ckaihatsu wrote:So then why isn't the U.S. government suing *Wikileaks* as an organization?
Shutting down the organization wouldn't stop the involved personnel (they could simply make another), besides going down that path would still have Assange persecuted at the end.
ckaihatsu wrote:Doesn't the *content* have any bearing at all here? At-issue is the documentation of government *war crimes* in Iraq, when the U.S. military had no reason to invade and occupy Iraq in the first place.
No. The problem should be the establishment of the platform itself. The release of the said information was merely the ignition point. If the United States do use this as a main justification of persecution they would have no one to blame if the case is eventually thrown out.
ckaihatsu wrote:Your entire argument is that sometime in the future others with *malicious* intent may try to use a First-Amendment-type precedent to wrongly publish 'malicious' kinds of information, and so Assange should be persecuted in the present day to prevent that possibility from happening. Am I summarizing your position correctly here?
I'll again note that the First-Amendment-type precedent *already* exists, in the Ellsberg case, so what would be accomplished, exactly, in the continued persecution of Assange?
A simple answer to the first question is "Yes", but I think some supplementary opinion is required on my part.
I disagree with the Americans using "Assange not being American" as their reason of "not" applying the First Amendment. To me, that Amendment should not be relevant in the first place (it affects how the U.S. make laws). Standing in their shoes, they should claim (and prove) that by establishing Wikileaks, Assange
abused the freedom of speech, or opened the possibility for others to commit such abuse, even though he believed (and in some sense, objectively) it's for the greater good.
I believe Wikileaks does have some rules preventing such reason to hold. On this occasion, the leak of the said embarrassing documents could be argued as the evidence that Wikileaks failed to contain such abuse. Echoing what I said above, though, if I were the Americans I would rather find something objectively problematic, i.e. not those which expose American atrocities, but some diplomatic secret that
doesn't serve the greater good and only creates unnecessary distrust between nations.
For example, I remember a Chinese diplomat secretly commenting that they would allow South Korea unifying the peninsula because Kim Jong-Il was being unpredictable. I would consider those documents both embarrassing and not actually beneficial, and I am sure a lot more similar documents were leaked against the United States.
I'd say I am a bit drifting off here. What I think is that Assange and his supporters tried to challenge the current order and it's natural or even justified that a martyr is being made out of him. To me, the real aim should be forcing nations to adopt a more open approach in handling their supposedly classified information, and have such system under adequate public scrutiny that people do not need to resort to means like Wikileaks in the foreseeable future.
I somehow have a new thought that Assange's martyrdom would generate enough public uproar and enhance this cause. Having him walk away Scot-free would cause the people forget the event more easily.