During the first international war, more commonly known as WWI there were many Americans that were anti-war. The progressive era, 70% people were against the war. The Espionage Act was government employees who spoke against the war were thrown in jail. Government employees who spoke against the war were called whistle blowers. It was expected that the employees work with the government that did corrupted things and not speak against it. During Bush’s administration whistleblowers were thrown in jail for 7 years. The Sedition Act punished those who were anti-war but through a private sector. In 1989 congress passed the Whistleblower Protection Act to “strengthen and improve protection for the rights of federal employees, to prevent reprisals, and to help eliminate wrongdoing within the government.” One-way whistleblowers were protected per se was being able to release information while keeping their identity protected. However, the government created other laws that didn’t give federal employees much protection, also found ways to ruined their lives.
Wiki-Leaks is an international and non-profit organization that publishes news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Bradley Manning, worked for the army and leaked corrupt information about the government to Julian Assange the founder of WikiLeaks. Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified videos of torture to WikiLeaks a 3rd party publisher. The video we saw in class was a United States helicopter in Iraq shooting a van that resulting in 12 individuals at the scene dying except two children who were injured in the van. Two of those individuals were journalist, Namir Nour El Deen and Saeed Chmagh, who worked for the Reuters news agency. The video was unedited footage from the point of view from the helicopter cockpit. You can hear the soldiers demanding to fire and urging for permission to fire. It sounded like they enjoyed it based on my opinion. However, this was one of various videos that were uploaded to WikiLeaks and is also now uploaded to YouTube.
A journalist from Australia who was in London at the time. Collateral murder WikiLeaks Iraq Julian Assange was sentence for 120 years due to USA government. Ecuador offered Julian asylum, so his life consisted of being trapped in Ecuador for 7 years. However, with the Extradition treaty which is the United States has treaties with more than 100 countries and the agreement various from country to country. If a person who has been charged with a crime flees to another country, they can be trial in that country if there is an extradition treaty. The treaty is a way is that the United States could reached into another country and ignore another’s countries rules, basically kidnapping. Since Julian was in hiding in Ecuador and nowhere to be found, the government went after his family through harassments. A supreme court case Bartnkiki v. Vopper: A third public publisher is not liable for information obtained illegally if the third public publisher was not involved in the illegal activity. A journalist passing it to the government is susceptible to punishment.
The government tried to accused Julian Assange of being part of it by accusing him of hacking the government to get information. The British violated due process by holding Julian Assange in solitary confinement without an actual charge. The government did that in an attempt for Julian Assange to die in jail. Since the government couldn’t use the Espionage act and Sedition act so they tried to use a false rape allegation. Through the false rape allegations, even though the woman stated that it was not rape the government was producing a chilling effect. The government knew they couldn’t win legally so instead they ruined his life. As of April 20th 2022, A British judge in London formally approved the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States to face spying charges, However the case is now up to Britain's interior minister for a decision.
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