A leak that did not occur | Washington accuses …

Finally, the United States put their first cards on the table. After investigating for years, Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks megafiltration website, after pressuring the Ecuadorian government to expel him from his embbady in London, where he was isolated for almost seven years after the British justice has arrested him for asylum at the embbady being on parole, after the judge of the case issued a statement announcing that Assange would remain in detention for a request for asylum. extradition emanating from the United States, after the US Department of Justice issued a formal indictment against Assange interpreted by a grand jury of Alexandria, Virginia, which had remained secret or "sealed" for years, waiting that Assange loses the protection of Ecuador.

The document, signed by prosecutors Kellen S. Dwyer and Thomas W. Traxler, accuses the editor and cyber-activist of one crime, "the conspiracy to commit a computer intrusion", a charge punishable by A maximum penalty of five years imprisonment. This is not a serious crime, but just ask for an extradition. If this process succeeds, the exhaustion of all the instances envisaged in the British judicial system could take years. Only then could the prosecution add charges, such as espionage, to potential punishment if found guilty.

The text presented to the British authorities gives some clues to the intentions of the prosecutor of northern Virginia, a locality in which a large part of the military families, intelligence agents and security forces surrounding the US capital are concentrated. The text indicates that Assange was conspiring to steal documents "related to national defense, some of which with the qualification of" secrets ", baduming that the information thus obtained could be used to harm the United States for the benefit of all. foreign country. "

The accusation particularly refers to a fact appeared when computer experts were able to decipher the discussions between Assange and Chelsea Manning, the intelligence services officer sentenced and then forgiven for filtering sensitive documents to WikiLeaks. According to the indictment, after sending the parties to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, documents regarding the Guantanamo prison and diplomatic cables from the state department, Manning warned Assange that There were other interesting documents stored on the Department of Defense server. but that was only part of the access code. Assange, then, according to the prosecution, offers to try to get the other part of the key. For the Virginia Attorney's Office, Assange's offer is the central axis of a conspiracy.

What is interesting in this case, or disturbing from the point of view of the exercise of journalism, is that the other elements cited in the conspiracy charge do not differ at all from the usual practice of journalists in the world. . To know:

"It was part of the plot that Manning and Assange used the online chat service 'Jabber' to acquire and distribute clbadified documents." It is common practice for investigative reporters to use an encrypted chat to obtain secret documents.

"This was part of the plot that Assange and Manning took steps to hide that Manning was the source of the transmission of clbadified material to WikiLeaks, including the removal of the user's name in the data transmission and the suppression of the discussions between Assange and Manning. "

Let's say that if you do not reveal the source and do not protect your identity, this is part of a conspiracy, the world is filled with conspiratorial journalists.

"This was part of the plot that Assange encouraged Maning to provide him with information and files of agencies and departments in the United States."

Once again: If inciting a source to provide us with secret information is a crime, millions of journalists should be imprisoned. And those who will not be because they are bad journalists.

The document indicates that Manning sent Assange 400,000 documents on the war in Iraq, 490,000 on the war in Afghanistan, 800 on the Guantanamo prison and 250,000 diplomatic cables. But they do not accuse him for that, but for the best style of the lawsuit against Al Capone, they accuse him of a leak that never happened, since the key to the server DOD, according to the prosecution, could not be deciphered. In his latest story, the prosecutor's report reports:

"On March 10, 2010 or around March 10, Assange asked Manning for further information about the key in question and said that he had tried to get it" but until now, I did not have a chance. "

@santiodonnell