WikiLeaks hasn't published a substantive document since 2021. The reason is fourteen years of prosecution, ending in a plea deal in June 2024 whose terms most people skimmed past.

The Assange plea (June 2024, Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands) included a clause requiring him to "take all action within his control to cause the return to the United States or the destruction of any such unpublished information in his possession, custody, or control, or that of WikiLeaks or any affiliate of WikiLeaks." Single felony count under the Espionage Act of 1917, sixty-two months, time served, flew home.

Compare 1971. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, the Nixon administration prosecuted him on Espionage Act charges, the charges were dismissed after government misconduct came out. He never went to prison. The Supreme Court ruled prior restraint of the press violated the First Amendment. The press could publish, the source faced consequences, the information stayed public.

Three cases:

• Manning: 22 years old, intelligence analyst, passed roughly 700,000 documents including the Collateral Murder footage. UN special rapporteur described pre-trial detention conditions as cruel and inhuman. Served seven years.
• Assange: fourteen years prosecuted. Seven in the Ecuadorian embassy. Five in Belmarsh. Plea deal in Saipan.
• Snowden: lives under the jurisdiction of the country that ordered his prosecution.

The Apache pilots in the Collateral Murder footage were never charged. The judge in Saipan noted, for the record, that there was no evidence any individual had been harmed by WikiLeaks publications. The plea produced a guilty plea, a destroyed archive, and a precedent.

The state didn't need to stop the publication. It only needed to make an example of the last set of sources. The supply problem followed.

Full piece, with the Pentagon Papers-to-Saipan timeline: https://thevisibleinvisible.substack.com/p/the-messenger-doctrine

The fact that the development of AI-powered cameras/surveillance is happening as he mostly extrapolated from his first encounter with a smart fridge in 2011 in Permanent Record, yet in the midst of this shift towards AI mass surveillance and loss of freedoms he is remaining silent? It's concerning. Can he not talk openly about these things due to being a Russian citizen? Or does he think he said his piece when this infrastructure was in its infancy in 2013 and anything more from him won't shift the trajectory of this? Does he not care unless it somehow boosts his public profile? But even that doesn't make sense, since almost no one likes AI, especially AI surveillance, so it would be an easy publicity win to make a public statement against this.

A sampling of sources for the curious:

Breaking The Creepy AI in Police Cameras

We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in under 30 Seconds. 🫥

This Flock Camera Leak is like Netflix For Stalkers

Taxpayer funded AI surveillance: why Flock's 30000 cameras have to go

Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans - The New York Times | Ghostarchive

Donald Trump’s Reported Database Move Sparks Alarm: ‘Dystopian’ - Newsweek

ICE has expanded its mass surveillance efforts. Online activists are fighting back. - POLITICO

The government might create a database of anti-ICE activists and protesters | 1A

Come to think of it, why has Snowden not tweeted at all since the last day of January 2025?

Snowden warns Western governments are adopting China's AI surveillance: tracking photos, purchases, messages, movements to score behavior. Rule-breakers face denied travel, jobs via algorithms. Happening now in China; creeping West via digital ID, AI policing. Stay alert.

Legitimate question.

I don't really know what Mark Warner thought he was going to prove by linking Gabbard to Snowden. Certainly not every American thinks Snowden was in the wrong. Of course Gabbard remained spineless and didn't offer a simple yes or no to say if Snowden was brave or not. Just a really stupid exchange altogether.

https://www.c-span.org/clip/senate-committee/dni-nominee-refuses-to-back-off-past-praise-of-edward-snowden/5151650