Snowden and Manning had a duty to the US. They were US citizens, they even worked for the military or spying apparatus.
For them to release information, no matter how justified, is obviously a crime, but Assange isn't American, not US permanent resident, and he has no duty to be loyal to the US.
This is why I feel that the prosecution is so insane. Assange getting extradited to the US is like Russia getting somebody extradited to Russia. Now of course, you can't expect better from the UK, which participated in the same war he is most famous for publishing stuff from, and him going to the UK was incredibly stupid.
But acquiring material actively is something you should obviously do. If you're a citizen of a third country and have a chance to obtain material of public interest, of course you should, and it shouldn't concern you whether the country whose material you obtain regards that as a crime.
> but Assange isn't American, not US permanent resident, and he has no duty to be loyal to the US.
That's besides the point, for example if a CIA agent is in China gathering intelligence on classified things, he is clearly guilty of espionage. You don't have to be a citizen or a permanent resident or have a duty to be loyal to a country to be spy.
Yes, but that doesn't mean that the CIA agent is a criminal.
Consequently, if arrested in, let's say, Thailand and handed over to China he will presumably not confess to espionage, just as Assange should not. He will instead presumably regard the procedure as irrelevant and say nothing.
By entering into a guilty plea he is participating in a legal procedure which is bullshit, and by legitimising it he causes harm to others who would seek to obtain information about war crimes from foreign countries.
I think framing the ethical considerations of this based on geographical borders is unnecessarily limiting.
Political borders should not be relevant to evaluate the ethics of what each person did.
Manning & Snowden ultimately to me acted ethically (And subjectively history has not been kind to the things that Snowden has had to do or chose to do since he got asylum in Russia)
Assange ultimately acted UN-ethically by being selective in some cases (leaking DNC data but not RNC), and "non partisan" in others (Leaking data that contained info on US war crimes; while also risking the lives of unrelated US intelligence agents and informants NOT complicit in war crimes)
Snowden and Manning had a duty to the US. They were US citizens, they even worked for the military or spying apparatus.
For them to release information, no matter how justified, is obviously a crime, but Assange isn't American, not US permanent resident, and he has no duty to be loyal to the US.
This is why I feel that the prosecution is so insane. Assange getting extradited to the US is like Russia getting somebody extradited to Russia. Now of course, you can't expect better from the UK, which participated in the same war he is most famous for publishing stuff from, and him going to the UK was incredibly stupid.
But acquiring material actively is something you should obviously do. If you're a citizen of a third country and have a chance to obtain material of public interest, of course you should, and it shouldn't concern you whether the country whose material you obtain regards that as a crime.