fixermark

If that headline accurately describes the situation, in what sense of the words is it "my data" instead of "data about me?"

+1. When I was a Boy Scout, I had confirmation direct from an FBI agent that once somebody is wanted, the Agency has a long memory and a long reach.

The anecdote he shared was a fugitive fled to Saudi Arabia. Over a decade and a half, the fugitive grew a small business empire and was well-connected. In tandem with allies in Saudi Arabia, the FBI arranged a lavish party on a yacht to which their target was invited. The yacht sailed out to international waters and FBI agents apprehended him and put him on a Navy cruiser out at sea.

It's interesting that it may have been avoidable if he'd accepted rendition to Sweden to stand trial for the sexual assault accusation, given that the previous administration was apparently uninterested in extraditing him for this charge.

He likely made the situation worse by hiding out in the embassy---he became a symbol of something untouchable by American power, and this administration cares more about that sort of perception than the previous one.

If Assange gets extradited on a charge that the previous administration wouldn't push but the administration his organization assisted in getting elected is willing to (because they don't care about such a paltry thing as "endangering the protections provided to freedom of the press by the US Constitution"), it will be the highest of ironies.

First Amendment protections are not extended to non-US citizens.

Why? Every organization has whistleblowers. By the same token that Chelsea Manning leaked the state department cables, one can imagine a middle-tier operative with differing political ideology dropping a hint.

Correct. And would have been entirely unnecessary, because they could just wait him out.

If the goal is deterrence, he works just as well as a symbol rotting in the Ecuadorian embassy as either dead or rotting in jail.

Wikileaks has leaked 10 some-odd documents on Australia, so I don't expect them to go to bat for him.

The problem with being a uniform thorn in everybody's side is you run out of friends.

Or the release of the Vatican letters.

Problem is, Trump says a lot of things that he doesn't mean. Or he forgets, it's a little unclear.

But the American intelligence community appears very interested in the guy and is known to have been working on extradition process in 2018.

If the American intelligence community wants to extradite Assange, I don't doubt somebody high-ranking in the CIA will sit down with the president and by the end of the meeting, have him thoroughly convinced that he's wanted Assange's extradition all along. They have agents trained in psychological operations and negotiation, and Trump is demonstrably an easy mark.

I honestly don't know what assange or wikileaks thought was going to happen when they leaked information that was politically embarrassing to an Ecuadorian ally.

On the plus side, I'm now far more convinced of WikiLeaks' non-partisanship (or naivete), since they threw their own founder under the bus.

If it was, WikiLeaks would have leaked the details by now.

Ah, see, I'm American. ;)

The lane assist can be disabled and a cyclist who hard-brakes in front of me is taking their life in their hands because my Ford only stops if I touch the brake (it just stops as hard as it needs to to minimize risk of impact, regardless of how soft I push the pedal).

(Sidebar: I almost feel like that cyclist game is something that should be solved with more sensors. If it's a common issue, you really want a dash cam to capture their image and report them to police, as inentionally hard-braking to trigger a car safety system is clearly endangering their lives and the lives of the car occupants, since the auto-brake is designed with a bias towards injuring occupants over killing anyone).

I'll be honest, I still prefer it to the world where lack of software kills people.

... I avoided running over that child I couldn't see in my rear-view because the infrared sensors picked him up as a mobile object intersecting my path and the backup warning screamed at me. I like not killing people, so I call that a win.