This isn't how the law works. If you conspire with someone to commit a crime or otherwise aid in the commission of a crime, you are also culpable.
Wikileaks didn't aid the people in stealing the information. They did that all on their own. Wikileaks simply received the details and went public about it. Assuming that the U.S. can get their hands on Assange, the government will have a hard time pushing that argument.
Besides, Assange isn't a U.S. citizen. Unless you can extradite him, your laws are dust in the wind on the international stage.
This doesn't mean a damn thing for the freedom of the press, your attempts to conflate the two notwithstanding. "Freedom of the press" does not include the freedom to conspire to commit felonies by leaking classified information.
Again, Wikileaks didn't leak the information, someone else did. They received it. It's an important distinction that you seem willing to gloss over. I can see how you would go for the conspiracy charges, but don't try to pretend that it's such a sure fire argument. The courts could easily side against you.
The statement on their homepage says: "
WikiLeaks is a non-profit media organization dedicated to bringing important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for independent sources around the world to leak information to our journalists. We publish material of ethical, political and historical significance while keeping the identity of our sources anonymous, thus providing a universal way for the revealing of suppressed and censored injustices."
Therefore they are a press organization, and any actions taken against them have repercussions for the international press at large.
And you have no business misinterpreting our laws and telling us what to do.
You have no business telling the rest of the world that we have to obey your domestic laws. Do what you want to your own people and betray your own constitution if you must, but stop trying to police the world.
Yes, he's certainly demonstrated that he's an honest and believable individual without any agenda. Your blind faith seems well placed.
Putting words into my mouth again. Where did I say that Assange has no agenda? He clearly does. But that is not relevant to the legal arguments. Maybe you would see that if you weren't so stooped up to your eyeballs in bias and hubris.
It makes much more sense to do whatever will improve security, rather than taking an "either/or" approach as you appear to be arguing for.
Really? Even if the U.S. gets Assange, that doesn't mean anything. They can lock him up forever or black bag him. Wikileaks still exists and will continue to function. Your government can't stop them. Even if Wikileaks is disbanded, people already have the right idea. They can see that there is no stopping the underground system of information. As long as people are leaking info, there will be agencies to receive it, and there is quite literally nothing you can do about that. Unless your government is prepared to seize control of the entire telecommunications sector. :shrug:
So yeah, keep vilifying Assange all you want and pretending that I am putting him on some kind of pedestal. I do hope he escapes extradition and that the phony rape charges are dropped, but even if they're not and he disappears forever, I know that his work will continue to be done.
I am far more interested in knowing what the world's governments are up to - including my own - than I am about the behaviours of one man. The way our governments are classifying their activities for no reason, combined with the fact that we are being denied basic freedom of information requests to their activities, is reason enough to increasingly turn to agencies like Wikileaks to fill the information gap.
If our governments don't want to be clean and honest, then they can prepare to have all of their laundry aired against their will, which
unfortunately will likely include information that does truly need to remain classified. If our governments were more honest, we wouldn't have to risk national security to find out what they are doing.
We have a right to know. They are answerable to US, and until they realize that and start acting like our representatives again, we are going to obtain the info through any means possible. I will now use the statement that they always use against us when they increase "safety and security" in order to infringe upon our freedoms: if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about.
See how that works?
What would "improve security" would be for you and every U.S. citizen to remember what is required of them to maintain a free and democratic way of life, and for your government to remember its function and duty, which is foremost to its people.
Denial of reality.