{"id":45312,"date":"2019-04-12T13:31:20","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T18:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45312"},"modified":"2019-04-12T13:33:04","modified_gmt":"2019-04-12T18:33:04","slug":"the-u-s-governments-indictment-of-julian-assange-poses-grave-threats-to-press-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45312","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. Government’s Indictment of Julian Assange Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"LONDON,<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/a><\/a>3<\/a>Julian Assange gestures to the media from a police vehicle on his arrival at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on April 11, 2019 in London.\u00a0Photo: Jack Taylor\/Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE U.S. GOVERNMENT\u2019S INDICTMENT OF JULIAN ASSANGE POSES GRAVE THREATS TO PRESS FREEDOM<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

THE INDICTMENT OF Julian Assange unsealed today<\/a> by the Trump Justice Department poses grave threats to press freedoms, not only in the U.S. but around the world. The charging document<\/a> and accompanying extradition request from the U.S. government, used by the U.K. police<\/a> to arrest Assange once Ecuador officially withdrew its asylum protection, seeks to criminalize numerous activities at the core of investigative journalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So much of what has been reported today about this indictment has been false. Two facts in particular have been utterly distorted by the DOJ and then misreported by numerous media organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first crucial fact about the indictment is that its key allegation \u2014 that Assange did not merely receive classified documents from Chelsea Manning but tried to help her crack a password in order to cover her tracks \u2014 is not new. It was long known<\/a> by the Obama DOJ and was explicitly part of Manning\u2019s trial, yet the Obama DOJ \u2014 not exactly renowned<\/a> for being stalwart guardians of press freedoms \u2014 concluded that it could not and should not prosecute Assange because indicting him would pose serious threats to press freedom. In sum, today\u2019s indictment contains no new evidence or facts<\/em> about Assange\u2019s actions; all of it has been known for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other key fact being widely misreported is that the indictment accuses Assange of trying to help Manning\u00a0obtain access\u00a0to document\u00a0databases to which she had no valid access:\u00a0i.e., hacking rather than journalism. But the indictment alleges no such thing. Rather, it simply accuses Assange of trying to help Manning log into the Defense Department\u2019s computers using a different username so that she could maintain her anonymity while downloading documents in the public interest and then furnish them to WikiLeaks to publish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

3Julian Assange gestures to the media from a police vehicle on his arrival at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on April 11, 2019 in London.\u00a0Photo: Jack Taylor\/Getty Images THE U.S. GOVERNMENT\u2019S INDICTMENT OF JULIAN ASSANGE POSES GRAVE THREATS TO PRESS FREEDOM THE INDICTMENT OF Julian Assange unsealed today by the Trump Justice Department poses grave threats to press freedoms, not […]<\/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":[3306,23718,2001,512,5567,827,6261,880],"class_list":["post-45312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-barack-obama","tag-donadl-trump","tag-julian-assange","tag-media","tag-the-intercept","tag-united-states","tag-us-department-of-justice","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45312","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=45312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45313,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45312\/revisions\/45313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}