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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.
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"
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Saturday April 22 2017, @11:19PM (4 children)
> 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)
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)
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)
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
Thanks for the correction. Sorry for my sloppiness.