Land And Water U.S.A.




Monday, April 15, 2019

CONFIDENTIAL

WHY DC FEARS ASSANGE

Shouldn't we, as American citizens be insisting our government cease and desist from engaging in activity(ies) that for anyone else would be considered un-Constitutional?

By Michael McCune

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was arrested last week in England after the Ecuador embassy there ended his seven-year sanctuary stay. His arrest led to a seemingly non-stop assault from the District of Corruption to hasten the extradition order to the U.S. so the man can face hacking charges.

I am no fan of Assange nor am I an opponent, but the lopsided assault on the man gave me pause to consider some ethical details.

The most egregious charge against Assange was "he hacked into our government computer system and stole information." This 'information' put American lives and American informants' lives at risk but what it also showed is the U.S. government definitely engaged in activities that, for any other country or person on the planet, it itself would classify as "illegal" and prosecute them for to the full extent of the law.  Fair for the goose should be fair for the gander.

There are a couple of legal questions that the District of Corruption has deftly avoided simply because nobody in the free press has had the guts to ask them.

Assange, whether you agree with his politics or not, seems to have disrupted a government penchant for putting and trusting anything and everything on computers--including top secret items. Those in government have effectively forfeited their right to "secrecy" if they put that information on a worldwide web of communication in order to share that information. If you wanted some legally questionable activity to remain anonymous, you shouldn't trust it to the safekeeping of a system that offers millions of outlets.

There is a more troublesome aspect of the Assange/Wikileaks affair that has been nicely slid under the radar and for which I believe those in the District of Corruption will be answerable for if they try to prosecute for hacking. For the past three years Americans have witnessed a continual assault on the current Administration for nefarious activities in the 2016 election. Few, if any, who supported the Clinton campaign in the same election want to discuss what Assange found out about definitive illegal campaign activities by their darling.

On the day of the election, Nov. 8, 2016, Assange released a report on the 2016 election cycle. It began, "In recent months, Wikileaks and I personally have come under enormous pressure to stop publishing what the Clinton campaign says about itself to itself. That pressure has come from the campaign's allies, including the Obama Administration [probably including all the intelligence agencies] and from liberals who are anxious about who will be elected U.S. President." 

He continued, "The right to receive and impart true information [emphasis mine] is the guiding principle of Wikileaks...Our organization defends the public's right to be informed."

Oh! the horrors that could be unleashed for the District of Corruption if the American public was to know the true facts about things that have been happening with regularity in domestic and foreign arenas because of our incompetent political leaders.

Hacking may or may not have been part of what enabled Assange to release information DC wanted kept quiet. But in some cases--like Chelsea, nee Bradley, Manning's own hacking efforts that Assange exploited where's the crime when Manning committed the act and was pardoned?

Assange, by DC standards, is guilty of the same thing the Trump campaign was guilty of--collusion with Russia. But there is a difficult aspect to the charges that, if DC has proof, is not likely to see the light of day simply because of the convoluted manner in which DC has classified that information. How will the prosecution prove Assange hacked into its system without demonstrating--publicly without a chance at protecting secrecy--that Assange hacked its system? Simply being in possession of such information is not proof of guilt.

If passing along information gained from outside sources without the passer committing an illegal act is now defined as criminal we can kiss the First Amendment, if not all the Constitution, good-bye. If that is the case, that's where the true colors of the District of Corruption will be shown. The single charge made public thus far is that Assange "conspired with with Manning to crack a password on a DoD computer" in 2010.

Assange, by most descriptions, is a self-centered man. But aren't we all to some extent? Is he a creep? Probably. Do I like him? Unequivocally, NO. But I have to respect a man who has the courage to put himself in harm's way of any government by releasing information that government wanted kept secret. Assange's release of CIA technical spying documents in March 2017 that showed hi-tech televisions could serve as a government listening device, even when turned off, was damning for our alleged "protectors of the Constitution." 

Added to that fact the DC crowd is upset that Wikileaks published a video of an American airstrike that killed citizens in Iraq along with military information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and Clinton-era State Department messages. But if journalism is going to be defined by pleasing the Swamp, the free has to be removed from our description of the press in the Constitution. 

When that happens, we truly are no better than any banana republic out there and our holier-than-thou government Swamp should be expunged completely just to make sure all the rats are homeless as well.

Our government should be more interested in finding out how to protect its top secret material from moles like Assange. But as American citizens we should be insisting our government cease and desist from engaging in activity(ies) that for anyone else would be considered un-Constitutional. If we do not then our corrupt government will continue to grow.and the only people we can blame is the nimrod in the mirror. 
"I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility towards every form of tyranny over the mind of man."--Thomas Jefferson

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