Author Archive

Last week I argued that some media outlets were publishing stories about the Julian Assange sexual misconduct investigation that seemed to misrepresent both the relevant law and the allegations against him. Despite what you might have read on the web, for instance, consensual sex without a condom isn’t illegal in Sweden.

I didn’t take a position on Assange’s guilt or innocence in that piece, because I don’t have one. I was just trying to make sure that the accusations against him were reported accurately. (For the record, Assange is accused of holding a woman down against her will during a sexual encounter, and of failing to comply with her request that he use a condom during sex. He is accused of having sex with another woman without her consent while she slept — again without using a condom.)

When a public figure is accused of misconduct, his supporters are often tempted to minimize the charges against him — to say that the accusations are not merely false, but also unserious. But in this case the accusations are serious. Assange may be guilty or he may be innocent, but he is accused of serious crimes.

Some who read my previous piece on this issue have accused me of taking Assange’s guilt as a given, but the fact is that the question of his guilt or innocence just wasn’t relevant to my post, because what I was trying to say was this: Whether he’s guilty or innocent, his accusers deserve a fair and honest hearing. They deserve justice. Whatever justice winds up meaning, they deserve justice.

And by the same token, guilty or innocent, Assange deserves the same. He deserves a fair and honest hearing. He deserves justice.

Whether Assange is guilty or innocent, justice will not be served if he is charged without sufficient evidence, if he is denied a fair trial, or if, having been convicted at trial, he is denied a fair sentencing process. Whether he is guilty or innocent, justice will not be served if his prosecution is manipulated to serve the interests of his political enemies.

Every student of history knows that innocence is no protection against persecution. But every student of history knows as well that the guilty have also often been persecuted. The guilty may be railroaded. The guilty may be framed. The guilty may be punished unfairly and excessively.

There is already reason to be concerned about whether justice will be served in this case, and whether we believe Assange to be guilty or innocent, that concern is reason for vigilance.

Update | See also Afua Hirsch, Lindsay Beyerstein, and Amanda Marcotte.

Some two hundred students at University College London have been occupying the Wilkins Building on campus for the last two weeks in protest against planned funding cuts and fee hikes at Britain’s universities. On Thursday the university demanded that they leave.

In the US, the university’s next step would have been obvious — call in the cops. In California, student occupations are becoming a regular occurrence, and police evictions accompanied by mass arrests are almost inevitable.

But this isn’t the US.

In the UK, you can’t evict students who are peacefully occupying a campus building without a court order, and the university has in this case so far failed to get one. Lawyers for both sides have faced off in court twice in the last week — first on Friday, and then again this morning — without a decision being reached. The judge’s ruling is now expected tomorrow.

A parliamentary vote on the government’s plan for higher education is scheduled to take place on Thursday evening.

I’ve addressed this before, in connection to the Wikileaks trending topics controversy (and previously in connection to #demo2010), but it’s always been tucked away as part of a longer post, so it’s been easy to miss. And it keeps coming up, so here goes:

Twitter has no policy against allowing usernames to trend on its Trending Topics list. Twitter usernames trend all the time.

Right now, as I write this, seven of Twitter’s global trending topics — dbsk, BEPE, Varanaski, alliwant, lemmeguess,Suyono, and Cassiopeia — are single words. Each of those seven words are also usernames. Some are long-established (@cassiopeia has tweeted more than 3400 times and has nearly 400 followers) and some are brand new (@lemmeguess has never tweeted and is following only four people), but all of them exist.

And if you think about it, this makes sense. If Twitter had a “no usernames as trending topics” policy, any of us could prevent any word from trending just by registering it as a username. The whole system would fall apart.

It’s true that really popular usernames tend not to trend, but that’s a function of Twitter’s trending topics algorithm rather than policy. As I’ve discussed in previous posts on the trending topics phenomenon, Twitter’s trend lists favor novel words and phrases, so even when chatter about Lady Gaga spikes, ladygaga (7,287,164 Twitter followers at last count) is unlikely to hit the trending topic lists. We’re always talking about @ladygaga.

Assange has been arrested in London in connection with sexual assault charges lodged against him in Sweden several months ago, and I’ve updated a post on the subject that I wrote last week with new information available this morning. I take no position on Assange’s guilt or innocence, by the way — I just think it’s important to set the record straight as to what happened, and what’s being alleged. There’s a lot of misinformation floating around, much of it problematic from the perspective of our understanding of sexual assault.

Among the issues I address in that post are these:

Myth 1: Assange has been charged with “sex by surprise.” (No. “Sex by surprise” isn’t a specific criminal violation in Sweden, but a slang term for rape. Assange has been charged with rape, sexual coercion, and sexual molestation.)

Myth 2: The charges against Assange carry only a 5000 Kroner fine as their maximum penalty. (No. He could be facing up to twelve years in prison.)

Myth 3: Prosecutors agree that the sex that took place was consensual. (No. Assange’s accusers and the prosecution claim that a sex act that began as consensual became non-consensual after Assange was told to stop and failed to.)

Anyway, you can go read the original post, if you’re interested. I’ll be updating there, rather than here, and closing this post to comments to avoid duplication of discussion.

December 8 Update | I’ve written a new post on the questions of guilt, innocence, and justice raised by this case.

A student was arrested — and reportedly assaulted by cops — as she and two friends attempted to block an entrance to the Rio Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico this morning. (Link | Google Translation)

UPR was closed for two months this spring by a massive student strike. At the time, students were able to negotiate a settlement on extremely favorable terms, but administrators have since reneged on one of their major promises — an abandonment of planned fee increases.

With plans in place for a tuition hike of $800 in the coming semester, students have approved a plan for a new strike to begin on December 14. As the activist blog Desdeadentro reports (Link | Google Translation), demonstrations are already underway. A one-day walkout, scheduled for today, has brought police to Rio Piedras in force. (Link | Google Translation)

The clash between protesters and police this morning occurred as students attempted to prevent police from dismantling a campus gate. In the previous strike, students chained several such gates shut to control entry to the campus, but this morning, after subduing the students, police private security removed the gate from its hinges and carted it away.

December 7 Update | As noted in comments, university administrators have brought private security onto campus, and things are tense indeed. Students have called a 48-hour strike, and the situation is being liveblogged here (Google Translation).