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Julian Assange

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Julian Assange
File:Julian Assange 2010-front.jpg
Julian Assange in 2010
Born1971 (age 52–53)
Townsville, Queensland, Australia
Occupation(s)Currently

Editor in chief and spokesperson for Wikileaks
Previously

Journalist, programmer, internet activist
Board member ofWikileaks
AwardsAmnesty International UK Media Awards 2009, Sam Adams Award 2010

Julian Paul Assange (/əˈsɑːnʒ/; born 1971) is an Australian internet activist and journalist best known for his involvement with Wikileaks, a whistleblower website. Assange was a physics and mathematics student, a hacker and a computer programmer, before taking on his current role as spokesperson and editor in chief for Wikileaks. Assange has said that "you can’t publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results; that should be the standard in journalism".[1]

Biography

Early life

Assange was born in Townsville, Queensland in 1971.[2] Assange has said that his parents ran a touring theatre company, and that he was enrolled in 37 schools and six universities in Australia over the course of his early life.[3] During his childhood years, he lived on the run with mother and half-brother. They were avoiding his half-brother's father who was believed to belong to a cult led by Anne Hamilton-Byrne.[2]

An article in The New Yorker has written that Assange was married to his girlfriend in an unofficial ceremony at the age of 18 and had a son.[2] The article says she left him while he was being investigated by the Australian Federal Police for hacking, and took their son.[2]

Assange helped to write the 1997 book Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier which credits him as researcher.[4] 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.[5][6] 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.[7][8][9] The New Yorker has identified Assange as Mendax and explains its origin from a phrase of Horace. Assange was reported to have accessed various computers (belonging to an Australian university, a telecommunications company, and other organizations) via modem[10] to test their security flaws; he later pleaded guilty to 24 charges of hacking and was released on bond for good conduct after being fined AU$2100.[5][6][8]

According to the Personal Democracy Forum, Assange founded a civil rights group for children called "Pickup".[11]

Computer programming

After the hacking trial, Assange lived in Melbourne as a programmer and a developer of free software.[8]

In 1995, Assange wrote Strobe, the first free and open source port scanner.[12][13] Strobe inspired Fyodor to develop the Nmap port scanner.[14]

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,[15] which he originally intended "as a tool for human rights workers who needed to protect sensitive data in the field".[16]

Other free software that Assange has authored or co-authored includes the Usenet caching software NNTPCache[17] and Surfraw, a command line interface for web-based search engines.

University studies and travel

Assange studied physics and mathematics at the University of Melbourne until 2006, when he began to focus heavily on Wikileaks.[2] He has been described as being largely self-taught and widely read on science and mathematics.[8] He has also studied philosophy and neuroscience.[11] On his personal web page Assange described how he represented his University at the Australian National Physics Competition around 2005.[18]

Assange has said that it is "pretty much true" that he is constantly on the move, and that he is "living in airports these days".[2][19] Assange has lived for periods in Australia, Kenya and Tanzania, and has visited many other places including Vietnam, Sweden, Iceland, Siberia, Belgium and the United States.[2][19][20][21][22] Assange began renting a house in Iceland on March 30, 2010, from which he and other activists, including Birgitta Jónsdóttir, worked on the collateral murder video.[2] In May 2010 upon landing in Australia, his passport was taken from him, and when it was returned he was told that his passport was to be cancelled. The Australian Customs Service stated that such confiscation was only because his passport was worn, and that Assange was otherwise free to travel.[23][24]

In 1999, Assange registered the website, Leaks.org; "but", he says, "then I didn't do anything with it".[21]

WikiLeaks

Wikileaks was founded in 2006.[2][19] Assange now sits on its nine-member advisory board,[25] and is a prominent media spokesman on its behalf. While newspapers have described him as a "director"[26] or "founder"[5] of Wikileaks, Assange has said "I don’t call myself a founder",[27] but he does describe himself as the editor in chief of Wikileaks,[28] and has stated that he has the final decision in the process of vetting documents submitted to the site.[6] Like all others working for the site, Assange is an unpaid volunteer.[27]

Assange was the winner of the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award (New Media),[29] awarded for exposing extrajudicial assassinations in Kenya with the investigation The Cry of Blood - Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances.[30]

Julian Assange at New Media Days '09 in Copenhagen

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

He has also won the 2008 Economist Index on Censorship Award; and various other media awards.[31]

Assange says that Wikileaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world press combined: Template:Cita

Public appearances

Since WikiLeaks has opened, Assange has appeared at news-oriented conferences such as New Media Days '09 in Copenhagen,[32] the 2010 Logan Symposium in Investigative Reporting at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism,[33] and at hacker-oriented conferences, notably at the 25th and 26th Chaos Communication Congress (representing Wikileaks together with Daniel Schmitt).[34][35] In the first half of 2010, he has appeared on international news agencies such as Al Jazeera English,[36] MSNBC,[37] Democracy Now,[38] RT,[39] and The Colbert Report[40] to discuss the release of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike video by Wikileaks. The same was covered in literary journalistic fashion by The New Yorker.[2]

On June 3 Assange appeared via Skype at the Personal Democracy Forum conference with Daniel Ellsberg.[41][42] Daniel Ellsberg told MSNBC "the explanation he [Assange] used" for not appearing in person in the USA was that "it was not safe for him to come to this country".[43] On June 11 he was to appear on a Showcase Panel at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Las Vegas,[44] but there are reports that he cancelled several days prior.[45] On June 10, 2010, it was reported[46] that Pentagon officials are trying to determine his whereabouts.[47][48][49][50][51][52] Based on this, there have been reports that U.S. officials want to apprehend Assange.[53] Ellsberg said that the arrest of Bradley Manning and subsequent speculation by U.S. officials about what Assange may be about to publish "puts his well-being, his physical life, in some danger now".[43] In The Atlantic, Marc Ambinder called Ellsberg's concerns "ridiculous", and said that "Assange's tendency to believe that he is one step away from being thrown into a black hole hinders, and to some extent discredits, his work".[54] In Salon, Glenn Greenwald questioned "screeching media reports" that there was a "manhunt" on Assange underway, arguing that they were only based on comments by "anonymous government officials" and might even serve a campaign by the U.S. government, by intimidating possible whistleblowers.[49]

On June 21, 2010 Assange took part in a hearing in Brussels, Belgium, appearing in public for the first time in nearly a month.[20] He was a member on a panel that discussed Internet censorship and expressed his worries over the recent filtering in countries such as Australia. He also talked about secret gag orders preventing newspapers from publishing information about specific subjects and even divulging the fact that they are being gagged. Using an example involving The Guardian, he also explained how newspapers are altering their online archives sometimes by removing entire articles.[55][56] He told The Guardian that he does not fear for his safety but is on permanent alert and will avoid travel to America, saying "[US] public statements have all been reasonable. But some statements made in private are a bit more questionable". He said "politically it would be a great error for them to act. I feel perfectly safe but I have been advised by my lawyers not to travel to the US during this period".[20]

On July 17, Jacob Appelbaum spoke on behalf of WikiLeaks at the 2010 Hackers on Planet Earth conference in New York City on July 17, replacing Assange due to the presence of federal agents at the conference.[57][58] He announced that the WikiLeaks submission system was again up and running, after it had been temporarily suspended.[57][59] Assange was a surprise speaker at a TED conference on 19 July 2010 in Oxford, and confirmed that WikiLeaks was now accepting submissions again.[60][61][62]

Characterisation of Assange and his work

In 2006, Assange was described in the magazine CounterPunch as "president of a NGO and Australia's most infamous former computer hacker".[63] The Age has called him "one of the most intriguing people in the world" and "internet's freedom fighter".[21] Assange has called himself "extremely cynical".[21] The Personal Democracy Forum said that as a teenager he was "Australia's most famous ethical computer hacker".[11]

Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg stated in an interview 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., Ellsberg added that:

..any serious risk to that national security is extremely low. There may be 260,000 diplomatic cables. It’s very hard to think of any of that which could be plausibly described as a national security risk. Will it embarrass diplomatic relationships? Sure, very likely—all to the good of our democratic functioning.

[...]

"[Assange is] obviously a very competent guy in many ways. I think his instincts are that most of this material deserves to be out. We are arguing over a very small fragment that doesn’t. He has not yet put out anything that hurt anybody’s national security."[64]

References

  1. ^ http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/2010/07/12/a-real-free-press-for-the-first-time-in-history-wikileaks-editor-speaks-out-in-london/
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Khatchadourian, Raffi (June 7, 2010). "No Secrets: Julian Assange's Mission for Total Transparency". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  3. ^ "Meet the Aussie behind Wikileaks". Fairfax New Zealand. July 8, 2008. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  4. ^ Dreyfus, Suelette (1997). Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier. ISBN 1-86330-595-5.
  5. ^ a b c Guilliatt, Richard (May 30, 2009). "Rudd Government blacklist hacker monitors police". The Australian. Retrieved 2010-06-16. [lead-in to a longer article in that day's The Weekend Australian Magazine]
  6. ^ a b c Kushner, David (April 6, 2010). "Inside WikiLeaks' Leak Factory". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  7. ^ Symington, Annabel (September 1, 2009). "Exposed: Wikileaks' secrets". Wired. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  8. ^ a b c d Lagan, Bernard (April 10, 2010). "International man of mystery". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  9. ^ "Profile: Julian Assange, the man behind Wikileaks". The Sunday Times. April 11, 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  10. ^ Weinberger, Sharon (April 7, 2010). "Who Is Behind WikiLeaks?". AOL News. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  11. ^ a b c "PdF Conference 2010: Speakers". Personal Democracy Forum. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  12. ^ 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).[1]
  13. ^ "strobe-1.06: A super optimised TCP port surveyor". The Porting And Archive Centre for HP-UX. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  14. ^ "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" [2]
  15. ^ Singel, Ryan (July 3, 2008). "Immune to Critics, Secret-Spilling Wikileaks Plans to Save Journalism ... and the World". Wired. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  16. ^ Dreyfus, Suelette. "The Idiot Savants' Guide to Rubberhose". Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  17. ^ "NNTPCache: Authors". Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  18. ^ Assagne, Julian (July 12, 2006). "Wed 12 Jul 2006 : The cream of Australian Physics". IQ.ORG. Archived from the original on October 20, 2007. 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'.
  19. ^ a b c "The secret life of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange". The Sydney Morning Herald. May 22, 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  20. ^ a b c "Wikileaks founder Julian Assange emerges from hiding". Telegraph. 2010-06-22. Retrieved 2010-07-05.
  21. ^ a b c d Barrowclough, Nikki (May 22, 2010). "Keeper of secrets". The Age. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  22. ^ "Profile: Julian Assange, the man behind Wikileaks". The Sunday Times. April 11, 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-29.
  23. ^ Arup, Tom (May 17, 2010). "Australian Wikileak founder's passport confiscated". The Age. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  24. ^ Davis, Mark (May 16, 2010). "SBS Dateline: The Whistleblower". Special Broadcasting Service. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  25. ^ "WikiLeaks:Advisory Board". Wikileaks. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  26. ^ McGreal, Chris (April 5, 2010). "Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  27. ^ a b Interview with Julian Assange, spokesperson of WikiLeaks: Leak-o-nomy: The Economy of WikiLeaks
  28. ^ "Wikileaks Fan Page Pulled Down for Being "Inauthentic," Says Facebook". techPresident. 21 April 2010. Retrieved 22 April 2010.
  29. ^ Nystedt, Dan (October 27, 2009). "Wikileaks leader talks of courage and wrestling pigs". Computerworld. International Data Group. IDG News Service. Retrieved July 7, 2010.
  30. ^ http://www.marsgroupkenya.org/pdfs/2009/03/KNCHR_crimes-against-humanity-extra-judicial-killings-by-kenya-police-exposed.pdf
  31. ^ "Julian Assange at the centre for investigative journalism". tcij.org. June 4, 2009. Retrieved 2010-04-01.
  32. ^ "The Subtle Roar of Online Whistle-Blowing". New Media Days. November 19, 2009. Retrieved 2010-04-08.
  33. ^ Video of Julian Assange on the panel at the 2010 Logan Symposium, April 18, 2010
  34. ^ "25C3: Wikileaks". Events.ccc.de. Retrieved 2010-07-05.
  35. ^ "WikiLeaks Release 1.0: Insight into vision, motivation and innovation". 26th Chaos Communication Congress. December 30, 2009. Retrieved 2010-04-08.
  36. ^ "Video of US attack in Iraq 'genuine'". AlJazeeraEnglish. April 5, 2010. Retrieved 2010-04-09.
  37. ^ "MSNBC Panel discusses WikiLeaks.org's "Collateral Murder" Video - Part 1". 2010-4-05. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  38. ^ Goodman, Amy (April 6, 2010). "Massacre Caught on Tape: US Military Confirms Authenticity of Their Own Chilling Video Showing Killing of Journalists". Democracy Now. Retrieved 2010-04-07.
  39. ^ "WikiLeaks editor on Apache combat video: No excuse for US killing civilians". RussiaToday. April 6, 2010. Retrieved 2010-04-09.
  40. ^ Stephen Colbert (interviewer), Julian Assange (subject) (April 12, 2010). "Julian Assange Unedited Interview". The Colbert Report. Episode 6049. Comedy Central. {{cite episode}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |began=, |episodelink=, |city=, |ended=, |transcripturl=, and |seriesno= (help); Unknown parameter |serieslink= ignored (|series-link= suggested) (help)
  41. ^ "PdF Conference 2010 | June 3–4 | New York City | Personal Democracy Forum". Personaldemocracy.com. Retrieved 2010-07-05.
  42. ^ Hendler, Clint (June 03, 2010). "Ellsberg and Assange". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 2010-07-05. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  43. ^ a b Hamsher, Jane (June 11, 2010). "Transcript: Daniel Ellsberg Says He Fears US Might Assassinate Wikileaks Founder | FDL Action". Firedoglake. Retrieved 2010-07-05.
  44. ^ "Showcase Panels". data.nicar.org. Retrieved 2010-07-05.
  45. ^ Poulsen, Kevin; Zetter, Kim (June 11, 2010). "Wikileaks Commissions Lawyers to Defend Alleged Army Source". Wired. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  46. ^ Shenon, Philip (2010-06-10). "Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Hunted by Pentagon Over Massive Leak". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2010-07-05.
  47. ^ McGreal, Chris (Friday 11 June 2010 19.02 BST). "Pentagon hunts WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in bid to gag website". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 18 June 2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Text "Media" ignored (help); Text "The Guardian" ignored (help)
  48. ^ Shenon, Philip (June 10, 2010). "Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Hunted by Pentagon Over Massive Leak - The Daily Beast". Pentagon Manhunt. The Daily Beast. Retrieved 18 June 2010.
  49. ^ a b Greenwald, Glenn (Friday, Jun 18, 2010 08:20 ET). "The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com". Salon Media Group (Salon.com). Retrieved 18 June 2010. On June 10, former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, writing in The Daily Beast, gave voice to anonymous "American officials" to announce that "Pentagon investigators" were trying "to determine the whereabouts of the Australian-born founder of the secretive website Wikileaks [Julian Assange] for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security." Some news outlets used that report to declare that there was a "Pentagon manhunt" underway for Assange -- as though he's some sort of dangerous fugitive. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  50. ^ Lauder, Simon (Fri Jun 18, 2010 3:23pm AEST). "Wikileaks founder fears for his life - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)". ABC Online. Retrieved 19 June 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  51. ^ Bosker, Bianca (06-11-10 05:22 PM). "Julian Assange, Wikileaks Founder, Hunted By Pentagon". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 19 June 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  52. ^ Stein, Jeff (June 18, 2010; 5:39 PM ET). "SpyTalk - Wikileaks founder in hiding, fearful of arrest". The Washington Post. Retrieved 19 June 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  53. ^ Taylor, Jerome (June 12, 2010). "Pentagon rushes to block release of classified files on Wikileaks". The Independent. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  54. ^ Ambinder, Marc. "Does Julian Assange Have Reason to Fear the U.S. Government?". The Atlantic.
  55. ^ "HEARING: (SELF) CENSORSHIP NEW CHALLENGES FOR FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN EUROPE". Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. Retrieved 2010-6-2. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  56. ^ Traynor, Ian (21 June 2010). "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange breaks cover but will avoid America". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 21 June 2010.
  57. ^ a b http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/wikileaks_repair/
  58. ^ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20010861-83.html
  59. ^ https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1ebTGiyaQQ2HSCOpqsD8GD7x_7IBqkeYZ4jfEJ_rYeFQ
  60. ^ http://blog.ted.com/2010/07/surprise_speake.php
  61. ^ http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_assange_why_the_world_needs_wikileaks.html
  62. ^ http://www.geekosystem.com/wikileaks-julian-assange-ted/
  63. ^ Julian Assange: The Anti-Nuclear WANK Worm. The Curious Origins of Political Hacktivism CounterPunch, November 25/ 26 2006 Cite error: The named reference "wankworm" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  64. ^ "Daniel Ellsberg: Wikileaks' Julian Assange "in Danger"". The Daily Beast. 2010-06-11. Retrieved 2010-07-05. Cite error: The named reference "ellsbergdanger" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
Cite error: A list-defined reference named "marsblog" is not used in the content (see the help page).
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