subject: Wikileaks, Espionage, and Sedition: We are All Guilty [print this page] Wikileaks, Espionage, and Sedition: We are All Guilty
Have you ever criticized a politician or a government policy in conversation with a friend or family member? Ever questioned the war or massive military spending? Have you watched any of the news coverage on WikiLeaks? Talked about it around the water cooler at work, or maybe just over dinner? You are guilty of "Espionage and Sedition".
While Washington reverberates with cries of espionage and execution, the truth is that no real laws have been broken in the WikiLeaks 'scandal' unless the Justice Department moves forward under the archaic Espionage and Sedition Acts. But this is proving a very slippery slope for the US, and the rest of the world because if America bends or rewrites existing law to prosecute Assange then we're ALL guilty.
Laws against sedition, defined as "Conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of a State", have appeared only twice thus far in American history and both times they were used to squash any dissent against a war agenda. The first was enacted in 1798 by a Federalist-controlled Congress in an attempt to silence pro-France sympathizers and Republican criticism of the government's policies. The law expired in 1801, and President Thomas Jefferson granted full pardons to the 25 or so newspaper editors convicted of Sedition.
The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, both passed by a pro-war legislature during WWI, made it a felony to "by word or act oppose the cause of the United States," to interfere with the war effort, or to criticize the US or the Armed Forces [1]. Before this law was repealed in 1921, thousands of individuals found themselves victims of targeted raids, arrests and deportations many of which were racially-motivated... All for daring to question the true motives of the war and the State.
So, here we are today. Faced with the embarrassment of having their corrupt, war-mongering ways published for all the world to see, coupled with an increasingly restless and volatile electorate at home, the powers that be in Washington are again trying to resurrect the old (and unconstitutional) Espionage and Sedition laws. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks may prove to be their test case. And if Washington uses these old laws to bring charges against him, you would do well to just go turn yourself in the next day in protest.
According to legal analyst Benjamin Wittes, the application of the Espionage Act to Assange's case, "also criminalizes all casual discussions of such disclosures by persons not authorized to receive them to other persons not authorized to receive them in other words, all tweets sending around those countless news stories, all blogging on them, and all dinner party conversations about their contents. Taken at its word, the Espionage Act makes felons of us all." [2]
