I think the merit of the case is not about what particular thing Assangge did which warrants extradition, but the fact that extraditions are near impossible to thwart in court as such, in many common law countries, because if you <i>are</i> innocent, your only remedy is to go to the country demanding extradition, and trying proving that.<p>This is so broken, and add extraditions to a long list of habeas corpus negating tools governments in the West now amass.
I still don't understand how the Eastern District of Virginia can claim that "Nathaniel Frank" was in fact Julian Assange. The reasoning presented in their affidavit looks clearly fallacious to me (starting at p13):<p><a href="https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2019/04/2017-12-21_Virginia_Assange_Affidavit.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2019/04/2017-12-21_Vir...</a><p>There are two assumptions they use to infer the identity of NF:<p>1- The belief of two persons that the person who they were talking with was probably Assange.<p>2- That only one single person was using that jabber account.<p>The only thing I can personally infer from the information they presented is that NF was (very likely) a member of Wikileaks at that time.<p>What am I missing?
Almost all of this is about a 2013 trial and not this present proceeding at all. And the claim (from that trial) is that Manning provided Assange with bytes from an <i>encrypted</i> SAM or that it's only part of the password hash.<p>It's actually pretty aggravating reading trial documents when nobody present knows what they're talking about, it might as well be a Star Trek script, this is why it's so nice when the trial judge or at least some of the lawyers know what they're talking about (e.g. the Horizon scandal in the UK) but we can't have nice things most of the time.<p>Here's what the transcript says Manning provided:<p>80c11049faebf441d524fb3c4cd5351c<p>That's 16 bytes = 128 bits = one Windows password hash.<p>So straight away it's completely reasonable that this is in fact a Windows password hash, and in the absence of evidence of how Manning obtained that value it's only <i>speculation</i> that this is actually encrypted somehow (e.g. because it is from an encrypted offline SAM). And yet Assange's defence apparently has hours of such speculation on tap, for whatever they suppose that's worth.<p>What Assange talks about doing is using Rainbow tables. This would be applicable regardless of which type of Windows hash it is (or Assange thought it was) <i>but</i> crucially if the password is strong then you only get a result if this 128-bit value is an LM Hash. The risible LM Hash turns the first seven characters into one 64-bit value using DES, the next seven into another 64-bit value (DES again). It doesn't work on long passwords, if you have a long password then you can't have an LM hash. This of course is one reason somehow who tried to obtain both hashes would only get one...<p>The NT Hash is MD4(password). If the password is "qwerty" or "manning" that's not difficult to find, and Rainbow Tables that will be fairly reliable for simple passwords with NT Hash are readily available and would have been years ago too.<p><i>But</i> if the password is sixteen random characters then MD4(password) might as well be Argon2id(password) for all the good that'll do you. It's just too many combinations.<p>So, for all we may ever know that 128-bit value <i>is</i> in fact a legitimate NT Hash of a good password.
Some background that helped me understand why any of the is is important -<p>The government want a way to charge assange with <i>something</i>, that they don’t then have to also charge all the national newspapers with who helped him - because that would then be a much more blatant attack on press freedom.<p>They want to charge him as some form of hacker instead of what it’s really about - that they don’t like what he did as a journalist.
> ASSANGE Agrees to Help Manning Crack a Password [1]<p>Is this what Assange is accused of doing?<p>1. Receiving a password hash from Manning<p>2. Telling Manning he'll try to crack it<p>3. Following up asking for more info about it (related usernames or something)<p>4. Never actually cracking it and no further action<p>Does anyone have any more specifics on what Assange actually did here to break the law? The indictment is pretty vague on this and it seems to be the central issue.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/downl" rel="nofollow">https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/downl</a>... (page 9)
This isn't a trial.. It's an extradition hearing. They don't need to prove their case. They just need to make a showing of sufficient evidence that they <i>could</i> prove their case at trial.
Summary quote:<p>> Manning never provided the two files necessary to “reconstruct the decryption key” for the password hash, Eller testified. “At the time, it would not have been possible to crack an encrypted password hash, such as the one Manning obtained.”
Except ... factual impossibility is not a defense to a charge of conspiracy, or indeed most charges of inchoate offenses.<p>If you have a gun, and we agree that I will shoot someone with it, but it turns out (unbeknownst to either of us) that the gun has in fact been permanently deactivated ... that's still conspiracy to commit murder.
Reading over these comments, I feel there are two common takes on the matter. And it’s shows why discussing certain topics is just painful.<p>one side seems to be just pointing out and clarifying the laws and evidence, the side seems to refuse to accept what seems to be a straightforward explanation.<p>You might disagree with the laws, you might think they are unfair, or think they are applied unequally or selectively, and that is fine. All those things are unarguably true in general.<p>But by the definition of conspiracy, I don’t get why so many commenters are trying to argue that what assange did does not fit that description.<p>If your objections were any of the reasons I mentioned earlier, that would make total sense. But rejecting that what he did technically can be described as conspiracy per the definition under United States law? It just makes you look unreasonable.<p>Is the USA out for assange? Yes, they’ll throw anything they can find at him. And it looks like they found something. Whether that is a good state of affairs is not relevant for the discussion at hand.<p>they’ve got him with this charge. Denying it won’t help him. Denial of a fact helps no one. Realize you lost the battle and move on so you can win the war or whatever analogy along those lines you want to use.
I'm surprised why "lawfare" is not more commonly used to classify what is happening to Assange and others by Western-sphere dissidents. maybe I'm not really surprised.
> “At the time, it would not have been possible to crack an encrypted password hash, such as the one Manning obtained.”<p>Wrong. Rainbow tables have always worked, even 20 years ago.