The Prosecution of Julian Assange Is an Assault on the First Amendment

We are subverting illegitimate authority WikiLeaks released 76,000 classified field reports of U.S. operations in Afghanistan. He has done a lot of harm to the United States of America and he should pay for that. I hope he rots in hell. Starting with that. WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. Publish true information that is otherwise unsayable. Joe Biden to Julian Assange is a hi-tech terrorist.

00:29 - You cannot trust a government to implement the policies that it says that it’s implementing. He has to answer for what he has done. And so we must provide the underlying tools. Many establishment journalists in the U.S. consider Julian Assange to be a criminal whose work doesn’t fit in the same category as their own. No journalism here. What we have is an act of espionage. The wholesale dumping of WikiLeaks actually isn’t journalism. If you help in these stealing of classified material nothing about the First Amendment is gonna insulate you from charges that you stole, regardless of whether or not you publish it.

01:09 - I mean, you learn that day one in news business school. In April 2019, police dragged the WikiLeaks founder out of the Ecuadorian embassy where he lived for seven years after the U.S. government indicted him for allegedly helping Chelsea Manning access government databases. The New York Times editorial board applauded the move, writing that it, “could help draw a sharp line “between legitimate journalism and dangerous cybercrime,” and said that the Trump administration has begun well by charging Mr. Assange with an indisputable crime. “Julian Assange is not a freepress hero,” The Washington post editorial board opined, “and he is long overdue for personal accountability.

” 01:47 - Many in the media revile Assange and WikiLeaks for publishing the DNC and Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta’s, leaked emails before the 2016 election. He hacked into the Democrats’ computers and that’s why Trump won, basically. Timing it right before the debate. We have to acknowledge how political WikiLeaks and Julian are being here. The disdain is mutual, with Assange regularly describing the corporate press as complicit in hiding vital information from the public. History is shaped and distorted by the media. It is our single greatest impediment to advancement. Then in May 2019, the U.S. government unsealed a second set of charges against Assange, that if they were to result in a conviction, could set a dangerous legal precedent that would put all investigative journalists who expose state secrets at risk of going to prison. Whether or not the media considers Assange one of their own, his fate could have a profound impact on the future of their profession. The government is now charging Assange with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 by publishing the information leaked by Chelsea Manning. If convicted, he could face up to 175 years in prison.

03:02 - Edward Snowden, a former government contractor, has also been charged under the Espionage Act for leaking information to the media, which is how it’s more commonly used. What’s different about Assange’s case is that the government is claiming an individual unaffiliated with the government is guilty of a criminal violation for seeking out and publishing classified information, which is exactly what journalists do on a routine basis. The Trump administration today just put every journalistic institution in this country on Julian Assange’s side of the ledger, which I know is unimaginable. Even many of his biggest media critics are concerned by the additional charges. Really anybody who is concerned about press freedom should be deeply concerned about the prosecution of Julian Assange.

03:50 - Freedom of the Press Foundation cofounder, Trevor Timm, who testified in Assange’s UK extradition hearing, says that Assange’s conviction under the Espionage Act would set a precedent that could endanger any journalist publishing leak information about the U.S. government. Maybe journalists don’t like Julian Assange or they have criticized many of his actions over the years. That’s all well and good. But what really matters is the acts for which the Justice Department’s trying to criminalize here. Bob Woodward, for the past 40 years, has made his entire career off writing books on various administrations’ national security policies. He had a book called, “Obama’s Wars,” for example, that came out in 2010.

04:29 - It is hundreds of pages of highly classified information. Basically the most sensitive information that you could possibly imagine at a far higher classification level than anything WikiLeaks published. The investigation that made Bob Woodward the most famous journalist in the United States that led to the resignation of Richard Nixon, Bob Woodward and his partner, Carl Bernstein, engaged in what the government is calling a conspiracy in the Assange case. They were going to grand jurors’ houses, for example, and trying to convince them to hand over information that it would be illegal for the grand juror to hand over. If this precedent was around during the Richard Nixon era it’s possible that Woodward and Bernstein would have been stopped far before Watergate and deep throat became household names.

05:15 - Richard Nixon may never have had to resign. They quite possibly could have gone to jail. I shall resign the presidency, effective at noon tomorrow. The government claims that WikiLeaks crossed a legal line by posting a list of most wanted classified documents and providing the encrypted Dropbox that Manning would use to submit the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs. But Timm says this too is standard journalistic practice.

05:40 - Freedom of the Press Foundation, the organization I run, we have a software project called SecureDrop. And SecureDrop is essentially an open source version of a whistleblower submission system. Something that WikiLeaks had a hand in pioneering back in the early 2000s and 2010s. Journalists at major newspapers around the country and around the world are constantly asking sources to leak them information. Of course they are. And they’re increasingly doing this in the internet age in a very public way.

06:07 - But when the New York Times launched their SecureDrop, they took out a full page ad in their own paper. I wrote a piece in The Guardian saying that somebody should leak the torture report back in 2014, if the government wasn’t gonna release it in full because it contained evidence of illegal and unconstitutional acts. So this is a common tactic by reporters, by newspapers, by common citizens everywhere. And thankfully, at least for now, it’s covered under the First Amendment. And I’m worried if this case goes forward, that it wouldn’t be.

06:38 - One of the key accusations in the case against Assange is that he violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by allegedly offering to help Chelsea Manning crack a password to a government database in an effort to cover her tracks. On this count, many journalists have sided squarely with the government. The government seems to be hanging their hat on this single, quite weak charge, which relates to the 30 second conversation between Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning. But nothing ever came of it. I think this one charge is potentially a side show trying to convince the judge that Assange is some sort of hacker and that this doesn’t relate to journalism. While recognizing that Assange’s case is vital to the cause of press freedoms, many journalists have treated him with disdain, often portraying his years long confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy as self imposed.

07:25 - A ploy to dodge sex crime charges in Sweden, which were dropped in November 2019. Assange defended himself by claiming he was seeking asylum from extradition to the U.S., where he would be indicted on charges that would seek to deny him First Amendment protections. A prediction that’s been borne out. The years of confinement have taken a toll on his mental and physical health. In 2018, doctors determined that Assange’s condition was deteriorating after years of confinement, and asked that he be allowed to safe passage to a hospital. That request was denied.

07:58 - In 2019, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzner, described the conditions Assange has been subjected to as psychological torture. A decade ago, Assange was well regarded in establishment circles. The standing ovation he received at this 2010 Ted Talk is inconceivable today. Assange created WikiLeaks in 2006 and leaked documents about the inner workings of Guantanamo Bay, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s emails, and bank fraud in Iceland. The organization first grabbed widespread public attention with this.

08:40 - Video WikiLeaks with title, “Collateral Murder,” showed footage from a U.S. Army Apache helicopter of soldiers gunning down more than a dozen people in Baghdad who weren’t engaged in active combat, including two Reuters reporters. The video generated international press and controversy. Assange said his intention was to expose the casual carnage and destruction happening in the course of the U.S. war in Iraq. It was the, “Another day at the office.” How routine it was. The whole street covered with bodies. The reaction to that was nuts. The Iraq War logs which followed was the largest military leak in history, revealing that more than 15,000 civilian deaths hadn’t been publicly reported. And it exposed the fact that the U.S.

military had ignored reports of torture, rape, and murder 09:36 - by Iraqi authorities and soldiers. 15,000 people whose deaths were recorded by the U.S. military but were completely unknown to the rest of the world. That’s a very significant thing. And compare that to the 3000 people who died in ⁹⁄₁₁. And imagine the significance. Then in November, 2010, there was a leak of more than 3 million U.S.

diplomatic cables, 09:59 - revealing corruption among various Arab governments, which helped inspire the Tunisian Revolution that began the Arab Spring. WikiLeaks also released thousands of pages of both CIA and Russian state surveillance techniques, exposed Saudi support for ISIS, and undisclosed U.S. training of soldiers in Yemen, and helped provide Edward Snowden safe passage out of Hong Kong. Assange says his guiding principle has been to grant regular citizens access to the information powerful governments, corporations, and media gatekeepers wanted nobody to see. Someone’s right to speak and someone’s right to know produce a right to communicate.

10:36 - And so that is the grounding structure for all that we treasure about civilized life. But the 2016 leaks damaging to the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic Party found him both new allies on the Right. You have done a lot of good in what you have exposed about how corrupt, dishonest, and phony our government is. WikiLeaks. I love WikiLeaks. And critics on the left. In terms of the Mueller Report, if we get a good look at it next week, and it’s not too heavily redacted, we get a look at it and it shows that WikiLeaks, Assange himself, worked with the Russians to put out their attacks on the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton. But Assange, who once said he viewed the choice between Clinton and Trump as a choice between cholera and gonorrhea, and who denies any connection to the Russian government, maintains that his commitment is to bringing to light true information, regardless of which political regime it might damage.

11:33 - We believe that the best type of government comes from a government that is scrutinized by the people when they have true information about how government and major corporations, other power actors in society, actually behave. Timm says WikiLeaks’ early work, which went a long way towards revealing the nature of 21st century American warfare and surveillance and exposing corrupt authoritarian governments, is what even those who dislike Assange should remember as he faces life in prison. Much like Julian Assange himself, the legacy of WikiLeaks is complicated. They did a lot of good for the world, especially in their early days when they were releasing all sorts of really important stories and really important investigations. So I think people kind of forget because their mind is clouded by 2016, the ability of news organizations to run secure submission systems, prioritizing digital security.

12:24 - This was kind of a thing in 2010 that nobody had even thought of. And now everybody’s doing it. The ability to create these large coalitions of news organizations who are going over huge data sets. We can look to investigations like The Panama Papers, for example, where there’s a whole bunch of news organizations working together. This was not something that was happening very often before WikiLeaks partnered with the New York Times, The Guardian, and many other papers. Their legacy is certainly mixed. But there’s a lot of good things, a lot of lasting things, that have actually come out of how WikiLeaks operated.

12:59 - Assange remains in a London prison, confined to his cell for 23 hours a day, according to WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson He’s awaiting a ruling from the British Extradition Court, which is scheduled for January 4th. Government whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg, John Kiriakou, and William Binney, along with more than 7600 cosigners to an open letter, have called for President Trump to drop all charges. Throughout his career, however, Assange has been cynical about the notion that the democratic and judicial process can truly constrain government power and protect individual rights. The citizens of the world need to take matters into their own hands and protect themselves using encryption and other freedom-preserving tools. We will end up into a global totalitarian surveillance society.

13:46 - Perhaps they will just be the last free living people, those people who understand how to use this cryptography to defend against this complete total surveillance. .