But having sided with the U.S. on pretty much all of the counts concerning press freedom, an appeals court may well 'find' that the heath condition is not enough.
I REALLY hope am wrong here.
But it goes to show the West is again only concerned with 'press freedom' when it's our strategic competitors violating it.
It is not really a matter for an extradition judge to rule on whether what Assange did falls under press freedom. The US courts would have to decide that. If however the case had been identical but coming from China, the judge would still not have ruled on press freedom, but would have likely considered that the Chinese constitution and court precedents do not offer sufficient guarantees that there would actually be a fair trial, unlike in the US system.
Whether you agree with this point or not is another matter, but I don't see the ruling as being either for or against press freedom, by my understanding.
Of course, they do have to be charges for something which would be illegal in some way in the UK as well. If the US criminalized ice cream consumption, you would not be able to extradite someone in the UK for having consumed ice cream in the USA, of course. But this is not the same as, say, extraditing someone accused of murder in the USA who is not known to have been physically there - the extradition judge may be ok in not looking at the evidence that the charges are based on (except maybe to ascertain whether they may be a sign of a politically-motivated trial).
Whether the actions Assange took amount or not to espionage and illegal access to computer systems is a matter for a fair trial to decide, not the extradition judge. I happen to believe that they did not in any way, but it should be a jury trial that decides that, not an extradition judge in the UK.
It is true that the UK technically doesn't guarantee 'freedom of the press' per se, it does have laws however that protect the freedom of expression, not as strongly as the 1st Amendment but still.
Further, there's a long precedent of British newspapers doing what WikiLeaks does and even collaborating with WikiLeaks without being prosecuted.
It's clear Assange is someone who the intelligence community views as an individual who crossed them and needs to be used to deter others. Reading the judgment it is hard not to come to the conclusion she agrees with this view.
The judge discusses that in the opinion. The difference she notes is that the newspapers carefully choose what they publish in order to avoid harm--for example, they don't publish the names of government informants even if those names are contained in the materials they obtain, since that would put the lives of those informants at risk. Wikileaks did not do that with the information obtained from Manning; they just released it all. The judge quotes the newspapers themselves condemning Wikileaks for doing that.
It is highly likely that the High Court will be asked to re-examine pretty much the whole judgment; it's highly unlikely that the defence won't question the holdings that they lost.
(It is also pretty likely that this will then be appealed to the Supreme Court, and relatively likely the case will be heard there too.)
If anything, as the judge notes, the current administration was likely somewhat more "friendly" to Assange than the Biden administration will be.
UK also doesn't really have freedom of speech or press in any meaningful way. I'm not surprised it failed on those grounds.
Later in the same thread it says they have 14 days to do so and already announced they will.
If the US seeks to appeal, it'd be under s105 of the Extradition Act.
If the appeal is filed and accepted, Assange can be kept in remand pending appeal under s107.
Not in a way meaningful to libertarian extremists, no - thank goodness.
Citizens and the press can say pretty much what they want, barring libel and what you might describe as “violence done through speech” ie threats, harassment or abuse.
Consider that if I were to walk through London wearing a teeshirt emblazoned with “Atheist” I’d be perfectly safe. I suspect doing the same in many US towns or cities might result in assault - contrast “liberties” with “effective freedoms”.
Also, political free speech is pretty much absolute in the UK - it’s citizens putting the boot in to each other in public that tends to attract Police interest in keeping the peace.
While I have a lot of sympathy for your argument about effective freedoms vs. de jure liberties, someone was stopped and told to cover up her "fuck Boris" t-shirt by police in London not that long ago[1]. (Though, while I consider the stop ridiculous, at the same time at least the officers in question otherwise conducted themselves calmly)
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/boris-johnso...
