For saying things they didn’t like.
After he fled to Berlin (ha the irony) his apartment was broken into - US Gov. involvement is suspected.
During the Cold War people like Jacob were called political dissidents and were fleeing to, not from the US.
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I would not be surprised if they managed to spin it into a treason charge… I agree with the sentiment though, fighting harder for this, and maybe showing a willingness to accepting some prison time would look really good on Google.
The American gov’t does not play nice though, even in that scenario I would not be surprised if they managed to get some other leverage. Say doing “random” searches at airports on your friends, looking up the sexual browsing habits of relatives, breaking in like @FFabian mentions above, stuff like that.
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You know, I’ve never seen a corporation charged with treason or doing any jail time. The government seems to have plenty of leverage on people but not so much on multinational corporations.
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That is a really good point!
I wonder whether that is because they can’t use that kind of leverage on corporations or because they use a different kind of leverage we haven’t heard of yet…
We don’t have political dissidents in America, because we’re special.
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I’m not sure about that but I do know that whether it’s a cop, the NSA, or the president - no one, including corporations, has to comply with any order unless it’s a lawful one. Applebaum is a member of the press. The neat thing about the press is that it is the only industry specifically mentioned in our constitution for the United States. Our first amendment grants the press freedom to disseminate ideas and information without interference, constraint or prosecution by the government.
I suspect that had Google ignored the order to turn over this press members email to the DoJ, the government would have a hard time making the case that such an order was lawful.
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The problem with those gag orders is that they forbid Google from talking about the case at all. How can you contest something you are not allowed to even discuss.
Lavabit is one (albeit small) corporation that disobeyed, even shutting down their entire company did not automatically clear them for further legal issues. Even that was not allowed by the rules the NSA set out for them.
It’s clear when you look at Applebaum they no longer really follow their own rules any more.
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If they don’t follow their own rules, why should we follow theirs?
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I think you might misunderstand how civil disobedience works. What you do is you ignore unlawful orders or orders that are contrary to common decency and/or are immoral and socially unacceptable.
Lavabit chose to shut down their operations because they could not afford the $5000 per day fine. I think Google could have covered that while their lawyers pleaded their case. [quote=“kingannoy, post:27, topic:71152”]
It’s clear when you look at Applebaum they no longer really follow their own rules any more.
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That’s why it’s so important to demand our rights and stick to our beliefs. If we simply resign ourselves to be abused by bureaucracy, that abuse will continue unabated. It is only when we take a stand for what is right that we see positive change take place.
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No, they’d charge all the humans in the corporation that participated in the action. Better to just leave the corporation out of it, really.
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He very clearly is now. The US still questions that though and they definitely did back in 2010, when this started, because his press credentials were “works on Wikileaks.” He’s a published journalist these days.
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Because they’ll kill you if you don’t.
Ten years ago, I was a committed moderate liberal fan of democracy. These days, I am getting closer and closer to a revolutionary communist. Previously, I would advocate for peaceful protest, letter-writing campaigns, electoral advocacy.
But we’ve been doing all of that for decades, and it doesn’t work. The rich get richer, the poor get screwed, and dissent is crushed when it can’t be ignored. The only people achieving political change these days are the folks who focused on encryption and explosives. And most of those people are arseholes.
I’m still holding onto a faint hope, but it’s very thin. Bernie is the last chance.
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Wikileaks should count as the ‘press’ far more than FOX, CNN, and the like.
It’s not like they serve as a useful ‘fifth estate’ or anything. They’re part of the problem if anything.
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There is should and then there is the government and the law. 
I’m actually not much of a fan of wikileaks anymore but Jake pretty clearly is a journalist these days and even the government should admit that.
But how does that work in the context of FOX, CNN, and the other 24 hour news networks that do receive significant protections and access because they operate under the umbrella of ‘news’ yet instead are beyond irresponsible and if anything are a net negative when it comes to informing the public?
I think we should keep the entire framework in view rather than focus on one entity that has been behaving far more responsibly, true?
Rhetorical questions?
You and I don’t make these decisions and there isn’t much point debating it since it is just opinions on the Internet.
We also don’t get to make decisions on whether the DOJ gets to force google to turn over Jacob Applebaum’s E-mail and gag him, but here we are.
Opinions on the internet are kind of what internet discussions are FOR. It’s not just a place to discuss how we agree with the government, right?
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I don’t usually waste time discussing “should be” things where I have no influence. The previous discussion was about sharing information. Coming up with new government policies is just masturbation.
We aren’t going to define how the government recognizes news providers or journalists no matter how much we debate it here.
I wasn’t proposing a new policy, I was pointing out that we have definitions that are lacking in perspective.
The fact that we have some entities that are far closer to ‘informing our citizens with our best interests at heart’ that are attacked by our own government while others that are on the ‘get people riled up with sensationalistic stories and manufactured drama’ side of the same analog scale get access and to operate far more freely is a relevant observation when journalistic freedom comes up in conversation.
I do plan on having some influence (by doing an end-around of the system rather than supporting one that evidence validates provides poor results), so it’s hardly masturbation.
Wikileaks did an end run around the system too. Assange now hides in an embassy in London and Jake lives in exile in Berlin.
The real lesson, to me, is that you don’t put your name on things and expose yourself when speaking truth to power. That is, not if you want to keep living a normal life and not be harassed or put into prison like Manning.
It is mastubation here to discuss US government definitions of journalism with the idea of proposing improvements to it.
