Assange Not Out on Bail; Wikiprosecutions Threat to Free Press

Despite earlier reports, the Swedes are refusing to let Julian Assange be released on bail. Some details from the UK Guardian:

The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, is to remain in jail after the Swedish authorities decided to challenge a decision by a British court to grant him bail on allegations of rape in Stockholm….

Sweden's decision means that the next legal arguments will be heard at the court of appeal. No time has yet been fixed….

Appearing for the Swedish authorities, Gemma Lindfield argued that Assange should be declined bail as the charges were serious and there was a real possibility he would leave the country.

"This is not a case about WikiLeaks, rather a case about alleged serious offences against two women," she said.

She said the allegations were serious and Assange had only weak ties to Britain and "the means and ability to abscond".

Of course, of course, this prosecution is all about sexcrime, not leakcrime. But Glenn Greenwald talks of possible Obama administration legal attacks on WikiLeaks and explains why they are dangerous:

if current reports are correct—that the Obama DOJ has now convened a Grand Jury to indict WikiLeaks and Julian Assange—this will constitute a far greater assault on press freedom than anything George W. Bush managed, or even attempted.  Put simply, there is no intellectually coherent way to distinguish what WikiLeaks has done with these diplomatic cables with what newspapers around the world did in this case and what they do constantly:  namely, receive and then publish classified information without authorization.  And as much justifiable outrage as the Bush DOJ's prosecution of the AIPAC officials provoked, at least the actions there resembled "espionage" far more than anything Assange has done, as those AIPAC officials actually passed U.S. secrets to a foreign government, not published them as WikiLeaks has done.

To criminalize what WikiLeaks is doing is, by definition, to criminalize the defining attribute of investigative journalism.  That, to be sure, is a feature, not a bug, of the Obama administration's efforts.  Just two days ago, The New York Times' James Risen wrote a story disclosing substantial classified information about the CIA, the DEA and Afghanistan, revealing that a high-level Afghan drug trafficker being prosecuted by the U.S. was long on the payroll of the U.S.; should he be tried for espionage?