Julian Assange’s Wikileaks:
Julian Assange | |
Assange in 2010 | |
Born | 3 July 1971 Townsville, Queensland,Australia |
Nationality | |
Occupation | Editor-in-chief and spokesperson for WikiLeaks |
Children | Daniel Assange |
Awards | Economist Index on Censorship Award (2008) Amnesty International UK Media Award (2009) Sam Adams Award (2010) |
Julian Paul Assange (born 3 July 1971) is an Australianjournalist, publisher and Internet activist. He is best known as the spokesperson andeditor in chief for WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website. Before working with the website, he was a computer programmer. He has lived in several countries, and has made occasional public appearances to speak about freedom of the press, censorship, and investigative journalism.
Assange founded the controversial WikiLeaks website in 2006 and serves on its advisory board. In this capacity, he has been involved in publishing material about extrajudicial killings in Kenya,toxic waste dumping in Africa, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures, and banks such as Kaupthing and Julius Baer. In 2010, he published classified details aboutUnited States involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Then, on 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and its five media partners began publishing secret U.S. diplomatic cables.
On 30 November 2010, at the request of the International Public Prosecution Office inGothenburg, Sweden, Interpol placed Assange on its red notice list of wanted persons; he was wanted for questioning on suspicion of sexual offenses, and voluntarily submitted to theLondon Metropolitan Police on 7 December 2010. Assange denies the accusations made against him.
Contents· 5 Awards |
Early life
Assange was born in Townsville, Queensland, and spent much of his youth living on Magnetic Island. Assange's parents ran a touring theatre company. In 1979, his mother, Christine, remarried; her new husband was a musician who belonged to a controversial New Age group led by Anne Hamilton-Byrne. The couple had a son, but broke up in 1982 and engaged in a custody struggle for Assange's half-brother. His mother then took both children into hiding for the next five years. Assange moved several dozen times during his childhood, attending many schools, sometimes being home schooled, and later attending several universities at various times in Australia.
Hacking
In 1987, after turning 16, Assange began hacking under the name "Mendax" (derived from a phrase of Horace: "splendide mendax," or "nobly untruthful"). He and two other hackers joined to form a group which they named the International Subversives. Assange wrote down the early rules of the subculture: "Don’t damage computer systems you break into (including crashing them); don’t change the information in those systems (except for altering logs to cover your tracks); and share information".
In response to the hacking, the Australian Federal Police raided his Melbourne home in 1991. He was reported to have accessed computers belonging to an Australian university; the Canadian telecommunications company Nortel, and other organisations, viamodem. In 1992, he pleaded guilty to 24 charges of hacking and was released on bond for good conduct after being fined AU$2100. The prosecutor said "there is just no evidence that there was anything other than sort of intelligent inquisitiveness and the pleasure of being able to—what's the expression—surf through these various computers".
Assange later commented, "It's a bit annoying, actually. Because I cowrote a book about [being a hacker], there are documentaries about that, people talk about that a lot. They can cut and paste. But that was 20 years ago. It's very annoying to see modern day articles calling me a computer hacker. I'm not ashamed of it, I'm quite proud of it. But I understand the reason they suggest I'm a computer hacker now. There's a very specific reason."
Child custody issues
In 1989, Assange started living with his girlfriend and they had a son, Daniel. She separated from him after the 1991 police raid and took their son. They engaged in a lengthy custody struggle, and did not agree on a custody arrangement until 1999. The entire process prompted Assange and his mother to form Parent Inquiry into Child Protection, an activist group centered on creating a "central databank" for otherwise inaccessible legal records related to child custody issues in Australia
Computer programming and university studies
In 1993, Assange was involved in starting one of the first public internet service providers in Australia Melbourne
Assange has reportedly attended six universities. From 2003 to 2006, he studied physics and mathematics at the University of Melbourne. On his personal web page, he described having represented his university at the Australian National Physics Competitionaround 2005. He has also studied philosophy and neuroscience.
WikiLeaks
Main article: WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks was founded in 2006. That year, Assange wrote two essays setting out the philosophy behind WikiLeaks: "To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not." In his blog he wrote, "the more secretive or unjust an organisation is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. ... Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance."
Assange sits on Wikileaks's nine-member advisory board, and is a prominent media spokesman on its behalf. While newspapers have described him as a "director" or "founder" of Wikileaks, Assange has said, "I don't call myself a founder"; he does describe himself as the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, and has stated that he has the final decision in the process of vetting documents submitted to the site. Like all others working for the site, Assange is an unpaid volunteer. Assange says that Wikileaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world press combined: "That's not something I say as a way of saying how successful we are – rather, that shows you the parlous state of the rest of the media. How is it that a team of five people has managed to release to the public more suppressed information, at that level, than the rest of the world press combined? It's disgraceful." Assange advocates a "transparent" and "scientific" approach to journalism, saying that "you can't publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results; that should be the standard in journalism." In 2006, CounterPunch called him "Australia Australia
WikiLeaks has been involved in the publication of material documenting extrajudicial killings in Kenya, a report of toxic waste dumping on the African coast, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures, the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike video, and material involving large banks such as Kaupthing and Julius Baer among other documents.
Public appearances
Assange in Copenhagen, 2009
In addition to exercising great authority and editorial control within WikiLeaks, Assange acts as its public face. He has appeared at media conferences such as New Media Days '09 in Copenhagen, the 2010 Logan Symposium in Investigative Reporting at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and at hacker conferences, notably the 25th and 26th Chaos Communication Congress. In the first half of 2010, he appeared on Al Jazeera English,MSNBC, Democracy Now!, RT, and The Colbert Report to discuss the release of the Baghdad USA Las Vegas U.S. U.S.
On 21 June 2010, Assange took part at a hearing in Brussels, Belgium , appearing in public for the first time in nearly a month. He was a member on a panel that discussed Internet censorship and expressed his worries over the recent filtering in countries such as Australia America , saying "[U.S. U.S.
On 17 July, Jacob Appelbaum spoke on behalf of WikiLeaks at the 2010 Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference in New York City
Release of United States
Main article: United States diplomatic cables leak
On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing more than 251,000 American diplomatic cables, mostly unclassified but including many labelled "Confidential" or "Secret". The following day, the Attorney-General of Australia , Robert McClelland, told the press that Australia Australia Australia U.S. Australia Australia Australia
The United States launched a criminal investigation related to the leak of US
In a Time interview conducted after the release of the cables, Richard Stengel asked Assange whether Hillary Clinton should resign; he responded by stating, "She should resign if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the U.S. has signed up".
Reactions to leaking
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that Assange "is serving our [American] democracy and serving our rule of law precisely by challenging the secrecy regulations, which are not laws in most cases, in this country." On the issue of national security considerations for the U.S.
On the other hand, Daniel Yates, a former British military intelligence officer, wrote "Assange has seriously endangered the lives of Afghan civilians ... The logs contain detailed personal information regarding Afghan civilians who have approached NATO soldiers with information. It is inevitable that the Taliban will now seek violent retribution on those who have co-operated with NATO. Their families and tribes will also be in danger." Responding to the criticism, Assange said in August 2010 that 15,000 documents are still being reviewed "line by line", and that the names of "innocent parties who are under reasonable threat" will be removed. This was in response to a letter from a White House spokesman. Assange replied to the request through Eric Schmitt, a New York Times editor. This reply was Assange's offer to the White House to vet any harmful documents; Schmitt responded that "I certainly didn't consider this a serious and realistic offer to the White House to vet any of the documents before they were to be posted, and I think it's ridiculous that Assange is portraying it that way now."
Glenn Greenwald and others have criticized the media's profiles of Assange. Greenwald calls one New York Times article (written by John F. Burns) on Assange a "sleazy hit piece". Burns defended his article, saying it was an "absolutely standard journalistic endeavour"; Greenwald disputed this, saying "What Burns did to Julian Assange is most certainly not a ‘standard journalistic endeavor’ for The New York Times ... please show me any article that paper has published which trashed the mental health, psyche and personality of a high-ranking American political or military official—a Senator or a General or a President or a cabinet secretary or even a prominent lobbyist—based on quotes from disgruntled associates of theirs. That is not done, and it never would be. This kind of character smear ... is reserved for ... people without power or standing in Washington and, especially, those whom American Government authorities scorn. ... the Pentagon hates Assange and wants him destroyed, and therefore the ‘reporters’ who rely on, admire and identify with Pentagon officials immediately adopt that perspective—and that's why he was the target of this type of attack".
An editorial in the Washington Times by Jeffrey T. Kuhner said Assange should be treated "the same way as other high-value terrorist targets" and be assassinated. Former Nixon aide and talk radio host G. Gordon Liddy has reportedly suggested that Assange's name be added to the "kill list" of terrorists who can be assassinated without a trial. U.S. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has called Assange "a high-tech terrorist". Former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich has been quoted as saying, "Information terrorism, which leads to people getting killed, is terrorism, and Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism. He should be treated as an enemy combatant." Fox News' National Security Analyst and host Kathleen Troia "K.T." McFarland has called Assange a terrorist, Wikileaks "a terrorist organization" and has called for Bradley Manning's execution if he is found guilty of making the leaks. Incoming Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Peter King, has requested the Obama administration to declare Wikileaks a "Foreign Terrorist Organization". Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, said, "Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is, they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family." Assange denies this has happened, and responded by saying, "...it’s really quite fantastic that Gates and Mullen...who have ordered assassinations every day, are trying to bring people on board to look at a speculative understanding of whether we might have blood on our hands. These two men arguably are wading in the blood from those wars."
Anonymous, the online community of hackers and activists, announced its support for Wikileaks by "declaring war" against enemies of Assange, calling on supporters to attack sites and companies that do not support WikiLeaks and to spread the leaked diplomatic cablesonline.
Dispute about status as a journalist
Assange received the 2009 Media award from Amnesty International which are intended to "recognise excellence in human rights journalism" and he has been recognized as a journalist by the Centre for investigative journalism. In December 2010 however, US State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley objected to the description of Assange as a journalist, and also stated that the US State Department does not regard WikiLeaks as a legitimate media organization. Alex Massie wrote an article in The Spectator called "Yes, Julian Assange is a journalist", but acknowledged that "newsman" might be a better description of Assange. Assange himself points out he has been publishing factual material since age 25, and that it is not necessary to debate whether or not he is a journalist. He has stated that his role is "primarily that of a publisher and editor-in-chief who organises and directs other journalists".
Alleged sex offences
On 20 August 2010, an investigation was opened against Assange in Sweden in connection with an allegation that he had raped a woman inEnköping on the weekend of 14 August after a seminar, and two days later had sexually harassed a second woman he had been staying with in Stockholm. Shortly after the investigation opened, however, chief prosecutor Eva Finné overruled the prosecutor on call the night the report was filed, withdrawing the warrant to arrest Assange and saying "I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape." He was still being investigated for harassment, which covers reckless conduct or inappropriate physical contact. The second woman was a member of the Swedish Association of Christian Social Democrats, a Christian affiliate of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, which organized a seminar and news conference in Sweden Sweden Sweden
In late October, Sweden Switzerland Australia , and then make a credible argument that Australia
On 18 November, Stockholm District Court approved a request to detain Assange for questioning on suspicion of rape, sexual molestation, and unlawful coercion. Director of Public Prosecutions Marianne Ny, who had reopened the investigation in September, said she had requested the warrant because, "so far, we have not been able to meet with him to accomplish the interrogation." Assange's British legal counsel, Mark Stephens, disputed this, saying "we were willing to meet at the Swedish embassy or Scotland Yard or via video link" and that "all of these offers have been flatly refused by a prosecutor who is abusing her powers by insisting that he return to Sweden at his own expense to be subjected to another media circus that she will orchestrate." On 20 November, Sweden
Stephens dismissed the charges, issuing a statement in which he called the allegations "false and without basis" and said "even the substance of the allegations, as revealed to the press through unauthorized disclosures do not constitute what any advanced legal system considers to be rape."
On 18 November, Assange's Swedish lawyer, Björn Hurtig, stated that the evidence against Assange was "very meager. It's not enough to get him convicted for crime."
On 24 November 2010, Assange lost an appeal against his detention, and thus remains under arrest in absentia and under an arrest warrant. The Svea Court of Appeal rejected his appeal and upheld the decision to remand him by the Stockholm
Wikinews has related news:Interpol orders arrest of Wikileaks founder to face rape charges |
On 30 November 2010, Interpol issued a red notice against Assange on behalf of Sweden Sweden Sweden Britain
Ny filed charges of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion. Assange denies the charges, which his lawyer described as stemming from a "dispute over consensual but unprotected sex", which may constitute rape under the Swedish law. The coincidence of the Interpol notice and European Arrest Warrant on Assange with the United States diplomatic cables leak was subject of commentary by the media. Stephens, said "It is highly irregular and unusual for the Swedish authorities to issue a red notice in the teeth of the undisputed fact that Mr Assange has agreed to meet voluntarily to answer the prosecutor's questions" outside of Sweden.
On 5 December 2010, Stephens told The Andrew Marr Show on the BBC, that Assange would fight attempts to take him to Sweden over the allegations due to the possibility that it could lead to the Swedish handing him over to the US
He was arrested by the London Metropolitan Police on 7 December by appointment, after a voluntary meeting with the police. Later that day, Assange was refused bail and held in custody on remand.
Awards
Assange was the winner of the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award (New Media), awarded for exposing extrajudicial assassinations in Kenya with the investigation The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances. In accepting the award, he said: "It is a reflection of the courage and strength of Kenyan civil society that this injustice was documented. Through the tremendous work of organisations such as the Oscar foundation, the KNHCR, Mars Group Kenya
Assange was awarded the 2010 Sam Adams Award by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence. In September 2010, Assange was voted as number 23 among the "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010" by the British magazine New Statesman. In their November/December issue, Utne Reader magazine named Assange as one of the "25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World".
As of current, he is leading the poll for Time magazine's "Person of the Year, 2010".
Residency
While an Australian citizen, Assange does not plan to return to Australia Australia , Kenya and Tanzania, and began renting a house in Iceland
For much of 2010, he was visiting the United Kingdom , Iceland , Sweden Switzerland Assange , Switzerland and Iceland
In late November 2010, Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas of Ecuador appeared to be offering Assange residency with "no conditions ... so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just over the Internet but in a variety of public forums".Lucas believed that Ecuador Ecuador
In a hearing at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on 7 December 2010, Assange identified a post office box as his address. When told by the judge that this information was not acceptable, Assange submitted "Parkville, Victoria, Australia " on a sheet of paper. His lack of permanent address and nomadic lifestyle were cited by the judge as factors in denying bail.
References
It is US Press Freedom!
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