The arrest of Julian Paul Assange on 11th April 2019 from the Ecuadorian embassy in London has created a stir among the media, journalists, and activists across the globe. The arrest marked an end to the asylum granted to Assange in 2012 by Ecuador while he was facing extradition charges to Sweden on sexual assault charges. He now faces extradition charges either to Sweden or to the United States (US), where he would be facing trial on charges of conspiracy against the US government which has posed the case as a security issue. The extradition hearing will take place in London on 2nd May 2019.
The US unveiled a Grand Jury indictment against Assange in 2018, for a ‘conspiracy’ with Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst in the United States Army, to acquire and transmit classified defence information of the US through WikiLeaks.
A free speech advocate and an information hero to some and a criminal to others, Julian Assange has once again brought the two groups of his supporters and critics at loggerheads over the questions of who is a journalist and does Assange’s arrest have any impact on the freedom of the press.
Why Julian Assange matters?
Julian Assange, an Australian citizen is the founder of WikiLeaks, the website that is known for releasing crucial secret information about activities of powerful governments across the globe ever since its inception in 2006. Skilled at hacking and cryptography, Julian Assange created WikiLeaks in such a way that it could enable people to submit encrypted computerized files anonymously without the fear of exposure. An easy to use electronic drop box that could instantly, with absolute secrecy, accept gigabytes of documents; WikiLeaks was a platform of its own kind that was never created before.
WikiLeaks gained worldwide attention since 2010 for releasing classified information, what is known as the ‘Manning material’ on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, gathered as Iraq War Logs and the Afghanistan War Logs. It includes a well-known video, Collateral Murder that shows two Apache US military helicopters targeting a group of people in Iraq in 2007, resulting in the killing of more than 23 people, including two Reuters journalists. In Cablegate, it released 2, 50,000 US diplomatic cables, classifies cables that had been sent to the US State Department. It published around 779 secret files relating to prisoners detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
The information published by WikiLeaks exposed a series of detrimental activities and wrongdoings including war crimes, human rights violation, and corruption; of the powerful governments in the world, particularly the United States. It became a significant source of crucial leaks and leads for many media organizations including, Al-Jazeera, Der Spiegel, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Hindu, The Asian Age and many others. With the dissemination of information through mainstream media, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange spearheaded the movement for the free flow of information to keep a check on the government’s activities and to know the cause of various events that occur and impact people’s lives.
It revolutionized the use of digital media and technology in investigative journalism. Since then, many platforms similar to WikiLeaks have emerged, including SecureDrop, developed by Freedom of the Press Foundation that helped WikiLeaks with its funding. SecureDrop has played a crucial role in releasing the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers by leaking several financial accounts dealing with money laundering. Today, many journalists become trained in encryption and electronic file transfers and equip themselves with modern tools of information gathering through anonymous and hidden sources. As Assange wrote in 2013, “By writing our own software and disseminating it far and wide we liberated cryptography, democratized it and spread it through the frontiers of the new internet.”
Journalist/ Whistleblower/ Activist
While one can define a whistleblower as someone who discloses information of unlawful activities of a government or a private entity to particularly media; there is no universally accepted definition for a proper ‘journalist’. Julian Assange’s case evidently indicates that the practice of journalism and methods used by a journalist to gather information on issues that would affect the public interest at large; can collide with individual social activism and can create space for prevalent ambiguities in defining a journalist and an activist who acts as a whistleblower and also as an individual publisher.
WikiLeaks, its publishers and its journalists have won several awards for their work including, The Economist Award (2008), The Amnesty New Media Award (2009), TIME Magazine Person of the Year, People’s choice (2010) and nominations in six consecutive years for the Nobel Peace Prize (2010-2015). The information obtained through WikiLeaks is cited in formal UN documents, the European Court of Human Rights and in more than 28 thousand academic papers (WikiLeaks, 2015). The corroboration of significant information through whistleblowers across the world and publishing it through mainstream media after checking the veracity of the content, the activities of Assange bring to light the concept of independent journalism.
The proponents of Assange have hailed him as a champion of free speech and right to information and have reiterated several times that his prosecution would violate the First Amendment of the US constitution, that guarantees freedom of the press and prohibits the Congress from making any law that would abridge the freedom of speech and dissemination of information. At the same time, Assange’s critics maintain that he is a notorious hacker and an imprudent activist who is charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by the US government. That law, while certainly not perfect, is law, and Assange’s alleged actions, as described in the indictment, are in clear breach of that rule, it is not journalism but criminality (Hackett, 2019).
Critics also argue that WikiLeaks has been selective in their targets and that it has worked with vested interests against the United States. Assange has also been accused of colluding with Russia to influence the US Presidential elections of 2016. A look at the subjects of WikiLeaks revelations shows a similar pattern and the material they have distributed undercuts the United States, particularly its diplomatic and security operations (Ghitis, 2019).
While Julian Assange’s journalistic credentials and the objectives of his undertakings continue to be debated, the consequences of his trial will certainly have a wider impact on the functioning of media, whistleblowers and the freedom of the press.
The threat to Freedom of Press
While the grand jury indictment of the US government does not charge Assange for publishing the information, it accuses Assange of allegedly conspiring with Chelsea Manning to crack a password to access documents from the defence department’s database; and for using tools such as ‘jabber’ online chat service for communication and cloud drop box of WikiLeaks to transmit classified information.
Assange used the similar modern tools of an electronic drop box, secret chat services, anonymous accounts that investigative journalists use to communicate with their confidential sources. It is a part of a journalist’s job to support and encourage the sources to provide them with more information and it is through these means that they can obtain crucial information that helps in digging deep into an issue of concern. Hence, the US government’s allegation of a ‘conspiracy’ between a publisher and a source strikes at the heart of investigative journalism.
This would mean that a number of media organizations can be brought under such charges for pursuing stories that can potentially expose any wrongdoing of the government, for example, The New York Times with Daniel Ellsberg for publishing the Pentagon Papers and in the case of India, The Hindu for the Rafale papers (Purkayastha, 2019). According to Robert Mahoney, deputy director of Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), “With this prosecution of Julian Assange, the US government could set out broad legal arguments about journalists soliciting information or interacting with sources that could have chilling consequences for investigative reporting and the publication of information of public interest.”
In conclusion, the trial of Julian Assange and further prosecution, whether a journalist or not, does have an implication on the freedom of the press. With the ongoing killings of journalists across a number of countries, it is important to look into every issue that can potentially thwart press freedom with increased sensitivity. Without explicitly targeting the press or an individual publisher or a whistleblower as in the case of Julian Assange, governments can lay a spectrum of laws to curb the autonomy and independent functioning of the media and obstruct the flow of crucial information that people possess the right to know.
References
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Centre for Constitutional Rights (2015). Call for Submissions on the Protection of Sources and Whistleblowers. Retrieved from https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/06/CCR%20Whistleblower%20Submission%20Final%20(2).pdf
Cornell Law School. First Amendment. Retrieved from https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/first_amendment
Edwards, D. (2019). Media Lens. Incinerating Assange: The Liberal Media go to work. Retrieved from http://www.medialens.org/index.php/component/acymailing/archive/view/listid-3-alerts-precis/mailid-155-incinerating-assange-the-liberal-media-go-to-work.html
Embersberger, J. (2019). Fair. Assange’s conspiracy to expose war crimes has already been punished. Retrieved from https://fair.org/home/assanges-conspiracy-to-expose-war-crimes-has-already-been-punished/
Ghitis, F. (2019). CNN. Julian Assange is an activist, not a journalist. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/11/opinions/julian-assange-activist-not-journalist-ghitis/index.html
Gostoli, Y. (2019). AlJazeera. What the ‘pursuit of Assange Means for press freedom. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/pursuit-assange-means-press-freedom-190413133901719.html
Hackett, R. (2019). Fortune. Julian Assange’s fate has got nothing to do with press freedom. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2019/04/15/julian-assange-us-extradite-hack-press-freedom/
Harding, L & Collyns, D. (2018). The Guardian. Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian Embassy, Sources say. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort-held-secret-talks-with-assange-in-ecuadorian-embassy
Kumar, A. (2019). The Indian Express. Supreme Court has stood up for the media amid accusations of ‘fake news’ and ‘bias’. Retrieved from https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/rafale-deal-judgement-standing-up-for-openness-5679257/
Purkayastha, P. (2019). Newsclick. #FreeJulianAssange: Why we must raise our voices against US tyranny. Retrieved from https://www.newsclick.in/Julian-Assange-Arrested-US-Tyranny?page=1
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. (2018).United States of America v. Julian Paul Assange. Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/press-release/file/1153481/download
WikiLeaks. (2015). What is WikiLeaks. Retrieved from https://wikileaks.org/What-is-WikiLeaks.html
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