Other sovereign nations get to make their own laws and legal systems without our control. They can make bullshit laws if they want to, like conflating journalism with spying. Then they can charge journalists in another country with a crime and extradite them to face charges. But, spying or journalism or criticizing their king, the details didn’t really matter, they could charge anybody anybody, anywhere in the world with any crime they want. And since it’s another country, we have no assurances of due process there.
Yeah, they already do that. Don’t go and publish a ton of articles criticizing Lese Majeste and expect to freely travel to a Direct Rule Monarchy or any country that is a client state of a Direct Rule Monarchy.
But extreme examples aside, every country in the world will come for you if you want to reveal their military secrets, including who is working for that country secretly in other countries. This isn’t just him dropping one video. There was an entire document dump that caused the CIA to pull hundreds of people out of the field. And no matter what your personal feelings on the matter are, countries view their intelligence activities as legitimate, secret, and not subject to whistleblower rules unless a crime (that they have on the books) is being exposed. Raw dogging the entire secret intranet for everything you can fit on a USB is not whistleblowing or reporting.
Travel to those countries? The precedent here is that China has the right to extradite me for supporting democracy in Hong Kong from here in the U.S., never once even leaving my house. Assange was not a U.S. citizen, and located outside of U.S. territory.
Of course, the U.S. won’t cooperate with the extradition request, but that’s just a matter of power relationships, not principles. The principle is that everybody in the world is subject to every country’s laws. Or, every person in the world is subject to the laws of the U.S., which fundamentally breaks the rule of law.
It’s scary how many people out there are okay with that.
Don’t solicit Israeli soldiers to become assets and give you classified information you will then edit to make Israel look as bad as possible?
He acted as a spy in every way.
Yikes! This reply validates my concern 100%.
Other sovereign nations get to make their own laws and legal systems without our control. They can make bullshit laws if they want to, like conflating journalism with spying. Then they can charge journalists in another country with a crime and extradite them to face charges. But, spying or journalism or criticizing their king, the details didn’t really matter, they could charge anybody anybody, anywhere in the world with any crime they want. And since it’s another country, we have no assurances of due process there.
That’s scary shit.
Yeah, they already do that. Don’t go and publish a ton of articles criticizing Lese Majeste and expect to freely travel to a Direct Rule Monarchy or any country that is a client state of a Direct Rule Monarchy.
But extreme examples aside, every country in the world will come for you if you want to reveal their military secrets, including who is working for that country secretly in other countries. This isn’t just him dropping one video. There was an entire document dump that caused the CIA to pull hundreds of people out of the field. And no matter what your personal feelings on the matter are, countries view their intelligence activities as legitimate, secret, and not subject to whistleblower rules unless a crime (that they have on the books) is being exposed. Raw dogging the entire secret intranet for everything you can fit on a USB is not whistleblowing or reporting.
Travel to those countries? The precedent here is that China has the right to extradite me for supporting democracy in Hong Kong from here in the U.S., never once even leaving my house. Assange was not a U.S. citizen, and located outside of U.S. territory.
Of course, the U.S. won’t cooperate with the extradition request, but that’s just a matter of power relationships, not principles. The principle is that everybody in the world is subject to every country’s laws. Or, every person in the world is subject to the laws of the U.S., which fundamentally breaks the rule of law.
It’s scary how many people out there are okay with that.