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Post by Disciple of Fate on Jun 26, 2024 8:26:01 GMT -5
I think even without the death sentence, US sentencing is seen as abnormally excessive and their prison system as quite inadequate. I think given what happened to David McBride, Assange would be better off facing trial in the US than Australia. I think the Australian government at the time couldn't find a reason to charge Assange, he isn't a great person overall and the reputation of Wikileaks speaks for itself, but there is nothing to prosecute in Australia. As for the McBride case, I am conflicted. McBride never set out or intended to reveal illegal activity. He leaked to the press to force the Australian government to loosen the rules of engagement for the Australian special forces. Afaik, the media finding evidence of war crimes in those leaks were not his intention and he wasn't happy that the media revealed this. McBride leaked for all the wrong reasons so to say.
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Post by easye on Jun 26, 2024 9:21:39 GMT -5
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nfe
OT Cowboy
Posts: 204
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Post by nfe on Jun 26, 2024 10:11:10 GMT -5
Can't believe Mad Doc took my joke about Californian age of consent laws seriously. I think the Assange case obfuscates a real problem in modern times though. If we look at internet fraud or hacking, the authorities in countries where it is done from are (often) indifferent to those crimes (if it is even classed as one). There is the recent case of a US teen comitting suicide over blackmail from Nigeria and the US is trying to extradite the two men it deems responsible. Is that wrong because they're not on US soil? The US often seems to use it as a tool so as to prevent the suspect from evading prosecution in their country of origin. If someone is blackmailing a US citizen in the US, I think there's an argument that the crime is being committed in the US, even if they communications are being sent from elsewhere - though I don't know how that plays out in law.
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Post by Disciple of Fate on Jun 26, 2024 10:20:43 GMT -5
But the problem was that this is exactly what the US accused Assange of, handing the tools to and convincing a US citizen to commit the crime for him, thereby making him an involved party, if not the instigator, for a crime comitted in the US.
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Post by Haighus on Jun 26, 2024 10:42:41 GMT -5
Also, handling stolen goods is not applicable. Theft in that sense requires the deprivation of goods from the rightful owner. That's why video game companies don't charge everyone with pirated copies of their games with handling stolen goods, they charge them with IP infringement laws. The US never was deprived of the information Assange released. It was copied from their computers, they retained it after the "crime". This is a really important point. Traditional concepts of theft and scarcity don't apply to digital products unless artificially imposed. The whole current concept of intellectual property is threatened by digital products, which is why so much of the activity of big internet players is about controlling information flow. Morally, there is a strong case that governments classify or restrict far too much information and should be far more transparent. The US is especially bad for this in the developed world.
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Post by crispy78 on Jun 26, 2024 11:27:43 GMT -5
I'd be vaguely worried about how a potential second Trump administration classes 'disinformation' though...
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Post by Disciple of Fate on Jun 26, 2024 12:20:48 GMT -5
I wouldn't be worried about that, a second Trump term won't have to worry about disinformation, that only matters when you still have elections.
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Post by Peregrine on Jun 27, 2024 2:43:12 GMT -5
I'd be vaguely worried about how a potential second Trump administration classes 'disinformation' though... I wouldn't worry about it too much. The ruling only permits the state to ask for removal, not to compel it. If the request is unreasonable the publisher is free to tell the state where to shove that nonsense. This is why it was a straightforward 6-3 ruling with only the court's biggest idiots suggesting otherwise.
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Post by Peregrine on Jun 27, 2024 2:58:45 GMT -5
We extradite for murder or drug crimes (within reason) You're still misunderstanding the question. There are at least two potential extradition scenarios: 1) Alice, a UK citizen, murders someone in the UK and flees to the US in an attempt to escape the police. The UK asks for her to be returned to face prosecution under UK law for a crime committed in the UK. 2) Bob, a US citizen, kills someone in Texas in self defense and the state of Texas declines to prosecute. The UK considers it an outrage that Texas law permits an act of violence that would be considered murder in the UK and demands that Bob be extradited to face murder charges in UK court. The first is a routine extradition request that happens all the time, the second is not. And the second is the scenario with Assange. His actions were not a crime in the country he was in and that country declined to prosecute him. But the US didn't like that he wouldn't be punished as much as they wanted and so they demanded that he be tried under US law. This is exactly the problem! Assange was prosecuted under the principle of might makes right, nothing more. The US wanted him punished, the US demanded his extradition and had him held in prison simply because the US had the power to do so. Because the fact that the US does not have jurisdiction is proof that it is operating by might makes right. The fact that any of this happened is an inexcusable abuse of power by the US. Does your country have an extradition treaty with North Korea? Did the crime, whatever you think about the underlying law, occur in North Korea’s territorial jurisdiction? After all, if we’re using silly and not direct comparisons, if I, a UK citizen, murdered someone whilst visiting New York, I can still be charged, prosecuted and imprisoned by the US Justice System, under their laws. That is not a comparable scenario. We are talking about you, as a UK citizen in the UK, doing something that is legal in the UK but illegal in the US and the US declaring that they have the authority to extradite you to the US and prosecute you under US law. Assange did not commit a crime under his own country's laws and was not prosecuted under those laws. He was held for extradition to the US because the US believes it has global jurisdiction in any case where the US doesn't like what someone did. The context is simple, as I already explained: a US citizen living in the US posts blasphemous material online, let's say on this forum, where it can be read by someone in Afghanistan. Should Afghanistan be able to extradite the poster to Afghanistan for trial and execution? Or should the fact that their actions are legal in the US, the country where they performed those actions, be the end of the discussion and the extradition demand dismissed as raving lunacy? Under which law? And why is that law relevant to this case?
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Post by Disciple of Fate on Jun 27, 2024 3:50:02 GMT -5
We extradite for murder or drug crimes (within reason) You're still misunderstanding the question. There are at least two potential extradition scenarios: 1) Alice, a UK citizen, murders someone in the UK and flees to the US in an attempt to escape the police. The UK asks for her to be returned to face prosecution under UK law for a crime committed in the UK. 2) Bob, a US citizen, kills someone in Texas in self defense and the state of Texas declines to prosecute. The UK considers it an outrage that Texas law permits an act of violence that would be considered murder in the UK and demands that Bob be extradited to face murder charges in UK court. The first is a routine extradition request that happens all the time, the second is not. And the second is the scenario with Assange. His actions were not a crime in the country he was in and that country declined to prosecute him. But the US didn't like that he wouldn't be punished as much as they wanted and so they demanded that he be tried under US law. I understand the difference, what I am saying is that the second scenario is becoming more common due to the changing nature of crime thanks to the internet, as in comitted in your country by a suspect abroad (which is what they accuse Assange of doing/participating in). I don't disagree that it is being misused with Assange, but I don't think scenario 2 is by definition bad in the case of the suspect comitting his crime from abroad. We just need to make clear laws in which situation/for which crime we would allow extradition. I fully agree here. What I mean is that it is ridiculous from a UK perspective, the UK government would never do this based on a Russian request, so why does the 'law' allow this based on one from the US? I understand that, what I am asking is why it then matters if the US has laws on this or not. The (non-)existence of laws for punishing Assange matter little if they go outside the rule of law for might makes right. We're discussing why these laws are bad in the hands of governments that believe in might makes right, even though the law doesn't matter based on the existence of Gitmo and black sites. My argument is, is that having laws and extraditions for crimes comitted from abroad on your soil isn't an inherently bad thing. What is a bad thing is that we don't guard against abuse as much as we should, but even if these laws didn't exist, might makes right would still cause that abuse.
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herzlos
Ye Olde King of OT
Posts: 981
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Post by herzlos on Jun 27, 2024 4:12:08 GMT -5
The internet is a good point and it starts to get murky really quickly. If someone who isn't a US citizen and has never been in the US breaks a US law via a US based server, does that give the US jurisdiction? How tenuous does that server use need to be given that it's largely abstracted away from the users. Like European Facebook isn't supposed to share private info outside of the EU for data protection reasons, but my feed is visible to my US friends. So does that mean if I posted something that was illegal in the US they'd have jurisdiction and be allowed to extradite me? Where is this forum hosted? I'd assume also the US.
Politics, mostly. The US could apply more pressure on the UK than Russia could. Russia owns many of our politicians and media, but the US controls our weapons.
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Post by Haighus on Jun 27, 2024 4:43:49 GMT -5
Firstly, lets acknowledge that the US has a huge issue with laws that punish by association. The US legal framework seems to really like this concept. Take drugs. If you buy cocaine in the US, and take it with a friend, and the friend then dies of an overdose because it turns out the cocaine was secretly cut with fentanyl, but you survive? You can be convicted of murder. There are plenty of other examples where merely being close to some kind of activity or having a small accidental part in it results in serious prosecutions (unless you are a copper).
Regarding cyber crime, I think we should look at the core concepts of victim and intent. If there is an obvious victim, then it is reasonable to look at extraditing suspected perpetrators. I don't think the government is a victim though, I think specific harm or risks have to be demonstrated. If a bunch of classified materials are leaked but no one is actually harmed by that? Then they probably shouldn't have been classified in the first place.
Secondly intent is very important. Intent to harm vs intent to expose harm that has been covered up is obviously different. Demonstrating intent is a core part of criminal proceedings, it should apply here.
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mdgv2
Ye Olde King of OT
Posts: 811
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Post by mdgv2 on Jun 27, 2024 4:54:25 GMT -5
Thing is….Assange published confidential documents belonging to the US Government. That’s what I think people are missing or not properly considering.
If the US sought prosecution and/or extradition because he published documents belonging to another country? I’d fully agree with you. But he’s been pursued for publishing US owned documents. Whether or not those were master copies is irrelevant. Data theft is data theft. And it’s no different to say, me doing a National Treasure and stealing the Declaration of Independence, shipping it outside of the US, and it being sold in a dark auction in another country. Both I and the auction house, quite possibly the buyer, would all be up shit creek.
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Post by Peregrine on Jun 27, 2024 5:01:09 GMT -5
Thing is….Assange published confidential documents belonging to the US Government. That’s what I think people are missing or not properly considering. We absolutely are considering it, we simply reject the absurd claim that the US has global jurisdiction and citizens of other countries are obligated to keep secrets the US wants kept. It's just like how the US would laugh at any suggestion that a US citizen in the US who publishes classified North Korean documents should be extradited to face charges in North Korea.
Also, note that copyright violations are a civil matter, not criminal. Assange was not prosecuted for violating the US government's IP rights regarding material it owns, he was prosecuted for not obeying US secrecy laws.
And blasphemy is blasphemy. Why shouldn't a US citizen in the US who commits blasphemy face extradition to Afghanistan for trial and execution under their anti-blasphemy laws?
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Post by Disciple of Fate on Jun 27, 2024 5:09:02 GMT -5
The internet is a good point and it starts to get murky really quickly. If someone who isn't a US citizen and has never been in the US breaks a US law via a US based server, does that give the US jurisdiction? How tenuous does that server use need to be given that it's largely abstracted away from the users. Like European Facebook isn't supposed to share private info outside of the EU for data protection reasons, but my feed is visible to my US friends. So does that mean if I posted something that was illegal in the US they'd have jurisdiction and be allowed to extradite me? Where is this forum hosted? I'd assume also the US. Politics, mostly. The US could apply more pressure on the UK than Russia could. Russia owns many of our politicians and media, but the US controls our weapons. It does in certain cases regarding servers, depending on the severity of the crime (think like CSA material), they make the decision if it is worth it and extradition is likely. As for the FB thing, it all depends on what you post, you're not comitting a crime in the US technically speaking. Even if the server would be on US soil (which is doubtful with privacy laws) you can make a pretty good argument you as a user would not know. The US can request FB to curate that sort of thing. However, it is not unknown, the Netherlands is trying a man in absentia for putting a bounty on the head of Geert Wilders on social media. But is that specific example wrong? I assume this is a US forum based on the FTC disclosure. I know its politics, but the fact that the law can so easily bend depending on politics doesn't bode well for the legal situation of even the citizens of said country.
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