What Assange’s arrest is teaching about press freedom

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By Evelyn Dan Epelle 


Following the arrest of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Thursday, there have been mounting concerns about the future of media reporting and what this could mean for press freedom.


Assange was arrested following a US extradition warrant that charged him with skipping bail in the U.K. in 2012, bringing his seven-year self-imposed asylum to a halt in what was a dramatic turn of events, filled with shouting and gesticulation as Police Officers bundled him into a waiting police van outside the embassy.


According to confirmed reports from the US Department of Justice, Assange had been indicted for conspiring to steal military secrets with Chelsea Manning (former Army intelligence analyst) who is known to have supplied classified documents to WikiLeaks in the past. He now faces up to 12 months in prison and will remain in custody until May 2, when he is expected to appear in court for an extradition hearing.


In the past, Assange has been known to violate the norm of not intervening in internal affairs of the state, the most recent being leaked Vatican document published on WikiLeaks in January 2019. In July 2016, WikiLeaks published almost 20,000 emails from Democratic National Committee staffers that suggested Hillary Clinton as committee favorite over Bernie Sanders during the US presidential primary. This free press debate has lasted nearly a decade with many citing Assange as a “symbol of freedom of speech and public’s right to know” and has recently resurfaced in the light of his arrest.


Although Assange was arrested under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act he is notorious for violating the Espionage Act for publishing classified material, causing many Journalists around the world to grow deeply concerned about unprecedented criminal charges in relation to the publication of certain news stories.


“It is a sigh of relief that the indictment seems narrow in scope and was not rooted in an Espionage Act claim simply based on receiving and publishing classified data. It is based on Assange’s alleged activities in personally participating in accessing the classified information and cracking a classified password. Assange is thus accused of not just receiving classified information and disseminating it but in the essence of breaking into the secured computers of the government.

 

That is fortunately not commonplace journalistic conduct.” says Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment lawyer. Other key stakeholders known to advocate for press freedom have taken to Twitter to express their views on the matter. Peter Stern, former U.S. Press Freedom Tracker tweeted: “The CFAA charge is clearly a pretext, a way of punishing Assange for publishing classified documents without actually charging him for it. But the fact that DOJ went out of its way to avoid charging him for publishing means this doesn’t set a dangerous precedent.”


Also commenting on the issue was Tim O’Brien of Bloomberg, whose column read: “If Assange Burgled Some Computers, He Stopped Being a Journalist


The world now awaits the verdict of the court on the matter, while deliberations have risen among journalists in determining the parts of the sand where the line must be drawn.



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