Jump to content

Julian Assange

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Tastemyhouse (talk | contribs) at 18:12, 17 May 2010 (→‎Biography: adjusted some language to better fit the facts in the source, and added another source, copy edit). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Julian Assange
File:Julian assange 250px.jpg

Julian Assange (/əˈsɑːnʒ/; born in the 1970s[1]) is an Australian journalist, programmer and Internet activist, best known for his involvement with Wikileaks, a whistleblower website.

WikiLeaks

Assange sits on the nine-member advisory board of Wikileaks, and is a prominent media spokesman on its behalf. He has also been described as the site's director[2] and founder[3] (although he does not use the latter term for himself[4]), and has stated that he has the final decision in the process of vetting documents submitted to the site.[5] Like all others working for the site, Assange is an unpaid volunteer.[4]

Assange was the winner of the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award (New Media),[6] awarded for exposing extrajudicial assassinations in Kenya with the investigation The Cry of Blood - Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances.

In accepting the Amnesty International Media Award 2009, Mr. Assange stated:

Julian Assange at New Media Days '09 in Copenhagen

It is a reflection of the courage and strength of Kenyan civil society that this injustice was documented. Through the tremendous work of organizations such as the Oscar foundation, the KNHCR, Mars Group Kenya and others we had the primary support we needed to expose these murders to the world. I know that they will not rest, and we will not rest, until justice is done.

— “WikiLeaks wins Amnesty International 2009 Media Award for exposing Extra judicial killings in Kenya”.[7]

He has also won the 2008 Economist Index on Censorship Award; and various other media awards.[8]

Since WikiLeaks has opened, Assange has appeared at news-oriented conferences around Europe such as New Media Days '09 in Copenhagen[9] and hacker-oriented conferences, most notably as a special guest speaker at the 26th Chaos Communication Congress.[10] In spring 2010, he has appeared on international news agencies such as Al Jazeera English,[11] CNN,[12] MSNBC,[13] Democracy Now,[14] RT,[15] and The Colbert Report[16] to discuss the release of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike.

Biography

Assange does not publish his exact age,[17] but has stated that he was born in the 1970s.[1] According to an Australian newspaper article published in 1995, he was 23 years old at that time.[18]

Assange has said that because his parents ran a touring theatre company, he was enrolled in 37 schools and 6 universities in Australia over the course of his early life.[1]

Assange helped to write the 1997 book Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier which credits him as researcher.[19] It draws from his teenage experiences as a member of a hacker group named "International Subversives", which involved a 1991 raid of his Melbourne home by the Australian Federal Police.[3][20] Wired, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Sunday Times have pointed out that there exist similarities between Assange and the person called "Mendax" in the book.[21][22][23] Assange allegedly accessed various computers (belonging to an Australian university, a telecommunications company, and other organizations) via modem[18] to test their security flaws, and later pleaded guilty to 24 charges of hacking, but was released on bond for good conduct after being fined AU$2100.[3][20][22]

Afterwards, Assange lived in Melbourne as a programmer and a developer of free software.[22] He was enrolled for some time at Melbourne University, studying mathematics, and has been described as being largely self-taught and widely read on science and mathematics.[22] In his personal page archived at http://iq.org/, Assange describes how he represented his University at the Australian National Physics Competition, where he was awarded a prize.[24]

In 1995, Assange wrote Strobe. Strobe was the first free and open source port scanner[25][26]. Strobe inspired Fyodor to develop the Nmap[27] port scanner.

Starting around 1997, Assange co-invented "Rubberhose deniable encryption", a cryptographic concept made into a software package for Linux designed to provide plausible deniability against rubber-hose cryptanalysis,[28] which he originally intended "as a tool for human rights workers who needed to protect sensitive data in the field".[29]

Other free software that Assange has authored or co-authored includes the Usenet caching software NNTPCache[30] and Surfraw, a command line interface for web-based search engines.

In 2006, the magazine Counter Punch described Assange as "president of a NGO and Australia's most infamous former computer hacker".[31]

In 2010 upon arriving in Australia, his passport was taken from him, and when it was returned he was told that his passport was to be cancelled. [32] [33]

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Julian Assange.
  1. ^ a b c "Meet the Aussie behind WikiLeaks". stuff.co.nz. 2008-07-08. Retrieved 2010-03-26.
  2. ^ McGreal, Chris. WikiLeaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians, The Guardian, April 5, 2010
  3. ^ a b c Richard Guilliat: "Rudd Government blacklist hacker monitors police", The Australian (30 May 2009) [lead-in to a longer article in that day's The Weekend Australian Magazine]
  4. ^ a b Interview with Julian Assange, spokesperson of WikiLeaks: Leak-o-nomy: The Economy of WikiLeaks
  5. ^ "Inside WikiLeaks' Leak Factory". Mother Jones magazine. 2010-03-12. Retrieved 2010-04-09.
  6. ^ Amnesty International Media Award (New Media) 2009
  7. ^ “WikiLeaks wins Amnesty International 2009 Media Award for exposing Extra judicial killings in Kenya”. Retrieved 2010-04-15.
  8. ^ "Julian Assange at the centre for investigative journalism". tcij.org. 2009-06-04. Retrieved 2010-04-01.
  9. ^ "The Subtle Roar of Online Whistle-Blowing". New Media Days. 2009-11-19. Retrieved 2010-04-08.
  10. ^ "WikiLeaks Release 1.0: Insight into vision, motivation and innovation". 26th Chaos Communication Congress. 2009-12-30. Retrieved 2010-04-08.
  11. ^ "Video of US attack in Iraq 'genuine'". AlJazeeraEnglish. 2010-04-05. Retrieved 2010-04-09.
  12. ^ [1]
  13. ^ "MSNBC Panel discusses WikiLeaks.org's "Collateral Murder" Video - Part 1". 2010-4-05. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  14. ^ Goodman, Amy (2010-04-06). "Massacre Caught on Tape: US Military Confirms Authenticity of Their Own Chilling Video Showing Killing of Journalists". Democracy Now. Retrieved 2010-04-07.
  15. ^ "WikiLeaks editor on Apache combat video: No excuse for US killing civilians". RussiaToday. 2010-04-06. Retrieved 2010-04-09.
  16. ^ Julian Assange Unedited Interview The Colbert Report, April 12, 2010
  17. ^ "Inside WikiLeaks' Leak Factory". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2010-04-09.
  18. ^ a b Sharon Weinberger: Who Is Behind WikiLeaks? AOLNews, April 7, 2010
  19. ^ Suelette Dreyfus (2009-06-04). "Underground Book". Retrieved 2010-04-01.
  20. ^ a b "Inside WikiLeaks' Leak Factory". Mother Jones. 2010-03-12. Retrieved 2010-04-09.
  21. ^ Annabel Symington: Exposed: WikiLeaks' secrets Wired UK, 1 September 2009
  22. ^ a b c d Bernard Lagan: International man of mystery The Sydney Morning Herald, April 10, 2010
  23. ^ "Julian Assange, the man behind WikiLeaks", The Sunday Times, April 11, 2010
  24. ^ "A year before, also at ANU, I represented my university at the Australian National Physics Competition. At the prize ceremony, the head of ANU physics, motioned to us and said, 'You are the cream of Australian physics'. (Retrieved 2010-04-15)"
  25. ^ In this limited application strobe is said to be faster and more flexible than ISS2.1 (an expensive, but verbose security checker by Christopher Klaus) or PingWare (also commercial, and even more expensive).[2]
  26. ^ strobe-1.06 - A super optimised TCP port surveyor The Porting and Archiving Centre for HP-UX (accessed April 10, 2010)
  27. ^ "Prior to writing nmap, I spent a lot of time with other scanners exploring the Internet and various private networks. I have used many of the top scanners available today, including strobe by Julian Assange"[3]
  28. ^ http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2008/07/WikiLeaks?currentPage=all
  29. ^ Suelette Dreyfus: The Idiot Savants' Guide to Rubberhose (accessed April 9, 2010)
  30. ^ NNTPCache home page (accessed April 10, 2010)
  31. ^ Julian Assange: The Anti-Nuclear WANK Worm. The Curious Origins of Political Hacktivism CounterPunch, November 25 / 26, 2006
  32. ^ 'Australian Wikileak founder's passport confiscated'[4]
  33. ^ 'Dateline'[5]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Julian_Assange&oldid=362651830"