The WikiLeaks founder has been held in a prison outside London for the last five years and fought extradition to the U.S. He is expected to return to Australia.
Good for him - he’s less innocent than folks like Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden but a heavy prosecution of him would definitely have a chilling effect on whistle-blowers. Did he release things at politically convenient times? Yes. Should that be illegal? Fuck no.
2016 Assange was a very different person than who he was in 2009. The espionage charges relating to the Chelsea Manning leaks were always bogus, but his involvement with the Trump campaign solidified him as a huge asshole in my mind.
Even back then, WikiLeaks was telling trump to claim the election was rigged and stolen. These are not the actions of a whistleblower, and it’s clear he was not a whistleblower (or working with whistleblowers) during this period and likely a mouthpiece for Russia to sow division in the US.
Good for him - he’s less innocent than folks like Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden but a heavy prosecution of him would definitely have a chilling effect on whistle-blowers. Did he release things at politically convenient times? Yes. Should that be illegal? Fuck no.
2016 Assange was a very different person than who he was in 2009. The espionage charges relating to the Chelsea Manning leaks were always bogus, but his involvement with the Trump campaign solidified him as a huge asshole in my mind.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/14/563996442/donald-trump-jr-had-direct-contact-with-wikileaks-during-campaign
Even back then, WikiLeaks was telling trump to claim the election was rigged and stolen. These are not the actions of a whistleblower, and it’s clear he was not a whistleblower (or working with whistleblowers) during this period and likely a mouthpiece for Russia to sow division in the US.
Agreed. Assange is not the good guy in this. No one is in this.
As if the last decade plus of his life were not enough for that. Better than a life sentence, yeah.