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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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Assange was arrested by US allies and kept in limbo under various political pressures. The US obviously pushed for extradition, so he could be prosecuted there. Other governments worried about such a fate and pushed back.

I think the real problem here is that The Powers That Be see his actions as criminal (which I don't have the strongest objections to, honestly), but that the actual written laws across The West aren't written today to cover such actions. It's not a good look for US authorities to prosecute someone who as far as I know, other than online interactions, never set foot in the US, even though he worked American sources (who have themselves been prosecuted) and published what they consider to be US secrets. But, as far as I know, the actions weren't directly against the laws of the (Western!) countries he was in.

Spycraft has its own sets of ethics and rules, but non-state-affiliated actors like Wikileaks aren't really subject to them. But at a fundamental level, those actions aren't particularly dissimilar to Bellingcat publishing exposes of Russian cruise missile targeting. It's not generally seen as a crime for Americans to snoop on and publish details of Russian military units. But the State Department already looks askance at Chinese law enforcement reaching overseas, and would probably loudly object if they started arresting, extraditing, or even just intimidating Bellingcat.

Realistically, Western-aligned governments should probably sit down and establish what the acceptable rules are: this entire case would have been easier if Australia had a law on the books that private citizens soliciting and/or publishing secrets of Australian allies (like the US) was subject to similar rules as Australian secrets. But that has some subtleties, because broad laws like this could threaten IMHO reasonable things like Western journalists criticizing the way Western allies fight wars.

It's not a good look for US authorities to prosecute someone who as far as I know, other than online interactions, never set foot in the US, even though he worked American sources (who have themselves been prosecuted) and published what they consider to be US secrets. But, as far as I know, the actions weren't directly against the laws of the (Western!) countries he was in.

I don't know of any on-point cases for the Espionage Act, but extraterritoriality is an absolute mess in general. I recall that since the Obama administration, there has been a push to publish "name and shame" indictments against Russians/Chinese individuals who commit 'crimes'/'actions disliked by TPTB' over the internet, even though they have zero chance of ever bringing those folks into a US court. I think if they ever managed to nab one, it would be quite a blockbuster case on extraterritoriality, and we might get more info that could shed light on whether Assange could have been successful with this type of defense as well.

The general space is mostly ungoverned/ungovernable, and agreed that the State Department would look askance at Chinese law enforcement reaching overseas, but in international relations, it pretty much seems to always come down to, "What are you going to do about it?" Assange found himself in the country of a US ally, so he got caught in the muck. The ugliest of mucks, where you're really at the mercy of great power politics rather than what is absolutely Right and Just.

Unfortunately, not only do I think that there are no established acceptable rules; I think this is an area where it is extremely unlikely that we are going to develop established acceptable rules anytime soon, given the geopolitical situation. For the meantime, I think all we have is muck.

I don't think extraterritoriality is a huge concern in this case. It's an issue in things like banking regulations where the actions are only peripherally related to the United States, but not in cases where domestic activity is at the crux of it. For instance, if someone in the UK who has never set foot in the US hires an American hit man to kill a US citizen in the US, I don't think there are any extraterritoriality concerns about prosecuting him here. Similarly, international espionage has US interests at the core of things. This is fairly rare because most spies who never leave their home countries simply aren't likely to be identified, and when they are they are usually employees of foreign governments that are at least somewhat hostile to the United States, e.g. China. If it's a country we're close to then we're more likely to deal with the situation via diplomacy than to demand extradition and put a further strain on the relationship. When the perpetrator is a private actor whose home country had no involvement in the espionage (or, as in the case of Assange, whose home country isn't even that relevant to the legal proceedings), then it's much easier.