Julian Assange (Townsville, July 3 , 1971 ). Australian programmer, activist and journalist, founder of the WikiLeaks website , which has published thousands of secret documents, mostly related to the United States government .
The 7 of December of 2010 , Assange stopped being the most wanted man in the world (as several media what they called since the INTERPOL issued , at the request of the Swedish justice – an order international arrest) and gave British justice. [1] After a complex judicial process, he was released on parole, pending the Supreme Court ruling, which finally determined his deportation to Sweden, which could pave the way for his extradition to the United States. [two]
In March 2012, Assange reported his decision to run for senator in his native Australia . [3]
In June 2012, he applied for political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London , arguing that a political persecution was carried out on him. [4] Two months later, the Ecuadorian government responded positively, [5] which caused a diplomatic crisis between Ecuador and the United Kingdom. [6]
The November to April of 2019 , after seven years of asylum, Assange was arrested by British authorities at the embassy of the South American country following the decision of the government of Lenin Moreno to terminate asylum [7] .
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 1 Programmer
- 2 WikiLeaks
- 2.1 Attacks on the site
- 3 Persecution
- 4 Death threats
- 5 Judgment
- 2 Books about his biography and WikiLeaks
- 3 Sources
Biographical synthesis
Julian Paul Assange was born in Australia in 1971 . His parents divorced in his youth and according to his words, he attended more than 30 schools during his childhood and youth. According to his biographers, Assange did not meet his biological father John Shipton [8] until the age of 27. [9]
With a solid background in physics and mathematics , Assange joined a group of hackers known as International Subversives in the late 1980s , and had its first legal repercussions in the early 1990s , when he faced 30 charges of hacking that managed to settle with the payment of a fine. [10] In the hacker world he was known as Mendax. He came to penetrate the Canadian telephone company Nortel and was therefore indicted.
In 1997 he helped write the book Underground and thus began the habit of investigating.
Programmer
Assange started living as a developer and developer of free software and in 1995 wrote Strobe, the first free and free port scanner. He participated in 1997 in the invention of a cryptographic concept made in a program package for GNU / Linux , which aimed to be “a tool for human rights workers who needed to protect sensitive information, such as activist listings and details on abuse committed ».
In parallel, he studied physics and mathematics at the University of Melbourne until, in December 2006 , he joined a group of human rights activists and experts in media and technology to create WikiLeaks .
WikiLeaks
The WikiLeaks website was born with the intention and will to access secret documents and disseminate them en masse and on a global scale.
WikiLeaks develops an uncensored version of Wikipedia for mass publication and analysis of secret documents, keeping its authors anonymous. The English word “leak” means ‘to make some information public without official authorization or approval, despite efforts to keep it secret’).
In April 2010 , the site released the Collateral Assassination video showing how a US helicopter shot civilians in Iraq in July 2007 in an apparent cold-blooded attack that killed, among others, a Reuters photographer and your driver.
The site has released thousands of documents revealing confidential telegrams sent by US ambassadors that contain both comments that value world leaders and sensitive information on terrorism and nuclear proliferation. [eleven]
The 25 of January of 2011 Julian Assange , the public face of WikiLeaks, announced to The Associated Press that realized an effort to find other partners to disseminate information, as well as major newspapers who worked with him in previous publications. Those media included The New York Times and The Guardian . [12]
Assange had shown frustration at the slow pace in the dissemination of secret diplomatic cablegrams, and said that the dissemination of country-specific archives to select local media would help those documents be published more quickly.
He wants to be a senator in his native Australia in 2013 , while he announced in mid-December 2012 that the formation of the Australian WikiLeaks party was well advanced. He indicated that one of the objectives of this party would be to promote transparency in government and politics and would be to fight against the intrusions that grow on individual privacy. [13]
Attacks on the site
Since January 2010, they have had an anonymous donation system so they are not influenced by the interests of those who donate, Assange explains.
One of the measures taken against WikiLeaks has been the deactivation of the online payment service PayPal , through which it receives at least part of its financing, the WikiLeaks site. PayPal, which belongs to the eBay auction portal , reported on its blog that
PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to violation of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy which states that our payment service cannot be used for activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. . We have notified the account holder of this action. [14]
In response to these actions, hackers from around the world have launched to defend Wikileaks. In what hackers call the “First World Computer War” they have already collapsed the website of the American credit card company Mastercard , the Swiss bank Postfinance, and threaten to disrupt the website of Internet payment services Paypal and the network. social Twitter .
Persecution
On 20 November 2010, the International Police ( INTERPOL ) received from Sweden a “request for the capture of extradition against Julian Assange”, who was presumed to be hiding somewhere in London . [15] Interpol then issued the “red alert” to its 188 member countries to request the arrest and extradition of suspects. Assange was wanted in Sweden for alleged “rape and sexual assault”.
Although it seems a joke, Interpol persecutes Julian Assange, for the “sexual crime” of not having used a condom, and not for sex without consent, that is, rape. [16] Anna Ardin, one of the accusers of the founder of Wikileaks, is an alleged CIA collaborator and was in Cuba , [17] where it was confirmed, had a meeting with the Ladies in White and met with other counter-revolutionary groups within from Cuba before returning to Sweden.
The lawsuit, somewhat strange but apparently in accordance with Swedish law, consists of the crime of having practiced sex without a condom, and having had two love encounters in the same week with each of the alleged victims.
Ana Ardin invited the founder of Wikileaks, as press officer of the Brotherhood Movement, a political organization attached to the Swedish Social Democracy party, to the seminar “The first victim of war is the truth.” Between his relationship with Assange and the accusation of “rape” mediate a party in tribute to him and the sending of messages on Twitter in praise of him. [18]
Assange finally appeared of his own free will with the London police and was arrested on Tuesday , December 7, 2010. Jennifer Robinson, an attorney for the WikiLeaks founder, awaits the upcoming filing of charges for espionage in the United States against her client. Robinson appeals to the First Amendment of the American Constitution which defends freedom of the press, of expression and of religion, as well as the right of assembly and, therefore, to apply to his client the Espionage Law would be unconstitutional.
It has been revealed that the police officer responsible in Sweden for the police interrogations in the sex crimes case against Assange is a friend of one of the complainants. [19] The agent was the one who questioned the two complainants and this questioning was key for the prosecutor on duty to issue an arrest warrant in Assange’s absence.
On December 14, 2010 a British judge approved his release on bail although Assange must undergo strict conditions while facing the extradition process to Sweden. [20] Lawyer Geoffrey Robertson , a former appeals judge at the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone , specializing in freedom of expression cases, represented him in court. The creator of Wikileaks will remain in prison despite obtaining bail until the appeal filed by Sweden is resolved. [twenty-one]
Various personalities, including filmmakers Ken Loach and Michael Moore, raised the money to pay the bail. Moore further stated that he has offered Wikileaks its website, its servers, its domain names and everything it can provide to:
… keep Wikileaks alive and thriving as you continue to work to expose crimes that were secretly hatched and committed on our behalf and with our tax dollars. [22]
The 16 of September of 2016 the Svea Court of Appeal ( Sweden ), reaffirmed the arrest warrant issued in 2010 against Assange, for alleged offense of rape lesser degree. [2. 3]
Threats of death
On December 6, Julian Assange reported via chat with the Spanish newspaper El País death threats against him, his children and his lawyers:
Some extreme right-wing sites (…) have appealed to attack me by way of my children. I already anticipated that this would happen in April (when other documents were revealed), so since then I have had to keep myself separated from my family.
Mark Stephens, Assange ‘s lawyer, said in a program of the British broadcaster BBC , the Republican former candidate for US vice – president and former governor of Alaska , Sarah Palin called Assange an “agent anti – American” who has “hands stained with blood ». His party partner Mike Huckabee noted that “anything other than the death penalty” would be “too mild a punishment” for the 39-year-old Australian activist.
The Democracy Now! Website He denounced that Bob Beckel (a commentator on the Fox television network) called for Assange’s murder. [24] The commentator said that: “A dead person could not filter things. That man is a traitor, he is disloyal and he violated all the laws of the United States. I am not in favor of the death penalty, so there would be only one way to do it, outside the law, shoot the son of a bitch.
On December 1 , Thomas Flanagan, aide to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, poured his anger out on Assange by commenting on CBS television cameras that he would welcome the murder of the website’s founder. For his part, Fox presenter William O´Reilly directly advocated the execution of the Wikileaks members.
Assange has responded by saying that in the event of his death or the death of one of the members of the organization, the key documents of the archive will be immediately deciphered and will be made available to more than 100,000 people around the world, including journalists. [25]
Julian Assange has placed a mysterious file on the internet called “insurance.aes256” that can contain all his secrets in case something happens to him, according to several specialized Internet pages. [26] The file, which was initially placed on the Wikileaks page on the documents of the Afghanistan war and is downloadable as a “torrent” file, weighs 1.4 gigabytes and is encrypted with AES256, the most widely used encryption system. advanced and adopted by the United States Government .
Neither Wikileaks nor Assange have given virtually any explanation as to the content of the file or the reason why it is being released.
Judgment
Julian Assange appeared before a British court in a preview of the February 7 hearing on his eventual extradition to Sweden . [27] During the appearance, the chief editor of WikiLeaks confirmed to the judge his name, age and permanent address in Australia . Assange argued in court that he should not be extradited to Sweden on alleged sex crime charges because he could end up in the United States . [28]
The 24 of February of 2011 the British court approved the extradition of Julian Assange to Sweden , where he is wanted for two allegations of sexual abuse. [29] The exhacker filed an appeal against the sentence on March 3 [30] . In December 2011, the High Court in London ruled that the case could be heard by the Supreme Court because it was a case of general interest; although the highest instance of British justice would not be obliged to accept the case [31]
The 30 of maypole of 2012 the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom authorized the extradition of Assange to Sweden , rejected by five votes in favor and two against the appeal of the defense, he understands that the European arrest warrant issued by Sweden met the legal requirements. [2] The following month, Assange applied for political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Immediately, Scotland Yard issued warrant if left the diplomatic seat [32] .
The government of Ecuador decided on August 16 to grant the political asylum that Assange was requesting, which provoked an immediate British response that expressed its disagreement with the decision of the Ecuadorian government and the refusal of the United Kingdom to grant the visa that would allow it to leave the country [ 33]
In September Assange’s defense led by former Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón received a 100-page report in which two forensic laboratories conclude that there is no evidence that he has used the broken condom delivered to the Swedish Police by one of the women who accuse of sexual crimes. [34] Assange’s DNA was found in another condom presented by the second woman who claims to have been a victim of sexual abuse while asleep.
The November to April of 2019 , after seven years of asylum, Assange was arrested by British authorities at the embassy of the South American country following the decision of the government of Lenin Moreno to terminate asylum [35] .
Books about his biography and WikiLeaks
This biography written by two journalists from the London newspaper The Guardian , David Leigh and Luke Harding, titled WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy ( ‘Inside the war on the secret of Julian Assange’), details are published his life and the various tricks he used to escape the agents of the American secret service. [9]
A former Wikileaks member, the German Daniel Domscheit-Berg , an exporter of the website, left WikiLeaks in his words because:
At some point we were a neutral tool that did not try to make politics with the content. Today, Wikileaks reacts to political events. This leaves that neutral tool very far from what it was. [36]
On February 10, 2011, Domscheit presented a controversial book in Berlin denouncing the platform’s politicization and the lack of transparency of its founder, Julian Assange , amid harsh accusations and threats of legal action by the web. . The project “no longer followed the objectives we had originally had,” explained its author during the Inside Wikileaks (inside Wikileaks) presentation . Another criticism points to the supposed lack of transparency in the organization of the company: decision-making fell solely on the person of Assange and not on a clear and organic process, Domscheit-Berg accused.
The publication of the book was accompanied by a hard crossing of accusations between Domscheit-Berg and Wikileaks, due to thousands of documents that the author kept in his possession after leaving the website in September 2010. The exporter justified having kept about 3,500 secret documents as he was unable to agree with Assange on a way to hand them over to him.
Domscheit-Berg created, together with other former WikiLeaks members, his own portal to filter documents: OpenLeaks . [37
