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posted by martyb on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the no-surprise dept.

U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors may bring charges against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange soon:

Two media reports say U.S. prosecutors are preparing or closely considering charges against the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, including its founder Julian Assange, for revealing sensitive government secrets. CNN (http://cnn.it/2pINsBT) reported Thursday that authorities are preparing to seek Assange's arrest. The Washington Post (http://wapo.st/2pJgy4k) reported prosecutors are weighing charges against the organization's members after the Obama-era Justice Department declined to do so.

Possible charges include conspiracy, theft of government property and violating the Espionage Act, the newspaper said, though any charges would need approval from high-ranking officials in the Justice Department. The move comes after WikiLeaks last month released nearly 8,000 documents that it says reveal secrets about the CIA's cyberespionage tools for breaking into computers, cellphones and even smart TVs. It previously published 250,000 State Department cables and embarrassed the U.S. military with hundreds of thousands of logs from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Also at BBC, DW.

Previously: WikiLeaks Says It Has Obtained Trove of CIA Hacking Tools
Wikileaks and CIA Hacking Tools -- Security Firms Assess Impact as Tech Companies Offered Access
Cisco Reports Bug Disclosed in WikiLeaks' Vault 7 CIA Dump
Wikileaks Releases Code That Could Unmask CIA Hacking Operations
CIA Director Mike Pompeo Calls WikiLeaks a "Non-State Hostile Intelligence Service"


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @08:45AM (18 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @08:45AM (#497845)

    So...it turns out that Assange was right: The US does want to prosecute him.

    It sounds like the current administration wants to prosecute him for his latest document releases. It's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy if he keeps releasing the documents of many governments.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:36AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:36AM (#497852)

    You forgot to bring up rape. The department down the hall working the green site is going to eat our metrics.

    He deserves to be prosecuted for WikiLeaks on completely unrelated charges because of a very shaky rape allegation. Plus, internet tough guys will always help out by calling anybody who thinks a rape allegation could possibly be invented by a party not even involved in the act a misogynist. Therefore, he's guilty of something, WikiLeaks is something, so he should be taken to a proper jail for torture and sexual humiliation* Q.E.D.

    * I don't see anybody's quite made this connection from Assange being a rapist to US prison rape on a conscious level yet, but it appears to be very effective on a subconscious level. Humans are ever gluttons for eye-for-an-eye style "justice." Just a few more decades now and they'll finish terraforming the planet for us, finally after 66 million years.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:14PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:14PM (#497881)

      I was only commenting on bradley13's post.

      The US government does not want to prosecute Assange for rape.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:29PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:29PM (#498032)

        Of course not. But if you don't mention the rape part, you won't get public support. Humans aren't rational, so you can't use logic or rationality to manipulate them.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @11:38AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @11:38AM (#497873)

    Now that Cheeto Mussolini is in office, he has no use for wikileaks anymore, so he's moving to eliminate that risk to his secrets. That's the problem with being a useful idiot, when your usefulness runs out, so does your life. Now, lets see how long it takes to blame this on Clinton... Derpstate perhaps?

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:20PM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:20PM (#497883)

      King Orange Ferret Pelt will denounce anything wikileaks says about him, and his followers & the US Congress will not care. "Fake News" is now the official sign to staple to your ass when you are ostriching* to avoid reality.
       
       
      * yes, I verbed ostrich

      • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 22 2017, @01:03PM (5 children)

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday April 22 2017, @01:03PM (#497892) Homepage

        You two sound like a couple of salty nignogs.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @02:30PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @02:30PM (#497914)

          And you routinely sound like a racist piece of crap, point?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:37PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:37PM (#497989)

          People acting like that literally got Trump elected by associating with the opposition. I warned them all it was happening a year ago but they just continued on spewing their drivel... so dumb. I joke sometimes that they are a false flag operation being paid by Trump somehow.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:04PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:04PM (#498005)

            They are Russians, it is in their own interest! Gotta secure their spot in the global economy once oil collapses...

        • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:20PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:20PM (#498028)

          Looks like they managed to trigger the white nigger. Then again, it doesn't take much to trigger a lying degenerate lowlife such as yourself.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @01:03AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @01:03AM (#498119)

          Nignog? Interesting. My brother and I used to use that phrase way back as a silly term to refer to each other when trying to be annoying. I suppose it rhymes and is generic enough but still... And yes, we meant it as a reference to niggers.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:38PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:38PM (#497889)

    The obama admin was going to do it too. They just couldn't find a way to make it seem different than prosecuting any other journalist that accepts dead drop sources.*
    This administration just plain doesn't care how it looks and just wants to do it anyway.

    *Which is what wikileaks is. If you looked at what they post they just don't focus on the US, but they do have a english speaking bias due to only having english speakers on staff. This is why chinese and russian secrets are not very prominent on their site. Those two countries may also have a better method of keeping secrets as well.
    A lot of the leaked stuff on the us is from low level private(aka civilian) contractors having access to the information and deciding it's their moral imperative to leak it.

    • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:26PM

      by LoRdTAW (3755) on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:26PM (#498030) Journal

      Those two countries may also have a better method of keeping secrets as well.

      Those two countries are also well known for killing shit loads of their own people because they are ran by loonies. Not that the US is a bastion of justice. But at least we still have a justice system with some teeth left and enough people who are not fully zombified by government propaganda.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Saturday April 22 2017, @11:19PM (4 children)

      by butthurt (6141) on Saturday April 22 2017, @11:19PM (#498109) Journal

      > The obama admin was going to do it too. They just couldn't find a way to make it seem different than prosecuting any other journalist that accepts dead drop sources.

      I don't know the reason why Assange wasn't charged by the U.S. before, although I doubt that wanting to make it look different from the Obama administration's prosecution of other journalists was the reason. From a search for "war on journalism":

      With Fox’s Rosen, the administration got an actual warrant to read his email and contends that he has committed crimes by pursuing and publishing a story about North Korea, even though the story apparently doesn’t include any classified information per se. Rosen hasn’t been legally charged as of yet, but as Glenn Greenwald notes, the accusations against Rosen parallel government charges against WikiLeaks honcho Julian Assange.

      -- http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/22/obama-s-war-on-journalism-an-unconstitutional-act.html [thedailybeast.com]

      [...] when international pressure moved the Yemeni government to finally consider pardoning Shaye, President Obama personally intervened, using a phone call with Yemen’s leader to halt the journalist’s release.

      -- https://www.salon.com/2013/06/28/obamas_war_on_journalism/ [salon.com]

      [...] the Espionage Act, approved in 1917 during the hysteria of World War I, was used three times before President Obama took office in 2009 -- and six times during his presidency.

      -- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kennedy/calling-out-obama-for-his_b_1303783.html [huffingtonpost.com]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @02:29AM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @02:29AM (#498149)

        I'm pretty sure none of your examples are of journalists using dead drops.

        • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday April 23 2017, @05:43AM (2 children)

          by butthurt (6141) on Sunday April 23 2017, @05:43AM (#498180) Journal

          Perhaps not: I only meant them to show the Obama administration's general eagerness to have journalists punished. Care to comment on the significance of the use of a dead drop, as compared to other ways of receiving information from an anonymous source--or indeed, of gathering information in general?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @12:21AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @12:21AM (#498597)

            Its about as relevant as the fact that the Obama DoJ didn't charge any of those journalists either.
            Look, I'm not defending spying on reporters. But using false equivalencies only diminishes the moral high ground.

            • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday April 24 2017, @02:08AM

              by butthurt (6141) on Monday April 24 2017, @02:08AM (#498621) Journal

              Thanks for the correction. Sorry for my sloppiness.