Nobody "hacked" into anything. Chelsea Manning had authorized access, had her own password, and downloaded tons of data before Assange was even in the picture. In fact, Manning first tried to give the data to the NYT and WaPo--'cause, you know, she, too, was still dreaming the iconic-liberal-hero-Pentagon-Papers dream. Only when they--out watching the movie, maybe--sent her to voicemail did she turn to Wikileaks, where the dream was not yet impossible.
So, contrary to the impression given by the iconic liberal papers of record, Julian Assange is not charged with "hacking" or helping Manning "hack" into a computer. He is not charged with doing anything that made it possible for Manning to get the information she gave to the American and the world public through Wikileaks.
The indictment charges Assange with trying (and failing) to help Manning decrypt ("crack") another user's password--not because Manning needed it to gain access, but because it might help conceal that it was she who was downloading data. Assange is accused of helping Manning cover her tracks. As Glenn Greenwald says, in his piece methodically making the point: "even if one accepts all of the indictment's claims as true, Assange was not trying to hack into document files to which Manning had no access, but rather trying to help Manning avoid detection as a source."
Of course, the government's theory of the crime will be that Assange's failed attempt to help Manning avoid detection in that way is an intrinsic and necessary part of Manning's "theft" of data itself.
In the abstract, it's not a ridiculous theory, because helping someone get away with it is undeniably abetting the commission of the crime. In the context of journalism, it is also a dangerous theory. Because every journalist who receives classified information is, undeniably, abetting that crime. (Just as every journalist of any worth is a "hostile, non-state intelligence agent.")
If the iconic liberal press wants to cheer on the USG/Trump administration's prosecution of that action, as part of a "conspiracy" to "knowingly access a computer without authorization," it is cheering on an expansive definition of that charge to include, as Greenwald says, journalists' "ethical obligation to take steps to protect their sources from retaliation, which sometimes includes granting them anonymity and employing technical measures to help ensure that their identity is not discovered." It is cheering on the prosecution of any publisher in the future doing what the NYT and WaPo did with the Pentagon Papers.
It is also, we should all acknowledge, cheering on Donald Trump for undertaking precisely the criminalization of standard journalistic abetting of sources that, it is said, the Obama administration declined to pursue, on exactly the same evidence. If the NYT and WaPo are praising the Trump administration for its "well begun" and "long overdue" prosecution of Assange on this charge, they are implicitly, it should be pointed out explicitly, denouncing the Obama administration for its ill-advised failure to be as aggressively reactionary. That is how the iconic liberal media rolls.
Not to fear, I am sure the government will be successful in presenting its theory of this crime in the Eastern District of Virginia, known as the "Espionage Court." Ask John Kiriakou about Assange's chances there.
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