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From: BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com>
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Subject: Re: Schenck lives! UK high court skeptical that Assange's rights would be protected in US trial
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In article <v2g3ld$46ea$1@dont-email.me>,
 "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

> Julian Assange is an enemy of the state, same as Schenck. He's been
> indicted under the Espionage Act. (I've never read that he's indicted
> under other acts.)

> While there can be much argued that the leaks he's responsible for had
> legitimate national security implications, a great deal of it was
> overclassification to avoid embarassment to the military and State
> Department and, in a few instances, cover up actual wrongdoing.
> 
> Typically with classified documents, we don't actually know what our
> enemies already know but we absolutely want to keep Americans from
> finding out even if our enemies are known to have the information.

When I had the responsibility of preparing the morning intel brief for 
the Director every day, I would get to work at 4:30AM and start 
scrolling through the classified CIA and NSA cables that had come in 
from around the world in the last 24 hours to pull anything relevant to 
our protectees' safety for the Director to read.

It used to drive me nuts to find some CIA station had copy/pasted an 
article from the New York Times into a cable and sent it back to Langley 
for his/her boss to read and the cable was marked TOP SECRET/NOFORN 
//5I//SCI-XXXX. It was only the newspaper article-- no commentary or 
analysis added-- an article which had been published to the public 
openly around the world but the CIA classified it at the highest level 
just because.

And when it came to the disclosures by Snowden and Assange, even though 
the contents of what they leaked where splashed all over every newspaper 
and broadcast on every news channel, if you were a government employee, 
you could get in trouble for buying a copy of the New York Times 
containing the classified info and dropping it in the trash can after 
reading it. (Improper handling/disposal of classified information) Or 
for just possessing the newspaper if you weren't cleared for the 
information the Times printed. It's no defense that the whole world can 
see it and it's no longer secret. You can still get a security violation 
for mishandling classified info.

> Assange wants to argue freedom of the press as a defense.
> 
> He was scheduled to be extradicted to the US later today but the UK
> highest court finally gave him the right to a hearing to challenge his
> extradition on the basis that he won't be treated fairly in US court
> because he's an Australian and not a US citizen, and courts won't grant
> him his 1st Amendment rights.

How does a foreign national not within U.S. territory get indicted as a 
spy in the first place? Is it the position of the U.S. government that 
all 7 billion people in the world have a duty to protect the national 
security of the United States? If so, wouldn't everyone who works in, 
for example, Mossad or MI6 or PLAGF or the GRU then be guilty of 
violating the Espionage Act?