{"id":40811,"date":"2018-11-22T06:32:05","date_gmt":"2018-11-22T11:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40811"},"modified":"2018-11-22T06:32:05","modified_gmt":"2018-11-22T11:32:05","slug":"the-case-against-wikileaks-is-a-threat-to-all-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40811","title":{"rendered":"The Case Against WikiLeaks is a Threat to All Journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Case Against WikiLeaks is a Threat to All Journalists<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

The Justice Department has prepared criminal charges against WikiLeaks founder <\/a>Julian Assange and is working behind the scenes to have him extradited to the United States. Press freedom and the right to dissent may hang in the balance.<\/p>\n

The criminal charges were accidentally revealed last week when Assange\u2019s name was found on the court filing<\/a> of an unrelated case, suggesting that prosecutors had copied a boilerplate text and forgotten to change the defendant\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

Barry Pollack, a U.S. lawyer on Assange\u2019s team, told the New York Times<\/a><\/em>: \u201cThe news that criminal charges have apparently been filed against Mr. Assange is even more troubling than the haphazard manner in which that information has been revealed.\u201d Pollack continued, \u201cThe government bringing criminal charges against someone for publishing truthful information is a dangerous path for a democracy to take.\u201d<\/p>\n

Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, after seeking protection against sexual assault allegations in Sweden. While the initial arrest warrant has since been revoked, if Assange leaves the embassy he runs the risk of being apprehended by UK authorities and extradited to the United States, a process greatly facilitated by the recent criminal charges.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsing free speech against us<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. government has targeted WikiLeaks and Assange for years. A confidential U.S. Army document<\/a> from 2008 recommends \u201clegal actions\u201d and attacks on the livelihood and reputation of \u201ccurrent or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers\u201d connected to WikiLeaks in order to \u201cdamage or destroy\u201d its \u201ctrust as a center of gravity.\u201d<\/p>\n

WikiLeaks enjoyed a brief heyday among Republicans when it released hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails during the 2016 presidential election. Then-candidate Donald Trump mentioned WikiLeaks over 160 times<\/a> during the final month of the campaign, calling it \u201camazing\u201d and saying \u201cWe love Wikileaks. Wikileaks. They have revealed a lot<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Case Against WikiLeaks is a Threat to All Journalists The Justice Department has prepared criminal charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and is working behind the scenes to have him extradited to the United States. Press freedom and the right to dissent may hang in the balance. The criminal charges were accidentally revealed last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5493,23162,462,2001,880],"class_list":["post-40811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-counterpunch","tag-heather-wokusch","tag-journalism","tag-julian-assange","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40812,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40811\/revisions\/40812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}