Do you think Assange will commit suicide?

[Forty Two]

Just what has Assange got to do with free speech? He is just a leach.

The same thing as the New York Times and the Pentagon Papers.

The right to publish true information, even if someone else revealed the information by stealing it or violating a government rule against disclosing it.

In a wonderful, classically liberal, ruling, the US Supreme Court in New York Times vs. United States, ruled that The New York Times and The Washington Post newspapers had a fundamental right to publish the then-classified Pentagon Papers without risk of government censorship or punishment. In that situation, Daniel Ellsberg illegally disclosed like 7,000 pages of documents about the Vietnam War which showed a lot of bad acts on the part of the United States. The US government sued to stop the publication, claiming that disclosure of the illegally released documents constituted a violation of the Espionage Act and was an illegal disclosure of secret government information.

The SCOTUS properly ruled that it might well be illegal for Ellsberg to have violated rules that bound him to not disclose the information, but the New York Times was not bound by Ellsberg's obligations. The New York Times was exercising its right of free speech and the press by publishing the information, even if it was top secret according to the government. So, the government shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press - so that means the government cannot make the Espionage Act punish a media report of information, even if it would be illegal conduct for Ellsberg to have obtained and released the information because of his role as a government employee.

That's Wikileaks. If Wikileaks receives leaked confidential or secret information, and then publishes it, it is doing what the New York Times did, as long as Wikileaks didn't commit a crime in getting the info - like doing illegal hacking or breaking into an office to get the info, or paying someone to do it, etc.

Add to that that Wikileaks is not American or British, and did what it did from some other country, it's not clear how American and British cops would even have jurisdiction.

Obviously, we all know why the cops are pissed off about it - it's embarrassing - it's showing the warts and crimes and bad acts of government officials and politicians. But, in my view, that's a good thing, and I certainly don't want it to be a crime for some guy to say to Scot Dutchy, "hey, here is a big report I found in the back of a taxicab after a government official accidentally left it there, and it discloses how the President of the US, the President of France and the Chancellor of Germany are conspiring to commit illegal acts, " and then Scot Dutchy has to return it to the government to allow them to keep that all secret under the rubric of espionage against the governments and such. That's bullshit.

Yes, the government is allowed to keep secrets, but the obligation to keep it secret is the government's obligation, not Scot Dutchy's, not 42's, not the New York Times' and not Wikileaks. We are allowed to know the truth. We are allowed to speak the truth. And, we are allowed to disclose information, absent some legal obligation that we consented to do to do otherwise. None of the people I just listed work for the government, agreed to keep anything secret, or agreed to any secrecy obligation.

[Forty Two]

He exposes secrets. Seems very relevant to free speech.

Selected secrets.

Once again, he exposes selected secrets. Still seems very relevant to free speech. What? He's only not a leach if he exposes every secret? He can't possibly be privy to every secret of every government.

[Forty Two]

Doesn't matter. Free speech is the right to say what you want within constraints, not what others want you to say.

Indeed. Well said.

[JimC]

Doesn't matter. Free speech is the right to say what you want within constraints, not what others want you to say.

Indeed. Well said.

The end times are here!

[mistermack]

You have to have a limit on the free publishing of information, and that limit has to be the harm it can do to innocent people.
If you harm people with a gun, or a car, or nerve gas, you stand to go down for it.
Why should the very real weapon of information be any different?
That is making the assumption that information is something that BELONGS to everybody, so everybody has a right to it. That's not even close to true.

If the New York Times published all your financial details to the world, why would it make a difference if it came via a third party? It's your information, and your privacy, and they have destroyed it by publishing it.

What if for example, a kidnapper was holding a victim, and threatening to kill them if the relatives went to the police.
If the New York Times knows all about it, and publishes the story, the victim dies.
Should they be immune, if they cause that much harm by publishing? "Oh, we were protecting free speech" isn't a valid excuse. It a fundamentally false principle.

You can make it look good by carefully choosing your examples, but that's simply trying to mislead.

There has to be a place for whistle blowers, but they should not have automatic immunity under law, nor automatic guilt.

[pErvinalia]

Doesn't matter. Free speech is the right to say what you want within constraints, not what others want you to say.

Indeed. Well said.

The end times are here!

Us libruls have got to stick together!

[Forty Two]

You have to have a limit on the free publishing of information, and that limit has to be the harm it can do to innocent people.
If you harm people with a gun, or a car, or nerve gas, you stand to go down for it.
Why should the very real weapon of information be any different?

Well, because words are different than guns. The harm from a gun is a bullet which can kill or maim, etc. But the harm from words is different. Obviously, if someone publishes intentionally false and defamatory words, there is a remedy for that. But, that has nothing much at all to do with wikileaks, which published government secrets.

That is making the assumption that information is something that BELONGS to everybody, so everybody has a right to it. That's not even close to true.

Not really. It's that the government doesn't have a right to engage in secret and illegal conduct, and then protect the information from disclosure. That's the wikileaks issue.

If the New York Times published all your financial details to the world, why would it make a difference if it came via a third party? It's your information, and your privacy, and they have destroyed it by publishing it.

Well, this becomes a very complex issue. If you release your information to the world, then you generally do not have a right to stop people from reading it. If a bank or something released the information, then there is a remedy against the bank.

Did Donald Trump have recourse against MSNBC and Rachel Maddow when they published on national television Trump's tax return? After all, a news outlet published his financial details from the world, and relied on the fact that it was leaked by a third party. It's Trump's information, and his privacy, and they destroyed it by publishing it.....

What if for example, a kidnapper was holding a victim, and threatening to kill them if the relatives went to the police.
If the New York Times knows all about it, and publishes the story, the victim dies.
Should they be immune, if they cause that much harm by publishing? "Oh, we were protecting free speech" isn't a valid excuse. It a fundamentally false principle.

Immune? No. They'd be subject to suit and the outcome would depend on the facts of the situation. Like the high school girl who was prosecuted for urging her boyfriend to kill himself, and he did.

You can make it look good by carefully choosing your examples, but that's simply trying to mislead.

There has to be a place for whistle blowers, but they should not have automatic immunity under law, nor automatic guilt.

The whistleblower does not have automatic immunity, or automatic guilt. Someone like Snowden may well have violated the law by leaking, and he might properly be subject to prosecution because he was hired as a government worker, and agreed to accept rules and regulations regarding his conduct and his obligation to keep secrets. However, if Snowden - or Daniel Ellsburg -- releases the info to the New York Times - does the New York Times have the obligation to keep the government's secrets? The New York Times won its case to publish the Pentagon Papers, and Daniel Ellsberg was put on trial for criminal violations that had him at risk of life in prison (but he got off, because of a mistrial after Nixon had ordered the The Plumbers to break into his psychiatrist's office to dig up dirt on him).

So, Ellsberg may well have gotten away with a serious crime because of the government's overreaching in trying to prosecute him and get dirt on him. But, the Pentagon Papers were true, and revealed the truth about the War in Vietnam. Snowden may well be facing prison if he's ever extradited to the US. But, the media isn't. The government is not prosecuting the media who published the information that Snowden divulged.

[mistermack]

I think America has got it wrong.

Over here we have the official secrets act. The media can be in deep shit if they go against it.

As a principle, information is often far more valuable than things. If the New York Times received a stolen pedal bicycle, it's a criminal offence.

If they receive stolen information worth millions, it's far more serious than receiving a stolen bicycle.

The law is years behind the facts on the ground.

[JimC]

I think America has got it wrong.

Over here we have the official secrets act. The media can be in deep shit if they go against it.

As a principle, information is often far more valuable than things. If the New York Times received a stolen pedal bicycle, it's a criminal offence.

If they receive stolen information worth millions, it's far more serious than receiving a stolen bicycle.

The law is years behind the facts on the ground.

It's not black or white. The release of stolen information may cause harm to the national interests of a state, and/or it may well be in the public interest for that information to be widely known. Whether a given release did, on balance, produce more benefit than harm can only be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

[pErvinalia]

I think America has got it wrong.

Over here we have the official secrets act. The media can be in deep shit if they go against it.

As a principle, information is often far more valuable than things. If the New York Times received a stolen pedal bicycle, it's a criminal offence.

If they receive stolen information worth millions, it's far more serious than receiving a stolen bicycle.

The law is years behind the facts on the ground.

Government secrets of wrongdoing aren't equivalent to a "stolen bike".

[mistermack]

Government secrets of wrongdoing aren't equivalent to a "stolen bike".

Well, that's the obvious point.
It's not automatically right or wrong to steal and publish information.

There can be a defence of the public interest in this country.

Unfortunately, recently courts have been interpreting that as "the public is interested" rather than protecting the interests of the public.

What the public is interested in knowing should be irrelevant. We're all nosy bastards, but we don't have a right to know, unless it affects our rights or welfare.

[Forty Two]

I think America has got it wrong.

Over here we have the official secrets act. The media can be in deep shit if they go against it. z

As a principle, information is often far more valuable than things. If the New York Times received a stolen pedal bicycle, it's a criminal offence.

If they receive stolen information worth millions, it's far more serious than receiving a stolen bicycle.

The law is years behind the facts on the ground.

I'm not in agreement that America has got it wrong here. What we're talking about is government secrets, not bicycles, and not only that, but secrets of government wrongdoing. To enlist the media as an agent of the government, obligated to preserve the government's secrets, is to destroy one of the purposes of having a free press, which is to report the truth to the people.

Almost anytime you have leakers in government, you have people illegally exposing government information. If the media had an obligation to refrain from reporting what anonymous "officials" are exposing about the government's secret activity, then much of what the media reported about, say, the Iran-Contra affair, or NSA surveillance (Snowden revolations) and the stuff that Chelsea Manning exposed would result in reporters being subject to criminal prosecution.

What if a government official drops a package on the New York Times' doorstep showing that the the US is involved in secret, covert war in Peru to topple the government, and raise funds by taking over the cocaine business?