Early this morning, news broke that WikiLeaks’ co-founder Julian Assange had been arrested by London’s Metropolitan Police Service at the Ecuadorian embassy. It was later announced that Assange was arrested in relation to an extradition warrant on behalf of the United States for conspiring with former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a classified US government computer in 2010.
Assange has been quite an interesting figure for over a decade. To some he is viewed as a heroic crusader for truth — a man using his First Amendment rights to reveal dark secrets held by the United States and other foreign governments. To others, he is viewed as a danger to national security — an individual getting away with espionage-like tactics by relying on those same First Amendment protections.
First Amendment advocates stand by Assange’s publication of leaked documents, and any attempt to prosecute Assange on the basis of such would be viewed negatively by most politicians as well, regardless of political affiliation. Today’s charges against Assange, however, have nothing to do with him exercising his First Amendment rights, and everything to do with him allegedly attempting to commit an entirely separate crime. Assange is officially charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion with Chelsea Manning. He is alleged to have worked with Manning to attempt to crack a password stored on US Department of Defense computers connected to a “US government network used for classified documents and communications”.
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Categories: Asia, Europe, Europe and Australia, European Union, UK, USA