Two of us, Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky, testified for Assange at his extradition hearing last year. In Ellsberg’s words then, the WikiLeaks publications that Assange is being charged for are “amongst the most important truthful revelations of hidden criminal state behavior that have been made public in U.S. history.” The American public “needed urgently to know what was being done routinely in their name, and there was no other way for them to learn it than by unauthorized disclosure.”

  • gowan@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    "On 11 April 2019, the day of Assange’s arrest in London, the indictment against him was unsealed.[60] He was charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion (i.e. hacking into a government computer), a crime that carries a maximum 5-year sentence.[61][62]

    The charges allege that Assange sought to help Chelsea Manning crack a password hash so that Manning could use a different username to download classified documents. This “would have made it more difficult for investigators to identify Manning as the source of disclosures of classified information”.[63][64][65][66] This allegation had been known since 2011 and is a less serious charge than those levelled against Manning, and carries a maximum sentence of five years.[67][68] The US pointed to chat logs and filed an affidavit that said they were able to identify Assange as the person chatting with Manning using hints he made during the chats and that Manning identified him as Assange to Adrian Lamo.[64][69]"

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment_and_arrest_of_Julian_Assange#:~:text=He was charged with conspiracy,a maximum 5-year sentence.

    No Im right on the money here

      • gowan@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        Tax evasion as they could prove that. There is evidence that Assange was directly involved in the hacks. He is being charged with that.

    • flint5436@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That the US law forbids such acts is a no brainer. But it’s still “Telling the truth”. imho this qualifies him for the nobel peace price rather than incarceration.

      • gowan@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        No it isn’t telling the truth. He isn’t being pursued for sharing the info but rather in directly committing crimes to get the info. The NYT could publish the Pentagon Papers because they did not steal them.

        Assange is accused of being involved in the theft. He’s also now a Russian stooge so probably deserves nothing other than what the US prison system will give him.