-
Why I Support Julian Assange (And Why You Should Too)
This weekend I joined a number of people in an online vigil in support of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange.
People ask why I did it; Assange is at best imperfect in who he is and what he does. But supporting him transcends him, because the battle over the prosecution of Assange is where the future of free speech and a free press will be decided. Even if you think Assange doesn’t matter, those things do.
Assange is challenging to even his staunchest supporters. In 2010 he was a hero to opponents of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others called him an enemy of the state for working with whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Now most of Assange’s former supporters see him as a enemy of the state and Putin tool for releasing the Democratic National Committee emails. Even in the face of dismissed charges of sexual assault, Assange is a #MeToo villain. He a traitor who hides from justice inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, or a spy, or some web-made Frankenstein with elements of all of the above. And while I’ve never met Assange, I’ve spoken to multiple people who know him well, and the words generous, warm, or personable rarely are included in their descriptions. But none of that really matters.Support is due because Assange ends up being the guy standing at a crossroads in the history of our freedoms – specifically, at what point does the need for the people to know outweigh laws allowing the government to keep information from view? The question isn’t new, but becomes acute in the digital age, where physical documents no longer need to be copied one-by-one, can be acquired by hackers from the other side of the world, and where publishing is far removed from the traditions, obstacles, safeguards, and often-dangerous self-restraint of traditional journalism.
A complex history precedes Assange. In 1971 Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, a secret U.S. government-written history of the Vietnam War, to the New York Times. No one had ever published such classified documents before, and reporters at the Times feared they would go to jail under the Espionage Act. A federal court ordered the Times to cease publication after an initial flurry of excerpts were printed, the first time in U.S. history a federal judge censored a newspaper. In the end the Supreme Court handed down a victory for the First Amendment in New York Times Company v. United States and the Times won the Pulitzer Prize.But looking at the Times case through the lens of Wikileaks, law professor Steve Vladeck points out “although the First Amendment separately protects the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, the Supreme Court has long refused to give any separate substantive content to the Press Clause above and apart from the Speech Clause… The Supreme Court has never suggested that the First Amendment might protect a right to disclose national security information. Yes, the Pentagon Papers case rejected a government effort to enjoin publication, but several of the Justices in their separate opinions specifically suggested that the government could prosecute the New York Times and the Washington Post after publication, under the Espionage Act.”
The Supreme Court left the door open to prosecute journalists who publish classified documents by focusing narrowly on prohibiting the government from exercising prior restraint. Politics and public opinion, not law, has kept the government exercising discretion in not prosecuting journalists, a delicate dance around this 800 pound gorilla loose in the halls of democracy. The government meanwhile has aggressively used the Espionage Act to prosecute the whistleblowers who leaked to those same journalists.
The closest things came to throwing a journalist in jail was in 2014, when the Obama administration subpoenaed New York Times reporter James Risen. The government accused former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling of passing classified information to Risen, information it said appeared in his book State of War. After a lower court ordered Risen under threat of jail to testify and disclose his source, the Supreme Court turned down Risen’s appeal, siding with the government in a confrontation between a national security prosecution and an infringement of press freedom. The Supreme Court refused to consider whether there existed a gentlemen’s agreement under the First Amendment for “reporter’s privilege,” an undocumented protection beneath the handful of words in the free press clause.In the end the government, fearful of setting the wrong precedent, punted on Risen. Waving the flag over a messy situation, then-Attorney General Eric Holder announced “no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail.” Risen wasn’t called to testify and was not punished for publishing classified material, even as the alleged leaker, Jeffrey Sterling, disappeared into jail. To avoid the chance of a clear precedent that might have granted some form of reporter’s privilege under the Constitution, the government stepped away from the fight. The key issues now wait for Julian Assange.
Should the government prosecute Julian Assange, there are complex legal questions to be answered about who is a journalist and what is publishing in the digital world. There is no debate over whether James Risen is a journalist, and over whether a book is publishing. Glenn Greenwald has written about and placed online classified documents given to him by Edward Snowden, and has never been challenged by the government as a journalist or publisher. Both men enjoy popular support, and work for established media. The elements of fact checking, confirming, curating, redacting, and in writing context around the classified information, were all present in the New York Times’ case with the Pentagon Papers, and are present with American citizens Risen and Greenwald. Definitions and precedent may be forming.Assange is an easier target. The government has the chance to mold the legal precedents with such certainty that they may seize this case where they have backed away from others in the long-running war of attrition against free speech and the press.
Assange isn’t an American. He is unpopular. He has written nothing alongside the millions of documents on Wikileaks, has done no curating or culling, and has redacted little information. Publishing in his case consists of simply uploading what has been supplied to him. It would be easy for the government to frame a case against Assange that set precedent he is not entitled to any First Amendment protections simply by claiming clicking UPLOAD isn’t publishing and Assange isn’t a journalist. The simplest interpretation of the Espionage Act, that Assange willfully transmitted information relating to the national defense without authorization, would apply. Guilty, same as the other canaries in the deep mineshaft of Washington, DC before him, no messy balancing questions to be addressed. And with that, a unique form of online journalism would be squashed.
And that really, really matters. Wikileaks sidesteps the restraints of traditional journalism. Remember in 2004 the New York Times held the story of George W. Bush’s illegal warrantless eavesdropping program until after his reelection. In 2006 the Los Angeles Times suppressed a story on wiretaps of Americans when asked by the NSA. Glenn Greenwald said it plainly: too many journalists work in self-censoring mode, “obsequious journalism.” Meanwhile Assange has made mistakes while broadly showing courage, not restraint, under similar circumstances. The public is better informed because of it.Wikileaks’ version of journalism says here are the cables, the memos, and the emails. Others can write about them (and nearly every mainstream media outlet has used Wikileaks to do that, some even while calling Assange a traitor), or you as a citizen can simply read the stuff yourself and make up your own damn mind. That is the root of an informed public, through a set of tools never before available until Assange and Internet created them.
If Assange becomes the first successful prosecution of a third party, as a journalist or not, under the Espionage Act, the government can turn that precedent into a weapon to attack the media’s role in any national security case. On the other hand, if Assange can leave London for asylum in Ecuador, that will empower new journalists to provide evidence when a government serves its people poorly and has no interest in being held accountable.
Freedom is never static. It either advances under our pressure, or recedes under theirs. I support Julian Assange.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Does Snowden Know Why the NSA Doesn’t Need Warrants? He Might.
A funny thing to come out of Snowden’s recent interview with NBC News was his claim that he raised concerns about the NSA’s surveillance of American citizens through channels at the NSA, well before he began disclosing classified documents to journalists like Glenn Greenwald.The NSA denied for almost a year any record of Snowden speaking up, though located a single such email only following the recent television interview. It gets complicated, and very interesting, from that point…
Snowden’s Email to the NSA
The email the NSA disclosed showed Snowden asked a fairly simple legal question arising from an NSA training session that outlined various legal authorities, from the Constitution on down.
“I’m not entirely certain, but this does not seem correct, as it seems to imply Executive Orders have the same precedence as law,” Snowden wrote, citing a Hierarchy of Governing Authorities referenced during the training. “My understanding is that E.O.s [Executive Orders] may be superseded by federal statute, but E.O.s may not override statute. Am I incorrect in this? Between E.O.s and laws, which have precedence?”
“Hello Ed,” came the reply from an NSA lawyer. “Executive orders… have the ‘force and effect of law.’ That said, you are correct that E.O.s cannot override a statute.”
What the Email Means
Based on the NSA training he was given, Snowden was questioning which carries more weight within the NSA– an actual law passed by Congress, or an order from the president (an E.O., Executive Order.) The answer was a bit curvy, saying that absent a specific law to the contrary, an order from the president has the force of a law.
By way of a trite illustration, if Congress passed a law requiring Snowden to eat tuna every day for lunch in the NSA canteen, he’d have to do that, even if the president ordered him to have the tomato soup instead. However, absent a law specifically telling him what to eat, the president’s order meant he would have to eat soup. Of course if Congress did not even know of the president’s order, it could not pass a law countering it.
Back to 2006
Hold on to the Snowden question for a moment and let’s go back to 2006.
In 2006 we knew very, very little about what the NSA was doing, and knew even less about the scope and scale of their surveillance of Americans. That context is important.
General Michael Hayden, then head of the NSA, gave a talk in January 2006 at the National Press Club. Journalist Jonathan Landay started a back-and-forth with Hayden over the wording and meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Most media outlets played the story as a mockery of Hayden, claiming he did not even know what the Fourth said. MSNBC quipped “Well, maybe they have a different Constitution over there at the NSA.”
Let’s take another look at the exchange, with a few parts highlighted:
LANDAY: I’m no lawyer, but my understanding is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American’s right against unlawful searches and seizures. Do you use —
HAYDEN: No, actually — the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.
LANDAY: But the —
HAYDEN: That’s what it says.
LANDAY: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.
HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.
LANDAY: But does it not say probable —
HAYDEN: No. The amendment says —
LANDAY: The court standard, the legal standard —
HAYDEN: — unreasonable search and seizure.
LANDAY: The legal standard is probable cause, General. You used the terms just a few minutes ago, “We reasonably believe.” And a FISA court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say “we reasonably believe”; you have to go to the FISA court, or the attorney general has to go to the FISA court and say, “we have probable cause.”
And so what many people believe — and I’d like you to respond to this — is that what you’ve actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of “reasonably believe” in place of probable cause because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief, you have to show probable cause. Could you respond to that, please?
HAYDEN: Sure. I didn’t craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order.
Just to be very clear — and believe me, if there’s any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it’s the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you’ve raised to me — and I’m not a lawyer, and don’t want to become one — what you’ve raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is “reasonable.” And we believe — I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we’re doing is reasonable.
Reasonable Searches v. Warranted Searches
The full text of the Fourth Amendment is as follows, broken into two parts for our purposes here:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
AND
no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The reporter questioning Hayden, and most everyone else, wrongly conflates “unreasonable” with “unwarranted,” claiming that the only reasonable search is one done under a warrant. That is not true. Cops search people and cars all the time, legally, without warrants. Same thing at the border with TSA and others. New York City has its infamous stop and frisk law.
There are libraries of case law on this, and yes, courts have generally– but not always— claimed that the same probable cause required to obtain a search warrant is an implied part of a “reasonable” search. But not always.
One Supreme Court case of interest is Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton. The case involved a student’s refusal to submit to drug testing as a condition of playing high school sports. But take a look at the clarity of precedent in the Court’s opinion (emphasis added):
Where a search is undertaken by law enforcement officials to discover evidence of criminal wrongdoing, this Court has said that reasonableness generally requires the obtaining of a judicial warrant. Warrants cannot be issued, of course, without the showing of probable cause required by the Warrant Clause. But a warrant is not required to establish the reasonableness of all government searches; and when a warrant is not required (and the Warrant Clause therefore not applicable), probable cause is not invariably required either. A search unsupported by probable cause can be constitutional, we have said, “when special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, make the warrant and probable cause requirement impracticable.”
What Hayden Knew, Part I
As head of the NSA, Hayden was not an emotional man, one prone to off-the-cuff remarks, or an imprecision of language. Standing in front of the press in 2006, Hayden knew in great detail the vast scope and scale of surveillance of Americans his agency was carrying out at that very moment, even if his audience did not. Hayden had also been around Washington a long time, and knew political will fades, winds change, and was not about to implicate himself in a violation of the Constitution in front of a room full of journalists.
Hayden parsed the Fourth Amendment to maintain that under some legal opinions, a government search could be both “reasonable” and unwarranted and still be constitutional. Hayden also clearly referred to his “the authorization,” said “I am responding to a lawful order,” added that “the attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order.” He ended by saying “I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we’re doing is reasonable.”
What Hayden Knew, Part II
The law, the statuate Snowden asked about in his 2013 email to the NSA lawyer, as passed by Congress was clear: under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), government officials have to prove to the secret intelligence court that there was “probable cause” to believe that a person was tied to terrorism to obtain a search warrant. Warrants, FISA or otherwise, still require probable cause, precisely as the Fourth Amendment states.
But what if, standing there in 2006, guessing some or all of his NSA’s work would someday become public, Hayden knew he was covered for all the searches he was doing without warrants if he just chose his words very carefully. What if Hayden had an Executive Order from the president in his office safe, a secret legal memo, similar to the memos we now know of by John Yoo that explained how torture was not torture, or the one by David Barron explaining how the president ordering the drone killing of an American was not a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process. Perhaps that Executive Order Hayden had laid out the legal argument that the NSA’s electronic surveillance of every America constituted a “reasonable” search under the Fourth Amendment. Reasonable searches do not require warrants. The Fourth prohibits only “unreasonable searches.” All the push and shove over unwarranted searches was just a smokescreen, a distraction for the public. It was all legal without a warrant anyway.
At that point everything Hayden said– that what the NSA was doing was lawful because it was reasonable– makes chilling sense.
What Snowden Knows
Edward Snowden and the journalists working with his materials are smart cats. Over the past year they have had a curious knack for releasing a document, watching the president lie about it (“we don’t read Americans’ emails”) and then releasing another document exposing the lie.
Does Snowden know of, or strongly suspect, there is a secret Executive Order legalizing everything the NSA is doing by claiming the searches are “reasonable,” and thus no warrant is needed to conduct them on a mass scale? Did something in his NSA training hint at that, and, through his email inquiry asking about the relative strength of an Executive Order versus a law (in the case, the FISA law requiring probable cause for warrants to be issued), was Snowden trying to tease that out of the NSA lawyer he wrote to?
Ask Obama This Question
So let’s make it simple: Journalists with access to the president, ask this question directly: Is there an Executive Order or other document stating that the NSA’s surveillance of American citizens is “reasonable,” and thus no warrant is required for the surveillance to continue and remain Constitutional under the Fourth Amendment?
Yes or No, Mr. President. Edward Snowden and the rest of us would like to know.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Buy Peter’s Books on Amazon!
