Micheal wrote:
I do however, reassert my belief that the real target for the federal government is the person who leaked the documents to Mr. Assange. Since Mr. Assange is not a citizen of this country (he is Australian) he has basically guaranteed he will never have the freedom to visit this country without facing arrest for, at a minimum, conspiracy charges. I am curious as to what Australia's laws on freedom of speech are like, perhaps Lydiaa could tell us more.
Once again, as has been pointed out, Assange broke no American laws, even if he were American and lived in America. The NY Times could have published those cables with legal impunity. The ONLY difference is that were he an american, they could compel him to testify who leaked the information to him (because that person DID break the law.) The only people bound to protect classified information are those who have agreed to an NDA to do so.
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By the way Talya, Ng was a sexual offender and serial killer. He and his partner Leonard Lake (who committed suicide before capture) raped, tortured, filmed and executed their victims. Hardly an international terrorist of the stripe we normally think about. Canada held him for years on shoplifting, resisting arrest and wounding a police officer, he served time for those offenses in one of your Canadian prisons, then after a long extradition process was returned to the United States where he was tried for those murders and is currently on death row. It was a relatively local event here, I followed it for a long time.
I never mentioned Ng. I suspect that was for someone else.