Assange

Since the US justice system is not perfect most people feel that the law should err on the side of the victim meaning that it is better to let a criminal go free than to have an innocent person in prison. Many feel the same way about national security and the right to privacy. They feel that it is better to risk the release of government secrets than to have too many secrets. The case of Julian Assange is an example. Assange was given information from an US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning that was secret and he published that info in WikiLeaks which he founded in 2006. While there is little doubt that Manning committed criminal acts the question is did Assange. In the Daniel Ellsberg case in the 70's Ellsberg obtained the information himself and then released it to the public. He was charged under the Espionage Act but was later released because of government misconduct. The Assange case is now coming up where he contends misconduct on the part of government. Assange was hold up in the Ecuadorian Embassy where he assumed his conversations were private but somehow these conversations got into the hand of US government officials and they used that to charge him.