It looks like they won’t have to find grounds for a treason charge. The British now have a open and shut case for blackmail.
I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure you can’t be charged with blackmail for demanding government action, even if the purported victims would be individuals.
Really. He is demanding that the British govenment not arrest him or he he will release all the cables. It is practically a text book definition of blackmail.
I checked the British definition of blackmail and it looks like the threshold is actually lower than the US.
Given how the U.S. arrested Manuel Noriega - also not an American citizen - I would suggest it’s in Assange’s best interests to remain in countries with reasonably well-armed defence forces.
Perhaps you should read my whole post instead of just the first sentence, and then respond.
I read both sentences. Did your response get truncated? In my scenario the British Government is the intended victim and the organization he is trying to coerce and this is an attempt to force them not to act on the arrest warrant.
What gives you the idea that only people can be blackmailed? How is this different than someone finding out some information that would hurt a corporation’s public image and threatening to publish it. Publishing the information could be perfectly legal, but the threat is not.
A government is not a corporation, but I’d be equally surprised if blackmailing a corporation is a crime in England and Wales.
In any event, it’s not clear that any specific harm would result from his release of the unredacted documents. It’d just be even more embarrassing.
Looks like Assange’s moving up into the leagues where he ought to have his own island, submarine or moon base heavily guarded by his own private army of henchmen.
“Gentlemen, I will release the encryption key unless you pay me one . . . MILLION . . . dollars! Bwuh ha ha ha ha!”
And supposing he is extradited. What then? A public normal jury trial? Or shall we depend on the Guantanamo system?
Can we thereafter prosecute or Gitmo the NYT editorial board?
These revelations so far amount to gossip. They make the US and all diplomats look like gossiping bitches.
This is what is going to end all notions of civil rights in the West? Really?
You can expose Valeria Plame with impunity and only one bullshit prosecution, but when Prince Andrew gets drunk and acts like his father it’s an international incident leading to the end of civil rights?
If he is extradited, it won’t be to the US. It will be to Sweden, on the rape charges. He can’t be arrested in preparation for extradition anywhere else until he actually gets charged, and despite Ms. Palin’s helpful advice the Feds haven’t figured out anything to charge him with yet.
What Assange has done was not expose some evil plot or plans to invade Poland. What he has done is release diplomatic memos which contained information that could hurt many country’s diplomatic efforts. For example, we all might think that Russia is a mafia state. Our papers may state it, etc. However, its something quite else to have an official representing the U.S. government making such a statement. That could harm relations with Russia.
And, the documents aren’t about U.S. private matters, but what other diplomats from other countries have said to the U.S, and that could be very embarrassing for these countries too.
Because of this, Assange is not on good term with any national government, and many might be willing to turn him over to the U.S., or simply prosecute him themselves. After all, you don’t want to be the next victim of his attack.
As for Assange friends, they get fewer by the day. People who use to work for him are now doing DoS attacks against WikiLeaks.
Assange setup an organization to encourage people to violate the law.
The New York Times is merely publishing a story, and as a news organization has certain rights to do so. The government could prohibit the New York Times from publishing certain aspects of the story, but the U.S. government would have to know that particular piece of information in advance.
There doesn’t need to be any objective harm to qualify as blackmail. Quote from the wikipedia article I referred to earlier:
It would be hard to claim that the wikileaks release would not be embarrassing to the British Government. It is the threat, not the nature of the information that makes it blackmail. The interesting part is that demanding not to arrested is legal and publishing the wikileaks might be legal, but when you combine the two it becomes a crime.
I have all the same rights to publish as the NYT, and so does Assange. It would presumably be the first edition of my publication, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t protected press. Assange has an existing publication, Wikileaks. The difference between Wikileaks and the NYT is that one is a tool of the US government, and edits and interprets the information extensively to benefit that government, and Wikileaks does far less editing and interpretation.
Even assuming that Assange is caught (probable) and extradited (less probable) it raises a bunch of questions. Was he the guy who published the information, or is he just the spokesman and founder of the publication. What is the nature of the organization of Wikileaks? Why go to all the trouble when the guy has only released secret level documents when Ellsberg and the NYT were not prosecuted for top secret level documents. How come Assange is extradited when Pinochet and Kissinger and now Cheney and Rumsfeld are not. Presuming a public trial instead of shipping off to Gitmo, the trial will be very, very ugly with the revelations and daily focus on the bullshit memos. And so far the memos are bullshit. Prince Andrew is a lout. Duh. Russia is a corrupt mafia state. Duh. And now the US government has employees who are sending back that information to Washington. Duh.
We’ve been down this road before, during the Pentagon Papers crisis. Freedom of the American people to know what the government was up to prevailed over the bullshit secrets that were being hidden. We are substantially less free now.
All the lone nuts of the past century who were looking to make a notorious name for themselves (Lee Harvey Oswald, Gavrilo Princip, John Dillinger et al.) must be looking up from Hell with more than a smidgen of envy.
Well, in the US at least, a corporation is a person of sorts.
And how does using illegally obtained, retained, and disseminated information not constitute “harm?”
Again, this doesn’t adequately explain why the Fox News journalist who was attempting to obtain classified documents on US defence policy with respect to North Korea from a defence contractor was protected—or, at least not prosecuted—whereas Assange is being hounded from house and home.
(Though, it’s especially funny to see Fox News leading the charge of the mouthbreather brigade in calling for Wikileaks to be classed as a terrorist organization, etc.)
Now you’re quoting the general definition of blackmail. From Wikipedia. If you want to show that a government can be blackmailed under the law of England and Wales, you have to do a bit better than that.
“Harm” is the effect of an action, not the action itself.
Transparency in government, here we come! (and hopefully in business, too)
I think Assange is a hero.
I found the transcript of the interview with Mark Stephens. I can’t see any place where he actually makes a threat, but I can see where someone watching the show might tend to reach that conclusion. The interviewer used the threat word more than once.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/andrew_marr_show/9258262.stm
That clears up my confusion, since it didn’t sound like something a solicitor would say even if his client told him to.
The most dramatic statement in the interview IMO:
Frankly, stating that his client thinks the wikileaks file is an electronic thermonuclear device doesn’t make his client sound like responsible journalist that is trying to reform the system. If I were Assange, I would be shopping for a new solicitor.