House Judiciary Committee hearing on WikiLeaks: Video

Video Link. C-Span's archive of the House Judiciary Committee hearing today on WikiLeaks, the Espionage Act, and the US Constitution. (via @EFF)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: politics • security • transparency

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Anonymous

Melancholiac, you used the precise formulation that arose in my mind as I watched this. How heartening to hear the sober, measured voice of reason regarding this matter. And from a politician, no less! Whether it will cut through the shrill cacophony of hysteria is doubtful. Whether it will still the hand of the prosecutors is more doubtful. They do not intend to use the processes of the law to arrive at a just outcome but to inflict that process as a punishment in itself.

If America does not wish to provide a noxious precedent for all repressive regimes to cite it should just step back and take a deep breath. Nothing really bad has happened. The wind is blowing in from the south bringing the sweet smell of wildflowers and forests. Somewhere a bird calls and two dogs answer each others barks across the valley. Supper is on the table and there are people here who love you. It’s OK.
travtastic

It’s theater. The government will do what government does.
melancholiac

How heartening to hear a voice of sanity in the USA. There are good men. And the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. To the children of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, FDR and Martin Luther King, and to the memories of all those good and brave men who died at Normandy and Iwo Jima, I salute you.
Bahumat

I’m greatly enjoying watching this. Rational voices are speaking on both sides of the debates, for the most part, and it sounds like the balance is on cautious leniency.

I can only hope that this panel directly influences the american actions (if any) concerning Wikileaks and those organizations which are sure to follow.
petsounds

Huh, Rep. Ted Poe used to be a judge when I was growing up in Houston. In fact, my class went to sit in his court and talk to him. His nickname was “The Hanging Judge”, and you can see some of that attitude here.

On a sidenote, considering the length of the video, you’d think the CSPAN video player would at least have a scrubber bar.
- pmocek
  
  Petsounds wrote, “On a sidenote, considering the length of the video, you’d think the CSPAN video player would at least have a scrubber bar.”
  
  If you follow the “more info” link to http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Legaland you’ll find a more functional player which includes a scrubber bar and pause button, along with a transcript of the hearing.
Lt DirtyFreq

I agree.. It was looooong. I think I watched an hour 30 min before I turned it off. Can I just get a video with highlights from this debate? Or can BB just make a video saying which said yes & which said no & what their other concerns were?
g0d5m15t4k3

Thankfully I am at work listening to this in the background. This video is LONG.

I’m hearing a lot of talk about “over classification of documents”, basically we stamp everything with CLASSIFIED and so in the mix of really important stuff is stuff that the general public would be safe with knowing.

Also, I agree with above comments that there are sane and logical arguments coming from both sides. Should be interesting to see how this plays out. It seems like something that could be argued back and forth for a very long time.
g0d5m15t4k3

Okay, I watched about half of the video. Its 3:14:18 long. I’m amazed I held out that long. Here’s a better link as mentioned above:

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Legaland