While the Obama administration was willing to hunt down and prosecute journalists’ sources using the Espionage Act, it never charged WikiLeaks simply for publishing classified information. In the wake of the 2010 publications, Obama officials eagerly wanted to indict WikiLeaks and Assange. That indictment pretended that it was prosecuting Assange for allegedly helping Manning hack into government databases to steal secret material. By this reasoning, imprisoning Assange for publishing documents poses no dangers to “real journalists” because press freedoms are inapplicable to Assange (or, presumably, anyone else denied the “journalist” designation). But the Trump administration, from the start, escalated that threat severely and quite publicly.

Source: thestar June 02, 2019 11:03 UTC