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US Government Admits It Doesn't Know If Assange Cracked Password For Manning (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The U.S. government does not have any evidence that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange succeeded in cracking a password for whistleblower Chelsea Manning, according to a newly unsealed affidavit written by an FBI agent. Last week, Assange was escorted out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and arrested for breaching bail in connection to allegations of sexual misconduct in Sweden. The day of Assange's arrest, the U.S. government unsealed an indictment against Assange with a hacking conspiracy charge. The Department of Justice accused WikiLeaks' founder of agreeing to help Manning crack a password that would have helped the former military analyst get into a classified computer system under a username that did not belong to her, making it harder for investigators to trace the eventual leak.
On Monday, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia unsealed the affidavit, which is dated December 21, 2017. The document contains more details on the interactions between Assange and Manning. And, most significantly, contains the admission that the U.S. government -- as of December of 2017 -- had no idea whether Assange actually cracked the password. Until now, we knew that the U.S. was aware that Assange attempted to crack a password for Manning once, but didn't know if it had more evidence of further attempts or whether it thought Assange was successful. "Investigators have not recovered a response by Manning to Assange's question, and there is no other evidence as to what Assange did, if anything, with respect to the password," FBI agent Megan Brown said in the affidavit. According to lawyers, the simple offer to help can be considered part of a conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
"For purposes of a conspiracy charge, it is not necessary for the action to be successful. All that is needed is an overt action in furtherance of the conspiracy, namely Assange's efforts to crack the password for Manning," Bradley, a lawyer at the Mark Zaid P.C law firm in Washington, DC, told Motherboard via email. "That he failed is irrelevant."
On Monday, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia unsealed the affidavit, which is dated December 21, 2017. The document contains more details on the interactions between Assange and Manning. And, most significantly, contains the admission that the U.S. government -- as of December of 2017 -- had no idea whether Assange actually cracked the password. Until now, we knew that the U.S. was aware that Assange attempted to crack a password for Manning once, but didn't know if it had more evidence of further attempts or whether it thought Assange was successful. "Investigators have not recovered a response by Manning to Assange's question, and there is no other evidence as to what Assange did, if anything, with respect to the password," FBI agent Megan Brown said in the affidavit. According to lawyers, the simple offer to help can be considered part of a conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
"For purposes of a conspiracy charge, it is not necessary for the action to be successful. All that is needed is an overt action in furtherance of the conspiracy, namely Assange's efforts to crack the password for Manning," Bradley, a lawyer at the Mark Zaid P.C law firm in Washington, DC, told Motherboard via email. "That he failed is irrelevant."
The story I always heard was that Assange came into contact with the material way through the means of an anonymous collection process, which forms the basis of how Wikileaks is supposed to work? Or is that all BS too? All the "hacking" was done on Manning's side, which isn't hacking because his job was analyst for the military and working with cables was his job, didn't he just used his own access to steal the information in the first place?
Or have I got it all wrong here?
I say this as a general supporter of Wikileaks:
If the US actually has correspondence between Assange and Manning, where Assange offers to crack a password (successful or not), then it would completely destroy Wikileak's pure journalism claims and Assange is guilty of attempted espionage.
The question at hand is whether they actually have that hard evidence or if they just finally broke Manning, who was tortured for years in a solitary + lack of sleep environment, and got her to say that Assange offered to assist.
So, apparently, Manning should have changed name to "Bradley Manning (not guilty of all charges)". Then the reporters would always write it that way, since that's the rule.
Why is it okay to insist you use her actual, legal name, but not her actual, legal gender and associated pronouns?
Let me say up front that I just go ahead and use people's chosen pronouns so long as they are male, female, or neither, because it costs me nothing. (I don't use the made-up ones, like sie or hir, though, because I'd actually have to think about that, and then it makes me think about the whole ridiculous situation. I use its.) But it's perfectly logical not to see someone who has had gender conversion surgery as actually being that other gender. They aren't, necessarily. They've just had their bits swapped. The only [hypothetical] time in which I'm inclined on a scientific basis to call someone by the pronouns of the gender they've swapped to is when their sex was indeterminate at birth, they were assigned a gender, and they actually turned out to have more of the characteristics of the other gender.
The whole argument is just sad anyway. Not stupid, but sad. It's sad because who gives a flying fuck? If you're not having sex with someone, who gives a shit what their gender is? Why don't we have a genderless way to refer to people? Its is for objects, their is for groups. The language assumes that we will always know the gender of the addressed object, which is plainly false, and also gender-biased.
The only times it matters what someone's gender is: when police are trying to ID someone, when you're trying to fuck someone, or when someone is trying to qualify for gender-specific sports. In the first case, there are only four legitimate genders: male, female, both, and none. In the second case, it doesn't matter what they have as long as you like it, and if you're having sex for procreative purposes, if your parts + their parts = baby. In the latter sense, it's up to the regulators. Gender-specific sports leagues should write a gender definition. And they should have the right to apply their definition so long as they're not getting any public funding. What's the point of having a women's sports league if someone who was born a man can transition and then demand inclusion? The whole point was to feature (and serve) women, not men-who-chose-to-become-women. Forcing women's sporting leagues to permit trans women is like forcing a women's gym to permit men. It defeats the whole purpose.
Anyway, your eyes are not reliable instruments for determining gender.
Yes, that's why we need non-plural, non-gendered forms of address. So we can stop referring to people by their apparent gender. It would solve a number of conversational problems which existed before gender reassignment surgery.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Most of the statics show these people are not 'happier' after and just as likely to harm themselves.
Maybe because people such as yourself refuse to accept or refer to them as their new and preferred gender? The external stimuli hasn't really changed, so why would you assume the emotional response to that stimuli would? If people started treating trans people as their preferred gender, I bet you those "statics" (sic) would show something much different. It doesn't affect you at all, so if someone who may have been born male prefers to be referred to by female pronouns and expresses/presents themselves as a female, just do it. The world is crappy enough for everyone already, no need to make it even worse for someone.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil