 Right now I think we've got Kathy Vogan waiting to come on board and talk an interview her own boss which is the other way around from normal isn't that what you were just telling us? Kind of yeah okay so yes I'm Kathy Vogan the executive producer of CN Live with Consortium News and usually I'm sitting you know on the other side of operations and Joe and Elizabeth are on screen doing the interviews but today our editor-in-chief has some very important things to say so I'm going to kind of interview him he's going to talk I think about the history of the extradition and sedition acts so Joe are you there can you hear me? Can you hear me now? Yes yes thank you Kathy very much I just wanted to say first of all what a terrific job you do on CN Live as our executive producer and we have our last video as an interview with Jill Stein and Richard Wolff I recommend people to go and see it I also want to thank Alex Hill and Joe Booth and everybody else who's working behind the scenes to make this world press freedom day broadcast possible yeah it was the Espionage Act and the Sedition Acts that I I've written a piece in Consortium News last week the first part of the department series on the Sedition Act coming up this week will be a history of the Espionage Act and how it is ensnared Julian Assange you know when you look carefully at the indictment of Assange the 17 charges under the Espionage Act which I reread once more you see what a weak case the government has against him basically they have him on one technical charge that's in the Espionage Act and that is simply possession and dissemination of classified material and nobody is arguing that he didn't possess and disseminate classified material given to him by Chelsea Manning but every time one of us retweets or posts on anywhere on social media or quotes in an article any WikiLeaks document that was classified and that the U.S. government still considers classified therefore we've also violated the Espionage Act because we're possessing it by downloading it and we've disseminated it by putting it on social media that's how absurd this charge is and this Section E of the U.S. Espionage Act that's all they have Assange on everything else in that indictment is what John Kiriakou called window dressing for example they go on at length about him supposedly endangering informants now beside the fact that we know from Mark Davis and from Assange's own lawyers in the four in the first four days of his extradition hearing in February that Assange indeed was working overnight that Friday night he did an all-mighter to redact the names of informants from the from the publication that was coming out on Sunday in The Guardian in Der Spiegel and in The New York Times and that it was the editors particularly of the Times in The Guardian who didn't give a damn about whether those names were in there there is no law against revealing the names of informants not listed at the top of the indictment are listed all the statues that Assange allegedly has violated all of them are from the Espionage Act and there's nothing in the Espionage Act about an informant it's against the law to reveal the name of a covert agent that's a different law not in the Espionage Act many people might remember the Valerie Plam case of several years ago where somebody outed her from inside the White House because her husband had written an op-ed in The New York Times saying that one of the key points of the Bush administration's argument for their invasion of Iraq was that some yellow cake had been bought by Iraq from Niger and Joe Wilson her husband debunked that in the Times and in retaliation they outed Valerie Plam who was a covert CIA agent that's a that's a crime Assange redacted as many as he could and that wasn't a crime even if some slipped through some names plus the US government has said on the record that they have no knowledge of anyone having been harmed any informant by a weak leaks publication so we could just dismiss all that stuff paragraphs and paragraphs in the indictment about him revealing names of informants it's not a crime and he did what he could to redact them unlike the editors of the Times and the Guardian so what have he left in the indictment we're left with him possessing and disseminating classified information journalists have for decades countless journalists in mainstream media have possessed and disseminated classified information there is this that's the way you do national security reporting it's done today still in the New York Times in the Washington Post cnn they're doing what they are accusing Assange of doing and that's why on world press freedom day it's so important to focus in on this indictment of Julian Assange and what it means for press freedom not just for Julian Assange and his fate but for the press for the media if the trump administration gets away with this indictment if he they get away with this extradition request they get away with convicting him and putting him away for the rest of his life 175 years they have struck a mortal blow to press freedom this section of the aspirin object against possession dissemination clearly runs up headlong into the U.S. First Amendment there is definitely a conflict there on its face it appears unconstitutional you can't really have a freedom of the press bill in the Bill of Rights you cannot say the First Amendment that the press has freedom and we all have freedom of speech and then arrest and prosecute a journalist from practicing journalism whether he's considered a journalist or not then why isn't it the other day one of these wonderful video webcasts that are being done around world press freedom day said that whether is a journalist or not is immaterial because he did conduct as a journalist what a journalist does so it doesn't matter whether you think he's a journalist or whatever and what Julian did was what Julian did was receive classified material from a source and he published it that's what journalists do so to go after him and we've seen a history since the aspirin object of 1917 there were moments when governments ran up to the line and then pulled back FDR did this during the war but never prosecuted a journalist in the Pentagon Papers case when Daniel Ellsberg gave the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times the the Times the sorry the Attorney General of the Nixon administration issued an injunction against the New York Times to have them stop publishing that went to the Supreme Court and the court ruled in favor of the New York Times simply because it was considered by the court to be prior restraint this is completely against the Constitution a government cannot tell publication beforehand you cannot publish this you must stop publishing this is clearly a violation of the First Amendment however the ruling in that Pentagon Papers case that a lot of people don't know is that after publication the government can prosecute for what from possessing and disseminating classified information with the going after Julian for that can be done in fact Nixon Justice Department impound the grand jury in Boston Massachusetts to possibly indict two New York Times reporters who worked on the Pentagon Papers case was only one it was discovered that Ellsberg's Hikiatris office had been broken into by Nixon's plumbers to dig up dirt on him and also that his phone was tapped that these two New York Times reporters asked the prosecutors whether they had been tapped as well since they've been speaking on the phone what Ellsberg clearly their conversations have been listened into and it was at that point that Justice Department of Nixon withdrew this grand jury and it collapsed so in that case they did not prosecute a journalist for possession and dissemination although Nixon came very close to doing it and then of course we know even in Julian Assange's case that the Obama administration was held bent on getting him they had a grand jury and paneled it in 2010 and it looked at prosecuting Assange for possession dissemination of classified information at the end the Eric Holder the attorney general of Obama and Obama decided they wouldn't do it simply because of what they call the New York Times problem which is what I described here at the beginning which is that the New York Times does that all the time as well so if they prosecuted WikiLeaks and Julian Assange what's to prevent them from prosecuting the New York Times or a subsequent administration so they could not could not prosecute Assange because of the principle of the First Amendment even though it's still on the books in the Espionage Act it's not been successfully challenged in the Supreme Court as unconstitutional it's there but the Obama administration had the good sense to not go forward but let's fast forward to the Trump administration of course they have done that I believe one of the driving forces with Mike Pompeo who was CIA director when the vault seven releases came out that infuriated him that was infamous quote now about Assange and WikiLeaks being a non-state intelligent hot stone intelligence service they went ahead and actually died at him on this this is why we have him now on remand in COVID-19 infested Belmont prison awaiting his extradition hearing which will resume either in July or November this is a very very serious matter it goes right to the heart of freedom of the press it's exactly the thing to be talking about on this day I think the indictment is a weak case because that's all they have on him as I said the stuff about informants and anything else is just not not viable because there's no law that he broke there what they're really doing and this is what I said in the piece I published last week is they are actually in essence trying to prosecute him on a law that doesn't exist anymore the US had two sedition acts in its history in 1798 and in John Adams president and in 1917 or 18 Woodrow Wilson when he pushed through the espionage act that Assange has been indicted under he tried to get censorship legal censorship put into the espionage act and he lost by a single vote in the senate so that was removed from the draft espionage act so the censorship was not legalized even though possession dissemination was in there and could be applied to journalists censorship was rejected by the senate and by the press and a large part of the public that was aware of this so what did Wilson do a year later he just put together a new act which he made as an amendment to the espionage act and that was the sedition act of 1918 and thousands of people were thrown into jail journalists were prosecuted under that for mostly for opposing the war of the first world war this was a first world war law of course and amongst them was Eugene Debs who was the leader of the socialist party in the US and he was imprisoned and he actually got almost a million votes in 1920 presidential election from inside prison but that law when wilson left was then repealed just as the 1798 one was repealed by thomas jefferson the new president he actually uh refunded the fines that people had paid under that 1798 sedition act and the 1921 1921 the sedition act was removed the UK like latest sedition act was from the 17th century that was repealed only in 2009 believe it would be unbelievable i found out when i researched this piece so britain and the US do not have a sedition act but why do i say it's not just being charged uh in essence under an act that doesn't exist anymore because they're angry at him for disrespecting government for embarrassing them for revealing their crimes these are the kind of things that you could not say against a monarch even if it's true under that 17th century british act even if it was true you could be prosecuted in fact it was worse uh if you it was true they were more angry about that and this brings us to the john peter zenger case in colonial america colonial new york province of new york the governor of new york at that time william cosby was angry at this printed john zenger who published some true information against his corruption the jury that was put in there acquitted zenger even though he had broken the law that's called jewelry notification so even though the law he did break the law the jury said it we can't stand for this and that was really the genesis of this first amendment that is conflicting now with this part of the espionage act so i'd say assange is being being charged on a flint on a very very technical part of the espionage act that is unconstitutional in my view i hope that his lawyers if he gets to the u.s. we hope he doesn't obviously but if he does that that's challenged there and that in fact there are two congressmen in the u.s a senator and a representative who have put forward a bill that would change that would amend the espionage act to exempt journalists publishers from that section so it would apply to uh someone who is not a journalist but would not apply to journalists so that probably won't get anywhere in congress but it's good to see that two members of congress have understood how unfair and unconstitutional this part of the espionage act is excellent joe thanks for that history i just like to talk about two things that were discussed in court uh in the first week of julian's extradition hearings now the first one was uh mr louis's address not to the court but to the press when he seemed to be saying to the press don't worry you're not going to be charged that seemed to be the underlying message that they were supposed to receive and unfortunately they all up and left after that um but why why as mark davis said in his talk at politics in the pub and if julian is in jail uh the guardian journalists should be in jail all those ones in the bunker the guardian built the whole interface for the leaks uh the search searchable database he said it was all the guardians making and julian was just supposed to be the front man but in fact uh he he does relate uh having been there mark davis in the bunker during all of that preparation that wikileaks had a technical problem and in fact it was the new york times that ended publishing first so in fact in view of the fact that the guardian el pace uh new york times um der spiegel they all handled and published the same material why are they not being prosecuted as well if the trump administration is so gung-ho against journalists or is it just journalists that are called julian and sarge well uh they shouldn't be prosecuted because i said this should not apply to journalists so the new york times the guardian der spiegel whatever should not be prosecuted one might say well they're they're foreign publications in the u.s they are in britain and in germany why how could you possibly prosecute the guardian journalists under u.s law i want to point out that there was an amendment to the espionage act in 1961 that universalized the the law previous to 61 the way it was written in 1917 the espionage act this crime of espionage had of uh possessing and disseminating classroom card information along with other parts of the statute had to be performed on u.s territory but an event happened in poland in 1960 i believe in which a american diplomat was found by polis security services uh they burst into a bedroom and they found him in bed with another woman who wasn't his wife and they took photographs and they blackmailed him they showed him the pictures and said if you don't give us these classified documents from the embassy and also the u.s embassy then we're gonna you know your life will be ruined this will be in the newspapers tomorrow so the guy got the documents that is u.s territory in the embassy but he had to bring them out of the embassy to give them to these agents and he got caught and the u.s found out who he was but he couldn't be charged for the espionage act because it took place in polish territory not in u.s territory so that incents this congressman or his name i'm forgetting right now uh to push hard and it took four votes i think to finally amend the the espionage act to say that anywhere in the world anyone who possesses and disseminates classroom information or violates other parts of the espionage act can be prosecuted that's how julian is soldiers in bell marks right now because the law says that it doesn't matter if you're australian doesn't matter if you're doing it in uk and island wherever i don't have to be on u.s territory but back to your question which is um why aren't they why wouldn't they prosecute well we don't know that they wouldn't probably not the trump administration although the guy hates the media he has some good reasons to be critical of the media but certainly it's really um it's really uh that he's angered that they attack him personally it's not about a larger issues of the way the corporate media reports things so that could be dismissed because of his his it's focused on himself but uh they could go after him and if subsequent administration could after this because the president has now been said that a journalist has been indicted under the espionage act i think one reason they wouldn't go after big media is because they are powerful and they could fight back and they've got the public a good part of their reading public and we're talking about millions of people when you're dealing with the new york times of cnn who they the papers or the tv stations could get their readers on their side and explain as they're not doing now about julian why this is so unfair to uh to indict them on um publishing classified information now they should be out front and center defending julian assange now because of the possibility of them being in the crosshairs at some point in the future but they aren't because they don't think he's a journalist and they don't really think they're going to go after them and probably they won't because if they're powered they also have tremendous uh uh expensive lawyers to fight this they would bring it to the supreme court they'd get the public behind them in a way it would be good if they did indict the new york times because then the times couldn't bring it to the supreme court and maybe have that struck down even this right wing court it could possibly have it struck down and that would free julian them because that's something they have them on all the asses all the rest is crap in the indictment as i've said but they won't and i don't think uh governments will go after big media for the reasons i laid out however there is um you know there is that possibility now there always was that possibility as i said administrations went up right to the edge and then decided not to do it trump has and that was a fundamental difference and a fundamental threat to press freedom well surely if they're going to be selective about it those decisions uh would be made for political reasons right it shows the political nature of this case um absolutely that's why i say it's one more thing for sedition than a spinach because sedition is an overtly political uh matter they can't even argue national security where they can in the espionage because there are people who get documents and give them to an adversary or enemy states this is not what julian assange did this is not a classic espionage case he didn't take the classified material from chelsea manning and give them to an enemy of the united states unless the public the government considers the public the enemy of the united states because that's who assange gave it to that's a difference in journalism in espionage really is both trying to get information secrets and the spy gives it to their governments and keeps it secret of another if they steal documents or intelligence from another state they keep it whereas a journalist gets it gives it to the public that's what assange did that's another way to define him as a journalist he's not an intelligence service he did once say that this wiki leaks was the intelligence service of the people but this is just a you know a rhetorical way of describing what wiki leaks is all about and of course this idiot Pompeo used that it's even in the indictment i believe that they sort of at the beginning in the preamble say that he called themselves himself an intelligence agency the people i mean this is so ridiculous to take that out of context he didn't he's not acting like an intelligence agency wiki leaks doesn't why do the state publisher they give it to the public that's in the word publish whereas intelligence services keep it to themselves so you know i i really think that it's a great day to talk about this and i really would hope that mainstream media they do understand because if you remember on april 11th of last year when the songs were dragged out of the embassy violating asylum laws and whatnot even rachel maddo got on her tv show when there was nobody on the media i hated to saunch more and she defended him and she said oh as hard as it is for me to do this basically because this is about us in the media it's how bread and butter you know published in class by material there i know the last time rachel maddo broke a story based on class by material but in general she's right that the media does this all the time and therefore they couldn't stand for this happening to saunch the washington post and the new york times that editorials that they saying the same thing mrs going too far can't do it but since then we've heard nothing they hardly covered the extradition hearing in february the first day there was nothing in the times of the post i think the new york times were one article i think during that time so they've lost interest because as you say kathy uh they feel pretty comfortable that it won't go against them but they understand that they it could happen to them well something makes me think that it's all to do with whether they're willing or not to go along with perception management i was just uh reviewing today um when bob parry discovered walter reynman the cia operative who was in charge of perception management for the united states i mean that kind of warning like that where uh louis who is more or less uh the prosecutor in uh julian as sounds his extradition hearing has the us lawyers sitting behind him but yeah curiously he is addressing the press and perhaps that it's not so much the high and you know the unions or the the size of their organization it really is something to do with whether they will compromise or not whether they will go along with narratives as katelyn johnson said he who controls the narrative controls the world so you know something tells me that uh it's possibly because wikileaks won't compromise and when you reveal all of the raw documents well that's somewhat short circuits the possibility of perception management but i'd like to just move on to one more thing that we heard in court and you and i were there so this was something that edward fits gerald uh brought out or maybe it was mark summers yeah i think it was mark summers on that day so he was talking about the first charge in fact he talked about three points that the prosecution were making but i'd like to focus on this one which was about the the first charge the computer hacking and uh i think we were all under the impression originally that chelsea manning needed to crack a password somehow this was in relation to the national security information but what came out in um the hearing was that this password was actually for video games movies and video clips for the fellow soldiers because they weren't allowed to install video games on their computers so in fact uh and also uh the the terminal uh that manning had access to and had top secret clearance for um there was no login on and password so in fact that's that uh conversation between uh manning and well we can presume now that nissaniel frank was a serge was something to keep his fellow soldiers happy it had absolutely nothing to do with this case so if that just and they have evidence uh to show this so that disintegrates that means that there's only the espionage charges that are left and in that case you have to maybe you have to say what source for the goose is source for the gander if you're going to charge a serge well then why not charge the guardian journalist or well the new york times uh at any point but post 61 amendment of the espionage they could charge the guardian journalists as well and they are much more culpable because they built the whole search engine and everything wiki leaks as mark davis said didn't have the capacity to do that kind of thing and wiki leaks didn't even publish first so you know they were all there were many media partners and i think somehow that warning on the first day by the prosecutor mr lewis was somehow warning the press if you're going to play the game we won't prosecute you but as soon as you become defiant of our narratives our perception management which has been going on as bob parry pointed out to us since the 70s um then you're in trouble would you agree with any of that i always agree with you kath no actually i don't that was interesting i didn't answer that part before about why he addressed the press i think that shows that the government is somewhat nervous or quite well aware of the way the press initially reacted that they could be gone after as well and so he's reassuring him which was extraordinary in the middle of this hearing to say that to them not just to them but for everybody who would report that um so that that they're very aware of this uh part of their strong arguments is just not a journalist so you know he's a hacker uh he's not a journalist that's what the underlying argument is and that's why they also team this with that computer fraud and abuse act charge the first one that is applied to hackers so this is they're trying to argue he's a hacker he's not a journalist and he sort of hacked in to get these materials well for one reason i think they won't go after another reason i think they won't go after the big corporate media and it's interesting as you point out that it was the new york times that published that classified material first and yet the government went after the second guy went after not the first guy did the exact same thing on a search engine that was built let you say by the guardian and that's because the corporate media for a long time now certainly since the end of the second world war with some extent maybe exceptions during vietnam uh have been covering up u.s crimes covering up u.s foreign policies real motives its motives be to extend a strategic and economic interest and its political dominance of other states around the world this doesn't come through in the reporting in the major u.s media instead we hear they're spreading democracy they're they're taking down dictators etc etc and they've taken down many uh democratically elected leaders like arbenz in guatemala and mozadek in iran and ayende in chile and we could even say yana kovic in ukraine so this is not the way it's portrayed in the major u.s media it's portrayed as america doing good for the world like they really care about people the people that they bombed and destroyed their infrastructure and killed and massacre hundreds of thousands as they did in iraq and of course it was the mainstream media that facilitated that invasion by believing all the trumped up um intelligence before about why the u.s should invade iraq so the corporate media is doing its job for the state they're doing what they're supposed to do they're laundering intelligence that would not maybe be believed by the public who could be skeptical of the cia for example but if you if they leak it to the new york times and the times publishes it well it becomes more credible that's why i say they're laundering it because it's not directly to the public so the times and the other mainstream media does the job that the state wants them to do and uh they're useful as long as they remain useful they won't be prosecuted assange on the other hand did exactly the opposite of what corporate media does which is to reveal those crimes and corruption and the real motives of u.s farm policy and u.s dominance of other states with the raw materials that prove this not a whisper from an intelligence source in a cafe somewhere in the corner shadows in washington somewhere or on the phone but the documents themselves so they cannot be questioned we can question new york times and other reporting when they quote anonymous u.s intelligence which is like they recently did on china china somehow all of a sudden clearly the trump administration wants to go after blame china to deflect attention from the disastrous way trump has uh led on the corona virus crisis so china is in the crosshairs and what did new york times come out with a story saying that china was behind these facebook posts that you know that put out a lie about the us being locked down nationally um and then they say it was they only quote anonymous officials in the intelligence services and then there's a paragraph it's always been that paragraph all the russia gate stories and now china gate stories that the intelligence agents wouldn't give the details of the evidence because it would give up sources and methods so in other words take our word for it and the times reporters took their word for it why because it's a big scoop and that they and people in government know that journalists live for scoops they can smell one easy to manipulate them and give them one so that's why i'm saying the times and other big media are useful to the intelligence agents as long as they remain useful they can keep on breaking this part of these espionage act as long as they want and they'll never be gone after and as far as the computer fraud and abuse act charge uh yeah i was shocked uh when i was in the courtroom to hear in the public galley ason just lawyers laying out that he was actually helping chelsea break a password to download forbidden music videos and games now i don't think that they would say that ason just lawyers if they didn't have the evidence to back that up so i i believe them i don't think they would put that out in court if they couldn't prove so funny enough that didn't get a lot of traction that story people still believe as i as i did and most of us did before who didn't accept the espionage uh who didn't accept that indictment rather the computer for for our abuse act indictment that he had that saw that jelsie had legal access through all these documents the indictment says this that she had legal access she had top secret clearance but that sans was trying to help her uh sign in under an administrative name only to protect her identity not to get access to the documents so that's why from the beginning that indictment was rubbish uh because he was doing what journalists do you mentioned bob harry the founder of course founding editor the late founding editor of consortium news he wrote a piece back in 2010 just went around the time the obama administration was impaneling that grand jury and the king of indicting the sans for trump ultimately indicted him for bob wrote that this is what he did all the time and of course bob harry for people who don't know who's one of the best investigative journalists of his generation he broke some of the biggest iran contra stories about cocaine nicaragua transfers and he quit ap when they spiked his stories because they were protecting the state very much like that they were protecting the state u.s state interests so bob quit ap and then he quit newsweek because they were also spiking his stories and he started 1995 consortium news 25 years we're celebrating our anniversary bob did what what uh julie sans did later he published classified information that undermined the interests of the u.s government and the u.s state and that's why he felt strong connection i believe with julie sans and wrote this piece in 2010 in which he said he not only encouraged his source to get more the crying eyes quote that they they seem to criminalize because sans asked channel tells him for more not only did bob asked him to give him more he said that he asked him to break the law in order to do that the law being the taking of the classified documents in order to prevent a larger crime than being committed so if an analyst and intelligence analyst takes a classified document gives it to the press the release of that information curtailes a war or prevents a war that is a crime worth committing and that's what we whistleblowers do and julien was uh us doing that with chelsea so um i see commander x with your hand up so i'll just stop filibustering right now here hi yeah i want to say a couple of things um i'm a hacker okay and damn fucking proud of it and also i'm an author and i'll be dropping my third book that will be in print in july you can be many things you can be a fireman and you can be a baker at the same time and you're you can be all of those things and all of those things are legitimate um if i'm a hacker my consequences and my responsibility my social responsibility for those actions are separate from my rights to publish as an author i can't be penalized or my books can't be censored because they describe me hacking so to me that that whole that whole thing is really it's a non-existent point it's it's a moot point because and with regard to the cfa i am in mexico right now with political asylum because of a cfa charge so let me tell you guys about what the cfa is really all about okay the computer fraud abuse act has been used in ways they have sent researchers to prison for months on charges based on the cfa and all these researchers did was aggregate public information publicly available information and deliver it to the press and they have gone to jail for it the cfa is the espionage law of hackers and whether anybody wants to acknowledge it or not maybe everybody thinks or paints hacking or hackers is some big black thing we are persecuted too i am here in mexico to stand for the fucking hackers because we are persecuted too okay and like barrett brown said in the we are legion movie you know there are some things that you people the world all of you out there listening would never ever know if it weren't for the hackers because it's stuff that will never be found out by a congressional hearing it will never be found out by an investigative journalist it will never be dug up unless one of us goes in there and takes the information and gives it to you so i want to make crystal clear that whether or not julien is a hacker and i'm sorry but he is okay i can vouch for the fact because that's how i met him okay and that is that is a mood point to the fact that he's a publisher and a journalist as well and the cfa you can share your netflix password with another person and under the computer fraud abuse act you can be charged with a felony that can earn you five no sorry two years in prison for sharing a netflix password if they were to choose to prosecute you under the cfa the cfa is nothing more than a sword that the prosecutors in the united states of america use against information activists which covers all of us hackers publishers sources all of it the whole front of information activism is now under attack and has been for 10 years since we first came to wikileaks defense since the hackers the hackers were the first people in the world when no one else in the world would stand up for julien in 2010 the hackers took town paypal masticard visa one after another we were costing masticard a million dollars a minute three days before christmas because of julien assange okay so we've done our part and we've stood the line and we've and and we paid we paid an awful price it's one of the reasons i was run to mexico because i was one of the people in charge of that shit i was one of the people leading that shit and they knew it and that's that's the reason i'm here not the cfa law that they used to try to put me in jail and that's what the cfa's age purposes its only purpose is to get you to stop what you're doing and so if you're doing research that for instance exposes at&t for having just the most incredibly shoddy material on their newest ipad that they released back in uh 2008 um check me on my details but uh you know and you release that to the press and they charge you you go to prison for two years that's what the cfa is about they wanted that man that researcher to stop releasing that information because at&t was embarrassed they had they had this premier product that the whole world wanted obama got one his daughter got one and all their data got dumped because of this man's research that he released to the press and it was at&t's fault dead wood at&t's fault and yet he was prosecuted so when they bring the cfa out which i was found it very interesting and a little bit kind of an honor that it was the first charge doing was charged with was the cfa that was the first charge he dropped on and i think that that's you know it's telling and it shows that this is again they're wielding this sword called the computer fraud and abuse act and this law that they're persecuting julian with besides the espionage law is very important it has killed people it has killed friends of ours friends of mine and julians erin schwarz hung himself one of the most brilliant fucking men ever to live in our lifetime literally on the fucking planet he invented reddit at the age of 15 okay and founded it good god almighty he invented rss at the age of 13 the feeds that we use and he hung himself in a fucking room alone in new york because of the cfa and the persecution how they will go after your family they went after mine they'll go after your friends these motherfuckers are like stopo that's what they are and the cfa is just one of many tools that they can flip open their book and and use these blue laws or these archaic laws the cfa is very archaic it was written in the 80s um and they can use these these laws and keep them on the books on purpose even though they know they're deprecated laws and that way they can use them as the as a weapon against whatever political in this case it's information activists cfa is very useful but we have a running joke amongst hackers man basically if you buy a computer and turn it on you just broke the cfa it could come with an indictment under the lid they could just give you one with the computer and say you've now been indicted just send this in when you turn the fucking thing on that's how easy it is to break the cfa break that law so that is again it's indicative of of of of where julian stands there is nothing wrong nothing wrong with being in favor of free access to information and saying that that that there is a cause behind wiki weeks there is a political movement behind wiki weeks and the hackers are front and center part of it they're a good part of it a part that can be people there are heroes jeremy hamon half the weeks on wiki weeks belong to a friend of mine named jeremy hamon who's doing 10 years for getting those secrets and push them 10 years he's still he just got out of the grand jury thing and he's still finishing his sentence we never hear him talked about why because he's a street anarchist with dreadlocks because he's because he used to go around breaking starbucks windows before he started breaking servers look man you know judge not less gb the one who has to fucking resist someday that's all i've got to say don't don't judge the parts of the movement um and that may seem a little dark or whatever hacking is the hackers i know are heroes straight up and the world has been so dramatically changed because of and they knew all of us are very smart men we knew going into this that we were going to face these charges that we were going to face this hideous persecution 10 years they spent millions of dollars they chased me across three countries because of my defense of wiki weeks so my point was that and i just wanted to put that out there you know yeah that's fine my point was that it was not a charge in that first indictment for hacking he was trying to help chelsea sign in under a different name to protect our identity that's what the indictment says and the investigators are angry because that would make it harder for them to find out who had done this not hacking in fact the word hacking doesn't appear anywhere in that indictment even though it did on the justice department release because well i thought i heard you say it i thought i heard you say it earlier but i think really the point where you hit on is it's a smear attempt and this is why i'm being so vehement about this because it's an attempt to first of all it's an assumption a social assumption that hackers are the bad guys and we're fucking not okay and then going with that social assumption again what kathy was saying who who writes the narrative writes so the narrative is that we're the bad guys we're the shitheads right so the way to smear shit on him is to stick a cfa a charge i don't actually think they give a shit about that charge and that would be the first one they negotiate off the table when they start if they ever have to start talking about legal um plea bargaining or anything like that it'd be the first one to go it's a shit charge it's there for one reason only because they can number one and number two because it smears him as a hacker well guess what he's a hacker so you you wasted your time you didn't need to see f a a charge right i could have told you that myself but he may in the regardless of his past he was not the charge with hacking in this case this was chelsea manning who freely gave the material that's what i was making well it's the hacking law i mean it's it none nobody you know i mean the researcher that did that did that research on at&t um and gave it to uh vice magazine uh you know he didn't uh he he didn't do any hacking either none at all it was literally zero penetration he did it all in a browser with publicly available addresses and and aggregated that information and it was just shitty security on at&t's part to put that on a public web server and it was very very embarrassing but he did months and months in prison before that that charge was finally overturned on a technicality not even on the merits of the case and the judge scratched his head he's like i can't believe that this made it into my appeals court i wish i could rule on the rest of it he he even said he said i wish i could rule on the rest of how ridiculous this case is the cfa a case but i just wanted to make clear that it's a hacking charge and it's meant to smear him not meant to i don't believe that they have any worry or concern about sourcer and that that's not why that charges in that charge is pretty nipple one reason one reason only because they knew they could and because they knew that it's a smear on julian to call him a hacker and rather than dodge around that and try to dance circles around that i would rather just say straight up okay he's a fucking hacker you know what and we're the good guys so tough shit and that's a shitty fucking law and it's the reason i'm here in mexico and guess what the mexican government agreed with me the mexican government took a very careful look at the computer fraud abuse that because that's why i'm here and they 100 agreed with me that this law is a almost universally used for political reasons so therefore just being charged with it they considered to be ipso facto evidence that i needed asylum okay and number two that there's no possible way you could beat the charge it is literally physically it's just impossible to beat a computer fraud abuse act charge nobody has ever beaten one that's why erin hung himself okay and so if they push it to the women nobody you can't beat it and that's why jeremy's in here jeremy's also on under computer fraud abuse act so and he did do network penetration so it's just this vast thing and like i said you can trade a networks passport and you'll be a computer fraud abuse act victim or you know prosecuted so um i just i don't know i just think that honesty beats everything and let's just push forward julien's rights stand no matter what he did it wouldn't matter what he had done in his past whether he was a drunkard whether he got parking tickets uh whether he smoked pot in the 60s it wouldn't have fucking mad none of that shit fucking matters what matters is that he's a publisher and a journalist facing the most obvious and dire attack by empire in human history never have we seen a contest like this where we see whole western nations a whole western empire a raid against a single fucking man and has somebody who has fought the empire single-handedly myself i can tell you that that's you know that's it it's it's incredibly courageous first of all and it's it takes almost a death wish really to push through to the end to the very very end to not ever give up and this is what we need to focus on this is what's going to free julien is focusing on the fact that there's a single man against this vast fucking empire um we can't let a single individual be a sacrifice to liberty we just can't we can't do that you know it individual life has to mean something it has to mean something um sovereignty and nations and laws and fucking ink stains on old books that they call religion all of that shit has to give way to the individual human it has to or else i will not relent i will i will resist this world to my dying breath if a single individual can't get all his rights just to convenience the state it's just unacceptable and that to me is the the focus of this argument the the legal stuff is all icing on the cake i think the espionage not as charged as the beef of it that's the thing to focus on and i think we should be crystal clear that the cfa a charge is bogus that there are a lot of victims of this charge that people should resonate with when they consider julien cfa a beef you should also resonate with a lot of people who have been victims of this particular law and they stand in solidarity with julien and we should put it aside because it's a smear designed to tell us something we already know thank you miss x thank you jill for for the comments and everything i just wanted to give a hacker's perspective because you would that was that was brilliant the hacker thing in the cfa thing around a lot there and i just wanted to say that there's actually one on the show so maybe i'll sing my piece yeah well we certainly haven't forgotten operation payback and all of the other amazing discoveries uh even about the hb gary um project and you know what he has a very particular hatred for me that's very funny oh i'm sure he does he really he considers me like his arch nemesis i'm like he's like joker and i'm batman or the other way around in his mind i guess but but uh he he's a funny dude man he's what a what a what a character no it's you know the point is i i think we should set it aside because i realized too i'm a i'm a propagandist i i work with publicity all the time and how to get messages across and everything and i get that this is not something we should dwell on necessarily i mean it's not i don't want to drape uh operation payback across my back and go hey look everybody we know we hack mastercard visa for julian i mean that you know that's not going to gain us um a lot either and i'm not that's not where i'm at with it i also i'm not going to hang my head in shame and and i'm not going to have julian by proxy hang his head in shame no but i think this uh he's a whole man and what makes him a genius is the fact that he is a hacker among the many things that he is yeah but you have to put aside this great work i think that uh many individuals and groups did uh from the publishing activities i think you've already said this of of of wiki lakes um they're two different things and absolutely and um and and in this particular case in the case of the manning matter the manning uh committed what is called the core crime and asange is associated by a charge of conspiracy to commit a computer intrusion so that's whether he was involved in helping manning get the classified information so the whole hacking thing does not come in to this at all it's a smear it's a smear they're using absolutely absolutely yes with other people's lives i just wanted to make that point i would also have to remind you as well uh of what christine asange said about the press in australia she was for years for many many years she was constantly having to call the press and ask for modifications uh you know because there was a certain amount of libel going on i remember at one point in time i remember there were 13 libel cases that wiki lakes was engaged in at the same time which is why they needed funding um but christine was always having to call the australian press because they were in the last interview i did with her they were constantly calling him a hacker in order to create that but this is all part of the perception management war to to and you know you have hackers who steal people's uh credit card numbers you have ethical hackers like like yourself you know the fact that you can get in uh you know to me a criminal absolutely you know jeremy haman i'd like to use i'd like to put that that analogy on his head jeremy haman could have gone down to stratford and he could have broken the lock on the fence broke a window climbed inside had taken all of their servers and he would have served two years in prison but because he took the data over the network he's doing 10 so you're preaching to the choir you know what i mean i mean i i get oh that's right i get it that's right what i want to get across to people though is for me to step around that smear is to simply step over it and say yeah okay he is a hacker and a damn good one well i mean in this case we're a very smart man and you know what he's a very powerful man and the other thing that that gentleman joe warrior was saying too about the press and the media organizations and how the big ones would be immune to this sort of thing um you know what wiki weeks is really fucking big too and powerful okay they're not mainstream media i will never lump them with that but they're as powerful as mainstream media and they're as big as mainstream media and they're feared too and they have some cards left to play you know they're in very good hands with chris i happen to know chris and i really approved of him getting um elevated to editor status when julien couldn't couldn't work anymore so uh i really feel super confident that wiki weeks uh can can apply the same amount of power and this is why i'm very optimistic we're actually going to win this guys i think what do you think um do you think this kind of influence both to you and joe this kind of influence that people have uh over the public how many people listen to what they're saying uh does that have something to do with the selectivity in deciding not to uh i mean i suppose guardian new york times they have a lot of influence but one of the things and i ask australian politician george christensen this as well one of the things that made wiki leaks a target is that so many people were actually interested in receiving this information is that not a critical factor why a lot of people can get away with publishing what they like or saying what they like and other people become a target because it conflicts with this perception management in my opinion the target surface of wiki leaks here and and really it is their biggest beef and and it is their target surface is very specifically the idea of publishing raw unredacted i don't mean unredacted but unfiltered um classified secret classified information secret or private or classified information um in large amounts and then and then taking the further step to build tools so that journalists can then go there and use the search engine on the wiki leaks website and search those leaks and actually a lot of incredible articles will continue for for decades to come out of just the dumps we already have so it is the it is the taking of that raw data and then delivering it to the press they know that they can't prosecute the press once the press writes the story on it what they want to do is shut off the faucet and where they see the faucet that the head of the faucet is wiki leaks that's what they see is the faucet of these stories is the raw data and wiki leaks is not just made it available they've made it accessible they've built tools for journalists to dig into those tool things are actually uh i just as i pointed out mark davis who was in the bunker said it was the guardian in the case of the manning leaks it was the guardian that built the interface they they built the search uh they they created an item for every uh every leak i think you didn't have a search engine at the time and you're pretty hard to build that's right and they gave every single one of them the guardian gave every single one of them a graphic interface made it searchable and then they put it online um the other thing is that it was julian in terms of redaction it was julian who redacted 10 000 documents alone they all went off to play golf on the weekend they didn't apparently care mark davis describes their difference the graveyard humor about victims however the difference between wiki leaks and guardian however is that guardian went ahead in the minute the uk just even asked them to smash those uh those drives with sweat chambers they did it on film they smashed the fucking drives and and and ended the whole thing that's the difference they rolled over and died but that was snowden's material however in this particular context of the manning case you have julian who's doing the reductions single-handedly and also uh you've got manning who is the primary source he is a whistleblower there is no hacking involved in this story at all and uh you know you may be in in a previous life when he was a teenager but not in this story there is no hacking we have a whistleblower and they are not protected enough incidentally i did a reportage for unity for jay on switzerland when switzerland were considering uh not the whole country but a local council were thinking of bringing this to the federation to ask julian to to offer julian asylum and that had previously been refused before because they didn't consider wiki leaks is defending people's human rights but then there is of course this article 19 which is the right to seek impart and receive information which is something that we all have a right to but the thing was that what i noticed is that the local council had made a mistake they were calling julian a whistleblower and in the context of the manning case julian's not the whistleblower he's the god damn publisher of course we should have rights in the united states the first amendment for publishers but i will acknowledge that there isn't um the switzerland were acknowledging that there weren't enough rights for whistleblowers and i guess there's another category and that is the ethical hackers who get in there when it's been absolutely refused the information and we are very grateful you know the public are very grateful for whatever truth they get to know but in terms of wiki leaks they are publishing it not hacking it ever my personal opinion right now as things stand in this world and i will be using all the leverage that i have with julian personally and with wiki leaks and with chris when julian is freed because i know that he will be and when he's freed there's only one world leader guys and i just want to give a shout out to mexico and i just want to point out that there is only one leader that i know of and i'm pretty savvy in world politics i'm pretty up to date there's only one leader that has come forth in this world right now within the last few months or so like new um and come out and and and and spoken in a in a manner that makes me quite certain he would give julian political asylum um i have spoken with the uh immigration people here about julian's case and they have asked me about julian's case because i'm actually like i said i'm claiming persecution part of my persecution is because of wiki leaks and they've asked me about it and i fully intend to try to convince julian and chris to bring wiki leaks here to mexico and i will walk him into the office to my ianm officer because he is the nicest if he's listening to shout out dude you are the nicest dude in the world man i got the best ianm officer and he will treat julian like the prince that he is and um so i really feel that that wiki leaks is future may be here in latin america still there are more countries down here than ecador and mexico is doing a right nice job right now of protecting people they protected evo moralis if you go to wikipedia and you look up list of people to get political asylum i'm the last one on the list and evo moralis is right on top of me and both of us got it from mexico which is kind of cool so mexico is the game guys and this is what i want to achieve in the long term i believe wiki leaks is places here in latin america if not here maybe brazil with glenn that would be okay too um but uh i i really feel that they should look here i think this is a region of the world that is going to become a bastion of freedom guys in the future um there's chaos everywhere china is really wrecking africa bad we're wrecking the middle east the u.s is wrecking the middle east africa uh europe is just a mess but latin america i think is heading in a positive direction i'm living here now and that's what i see i see them going in a positive direction i see people socially active solving problems and and being satisfied getting getting satisfaction so i think that that's a progress so um i just want to say it's so great to be on with you again i haven't been on a vigil in like what a year with you so we were on them all the time back back in the early days man together so i just want to give a shout out man we we've done a lot of time on this beat man yeah pleasure and let's hope that's what you envisage um regarding mexico could could ever happen at the moment we are terribly concerned about julian's vulnerability to coronavirus uh in well that's the only thing that i think can go wrong here that's the funniest part about this and i i think i could be a little bit more honest and open now about my optimism i was always kind of it's funny i was always kind of hesitant to be optimistic on the vigils um because i didn't want to just you know deter anybody from resisting and going out there and protesting but now we can't protest physically um all we can do is get online and we got plenty of time to do that so i can be i can really tell the truth about what i think is going to happen and one of the things that um you know i have i have a lot of friends in in this movement and um lori love is one of them a really incredible hacker when you want to talk about people who went out there and did the heroes work in the hacking field lori was one of them and the us tried to extradite him very recently in the last couple years to the usa on a cfa ab and because he's a dear friend of mine i followed that case super intimately as intimately as i'm following julian's um and i saw the exact same pattern um they were horrible to him in court they did every decision that they could against him in court the judge acted mean and gruff and then when she came out with the decision what she did is said exactly everything that was right i mean everything that we would want to hear that he was vulnerable i mean she literally ruled the exact opposite of the way she was acting in court okay so these cats are playing a role they're playing a a lark in a way they're they're playing an act of what they think a judge should be right so in order to be fair they got to be harsh you know what i mean and so all this all this crap but i really think that this decision is actually going to come down right just um and i think i'm you know i did speak to christina soundsh about this as well or she spoke to me about it you have lori love and um and gary mckinnon who are both british citizens julian is not the other thing is it seems like he's not a us citizen but the the british public rallied around those two british citizens that were at risk of extradition in a way that they wouldn't necessarily do for julian i'm sorry i gotta contradict you lori love had almost no boots on the ground fucking support and the online support was maybe as strong as mine that's about it he really had nothing compared to julian and he beat the case okay well i think julian's got exactly the opposite a mile in the other direction a whole history 10 years of odious smear from the the guardian for example um but the thing is that loris the resolution of lori's case came the day before julians and and christine's heart sunk because the good news about that would eclipse the fact that julian's case was i see it as a good news for all of us i see every one of these victories even my own asylum as a victory for all of us that are in trouble right now and i really think that lori loves cases pivotal to understanding what's about to happen i feel really positive about it i really feel that uh like i said it's going to look like hell and the biggest concern i got now is really this fucking virus which is absolutely 100 real people okay if you're asking my opinion did i hack any secrets or anything do i know any conspiracies no okay go home then stay home okay it's real and it'll kill you really fast so um but i'm worried about that i'm worried about that too in in the prison and i think that that's my main concern and i see it is the only thing that can go wrong right now we've got all the pressure we've got the the army online i love what i'm seeing i love these streams that's why i'm here tonight exhausted after 12 hours of streaming and four more to do this afternoon um i'm geeked i'm geeked i'm amped you know to be weak bye bye joe thank you for joe lovely to see you again it was great meeting you in sydney thank you it's been a pleasure to talk to you mandorex and big hug man i'm really honest to god it's because so good to see you so good to see you i'll be we're this is the final push i'm sure we're gonna bump heads again soon uh i'm not gonna give up i know you're not gonna give up and that's no and i and i just want i really even if you disagree with me on an intellectual level let your heart sing with a little bit of joy because i really i really really and i'm i'm a pretty good guesser i don't i don't i'm not wrong too much too often and i i think we're going to beat this we just got to keep doing what we're doing right now and i i think we got to switch and so you're a hero we're you're all heroes man thanks for letting me crash the party tonight that's okay so uh there's one other thing that i'd like to say that i feel is very important and this is about the the actual court proceedings uh both joe loria and i were in london we did a london reportage uh for the week leading up to that all the events in in london but we also attended a belmarsh prison and woollich crown court and there's two separate problems one of them well mainly to do with the press the court had called for these innovative technical solutions so that assange's hearing could continue during lockdown now uh maybe it's you know they didn't employ the right technical crew to do that but we do have a problem where the press were all complaining on the line that they could not understand a word either uh edward fitz gerrard or mr lewis i'm sorry i forgotten his first name was saying neither the defense or the prosecution now this is grave if the press cannot report on what is happening in court then they can't fulfill their responsibility their obligation towards the public what was improvised at the time was a kind of a mic check situation and in fact the problem was that there were two speaker phones on either side of judge baritza now she could hear both of them and one of them was the lawyer's line and the other one was the journalist's line and the journalist was supposed to be able to hear what was coming out of the speakerphone on the other side of her and of course everybody was saying we can't understand a word now in my mind those proceedings should have been stopped if the press could no longer report they could not report at all we all had to rely on the five uh maximum i don't know if there was actually five but there were well there was a limit to five members of the press and five people in the public gallery because all the seats have been taped off so we had to rely on what those people who were physically inside the courtroom were tweeting but there was a dial in and i think there was about 50 journalists you know it seemed that way that were that were coming in now this mic checking situation is that judge baritza first of all she said i i can't understand why you can't understand like but she's not a technician but she decided that she would resume what the defense and prosecution was saying because they couldn't be heard directly so she did not repeat verbatim in other words the defense's arguments could not be heard by the press and we were only getting it through the filter of baritza summarizing what the defense had said then the clerk of the court started more or less repeating but even he was extremely difficult to understand consortium news were listening in on that and the whole conference call was you know mainly garble except for the voice of judge abuthnot who was coming through loud and clear uh sorry not not no abuthnot it's funny that's a funny lapses but judge baritza her voice was the only one we could actually hear so i think that in terms of the accessibility of the press to what is going on in this courtroom as a crucial issue if the press cannot understand what is happening in the courtroom they have caused for complaint the other aspect of it is mr. assange who's been in a glass bulletproof glass cage and who has complained that he cannot understand very well he cannot speak with his lawyers he's been forbidden the prosecution even said that they had no objection to being him able to sit beside his lawyers but it's a refuse to have him out of the dock the problem there is is of a fair trial because of a defendant cannot participate properly in a hearing if he can't hear properly him he said mr. assange said that it was like watching a game of tennis at wimbledon he was such a passive spectator instead of an active participant in his case so that really speaks to whether it is a fair trial in the first place but certainly the press would have caused for complaint that they can't even report on it for the public we all heard from john pelger that we were putting a lot of reliance in terms of the english case anyway on article four which says that political fences can't be yeah craig murray has written about that and he's explained it quite well so the extradition treaty between the uk and the us says that no extradition can take place if it is for political reasons and i think we've been talking about that earlier about how selective this has been why are the other journalists and the media partners who published the same material not being charged but you have the extradition act which i believe is 2003 and that for some reason doesn't mention political extradition however as craig murray has pointed out the extradition treaty must be ratified every single part of it must be examined to see whether it can be employed consistently with every other british law so the fact that the extradition act british extradition act doesn't mention political extradition the prosecution are saying that they would prefer to rely on the act whereas the defense are saying but hang on a second you've got the god damn treaty which enables extradition or not in the first place you know and judge baritza seems to be favorable to paying attention to the act that doesn't mention whether you can do it or not i see um well um thank you kathy because i mean this is an area where i would love to be as informed as you and be able to ask these intelligent questions and and also even talk about the hacking issues i don't you know i don't know enough and so i am at you know your um i'm really really glad that you were able to come and help us with that technically that's great and also bring joe with you that was fantastic well we were there we were there yeah and we we experienced it um yeah it's a shambles it must have been surreal and it's very disappointing as a british person to watch what's happened to britain and the legal system is is is desperate and i can only feel that they're making a complete mockery of themselves but well that's right i mean the conference call for the for the actual proceedings i mean we are doing a hundred times better here and in this world press freedom day zoom we're actually getting our voices out okay bye alex you're off thank you so much kathy for fielding that hour for me i'm i'm really appreciative