Assange Granted Right to Appeal Extradition
Assange Granted Right to Appeal Extradition
The UK courts ruled that Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, can appeal his extradition to the U.S.
A brief history of Assange’s battle with the US government:
Assange has been detained since publishing leaked documents in 2010 that exposed corruption and war crimes by various world governments, including the United States. The United States immediately launched a criminal investigation into Wikileaks, and Sweden put out an arrest warrant for unrelated charges. When Sweden failed to move their case forward and it was clear it was being used as a holding mechanism to keep Assange surveilled, Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy on the grounds of political persecution, where he lived for 7 years. The Swedish charges were eventually dropped, due to evidence apparently “weakening” over time.
Life in the Ecuadorian embassy started to go downhill after an Ecuadorian regime change and Lenin Moreno came to power. Total surveillance of Assange began, and it was later revealed there were even assassination plots for Assange formulated by the CIA.
In 2019, after being granted a 4 billion dollar loan from the IMF, Ecuador revoked Assange’s asylum. UK police dragged him from the embassy, and charged him with, of all things, skipping bail 7 years earlier — for charges that had since been dropped. He was sentenced to 50 weeks (the maximum possible sentence for this crime), and imprisoned in Belmarsh maximum security prison. A US extradition request was also unveiled at the time.
He has now been in Belmarsh, the UK’s Guantanamo Bay, for over almost 3 years, while he fights the US extradition request. The US indictment cites a breach of the 1917 Espionage Act for his journalistic ventures and publishing of documents. The Espionage Act deems it a crime to convey information that would interfere with the success of the US armed forces. Many question why Assange, an Australian citizen who was not even in the USA during his alleged crimes, would be expected to have allegiance to the US armed forces.
The actual charges in the indictment amount to the criminalization of journalism, and revolve around Assange taking measures to protect the identity of his source. The Obama administration decided they could not pursue a case against Assange, because it would put Freedom of the Press at risk. The Trump administration decided to go ahead with the charges, and now the Biden administration is continuing the case.
Julian appealed the extradition when it was initially placed, and won the case on the grounds that he was not in a stable enough mental condition, and the awful conditions he would be subject to in the US might lead him to self-harm. That decision was overturned in 2021 when the U.S. won an appeal, and was granted the right to extradite him. Assange has now appealed that decision, and this week won the right to move forward on that legal challenge.
The Supreme Court will now have the opportunity to hear this case, but here's the caveat: Julian will be sending his appeal to the same high justice who JUST granted the U.S. extradition, appealing to him to overturn his own decision.
There are not a lot of high hopes for a positive, or even fair, outcome from the UK courts.
Here’s what CAN be done:
If you’re a US resident, appeal to your local representatives and urge them to fight for the administration to drop the Assange extradition.
If you’re an Australian citizen, appeal to the government to fight to bring Assange home.
I interviewed Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s brother, and we dive into the whole history and corruption surrounding this case. We highly recommend you watch, and join in the fight to help protect press freedom.
Syndicate DAO
Syndicate Protocol launched a tool last week that will make it easier for people to make DAOs. The idea is to revamp traditional investment clubs for the blockchain age, with all the right legal documents. Their crypto-native investing tool, Web3 Investment Clubs, went into beta and would potentially take the lawyers out of the equation when entering into investment contracts with others.
Co-founder, Ian Lee, said:
“We’ve worked with a number of external partners like law firm Latham & Watkins, who helped advise in the creation of the different legal templates and tools, specifically for investment clubs that are embedded in the product”.
He also announced their partnership with Doola, a platform that helps DAOs become legal entities and do things like incorporate, open bank accounts, and file taxes. Syndicate’s other co-founder, Will Papper is optimistic about the potential game changing effect this will have for the investment club world:
“Translating [investment clubs] to the DAO space will open up the sea change in terms of what the future of capital allocation looks like. … The end results will be so, so different. It’s like the shift from film and media to YouTube, in terms of its ease of use, cost reduction and distribution”.
It’s important to note that, even though the barrier to entry for diving into investment contracts has been lowered, you still want to exercise caution before engaging in any investment (DAO or otherwise). There are opportunity costs associated with every investment decision you make. That being said, taking some of the bureaucracy out of the whole process and democratizing entry into the decentralized finance space is a very exciting development.
Railgun Enhances DeFi Privacy
Privacy and anonymity system, Railgun, has entered into a $10 million partnership with Digital Currency Group (DCG) in a move that aims to add privacy to the world of DeFi.
DeFi is incredibly exciting from a transparency perspective, because the financials of an investment contract are all laid bare on the blockchain. This does, however, present big problems from the user-privacy perspective — your crypto transactions can be traced on those public blockchains for all to see. Railgun’s mission is to hide that unnecessary information.
Matt Beck, director of investments at DCG, said:
“Through a collection of smart contracts that verify zero-knowledge proofs, the Railgun team has built a privacy system directly on Ethereum and other Layer-1 protocols, from which you can interact with decentralized exchanges, lending platforms, and popular smart contract applications. … Railgun fills a clear gap in the market, and solves the privacy problem that everyone who uses crypto will come across”.
Through the use of zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs) the protocol will be able to remove unwanted, identifying information from transactions that occur on DeFi platforms and smart contracts. It’s currently deployed on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon, and will soon be added to Solana and Polkadot.
In addition to staking $10 million of their native RAIL token, DCG has also shown their support by donating an additional $7 million in stablecoins to Railgun’s treasury DAO.
Definitely something to keep an eye on if you value privacy and interact with DeFi.
The Attacks Just Keep Coming
Crypto was in trouble this week: the America COMPETES Act was introduced to the house, and included language that would have been a disaster for both crypto and due process.
Coin Center did their usual awesome work of watching out for language being snuck into bills that might try to crush crypto. They put out a comprehensive report outlining why this bill needed to be fought at all costs.
First of all, it included a "special measures" provision that would essentially give the Treasury Secretary unchecked and unilateral power to ban exchanges and other financial institutions from engaging in cryptocurrency transactions.
Currently there are power checks involved for Treasury activity. The Bank Secrecy Act §5318A allows the Secretary to identify a "primary money laundering concern" and take "special measures" to:
(1) require financial institutions to report information on the concern, and/or
(2) prohibit FIs from maintaining accounts related to the concern.
But the checks in place require that the Treasury engage in public rulemaking before instituting a prohibition. Also, while the Secretary can impose surveillance special measures, the duration is limited to 120 days and must also be accompanied by a public rulemaking. These limitations at least give the public a chance to push back if there’s something not in their best interest.
Executive Director of Coin Center, Jerry Brito, and Researcher, Peter Van Valkenburgh, explained that the updated language would remove BOTH of those safeguards. The Treasury Secretary would now be able to:
(a) Impose measures against financial institutions through any process
(b) Avoid any public notice and comment process to alert the public to measures and solicit feedback
(c) Make these measures apply in perpetuity, without any duration limit.
It would take away essential checks and balances in our regulatory processes, and could be use to apply sweeping bans to the crypto industry.
Coin Center came to the rescue and saved the day, fighting for the industry and succeeding in ensuring that the notice and comment protections will be retained.
But this bill is just one of many where language has been snuck in, in an effort to undermine the crypto industry. We’re lucky to have organizations tirelessly fighting on our behalf each time this happens. Thank you for your work, Coin Center, and everyone involved in fighting this iteration!
Unfortunately there will continue to be others, and we’ll continue to keep fighting.
Krugman’s Take on Crypto is Sub-Par
Paul Krugman strikes again with a bad crypto-take. In his latest New York Times op-ed he said that crypto is the new subprime:
“… regulators have made the same mistake they made on subprime: They failed to protect the public against financial products nobody understood, and many vulnerable families may end up paying the price”.
Krugman has had some famously bad takes in the past. In 1998 he said that the impact of the internet on the economy would be no greater than that of the fax machine.
He has also been consistently wrong about bitcoin, announcing its death repeatedly, and even penning an article called “Bitcoin is Evil”.
His latest piece compares crypto to subprime mortgages, and says it’s going to end like the ‘08 housing crash. By likening complex derivatives to complex crypto products, he says that people lack the understanding to know what they’re getting into, and that they’re going to get hurt as a result.
Surprisingly, we have some agreement with him, that education is paramount. People should make sure they fully understand things before investing in them.
But it’s important to remember that the housing crash was a government-created crisis. They actively created programs to funnel people’s money into the housing market, including setting ever higher quotas for Fannie and Freddie for the number of subprime loans they had to buy off banks. Credit became so easy for the housing market that banks resorted to NINJA loans: lending to people with no income and no jobs. But don’t worry about giving out a loan like this, because the government was taking all those dodgy mortgages off your books immediately. Essentially, government provided the punch bowl, and bankers got drunk.
It's absolutely reckless to actively encourage people to take out loans they have no chance of being able to repay.
Bitcoin isn’t being fueled by any government programs, or artificially boosted due to government quotas. People are choosing to buy bitcoin organically, because they see it as a better alternative to government-controlled fiat.
Yet Krugman wants to “solve” this issue by protecting people from making their own decisions, and implementing regulation that would stop certain people investing in crypto. Krugman may think bitcoin is evil, but what’s actually evil is infantilizing an entire population and taking away their freedom of choice.
Satoshi Roundtable
I just got back from attending the 8th Satoshi Roundtable event, a conference that I emcee each year, and I can tell you that innovation and dreaming big is alive and well. What is hands down the best crypto event of the year didn’t fail to deliver this year, with many new faces reminding us of how large this industry has become, and how increasingly important it is.
A huge congratulations to the SRT team for once again going above and beyond in delivering an experience that fosters friendship and discussion across all aisles of the crypto world. Delighted to be part of an industry that is so determined to change the world for the better.
-Naomi-
By Will Sandoval, NBTV Associate Producer, and Naomi Brockwell.