On Sun, 12 Mar 2017 23:43:16 -0400 grarpamp wrote:

All revelations to date are definitely *not* that. There is more. Much more. And it will blow your mind.

yeah, like all the snowden stuff we're still waiting for...

Trust me.

So leakers... get your leak on.

yeah, like all the snowden stuff we're still waiting for...

Snowden was relatively compartmented access, all are by design. Snowden may or may not have destroyed all his copies. Perhaps up to around four other people besides him have held a full copy in their hands at various points. Greenwald nearly certainly still has a full copy. The Intercept arose from and owes to that. Datasharing to outside journos was supposedly being agreed on. Cryptome was keeping a rough tally of pages released. Which pales compared to various size estimates of the stash. Greenwald et al have never really said the size, nor released anywhere near the full stash. Everything regarding doc release has essentially stopped. Which is weird, and unexplained. Particularly if release is not dependant upon some future timing / event. In their silence regarding the rest, questions abound. While oppurtunity to drive change evaporates. Perhaps journos are not so much activists / trusted as some may have thought? Perhaps redacted leaks and censored speech did not expose enough names who when then questioned would expose their upstream all the way to top? And not enough program tech data exposed to shutter ops thus bring to their knees? There are still some minutes left in the game. Who has the ball? Who will run for goal? Or steal it? And score?

On 03/13/2017 09:07 AM, jim bell wrote:

Having the tools used against him is only one of a number of reasons an attorney would have the right to raise this issue. In the hypothetical future case, where Assange gets prosecuted for this recent leak, he has the right to challenge the government's assertion that this information was genuine, rather than merely a well-constructed fraud. That would potentially require calling hundreds of government witnesses attesting to the accuracy of the leaks, a VERY unappetizing thought for government!

It would be a disaster. At this point, I suspect that the US Federal Government, if they found that Assange was VOLUNTARILY travelling to America, would do just about everything in its power to block him from doing so. If he succeeded, questions would be asked like "Why aren't they arresting/trying him?".

Jim Bell

The US government has no intention whatsoever of arresting Julian Assange and every intention of contriving an "accident" that kills (assassinates) him or other event of a similar nature that leaves him 'cowboy-ed' (a mess all over the sidewalk after a fall from a 20th floor window for instance) as a reminder to everyone else who might consider following in his footsteps. Partly for the reason you state (and partly pure vengeance). A trial would be an impossibility, but the US government is very VERY good at 'eliminating threats' in such a manner as to create 'plausible deniability. But they can't kill Wikileaks. Rr

------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:* Anthony Papillion

Even though WikiLeaks have released the keys to the kingdom, I don't think it would matter for prosecution. Keep in mind that we have proof of all of the NSA stuff and yet, when a criminal defendant tried to use those as evidence in his case, he was told he couldn't because he could not proce that the tools were used specifically against him. I suspect any prosecution of Assange would likely follow a similar route.

Anthony Papillion

----- Original Message ----- From: jim bell mailto:jdb10987@yahoo.com> Sent: 03/12/2017 - 10:28 PM To: CypherPunks mailto:cypherpunks@lists.cpunks.org> Subject: Is Assange now unprosecutable?

...

That recent leak of America's hacking secrets comes at an opportune time for Assange. He may have to leave that embassy in London within a few months. Generally, and unlike MY trial, a Federal criminal defendant gets great leeway to call witnesses for his defense. Now that he has published the 'keys to the kingdom', I doubt whether it would even be possible to prosecute him. Imagine all the witnesses he could call just to verify the genuineness of those recent documents! No doubt the person or people who leaked that material to Wikileaks knew this. Somebody deserves some big congratulations. Jim Bell

From: Steve Kinney On 03/12/2017 11:28 PM, jim bell wrote:

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That recent leak of America's hacking secrets comes at an opportune time for Assange.  He may have to leave that embassy in London within a few months.  Generally, and unlike MY trial, a Federal criminal defendant gets great leeway to call witnesses for his defense.  Now that he has published the 'keys to the kingdom', I doubt whether it would even be possible to prosecute him.  Imagine all the witnesses he could call just to verify the genuineness of those recent documents!

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No doubt the person or people who leaked that material to Wikileaks knew this.  Somebody deserves some big congratulations.

One thing I have never understood:  Prosecute Assange where, for what? Good question.  I wish I had a clear answer.  The Supreme court decision  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_States upheld the denial of an injunction which would have prohibited the New York Times newspaper from publishing what became known as the "Pentagon Papers",  This generally upheld the right of a news organization to publish leaked (or stolen) secret materials.  It is conceivable, however, that if the publishing organization is seen as cooperating too closely with the people who leaked or stole the materials, the decision might be different.  I am just speculating here, but perhaps there might exist an argument that the relationship between Manning and Wikileaks was sufficiently 'close' to provide an exception to this.   It's hard to know how this kind of case will be dealt with.  While in prison, I had access to a 'LEXIS' law-library computer system, which made it easy to search for lower-court cases which cite the New York Times v. United States decision I cite above.  And, these kinds of cases are extremely rare.   As a practical matter, I don't think there is any valid basis to prosecute Assange or any Wikileaks staff for Manning's leak.  It would be possible to imagine a hypothetical "cartoon" scenario where Assange held Manning's laptop computer in Iraq, while Manning logged into the system from which he downloaded the diplomatic cables.  But I don't think any such event occurred.  An alternative scenario might be if Manning sent emails to Assange, saying things like 'I have the ability to download hundreds of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, and send them to you.  Do you think this would be a good idea?  Should I do that? Say yes and I will!!!'      ×

It is alleged that a foreign national on foreign soil has published "top secret" U.S. military and diplomatic documents provided anonymously by a U.S. national (Chelsea Manning), and/or has published proprietary information transferred illegally by U.S. citizens acting on U.S. soli (DNC mail, RIP Seth Rich, etc.).  How will a Prosecutor assert that a U.S. Court has jurisdiction over a foreign publisher who received these materials and published them gratis?  (Excluding "specious argument constructed for public consumption, corrupt Judge, rubber stamp.") Generally, there is a well-established legal principle that American Federal laws are not to be considered applicable outside the bounds of the United States (or territories) unless the laws themselves clearly state otherwise.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritorial_jurisdiction  How that principle survives in the wake of Afghanistan and Iraq, including Guantanamo, I don't know.  

Does the U.S. State have sovereign authority over the citizens of "other" sovereign nations acting outside U.S. borders?  Maybe I'm just being dense here.  Can somebody clue me in?×

There may be  U.S. laws punishing terrorist attacks against Americans abroad.  Don't recall the details.  https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2008/june/international_06030...  ×

Also, per Jim's post, I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the argument that publishing true and damaging information somehow creates a barrier to prosecution.  A public opinion issue or a legal one?  Either way I'm not getting it. Strictly speaking, there may be no explicit 'barrier' to prosecution.  But prosecutions under American law are supposed to be public, and that includes the right of the defense to obtain 'discovery', and to employ public testimony.  That has costs of embarrassment, including potentially revealing a lot of material that the government doesn't want to see exposed.  Remember that the leakers themselves, or people entirely unconnected with the leakers, might get into contact with the Defense team, making lists of very embarrassing lines of questioning that government staff don't want to see addressed.   Such questions can be rudely ignored in press conferences, but in criminal trials, generally the defense is allowed to ask germane questions and compel the answers from witnesses, all under penalty of perjury.  This would be an utterly terrifying situation for the government, particularly since follow-up questions are always available.   Look at what happened when it became publicly-known that Hillary Clinton was using her own private email server for classified information, rather than a government-provided one.  This tiny piece of information probably ended up changing the outcome of the 2016 election.   http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/12/guccifer-hacker-who-exposed-...        Jim Bell

On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 1:40 PM, Steve Kinney wrote:

One thing I have never understood: Prosecute Assange where, for what?

Really sad to see people and nations, falling for the bullshit narrative put out by the corrupt criminal secret keepers torturers murderers warmongers soveriegn disrespecters etc in high severity ad nauseum, that leakers and publishers are somehow the ones committing such heinous moral / ethical wrongs, then going after the leakers and publishers who have done nothing but spread a little love and sunshine on a dark world. When love and sunshine become thought of as evil, you're fucked. Don't fuck yourselves.

On 03/13/2017 08:13 PM, Cecilia Tanaka wrote:

On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 8:48 PM, grarpamp wrote:

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<SNIP> then going after the leakers and publishers who have done nothing but spread a little love and sunshine on a dark world.

CIA advertises internships. Whistleblowing opportunity!!! :D

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/841313583212429312

They probably filter out people who have hit this list ;)