spudone wrote:
Ozymandias wrote:
It's like watching real life NPCs stuck in a bug loop. Me? I liked that WikiLeaks did. I'm sick of the "cost American lives" bullshit, and think gov't defaults to secrecy. That is antithetical to freedom. At the same time, Assange is a narcissist and a garbage human being. I think he liked the attention his releases brought him and is now paying the price for his ego. And I'm ok with that.
I was very against Assange and WikiLeaks, even before the most recent election, but maybe that's my military background.
I disagree with some of the headlines we're seeing right now about his arrest being a threat to freedom of the press. Assange is about as much a journalist as an arsonist. He did things that would cross a line even for the National Enquirer.
While I see parallels to Snowden, at least Snowden is a U.S. citizen and a true whistleblower -- by definition, exposing wrongdoing of his employer. Assange is more like a foreign intelligence adversary - or at least in later years he became a proxy to such.
Don't get me wrong. I DO want our government agencies to be held accountable to Congress and the voters. But I think we should solve that ourselves. Having a non-U.S. citizen attempt to force that on us through scattershot dumps of classified information is crap and he should be held accountable for it.
looks like your "more like a foreign intelligence adversary" view is now shared by DOJ. 17 counts in violation of Espionage Act indictment filed. The complexing twist involves publishing and 1st amendment rights. Is it too easy to read into this a more hardline attack on leakers and publishers in order to bolster DJT's assault on his #1 public enemy, the Free Press? No fan whatsoever of Assange, but .......