Julian Assange pleads guilty, leaves courtroom a free man Julian Assange is a free man. The founder of WikiLeaks on Wednesday appeared in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands before the Honorable Ramona V Manglona, who asked how he pled to Conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information – a single charge rather than the 18 the US department of Justice …
Julian Assange is NOT a journalist. He received classified information and released all of it in one go. There was no review, there was no parsing of information and as a result, the real names of assets in hostile countries were published putting them and their families in danger of imprisonment at best and execution at worse.
The info he released did highlight abuses and the video of a helicopter gunship mowing down reporters, but other info that went out along with that was released haphazardly and without any care. He put innocents in harms way in deference to his ego.
Snowden released his info to reputable reporters who decided what was appropriate or not before publication. The difference is night and day.
Snowden?! He was actually a traitor, for money. He stole information that was useful to Russia and China, and gave it to them. Nothing he released blew the whistle on anything - a good analogy is the release of medical records; we know that confidential medical records exist, but not their contents. Snowden stole operational details and handed them to non-NATO powers.
He stole information that was useful to Russia and China, and gave it to them
Any proof of that? Thought not.
He released the information to journalists, who decided what to publish and what to withhold to insure that collateral damage like what resulted from Assange's information dump was avoided. He's got much better legal ground to stand on than Assange in my opinion.
Don't be an idiot. Woodward and Bernstein didn't put the lives of foreign agents in jeopardy. Their stories were written by them based on their research, and reviewed by their editors.
The two cases are not at all comparable, and your strawman argument is pathetic even by Internet standards. Try learning to think critically.
> a person who betrays someone or something, such as a friend, cause, or principle. "he was a traitor to his own class"
Remembering to *always* expand out in one's mind the implied relationship - i.e. "he was a traitor to his own class", "he was a traitor to his own principles", "he was a traitor to his own avowed cause", "he was a traitor to his own friend", "he was a traitor to his own country"
Don't want to risk anyone claiming that (seom random person, let us call him "X") was a traitor to someone else's friend, whom he'd never met; or was a traitor to someone else's cause, which he had never avowed; or was a traitor to a country that was not his.
It puzzles me, therefore, why many (presumably left ponders) call Assange a traitor? He is, after all, apparently an Australian....
Back when Wikilieaks was current news, there were at least a couple of US Senators who called for him to be tried for Treason.
Perhaps explains something about the state of US politics that those eminent individuals did not understand this point (or possibly so US-exceptionalist that they couldn't conceive of a non-American being newsworthy).
We hanged William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) for treason even though he wasn't British.
Just had a quick check, because I remember that and not the details. According to that there Wiki, he was US born (which I did know) and grew up in Ireland. But he lied about being British to get a passport when he was living here, and had voted (he'd been a member of the British Union of Fascists) - so that was good enough for the court. Quite a severe penalty there, for lying on your passport form...
Quite a penalty for spending quite a lot of years literally working enthusiastically broadcasting Nazi propaganda during WW2 and being captured by the advancing US & British armies.
Do you think that he'd have gotten away with going back to America and saying "yeah, I headed up their propaganda operation which sought to destroy western democracy, but it was only a job?" I personally suspect not.
Do you think that he'd have gotten away with going back to America and saying "yeah, I headed up their propaganda operation which sought to destroy western democracy, but it was only a job?"
Probably. Mildred Gillars was an American who earned the nickname Axis Sally, broadcasting for the Nazis. After the war she apparently was the first woman convicted of treason by the US - and got 10-30 years. She served about 12.
Of course you search for stuff you half know, and lo - it turns out there was another Axis Sally. Rita Zucca. She was an Italian / American citizen - but gave up her US citizenship before broadcasting for the Nazis - so the US looked at trying her for treason and didn't. She did get 4½ years from the Italains for collaboration though, and served 9 months.
Ezra Pound also famously broadcast from Italy. Pro-fascist, pro-Hitler lots of anti-American stuff and lots of horrible anit-semitism. He was charged with treason by the US but found unfit to plead. So he ended up in a psychiatric institution for ten years.
Tokyo Rose also got convicted of treason, along with a couple of other less well known Americans who broadcast for the Nazis. No exectutions in the lot.
William Joyce led with the Irish (then German) citizen defence.
According to sworn evidence, he applied for a British Passport, which made him a person owing allegiance to the British Crown.
Technically, he was executed for making a false statement on a passport application. Bloody red tape, eh?
Damien All-bran,
Citizenship wasn’t legislated or enforced as tightly back then. I suspect everyone who stayed in Ireland, automatically became Irish. I think there was a mechanism to remain British, but you had to actively take it up. And I don’t know if that was a binary choice, in that you picked British or Irish? In some ways, it didn’t matter, as Britain and Ireland quickly became a common travel area, with both populations retaining the right to live and work in both.
Back when Wikilieaks was current news, there were at least a couple of US Senators who called for him to be tried for Treason.
Perhaps explains something about the state of US politics that those eminent individuals did not understand this point (or possibly so US-exceptionalist that they couldn't conceive of a non-American being newsworthy).
That you don't know that being a US citizen is not a requirement for being found guilty of treason in the US might say something about the intellectual laziness prevalent among people who cast aspersions on others, eh?
Treating the Constitutional offence of treason in a literal sense ("Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.") would mean all enemy combatants of any foreign state were guilty of "treason". This is patently nonsense and not the intention of the founding fathers, who apparently didn't realise that their descendents were going to start quibbling over words with well-defined meanings.
Such a naive and literalist reading is inappropriate and something the courts and USGov have repeatedly declined to adopt.
In the case of POWs for instance, trying foreign-national soldiers for "treason" (with or without execution) would break the Geneva Conventions in a number of ways. Even in the case of individuals who are not a member of an organised military, the US has actively developed legal fictions as an alternative - such as the class of "Enemy Combatant" for detainees at Gitmo. Not quite a PoW per Geneva, but somehow also not a protected civilian, yet not entitled to Constitutional Rights once on US soil1 either.
If the treason clause of the Constitution were to be applied literally, they could have just said "they're traitors".
But they very deliberately haven't adopted that meaning, because down that road madness lies.
Anyway. You were casting aspersions about intellectual laziness?
1. the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that Gitmo detainees "have been imprisoned in territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control." Which very inconveniently entitled them to Fifth Amendment rights to due process. Of course their inability to access lawyers or courts hampers this in practice.
Treating the Constitutional offence of treason in a literal sense ("Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.") would mean all enemy combatants of any foreign state were guilty of "treason". This is patently nonsense and not the intention of the founding fathers, who apparently didn't realise that their descendents were going to start quibbling over words with well-defined meanings.
IANAL, but have always assumed the general interpretation was that Treason was reserved for citizens or subjects acting against their own state. Hence I don't think it's ever been used against non-nationals, but it's something that seems rarely used anyway. So during and post WW2, UK nationals were charged with treason and jailed, or sometimes executed. Quibbling over words though is something lawyers and politicians do though, eg the whole Jan 6th thing, or the 'peaceful, but fiery protestors' and the Seattle insurrectionists. I guess for the US version though, there should be a high bar for prosecution, ie the US being at war. Plus some of the wording just amuses me. Adhering to their Enemy is, after all what ecofreaks do when they superglue themselves to oil-based tarmac on roads.
You are mixing up the conditions of the word "traitor" with those of the crime "treason".
If a politician defected from one party to another, they could be called a traitor.. It's not treasonous though!
Similarly if some member of a gaming clan gave operational plans to another clan, that would be traitorous, but not treasonous!
Treason is the one crime defined explicitly in the US Constitution, as follows:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
Note that:
1. It makes no mention of the accused being a US citizen.
2. Assange was not charged with treason. He was charged (across the original and superseding indictments) with various violations related to classified information under the Espionage Act, and computer-related crimes.
So the reason why some people refer to Assange as a "traitor" is that they don't know the law and are idiots.
I might also point out that historically in the UK, and prior to that in its constituent countries, treason was a very broad crime with many forms. For example, until relatively recently, a disobedient wife could be convicted of petty treason. Treason was also used as an excuse for numerous unfair punishments, some of which are explicitly forbidden by the US Constitution in response to that practice. So some non-USians might want to be careful about throwing stones at our glass house on this one.
Releasing confidential information without doing a proper job of protecting the names of people involved has never been tolerated, it's just that Assange was the first to do it.
I would have accepted his leaks without problem if he had sought to protect the names of the people from public scrutiny. That would have been a demonstration of US Government shenanigans.
Instead, what we got was a lot of people in sudden danger who needed to flee in urgency, many operations that were exposed and failed, or worse, and the fact that Assange paid for all that with the stress and confinement he got is only justice.
A journalist is not a judge. Leak curated info about government affairs, no problem, but you cite names when the person has been arrested or is being investigated officially. Then you can because you're reporting an ongoing affair, but you do not create the affair and name the people involved.
A proper journalist does not do that.
The unredacted release was not intended, Wikileaks realised they had too much information to go through themselves so they contacted some freelance journalists and gave them access to the Wikileaks servers so they could help go through it, it was one of those freelancers who hit publish on the unredacted information.
A journalist who releases videos of collateral murder, then releases names leading directly to their murder, is a vile hypocrite. Sadly, vile hypocrisy is stock-in-trade for journalists. Also, like senior politicians and certain government services, they like to argue that - and act as if - they are above the law. They are not.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/18/julian-assange-wikileaks-nick-cohen
" "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it.""
Also worth noting :
"an associate of Assange – a stocky man with a greying moustache, who called himself "Adam" – asked if he could pull out everything the State Department documents "had on the Jews". Ball discovered that "Adam" was Israel Shamir, a dangerous crank who uses six different names as he agitates among the antisemitic groups of the far right and far left"
"Assange [...] made Shamir WikiLeaks's representative in Russia and eastern Europe. Shamir praised the Belarusian dictatorship. He compared the pro-democracy protesters beaten and imprisoned by the KGB to football hooligans. On 19 December 2010, the Belarus-Telegraf, a state newspaper, said that WikiLeaks had allowed the dictatorship to identify the "organisers, instigators and rioters, including foreign ones" who had protested against rigged elections."
My memory may be clouded here, but if I remember correctly, the categorisation of 'sexual assault' that the Swedish court was attempting to try him on did not meet the UK definition for the similar crime under UK law.
IIRC, as part of the extradition treaties, someone cannot be extradited to a foreign country unless the crime they are accused of in the extraditing country was also a crime in the country they were trying to be extradited from.
If this was not the case, a huge number of people sheltering in various countries could be extradited for crimes their home countries applied which are thought unjust. Think of the people who were democracy supporters and who left Hong Kong as a result of the new judicial rules there.
The fly in the ointment here is the 'special relationship' with the US that Britain has, that normally allows the US to extradite people for things they were found innocent of in the UK (think Mike Lynch - accused ot corporate fraud), but does not work in reverse (think Anne Sacoolas, accused of death by careless driving, apparently being married to an American consulate member gives diplomatic immunity!). I think that the only reason why Julian Assange was not extradited was because there was a genuine fear he might get to the US, and never be seen again, at least not alive.
AFAICR the view at the time was that he wouldn't have been extradited from Sweden so that if he'd faced the Swedish courts, either by not leaving Sweden or by being extradited that might well have been the end of it as things stood at the time. The US extradition warrant was only issued after he'd holed up in the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden. Would it have been if he hadn't attracted so much publicity? Who knows? But he certainly made a number of bad (from his PoV) moves.
The speculation at the time was, that if Assange had returned to Sweden, the US would have quickly kick-started extradition proceedings and there is every possibility he could have been held and then extradited.
That seemed a reasonable fear to me.
It makes no sense at all. It would have been far harder to extradite Assange from Sweden than from the UK. The simple fact is that Assange jumped on literally the first plane he could catch when the Swedes told him to attend a police station to start the formal process of charging him over the rapes. He came up with the extradition nonsense afterwards.
Better go look at the facts before telling a good story. He was questioned whilst in Sweden and asked whether it was OK for him to leave Sweden, to which he was told that was fine. He left, as per his pre-scheduled plans. Sometime later the Swedish prosecutor decided she wanted to formally interview him and so issued an arrest warrant at which point Assange moved in to the embassy.
There's only one person telling lies on this thread. It's all on the public record that Assange was allowed to leave Sweden. Only some weeks later was he called back, by the new prosecutor put onto the case. Ultimately, he wasn't charged with anything.
Idiot lies from an Assange cultist. The exact opposite is on public record, extensively so. And the only reason he wasn't formally charged is that Assange hid in the Ecuadorian embassy.
And once again, all this quibbling about details doesn't change the key fact one iota: Assange admitted under oath that he raped the women, and his sole defence was to claim that he found a loophole in the law that meant his rapes weren't criminal offences. (Obviously no such loophole actually exists.) So, at best, your point is only that he successfully evaded justice for crimes he admitted committing. What exactly are you defending there?
No, that's just another of the Assange cult's lies. They have successfully clouded the issue in many minds by repeatedly outright lying about the facts.
Aside from the whole 'it wasn't really proper rape' which had tried on in front of a judge, and which was roundly rejected, Assange also confessed under oath to holding a struggling, crying woman down and forcibly penetrating her whole she begged him to stop. That court appearance and the judge's subsequent rulings were why he fled to the Ecuadorian embassy. The claim that it wasn't rape under Swedish or English law was laughed out of court.
Anyway, Assange never claimed he hadn't raped the victims, only that he'd found a legal loophole that meant it wasn't a criminal offence.
Original AC with clouded memory here.
I spent a bit of time refreshing my memory, and looking at some of the coverage of the judgement of the appeal against extradition. It seems like I was remembering the defence argument that was reported on at the time, rather than the summary of the judgement.
It does seem that at the conclusion of the appeal, Assange was slated for extradition for at least some, if not all of the Swedish charges. There is still the issue of extradition for questioning, which appears to be what the Swedish were wanting, and extradition for trial, which would have been the UK expectation.
But the judge was quite clear about what they thought should have happened, which is why Assange broke bail and holed up in the embassy.
"There is still the issue of extradition for questioning, which appears to be what the Swedish were wanting"
Easy enough to miss it in all the other stuff, but the judge also ruled on that. Sweden did not just want to question Assange, they wanted to prosecute him. The claim it was just for questioning was nonsense, based on the tiny nugget of truth that the Swedish system works slightly differently to ours, and the next step would be further questioning, followed by arrest and charging. The judge was very clear that this slight difference in procedure was completely irrelevant. It was a formality at that point, since Assange had stipulated under oath that the facts as alleged were true.
It does seem that at the conclusion of the appeal, Assange was slated for extradition for at least some, if not all of the Swedish charges. There is still the issue of extradition for questioning, which appears to be what the Swedish were wanting, and extradition for trial, which would have been the UK expectation.
I think those are the points Assange's defence (and UK Courts) were testing. So Assange was subject to both a European Arrest Warrant, and an Interpol Red Notice. So per treaty and convention, UK was obligated to arrest him. Which they did, releasing him on conditional bail.
So wiki again for simplicity-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Arrest_Warrant#
An EAW can be issued only for the purposes of conducting a criminal prosecution (not merely an investigation), or for enforcing a custodial sentence.
As I understand it, and IANAL, Sweden's prosecutors had elevated their case from simply ordering Assange to attend a formal interview, to formal prosecution and wanting him in Swedish custody. Assange then exhausted the UK appeals process, from memory, arguing whether extradition under both the EAW and Red Notice were proportionate. If anyone's got a link to the Supreme Court judgement granting extradition, that would be handy. But I think that answered the question of validity and proportionality.
Obviously Assange didn't accept that verdict, jumped bail and holed up in the embassy. And remind me not to steal any chickens next time I'm in Romania..
You're assuming political spectrums are left vs right
A simple model would be 2 dimensional left-right/liberal-authoritarian and most decent models have 3 or more dimensions (radical-conservative, dictatorial-democratic, etc are all extra axes)
Even these are simplistic and full of assumptions. Anyone who operates on a simple "left/right" definition is living a rather blinkered existence and easily manipulated
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum
"and with his long history of racism and misogyny, far right isn't an unfair tag."
So the left has no misogyny or racism? As far as I can see the liberal left likes to characterise the far left as just over enthusiastic friends, but anybody they actually dislike they try and label as "far right", which becomes a floor-sweeping collection of differing people, branded far right as a simple and automatic ad hominem.
Ah yes, because people killing people because they don't like the colour of their skin, or their sexuality is just the same as people who throw corn starch over covered paintings.
Sure, someone bombing a building because some department there does animal research is dangerous, but you know full well you'd rather be an enemy of the far-left than the far-right.
Hatred and violence is the far-right MO.
Hatred and violence is the mo of both, because they're indistinguishable - with the possible exception of whether or not they deny the Holocaust, or merely praise it.
It's very hard to say anything useful about it, though, because so many people claim to be far left who are clearly anything but.
I upvoted you. My original post was a bit clumsily written. I guess was talking about "alt-left" rather than "hard-left", but hard-left are much more rare.
However, "hard-right" is virtually a given for anyone right of centre these days. The MAGA politicians and the UK right wing politicians today (Reform, and most of the current tories) are much more diplomatic, but regularly engage in stochastic terrorism, and their sheep lap it up)
All the attacks on trans, immigrants, "foreigners" come from the right.
There are some on the right posting here that deny this.. If they feel uncomfortable facing the truth, maybe they should evaluate their position?
"Hatred and violence is the far-right MO."
Um.. no. What has been observed is the exact opposite. The gangs of black clad and tooled up protesters are from the left.
In Germany members of Hammerbande have been convicted of attacking people in the street with hammers. There is CCTV video of a gang of them walking up behind someone and smashing the person in the skull.
Since Oct 7th last year we have seen a huge increase in attacks on Jewish people and property by the political far left especially in the US.
During the 'summer of love' in the US we saw people dragged from their cars and beaten for driving down 'the wrong road', a person was shot in the back of the head while walking down the road by a far left activist and others have boasted on Xitter about taking bottles to smash over people's heads. And lets not forget the two young black lads gunned down by the CHAZ security.
Nigel Farage got milkshaked
An old lady was assaulted at a women's rally by a young man and he was acquitted.
In the last week protesters turned up outside Jake Tapper's house (CNN host, so not right wing) to screech about Gaza.
I do not see the media reporting on far right groups doing anything even remotely close.
What a load of bollocks! I hope you are trolling!
Jan 6th, Charlottesville. The hard right just happen to hate Muslims more than Jews at the moment, but they despise both.
Top law enforcement officials say the biggest domestic terror threat comes from white supremacists.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/us/politics/domestic-terror-white-supremacists.html
And you're gullible enough to believe them. Why not look with your own eyes?
You cite 2 events where no muslims or jews were hurt, on Jan 6th the only deaths were caused by the authorities and at Charlottsville the guy in the car was chased by heavily armed far left agitators into a deliberate roadblock.
You probably believe the 'fine people' hoax too. And to counter another one of your points it is the republican party that is most in support of Israel.
I am rather concerned that "espionage" apparently applies to a foreign citizen in a foreign country, and that the UK has set a legal precedent that they will extradite people for this. Waiting for Germany to request that GCHQ employees are extradited to Germany for espionage over hacking Angela's phone.
Also not normally a supporter of extra-judicial justice, however given that this all started with him running away from rape/sexual assault/whatever you call it charges because he didn't want a public court proceeding where his scumbag nature was exposed... He literally did this to himself running away from a slap on the wrist because he didn't want to face the consequences of his actions...
He didn't run away, he was interviewed by Swedish police and was told they would not be charging him. Before leaving he asked the Swedish police if they wanted to interview him again and they said no, he asked if he could leave Sweden and they said yes. Then once he leaves Sweden they charged him and requested extradition, he and his lawyers offered to meet with Swedish police to give an interview and they once again said they didn't want to interview him.
The US's plan has worked perfectly here, if you want to muddy and discredit somebody then just throw a fake rape allegation them. Now all the talk is about these allegations and not about the video evidence of misconduct by the US military. The crew of that Apache that gunned down a load of kids have never been charged by the way.
This is just a series of flat out lies. Assange fled Sweden when asked to report to be arrested. He subsequently confessed to rape under oath; his defence was that he found a legal loophole that meant his admitted rapes weren't criminal, rather than that he didn't do what was alleged.
Despite what the cultists like you pretend, the reality is that Assange admitted he violently restrained and forcibly penetrated a crying, struggling woman while she begged him to stop.
I upvoted you for your second paragraph, but I don't understand your issue in the first paragraph. If someone from any country stole and released British secrets, and was then found in a country with which we have extradition arrangements, would you not expect them to be extradited to the UK for trial? I don't think that's even controversial.
Indeed. I don't know of any case under modern common or civil law where a nation has said, "oh, this spy is a citizen of another country, so our hands are tied". Modern nations file charges against non-citizens all the time. The frequent outrage by Reg readers against this practice (generally directed at the US, as if it's unique to us) is just waving the naivete flag.
It's worth noting, perhaps, that the Obama administration considered indicting1 Assange on violations of the Espionage Act, and decided not to on the "journalist" grounds — not on the "non-citizen" ones.2 The latter isn't even a consideration.
1Technically, convening a grand jury and asking them to indict, but since indicting grand juries return an indictment about 97% of the time, it's nearly the same thing.
2It was the Trump DoJ which eventually sought the espionage indictment, despite Trump's occasional fawning over Wikileaks. Well, it's not like the man's consistent, or honest about his opinions, or rational.
I am rather concerned that "espionage" apparently applies to a foreign citizen in a foreign country, and that the UK has set a legal precedent that they will extradite people for this. Waiting for Germany to request that GCHQ employees are extradited to Germany for espionage over hacking Angela's phone.
This. The wording of the indictment is quite startling:
6. From at least 2009 and continuing through at least 2011, in an offense begun and committed outside of the jurisdiction of any particular state or district of the United States, the...
Okay, so a foreign citizen has been handed classified documents in a foreign country. And that individual is somehow subject to US laws how?
They've basically treated him as a foreign intelligence agent - but I doubt they will lodging extradition requests in Moscow or Beijing asking for intelligence agents who committed "an offense begun and committed outside of the jurisdiction of any particular state or district of the United States,"!
If Assange had ever been foolish enough to step on US soil, then fair game. But outside the US? This is entirely the US Military's problem - protect their secrets better.
The UK courts should know better after the ABC trials (recounted in these pages when Duncan Campbell occasionally Vultured).
And this is not to say Assange is a journalist. He's not (although certainly journalist-adjacent, Wikileaks very responsibly collaborated with Der Spiegel, El Pais, Le Monde and The Guardian on Manning's leak. It was unfortunate that Israel Shamir posted unredacted material. I wonder if we would consider it appropriate to personally prosecute the editor of Le Monde if one of their journos had screwed up like that?).
But there's nothing in the indictment that singles out Assange from (say) a journo at Der Spiegel, other than prosecutorial discretion. If a British or German or Aussie journalist (or activist) is handed US classified documents by a US citizen, then it is not the foreign citizen who is at fault (and there is no reason that they should be subject to US law, unless and until they enter a US territory). It's hard to see how an extradition could ever be justified, although the US certainly seem to have had a good go at it.
Okay, so a foreign citizen has been handed classified documents in a foreign country. And that individual is somehow subject to US laws how?
They're US documents, or 'trade' secrets.
They've basically treated him as a foreign intelligence agent - but I doubt they will lodging extradition requests in Moscow or Beijing asking for intelligence agents who committed "an offense begun and committed outside of the jurisdiction of any particular state or district of the United States,"!
That's what espionage and the great game is all about. If they could identify an agent and a crime, technically they could. But neither Russia nor China have extradition treaties with the US, so they don't. If, however an agent is caught in a country where there is an extradition treaty, and they have a decent case, they could request the agent and their contact be arrested and extradited. Or if the agent has diplomatic cover, they may use diplomatic channels to try and get that agent expelled. Writ larger, there's also stuff like the way the ICC is being used to issue arrest warrants, but has much the same effect, namely confining those charged to friendly or non-ICC member nations.
It's much the same with other hackers who've been caught hacking US systems, and then extradited to the US to face charges.
> It's much the same with other hackers who've been caught hacking US systems, and then extradited to the US to face charges.
Where the threshold for “hacking US systems” is at the level of accessing the login and using credentials as trivial as: admin / password1 and then bragging about having “hacked” a US MIL system…
Where the threshold for “hacking US systems” is at the level of accessing the login and using credentials as trivial as: admin / password1 and then bragging about having “hacked” a US MIL system…
Yep, which is why it's strange he thought that he'd be safer from extradition to the US in the UK than Sweden.
The crux of the USA's espionage charges against Asshat is that he offered inducements to American cItizens (Bradley/Chelsea Manning) to expropriate that intelligence data
If he hadn't actively encouraged people to search systems for misfeasance, I suspect the USA would be embarrassed but unable to try extraditing
Okay, so a foreign citizen has been handed classified documents in a foreign country. And that individual is somehow subject to US laws how?
The same way anyone anywhere is subject to the laws of any nation: because that nation says so. Whether said nation has any chance of enforcing that is uncertain and varies wildly, of course; but governments can say anything they want. I don't know why this concept eludes so many people here. Grow the fuck up.
Let's hope we never hear from the egomaniacal little scrote again.
(Except for when he inevitably dumps the PR decoys aka the Wife and Sprogs).
For all the wrongness of the USA's actions I was spectacularly uncomfortable hanging something as important press freedom off such a tarnished and self serving person.
Finally an anti-Assange comment I can upvote. He's a man with allegedly a history of deliberately breaking or removing condoms during consensual sex - an unconsensual act. However, as stated in these comments, Sweden dropped the case so he left Sweden. Then, almost certainly under pressure from the US, Sweden decided to restart the case. I can understand Assange's actions in trying to avoid a trip to the US for the past decade. The US government are the bad guys throughout this and publishing leaked documents is a public service. I wish that I could be on the side of defending press freedoms without having to also be on this twat's side but thems the breaks.
That's only true in the sense we don't know exactly what it would have been. We know what the range allowed for the offences are, and where in that range would be the sentences for violent, unrepentant rapists who come up with extremely stretched legal arguments to avoid taking any responsibility for their actions.
https://www.aklagare.se/en/affected-by-crime/sexual-offences/#:~:text=For%20serious%20rape%2C%20a%20person,the%20area%20of%20sexual%20offences.
The total sentence for the crimes Assange admitted to is in the region of 30 years.
The minimum for the least serious is 3 years, the maximum for the most serious is 10. This is, in fact quite lenient compared to the UK which, IIRC is life. If sentencing is similar to the UK the sentence after a guilty plea would be at the lower end of range and possibly a plea to a lesser charge might be accepted. Doing a runner wouldn't have helped there. In the UK there would also be the possibility of sentences being run concurrently. As it never ended up in court we don't know what the outcome would have been. We don't even know if he would have pleaded nor even if he would have been found guilty if it went to trial.
Tbf it's years since I last looked into this properly, so I may be misremembering details, but there's no doubt it was the higher end of several tariffs - and there'd be sod all chance of deductions for a guilty plea in this case, given we are talking about a man who believed it was a legal impossibility for him to commit the crime of rape.
It tells us all we need to know that preferred the time he has done in the Ecuadorian embassy and UK to much better conditions in Sweden - he'd have been locked up much longer in Sweden.
Why would the US want him extradited to Sweden on rape charges
dunno, but that's what happened as the author of this article writes:
Assange feared that if he appeared in a Swedish court US authorities would attempt to extradite him ... Once jailed on that charge, US extradition attempts commenced in earnest
Which means that the initial (rape) charges were only excuses to have him arrested. The girl even appeared with him in public the next day of that alleged "rape" : not a very convincing case, is-it ? He might also have observed what happened to others like Edward Snowden and Brandon Manning.
I disagree with you about how convincing the case is, but if I were to agree with you, that would only strengthen my argument:
They could, and did, get him arrested in the UK, on the actual charge of espionage etc, and managed to get him extradited on the US on it. So why mess around with a third country, on charges that in your mind aren't supported by evidence. There is plenty of irrefutable evidence of him publishing these secret documents, he doesn't deny it.
He thinks it is morally the right thing to do, and I suppose it is, at least in principle. That doesn't make it legal.
Why would the US want him extradited to Sweden on rape charges in order to get him extradited to the US, when it would be far easier to get him extradited direct from the UK, which is what they did?
Perhaps they thought it would be easier and cause less public outrage, embarrassment and awkwardness for the Swedish government extraditing him than it would if they had to pursue a UK extradition.
Or simply thought Sweden would be more amenable to extradition. While the UK often likes to be America's 51st State, there's also public opinion the government has to consider. That's ultimately why Gary McKinnon was never extradited.
Your version of events is inaccurate. Sweden interview Assange, released him while gathering further evidence, and then asked him to report to a police station to be arrested, at which point he got literally the first available flight out of Sweden.
He has admitted to forcibly penetrating a woman who was crying and begging him to stop. It's simply rape, not some pretend lesser form of rape.
He has admitted to forcibly penetrating a woman who was crying and begging him to stop. It's simply rape, not some pretend lesser form of rape.
It has always puzzled me that people who defend Assange can overlook this fact. Especially some of the celebs who were also part of the MeToo movement. I guess that's just a sad indictment on the effectiveness of his PR team. He is, and always will be an alleged sex offender. I'm also curious how long his marriage will last now he's a free man. As an obvious NPD sufferer, there's usually only room for one person in a relationship.
An interesting part of this, is that whilst a change in Australian politics played a big part, in trying to charge an Australian under US law, the question of First Amendment rights also applying to non-US nationals was also raised. It seems rather than risk contesting this and loosing, the US prosecutors stepped back and to all intents and purposes have accepted the principle… which will impact future attempts to extradite non-US citizens to stand trial in the US…
An interesting part of this, is that whilst a change in Australian politics played a big part, in trying to charge an Australian under US law, the question of First Amendment rights also applying to non-US nationals was also raised.
I don't think that was ever a serious question, but no doubt was a point Assange's legal team argued for all it was worth. Non-citizens tried in US courts are entitled to the same protections as any US citizen. That was already tested all the way to the Supreme Court (I think) wrt the rights of detainees at places like Guantanamo Bay. They'd been treated as somehow 'non-persons' with no rights, but it was successfully argued that as they were in US custody, they had the same rights as any other US citizen.
Just a note: the Guantanamo SC ruling was about whether these things applied even when not on US soil; it was already long established that they applied to non-citizens.
Thanks, I couldn't remember the details, just that it pretty firmly established rights for anyone in US custody.
Up to that point the USA had been avoiding the issue by keeping their prisoners offshore
This is the same tactic that Australia used to dump asylum-seekers on Nuie - they couldn't do it to anyone who'd set foot on Australian soil(*), only those intercepted at sea (Christmas Island isn't Australian soil)
Eventually this was ruled illegal and coming under the same UN conventions that apply to asylum seekers who'd actually made it to the destination
(*) Deporting unprocessed asylum seekers is illegal under a bunch of UN conventions enacted with an eye to avoiding repeats of the "St Louis" and similar events. This is why the Rwanda plan is as unworkable by design as Nazi Germany's "Madasgascar plan" was
> the question of First Amendment rights also applying to non-US nationals was also raised
This has been raised and answered in USA high level courts multiple times
The short answer is that the protections of the USA constitution apply to ALL people, not just citizens
This is important, not least because every single confederate soldier was stripped of USA citizenship after their Civil war and had to reapply for it as any other migrant would (with added checks) or live with a "resident (hostile) alien" designation
That designation is WHY "alien" is a perjorative in the USA when applied to non-extraterrestrials
Assange was no journalist in my book. He was a gamer, a blogger, someone out to get attention, and a tool of the Kremlin, whose antics ("sloppiness" in the article) had concrete negative consequences for millions of people. Where would he be now if he had been facing the "justice" of a repressive regime? Gulaged to death? Novichoked? A grenade in his private jet? Accidentally defenestrated? Khashoggied into bite-size bits? He got the best deal, by far.
The conviction is for (what El Reg does):
"obtaining newsworthy information from a source,
communicating it to the public, and
expressing an openness to receiving more highly newsworthy information."
Not my words but that of the EFF
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/eff-statement-assange-plea-deal
Tell that to the people he doxxed in his dumps.
My dislike of Assange (quite apart from the fact that I think he's a self-aggrandizing twat who wants attention) is not what he did, but how he went about it. No redaction (whether that was an accident or not is irrelevant, it happened), selective leaking and blatantly making himself the story. None of those are the actions of a responsible journalist.
Indeed. There have been quite a few reports of incidents of splitting condoms and sick stuff like that. He is a horrible man. Married his solicitor to improve his chances, then had kids to make a stronger case.
In terms of how he handled his incarnation: newbie. From our brief time together in 2022, the general opinion was that he should have gone for a plea deal after leaving Healthcare in 2021. Go for 25% of charges dropping the big time stretch ones and serve time in UK (not Aus). 12-18 months with time taken in hand and good behaviour with early release on tag after 6-8 months.
Regardless of the faux noble reasons, he still committed the crime. Nothing would change for him until he accepted guilt. And he finally did. And his solicitors are over the moon hugging and kissing him. For Assange has kept them in Porsches for the last 10 years. A small chuckle to the ordinary folk donating towards keeping the boys from Temple comfortable.
As suspected, the briefs have won by advising Assange poorly. he was a pup amongst tigers with them. A plea deal was there back in 2022, just a few more offences.
However, he has done his time. And I am happy to see him free like many others I met. 5 years in Belmarsh with the first 2 in healthcare - Dante's deepest circle where criminally insane 'people' scream at the moon. " years there with 170 years hanging over your head with deportation to a SuperMax... he did very well. But he is cut and cut deep. He has aged so much since the 2 years I was with him. He looks 10 years older in 2 years! And fat. Broken. Yes, Guv.
I wish him well now. I think he might milk it, but his prison memoirs will be a brilliant read if not just for the Jeffrey Archer-esque fantasy and embellishment.
Here in Sweden there has been some discussion around why the bloke did a runner in the first place, i.e. to skip out on what looked to be a pretty water-tight rape conviction.
Lots of fawning and sighing about him getting his 'freedom' back though from various sections of the news media, including (or perhaps, particularly) from sections that are very critical of a well known orange haired rapist.
To me both blokes seem to be pretty sleazy, but that's just my opinion.
Hillary lost due to insulting the voter base and generally being a completely entitled and utterly unlikable person.
It is still funny the number of people who froth at the mouth at any questioning of the 2020 election but also very vocally claimed the exact same things about 2016. And yes, Hillary did say that the election was stolen from her.
Hillary lost because the Republicans had spent years attacking her character. She spent a lot of time in public service and there were tons of decisions that could be second guessed. Her reputation was severely tarnished. She was unlikable, even to many who voted for her. Add to that the fact that we have never had a woman president. There are a lot of members of a large demographic that simply would never vote for a woman. My dad was one of those. Even to the extent of voting against his own interests. It probably sounds sexist, but she would have had a better chance running in 2000 when she was younger and more attractive. Plus less public service. But as VP, 2000 was Gore's election according to party politics.
Trump, OTOH, had no political past so you couldn't hold him accountable. Benghazi vs not paying his companies debts. It's great when you're running as a populist to not have a track record to explain. He could tell anyone what they wanted to hear.
My personal opinion is that Hillary's fiscal policies would have been similar to Bill's, due to experience and having a lot of the same advisers. I suspect that had she won her 8 years would have meant that our national debt would be half what it is now, and the economy would be as strong or stronger. $17t is a lot of money going to government contractors and tax cuts for large businesses. Backing Trump paid off well for them.
Remember, the Clinton presidency curbed spending increases and let the economy grow to the point that we nearly had a balanced budget when he left office. Compare that to Reagan, idolized by fiscal conservatives, yet tripled the national debt during his 8 years. At this point, I'm not sure it's possible for the economy to grow fast enough to out run the interest payments on the growing debt. And that's going to hurt a lot of people when the hammer drops on Social Security benefits.
She was a serial liar and had been involved in numerous iffy things over the years. The republicans didn't really need to do anything, she did it herself.
Claims of being under sniper fire when visiting Bosnia, you just need to watch the news footage of her arrival to see its a lie.
Many iffy things going on in Arkansas, whitewater for example.
The really funny thing is that both her and Bill would be classes as far right now for their views on illegal immigration and abortion while Bill was in office. I seriously doubt that Hillary would have continued as per her 1990's ways in 2016. The democratic party base has moved so far to the left since 2000 that it is a totally different beast. We are a long way from 'safe, rare and legal'.
"Backing Trump paid off well for them"
Nothing compared to the handouts from Biden. Endless war pays very well.
Assange may not be the nicest person on the planet, but the insane level of rage against him here is pathetic, to say the least.
He and WikiLeaks exposed American war crimes.
It is a bad day when journalism is being punished. Trump has repeatedly threatened to go after journalists if he's re-elected.
Think about that for a millisecond, if you can.
Why are you not thinking about THE FACT he absconded from a water tight rape case in which he would be found guilty?
Or are you implying any crime is forgivable as long as you have a pop at US war crimes along the way?
You are urging us to have a complete picture but your own seems highly lacking
If it was so water tight, why was he not detained when he asked wether he was OK to leave Sweden? The simplest option would have been to say you can't leave Sweden, and if he left he would then have an arrest warrant served for leaving when not allowed. That's not what happened though as they clearly said he was free to leave.
If it was so water tight, why was he not detained when he asked wether he was OK to leave Sweden?
citation needed Ok, so I know it's wiki, but-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_Authority
On 27 September 2010 Assange left Sweden for UK and prosecutors informed his Swedish lawyer Björn Hurtig [sv] that an arrest warrant would be issued for Assange. Hurtig admitted that prosecutors had tried to interview Assange before he left Sweden with their permission. Assange was arrested in his absence the same day.
As I understand it, Sweden's a lot like other countries where formal interviews require process be followed. So the UK you get arrested and interviewed under caution. In the US, there's lots of police interviews with people complaining they've not been mirandised, which AFAIK is much the same thing. Same I think with the rest of the process, so Assange may have been free to leave, conditional in returning to Sweden on the 18th for the formal interview. He didn't, and the rest became history and enriched his lawyers.
He was not allowed to leave at the point he did. He fled when told to report for arrest and charging.
That's the bit that seems a bit unclear, ie wiki's summary which only cites newspaper sources-
Hurtig admitted that prosecutors had tried to interview Assange before he left Sweden with their permission.
So what evidence there was of Assange having permission to leave the country. Plus assorted claims that his exit was pre-planned, rather than jumping on the first available flight out of Dodge. Regardless, if he was ordered to appear on the 18th and didn't, he should have been unsuprised as to what happened next. It seemed much like the situation in the US if you pick up an out-of-state speeding ticket or other charge and a court date is set. Fail to appear, or have a lawyer appear and there'll be an arrest warrant issued and a felony added.
As this was an interview though, Assange obviously had to be present, then proceeded with much special pleading that Sweden's laws and procedures should be altered to suit him. I know other countries can do things differently, ie co-operation agreements between LEAs in the US and UK so UK police could arrest someone, and an interview conducted with US LEOs in UK custody, or sometimes in US or other country's embassies if they have the facilities.
And I was also thinking about the US extraditon from Sweden claim. If he was so concerned about that, why was he applying for Swedish residency at the time? If that had been a real fear and he was looking for somewhere to live, why didn't he pick a country that didn't have an extradition treaty with the US?
Re permission to leave, it's obvious enough that when the police ask you to report to a police station, you don't have permission to leave.
Assange claimed that the police had told his lawyer to get him to report to the police, but he never received the message, and entirely coincidentally went to an airport to catch the first flight out.
Why do you have to lie? Is it because the alternative is admitting that you support a scumbag rapist?
Assange never 'exposed American war crimes'. He did leak US military information of minor secrecy, which would have been fine if he hadn't gone to the US, or a country with an automatic extradition treaty with the US - but he was too busy fleeing in panic from Swedish justice following his rape speed to think of that.
This post has been deleted by its author
.... that any discussion on Assange turns into 2 groups of posters metaphorically shouting past each other.
Putting aside discussions about Assange himself* and focusing on the Wikileaks allegations:
- he was engaged in a journalistic endeavor to publicise whistleblowing accounts.
- even if he did technically assist whistleblowers to extract data, this is not much different to what many respectable journalists at established news outlets do.
- this type of journalism is of enormous public interest and should be encouraged.
- governments have rarely gone after established news outlets that do the same thing (clearly they would like to but don't want the backlash)
- the best disinfectant is sunlight - government operatives should be the first to uphold national and international laws, and are not above either
There is a strong argument to be made that Assange irresponsibly handled the information given to him, endangering the livelihoods and lives of informants and their families. BUT note that this was not the argument made by the US in prosecuting him. They went after him because he made them look bad.
*Yes, Assange comes across as a bit (a lot?) of a prick in the whole saga.
Look, it's very simple. If you do stuff a country will consider to be spying - and any country would - then you don't go to that country, or anywhere with an extradition treaty like the UK has with the US. But Assange was desperate to flee from justice following his rape spree. That is _all_ that happened here.
The Assange cult is equal parts deluded tankies, and incels who envy his rape spree.
This post has been deleted by its author
Putting aside discussions about Assange himself* and focusing on the Wikileaks allegations:
- he was engaged in a journalistic endeavor to publicise whistleblowing accounts.
This isn't an allegation, merely a disputed fact. Assange was not a journalist, nor would I consider Wikileaks a news organization at the time. That's like calling 4chan journalism, or the clowns that publish health data from organizations that have been hacked.
Anybody who publishes information in the public interest is a de facto journalist. Nobody needs any sort of license from anyone (least of all from a government) to be called a journalist, or to practise journalism.
I disagree. I think being a journalist means you've been educated and informed about ethics and the law. So balancing public interest with national security, protecting sources etc etc. So Bob tells Alice the nuclear launch codes are 00000000 and Alice publishes that. Both would find themselves in court because they published a very sensitive official secret, and every country has laws to protect that stuff. Or maybe Alice tells Bob to hack a system to obtain those launch codes, and both have then committed an additional crime.
Which I think is where Assange came unstuck by potentially assisting Manning in obtaining classified information. Where Wikileaks had previously been mostly a publisher, relying on tips and, well, leaks, it's position was probably a lot simpler. It also seemed to recognise the risks when it brought in proper journalists to review and manage some of the material it obtained, but didn't manage their security tightly enough so there was an uncontrolled release.
I think it's a tricky balance. When the Snowden stuff happened, I didn't look at the stuff he dumped. Some of it was probably interesting, but still classified. I did read the media reports and there was one 'shocker' that caught my eye because I was very familiar with it. It's something I'd love to talk with TPTB about, but that's unlikely to happen. It might also make a good story, but I'm not going to write it because although there's an IT angle, there's also the classified stuff and I really don't want to end up getting dragged through the courts.
Evidently, a few of the reasons the Ecuadorians wanted Assange out of their London Embassy was that he was mentally deteriorating so much in the last 6 months of his stay that he was smearing feces on the walls of his room and urinating in his bed and on the floors!
That tidbit comes from a UK rag magazine who quoted multiple embassy staff members about his bizarre behaviour!
Before that, multiple wikileaks insiders indicated he was a My Way or the Highway sort of leader that irritated many staffers.
Sometimes certain Assange personality traits got in the way of the "More Noble" aims of Wikileaks itself! Those traits also left him open to a few less than legal behaviours which riled up many in the political sphere who needed some ammunition to strike him down with!
V
They weren't his. He was requested to give them back, he didn't and choose to hide them. Not only is Cannon clearly delaying for him, now so are the Supreme and massively bent court judges (not all of them as 3 voted against the immunity case) with their bullshit ruling on the immunity case.
So now, Biden should send out seal team 6 to end Trump, simple and then say "Well Trump did say a president should have total immunity, even for killing their political rival. And because the Supreme Court appeared to agree with him, depsite us not having a King/Queen or this ever being a problem before in US history. I just did what Trump said I could do, so I took him out. Quite good really because now we don't have to listen to anymore of his grifting bollocks".
Well! Well! Well! ... As "The Traveller" acting on behalf of "The Q" who are a Toronto, Canada-based group of math-nerds that appropriated the name of a set of early 1990's-era television science fiction show characters in order to show their mathematical omnipotence, have just now made a statement about recent events relating to Julian Assange's release from custody making for an OPPORTUNE TIME TO REVISIT 2017 and their public disclosure of the means and method that allowed this team of former University of Toronto math students and post-graduates to do a fancy form of Differential Analysis in order to BREAK AES-256 encryption which allowed the contents of THREE Wikileaks Insurance Files AND a fourth 3rd Party donated Insurance File to be secretly DECRYPTED by using RGB computer imaging to represent the Shift-Box and Mix-Box operations running through known test decryption keys and their KNOWN input data and known final output data and compared against the Wikileaks insurance files!
Advanced image recognition software was able to discern subtle patterns within the recorded shift and mix box bit-pattern outputs of the AES-256 algorithm at various stages and was able to compare those RGB imagery outputs against known sets of test keys that were of values distributed across the numerical bandwidth of the 256 bits of AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) algorithm. Rewinding and forward winding of those shift-and-mix box operations allowed the University of Toronto students and post-graduates to use imaging software to model and recognize "the Where" and "the When" of what intermediate and final data outputs would be created and the likely precursor values that would have cause sub-portions-of and the entire input key and the input data to create specific encrypted output data. This essentially brought down the possible key combinations down to between 2^96 and 2^128 numbers of LIKELY decryption key combinations spread throughout the 256-bit key length. These "Islands of Probability" allowed Brute Force methods to be brought into play that used a GPU server farm to finally crack all the Wikileaks Insurance Files decryption keys and finally decrypt all their contents.
The contents of those files and their decryption keys, while fully decoded in 2017, were kept private and secret all this time for reasons undisclosed to me. "The Q's" only response to a publicly posted inquiry was that some of the contents of those Wikileaks Insurance Files were "JUST TOO EXPLOSIVE!" to reveal publicly in 2017. Further digging by me indicated that certain persons, institutions and their antics described within those files are now dead and/or disbanded as of 2024 so it may now be appropriate to release all stored data.
I should note that the decrypted data itself has already been indexed, curated and put into a easy-to-search database that contains HIGHLIGHTED BEST-OF video and still photo imagery, PDF files, emails, word processing documents, Powerpoint presentations, plain text and other information that highlights the most publicly pressing and//or the most politically sensitive information, the most "Explosive" information and the most technologically advanced systems and processes discovered within all documents!
It is a LOT of data that had to be gone through by hand using database-oriented manual and automated search techniques to remove duplications and re-hashes of older previously released data. Only the most publicly interesting data was put into the HIGHLIGHTED BEST-OF sections but ALL data is still available for public perusal. This database and the final decryption keys will be released to MULTIPLE worldwide public media-related entities and to Wikileaks itself all at the same time!
This release is currently being discussed by "The Q" members on a group-wide basis as to a specific time and place to finally reveal the final input keys for the three AES-256 encrypted Wikileaks Insurance Files and the fourth 3rd party data file as noted below:
.
File 1: wlinsurance-20130815-A.aes256 -- 3.32GB
SHA256 Hash: 6688fffa9b39320e11b941f0004a3a76d49c7fb52434dab4d7d881dc2a2d7e02
.
File 2: wlinsurance-20130815-B.aes256 -- 46.48GB
SHA256 Hash: 3dcf2dda8fb24559935919fab9e5d7906c3b28476ffa0c5bb9c1d30fcb56e7a4
.
File 3: wlinsurance-20130815-C.aes256 -- 325.39GB
SHA256 Hash: 913a6ff8eca2b20d9d2aab594186346b6089c0fb9db12f64413643a8acadcfe3
.
File 4: USA-Secret-Patents-List-1948-to-2009.aes256 (54.1 GB)
SHA256 Hash: 12adbf23579ddaec01aadeaeac87092536e629462392aacabb341373cebce1b1
.
If the above values DO NOT MATCH the computed hash value then some or all bytes within the downloaded Wikileaks insurance files can be considered to have been changed or are corrupted (i.e. are a bad copy)!
A further press release from "The Q" will be forthcoming shortly.
thank you, from
"The Traveller" acting on behalf of "The Q"
V
Explaining the technique a little better, the AES-256 encryption algorithm contains shift-boxes and mix-boxes that are matrices of numbers used to "scramble" or "unscramble" the input data via a complex numeric operation that is based upon the starting values created by an input encryption or decryption key. By graphing the actual intermediate values created during these complex shift and mix operations as a series of greyscale and/or RGB pixels AND organizing them into a X and Y axis plot that organized as a set of parameters to look at such as intermediate key or data value, distance in integer, ASCII or UNICODE value from another decoded or encoded value, range of values between a set of specified minimum and maximum values, an average, mean, minimum or maximum data value and other parameters that are plottable on an X, Y coordinate basis.
The pixel array created, in many cases, has a discernable pattern within such as a curve, a line, an angular or curved outline or a regular filled shape that can be determined via expert-system or A.I.-enhanced vision recognition software that will then predict a future or previous value based upon comparisons against patterns that are produced by KNOWN input keys and KNOWN input data.
By running many graphing operations through a subsampled array of proposed input keys and arrays of known input data, it is now possible to figure out "Islands of Probability" for each calculated range of values that form the characters of a proposed input key used to unscramble encrypted data. These "Islands and Ranges of Probable Key Values" can then be brute-force checked on the encrypted data to figure out which one of the proposed key values is the actual decryption key.
AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) at 256-bits wide is a very, very, very large number of possible decryption key possibilities, so ANY VALID WAY POSSIBLE that lets one reduce the total number of proposed keys that needed to be actually checked via running the AES-256 algorithm on the encrypted file down to 2^128 or below number of combinations is a REAL BIG DEAL in the world of Cryptoanalysis!
The KEY ABILITY created by the above pixel-oriented X,Y coordinate graphical plotting method is that the permutations of colour and greyscale patterns produced from running through sub-sets of proposed input keys and sub-sets of input data ARE NOT truly random. Bit-shifts and Mix Box operations ALWAYS produce a specific pattern depending upon the initial first few bits of the input decryption key and the first few bits of a set of unencrypted input data. Those pixel patterns ARE NOT TRULY RANDOM! They follow mathematical rules which are derived by running, "fast forwarding" and "rewinding" the shift-box and mix box operations through a vision recognition system to find specific "lines, curves and shape patterns" that will let an expert system figure out what the original key was! It currently takes about 120 days of 24/7 number crunching on a four-GPU card super-workstation (i.e. using older AMD FirePro 9100 graphics cards and AMD S9170 server GPUs!) in order to run through 2^128 combinations of keys via brute force decryption computation of AES-256 on the four-GPU computer.
This method was created by a group of University of Toronto Department of Mathematics students and some post-graduate students who already had their Ph.D degrees and needed some "internship" opportunities post-graduation! Starting in 2017 this group calling themselves "The Q" after the early-1990's-era Star Trek: The Next Generation science fiction TV show characters was able to gather various computer resources and startup money in order to figure out if their pixel-graphing code actually worked on real-world encrypted data. They decided to use the multi-gigabyte Wikileaks Insurance Files that were available for download as a test vehicle for their software designs. After multiple attempts on a large GPU server farm, "The Q" group had considerable success that allowed them to discern non-random patterns found during deep examination of the shift-box and mix-box internals of AES-256 runtime operations upon running various known plaintext and known input key comparisons. A brute force attack on the found ranges of likely input keys were then applied to the Wikileaks files themselves which eventually led to actually legible decrypted output after a period of six months.
As each file was properly decrypted and perused, other group members created a highly organized database of curated content that was put into a master database which will be made available for public dissemination and perusal shortly. The Insurance File contents are actually quite controversial and ABSOLUTELY WILL cause political turmoil leading to criminal prosecutions and public outrage. In fact, it was described to me that a number of national governments around the world WILL FALL and/or be violently ousted by the body public after such public data disclosure and a number of business leaders/personnel will be vilified for their activities!
V
I can't find an authoritative cite that the people who posted bail for him back then, ever got refunded when he skipped bail. They just crowdfunded the cost of the jet, and I wondered if the others ever got their money back.
It's debatable whether Assange can be called a journalist.
Journalists have a code of ethics.
Journalists don't pay "bounties" for leaks.
Journalists don't pay "bounties" to get the competition fired.
Journalists don't help Russian military intelligence to interfere with democratic elections
He's a lot of things - a fraud, a narcissist, a useful idiot, an accused rapist, a threat to national security. But a journalist? Nah.
I think a lot of people have a mental image of Assange that's stuck in the past, when he was a darling of the left, but in 2024 he's celebrated by people like Tucker Carlson, Robert F. Kennedy, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Nigel Farage, and living proof of the Horseshoe Theory as noted by Bayard Taylor: "Voilà, comme les extrêmes se rencontrent!"
Ecuador eventually revoked Assange's asylum and he left the embassy, prompting his arrest by UK authorities for breaching his bail conditions.
Maybe El Reg confused "left" with "arrested and dragged, kicking and screaming, out of the building by the police"
it's an easy mistake to make, but shoddy journalism by El Reg.
Assange was arrested by Met Police inside the embassy, and the ambassador invited police inside
Snowden has always felt rotten about the side he 'picked'. But I will pick on the word 'picked' that you picked, because this word is either careless use of language, or conscious misinformation, or just biased against him (which, in fact, would be ok, because it indicates a viewpoint). But he did not 'pick' Russia. Before he ended up in Russia, he had tried to 'pick' several the so-called advanced democracies, and then, those less advanced ones, and then the ones even less advanced, and with all of them he was told, more or less publicly, to go forth and multiply. And that' because - according to the lore of that time, and very likely, the US were very busy calling ALL their democratic partners 'asking nicely' to think very, VERY hard (but not too long) about what'd do when Snowden asks them for political asylum. And it worked.
What sort of nonsense is this? Snowden stole and sold US military secrets. Of course he picked his side: treason for money.
The 'whistleblower' nonsense is for tankies and similar idiots. He didn't blow the whistle on anything. We already knew about everything he pretends to have revealed. He released confidential details of what was being intercepted and monitored, but the interception and monitoring was not a secret.
Well, that's certainly an interesting interpretation of Snowden's downfall. It doesn't say much for his credibility that your so-called "even less advanced" countries (what does that make Russia btw?) wanted nothing to do with him.
Just last year he said he had no regrets about what he did, so I'll take your claim about him feeling rotten with a pinch of salt.
Snowden chose to betray his country for five minutes of fame. He's right where he deserves to be.
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