Julian Assange
Encyclopedia
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist
. He is the editor in chief
of WikiLeaks
, a whistleblower
website and conduit for worldwide news leak
s with the stated purpose of creating open government
s.
WikiLeaks has published material about extrajudicial killings in Kenya, toxic waste dumping in Côte d'Ivoire, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures
, and banks such as Kaupthing and Julius Baer
. In 2010, WikiLeaks published Iraq War documents
and Afghan War documents about American involvement in the wars, some of which was classified material. On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and its five international print media partners (Der Spiegel
, The New York Times
, Le Monde
, The Guardian
and El País) began publishing U.S. diplomatic cables
.
Assange was a computer hacker in his youth, before becoming a skilled programmer and internationally renowned activist. He has lived in several countries and has made public appearances in many parts of the world to speak about freedom of the press
, censorship
, and investigative journalism
. He has received numerous awards and nominations, including the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award
, Readers' Choice for TIME magazine's 2010 Person of the Year, the 2011 Sydney Peace Foundation gold medal and the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism
. He was also nominated for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize
.
In 2010 a European Arrest Warrant
was issued for Assange in response to a Swedish police request for questioning in relation to a sexual assault investigation. Assange voluntarily attended a police station in England on 7 December 2010, and was arrested and taken into custody. After ten days in Wandsworth
prison, Assange was freed on bail with a residence requirement at Ellingham Hall in Norfolk, England, fitted with an electronic tag and ordered to report to police daily. Assange appealed a February 2011 decision by English courts to extradite him to Sweden
, claiming the allegations of wrongdoing were "without basis". On 2 November 2011 the High court
upheld the extradition
decision and rejected all four grounds for the appeal as presented by Assange's legal representatives. £19,000 court costs
was also awarded against Assange. A decision as to whether Assange will be allowed to further appeal to the Supreme Court
will be taken on 5 December when the high court judges will consider Assange's claim that his case raises a question of public importance and consider his request that they allow him to appeal to the Supreme Court. If such an appeal is not allowed Assange will be then taken into custody and extradited to Sweden within ten days of that decision. Assange remains on conditional bail.
.
Assange's mother Christine Ann Hawkins was the daughter of academic and principal of Northern Rivers College
, Dr. Warren Alfred Hawkins. Assange's maternal ancestors came to Australia in the mid-nineteenth century from Scotland and Ireland.
Assange says he did not meet his biological father, John Shipton, until the age of 25. When he was one year old, his mother Christine married theatre director Brett Assange, "who raised him from the age of one and gave him his surname". It is unclear if Julian Assange was born with the name Assange or Shipton, or if the name was changed. Brett and Christine Assange ran a touring theatre company
. Assange has reportedly claimed that his grandfather was a Taiwanese pirate who settled on Thursday Island "where he met and married a Thursday Islander
woman". In his autobiography, as well as in an article from The Independent, he says that Brett Assange "was the descendant of a Chinese immigrant who had settled on Thursday Island, Ah Sang or Mr Sang", "or ah-sang in Cantonese"., "his great-great-great-grandfather was a Taiwanese pirate". Brett, Julian's first "real dad", described Julian as "a very sharp kid" with "a keen sense of right and wrong ... He always stood up for the underdog ... he was always very angry about people ganging up on other people." Assange revealed that he created "an amalgam of Brett Assange and John Shipton" when speaking about his father to worldwide audiences, and that this father had "taught him the most fundamental lesson in life: to nurture victims rather than to create them".
In 1979, his mother remarried; her new husband was a musician whom Assange believed belonged to a New Age
group called the Santiniketan Park Association
led by Yoga teacher 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 divorced mother fled her boyfriend across Australia, taking both children into hiding for the next five years. Assange moved 30 times before he turned 14, attending many schools, including Goolmangar Primary School from 1979 to 1983, sometimes being home-schooled. In an interview conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist
, Assange stated that he had lived in 50 different towns and attended 37 different schools.
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 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". The Personal Democracy Forum
said he was "Australia's most famous ethical computer hacker."
The Australian Federal Police
became aware of this group and set up "Operation Weather" to investigate their hacking. In September 1991 Mendax was discovered in the act of hacking into the Melbourne master terminal of Nortel
, the Canadian telecommunications company. In response the Australian Federal Police
tapped Assanges' phoneline and subsequently raided his Melbourne home in 1991. He was also reported to have accessed computers belonging to an Australian university, the USAF 7th Command Group in the Pentagon
and other organisations, via modem
.
It took three years to bring the case to court, where he was charged with 31 counts of hacking and related crimes. Nortel said his incursions cost them more than $100,000. Assange's lawyers represented his hacking as a victimless crime. He pleaded guilty to 25 charges of hacking, after six charges were dropped, and was released on bond for good conduct with a fine of A$
2,100. The judge 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" and stated that Assange would have gone to jail for up to 10 years if he had not had such a disrupted childhood.
In 2011, court records revealed that in 1993, Assange helped the Victoria Police
Child Exploitation Unit by providing technical advice and assisted in prosecuting persons.
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. In an interview with ABC Radio
, his mother explained their "most important" issue was demanding "that there be direct access to the children's court by any member of the public for an application for protection for any child that they believe is at serious risk from abuse, where the child protection agency has rejected that notification."
s in Australia, Suburbia Public Access Network. Starting in 1994, he lived in Melbourne as a programmer and a developer of free software
. In 1995, he wrote Strobe, the first free and open source
port scanner
. He contributed several patch
es to the PostgreSQL
project in 1996. He helped to write the book Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier (1997), which credits him as a researcher and reports his history with International Subversives. Starting around 1997, he co-invented the Rubberhose deniable encryption
system, a cryptographic
concept made into a software package for Linux
designed to provide plausible deniability
against rubber-hose cryptanalysis
; he originally intended the system to be used "as a tool for human rights
workers who needed to protect sensitive data in the field." Other free software
that he has authored or co-authored includes the Usenet
caching software NNTPCache and Surfraw
, a command-line interface for web-based search engines
. In 1999, he registered the domain leaks.org; "But", he says, "then I didn't do anything with it." Assange was characterised as a "cryptographer" in a Suelette Dreyfus article published in The Independent, November 15, 1999 - "This is just between us (and the spies)", and was was said to have been the moderator of "the online Australian discussion forum AUCRYPTO", and during this time Assange claimed to have found a new patent relating to the US National Security Agency's technology for monitoring calls, "while investigating NSA capabilities". Assange said that "this patent should worry people. Everyone's overseas phone calls are or may soon be tapped, transcribed and archived in the bowels of an unaccountable foreign spy agency".
During this period he worked "in a number of different fields, as a security consultant, a researcher in journalism and started his own IT company", he has said. From 2003 to 2006, Assange attended the University of Melbourne
, mainly studying physics and mathematics and briefly studying philosophy and neuroscience. In most of his maths courses, he received the minimum "pass" grade. He did not graduate; the fact that his fellow students were doing research for Pentagon's DARPA was reportedly a factor in motivating him to drop out and start WikiLeaks.
Assange is the most prominent media spokesman on WikiLeaks' behalf. In June 2010, he was listed alongside several others as a member of the WikiLeaks advisory board. 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. 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." He 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's most infamous former computer hacker." The Age
has called him "one of the most intriguing people in the world" and "internet's freedom fighter." Assange has called himself "extremely cynical". He has been described as being largely self-taught and widely read on science and mathematics, and as thriving on intellectual battle.
WikiLeaks has been involved in the publication of material documenting extrajudicial killings in Kenya, a report of toxic waste dumping on the coast of Côte d'Ivoire
, Church of Scientology
manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures, the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike video, and material involving large banks such as Kaupthing and Julius Baer among other documents. In 2008, Assange published an article entitled "The Hidden Curse of Thomas Paine", in which he wrote "What does it mean when only those facts about the world with economic powers behind them can be heard, when the truth lays naked before the world and no one will be the first to speak without payment or subsidy?"
In late 2010, Assange was in the process of completing his memoirs for publication in 2011.
. 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 airstrike video by WikiLeaks. On 3 June he appeared via videoconferencing at the Personal Democracy Forum
conference with Daniel Ellsberg
. Ellsberg told MSNBC
"the explanation he [Assange] used" for not appearing in person in the U.S. was that "it was not safe for him to come to this country." On 11 June he was to appear on a Showcase Panel at the Investigative Reporters and Editors
conference in Las Vegas, but there are reports that he cancelled several days prior.
On 10 June 2010, it was reported that Pentagon officials were trying to determine his whereabouts. Based on this, there were reports that U.S. officials wanted to apprehend Assange. 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." 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." In Salon.com
, 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.
On 21 June 2010, he 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. He also talked about secret gag order
s 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. He told The Guardian that he does not fear for his safety but is on permanent alert and will avoid travel to America, saying "[U.S.] 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 U.S. during this period."
On 17 July, Jacob Appelbaum
spoke on behalf of WikiLeaks at the 2010 Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference in New York City, replacing Assange due to the presence of federal agents at the conference. He announced that the WikiLeaks submission system was again up and running, after it had been temporarily suspended. Assange was a surprise speaker at a TED conference on 19 July 2010, in Oxford
, and confirmed that WikiLeaks was now accepting submissions again. On 26 July, after the release of the Afghan War Diary, he appeared at the Frontline Club
for a press conference.
On 14 February 2011, Assange filed for the trademark JULIAN ASSANGE in Europe. The trademark is to be used for "public speaking services; news reporter services; journalism; publication of texts other than publicity texts; education services; entertainment services".
On 15 March 2011, Assange gave a speech at the Cambridge Union Society
. After initially discouraging recording, a video of this has been made available by the Society.
s in their possession, of which over 53 percent are listed as unclassified
, 40 percent are "Confidential" and just over six percent are classified "Secret". The following day, the Attorney-General of Australia, Robert McClelland
, told the press that Australia would inquire into Assange's activities and WikiLeaks. He said that "from Australia's point of view, we think there are potentially a number of criminal laws that could have been breached by the release of this information. The Australian Federal Police
are looking at that". McClelland would not rule out the possibility that Australian authorities will cancel Assange's passport, and warned him that he might face charges should he return to Australia. The Federal Police inquiry found that Assange had not committed any crime.
The United States Department of Justice
launched a criminal investigation related to the leak. U.S. prosecutors are reportedly considering charges against Assange under several laws, but any prosecution would be difficult. In relation to its ongoing investigations of WikiLeaks, on 14 December 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice
issued a subpoena
ordering Twitter to release information relating to Assange's account, amongst others.
Pentagon Papers
whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg
said that Assange "is serving our 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, "He's 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." Assange told London reporters that the leaked cables showed U.S. ambassadors around the world were ordered "to engage in espionage behavior", which he said seemed to be "representative of a gradual shift to a lack of rule of law in U.S. institutions that needs to be exposed and that we have been exposing."
The WikiLeaks diplomatic cable revelations have been credited with sparking the Tunisian Revolution
.
for Kenya: The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances, and he has been recognized as a journalist by the Centre for Investigative Journalism
. Assange has been a member of the Australian journalist union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance
, for several years, and in 2011, was made an honorary member. 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. Alan Dershowitz
said "Without a doubt. He is a journalist, a new kind of journalist". Assange has said that 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".
, announced that it had frozen assets of Assange's totalling 31,000 euros, because he had "provided false information regarding his place of residence" when opening the account. MasterCard
, Visa Inc., and Bank of America
also halted dealings with WikiLeaks. Assange described these actions as "business McCarthyism". The English-language Swedish newspaper web-site "Local" quoted Assange on 27 December 2010, as saying that legal costs for the whistleblowing website and his own defence had reached £500,000. The decisions to halt donations to WikiLeaks by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal
had cost it £425,000, the same amount it costs the website to publish for six months. Assange said WikiLeaks had been receiving as much as £85,000 a day at its peak.
to his proposed autobiography for over £1 million
. He told The Sunday Times
that he was forced to enter the deals for an autobiography due to the financial difficulties he and the site encountered, stating "I don't want to write this book, but I have to. I have already spent £200,000 for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat".
A draft
of this work was published, without Assange's consent, in September 2011. The book was ghostwritten
by Andrew O'Hagan
and was given the title Julian Assange – The Unauthorised Autobiography, (2011). Assange and the publisher, Canongate
, gave differing accounts of the circumstances around the publication.
said "I would argue it is closer to being a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon papers." In May 2010, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
had used the phrase, calling Assange "a high-tech terrorist", and saying "he has done enormous damage to our country. I think he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law". Also in May 2010, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
said: "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."
In July 2010, after WikiLeaks released classified documents related to the war in Afghanistan, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff
, Mike Mullen
, said at a Pentagon news conference, "Disagree with the war all you want, take issue with the policy, challenge me or our ground commanders on the decisions we make to accomplish the mission we've been given, but don't put those who willingly go into harm's way even further in harm's way just to satisfy your need to make a point. 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 responded later in an interview by saying, "There is, as far as we can tell, no incident of that. So it is a speculative charge. Of course, we are treating any possible revelation of the names of innocents seriously. That is why we held back 15,000 of these documents, to review that".
the Minister for Trade and Helen Coonan
the former minister for Communications, have made statements supportive of WikiLeaks and deprecated some threats. Emerson stated on ABC's Q&A program; "We condemn absolutely the threats that have been made by some people in the United States against Julian Assange and he deserves all of the rights of being an Australian citizen."
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
, then president of Brazil
, expressed his "solidarity" with Assange following his 2010 arrest in the United Kingdom. He further criticised the arrest of Assange as "an attack on freedom of expression".
Prime Minister of Russia
, Vladimir Putin
condemned Assange's detention as "undemocratic". A source within the office of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
suggested that Assange be nominated for a Nobel Prize, and said that "Public and non-governmental organisations should think of how to help him."
In December 2010, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Frank LaRue, said Assange or other WikiLeaks staff should not face criminal charges for any information they disseminated, noting that "if there is a responsibility by leaking information it is of, exclusively of the person that made the leak and not of the media that publish it. And this is the way that transparency works and that corruption has been confronted in many cases."
Daniel Ellsberg
, who was working in the U.S. Department of Defense when he leaked the Pentagon Papers
in 1971, was a signatory to a statement by an international group of former intelligence officers and ex-government officials in support of Assange's work, which was released in late December 2010. Other signatories included David MacMichael
, Ray McGovern
, and five recipients of annual Sam Adams Award
: Frank Grevil
, Katharine Gun
, Craig Murray
, Coleen Rowley
and Larry Wilkerson. Ellsberg has said, "If I released the Pentagon Papers today, the same rhetoric and the same calls would be made about me ... I would be called not only a traitor – which I was [called] then, which was false and slanderous – but I would be called a terrorist... Assange and Bradley Manning are no more terrorists than I am."
Prime Minister Julia Gillard
has come under widespread condemnation and a backlash within her own party for failing to support Assange after calling the leaks "an illegal act" and suggesting that his Australian passport should be cancelled. Hundreds of lawyers, academics and journalists came forward in his support with Attorney-General Robert McClelland
, unable to explain how Assange had broken Australian law. Opposition Legal Affairs spokesman, Senator George Brandis
, a Queen's Counsel
, accused Gillard of being "clumsy" with her language, stating, "As far as I can see, he (Assange) hasn't broken any Australian law, nor does it appear he has broken any American laws." Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd
, who supports Assange, stated that any decision to cancel the passport would be his, not Gillard's. Queen's Counsel Peter Faris
, who acted for Assange in a hacking case 15 years ago, said that the motives of Swedish authorities in seeking Assange's extradition for alleged sex offences are suspect: "You have to say: why are they [Sweden] pursuing it? It's pretty obvious that if it was Bill Bloggs
, they wouldn't be going to the trouble." Following the Swedish Embassy issuing of a "prepared and unconvincing reply" in response to letters of protest, Gillard was called on to send a message to Sweden "querying the way charges were laid, investigated and dropped, only to be picked up again by a different prosecutor."
On 10 December 2010, over five hundred people rallied outside Sydney Town Hall
and about three hundred and fifty people gathered in Brisbane where Assange's lawyer, Rob Stary, criticised Julia Gillard's position, telling the rally that the Australian government was a "sycophant" of the U.S. A petition circulated by GetUp!, who have placed full page ads in support of Assange in The New York Times
and The Washington Times
, received more than signatures.
, for exposing extrajudicial assassinations in Kenya
by distributing and publicizing the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights
(KNCHR)'s investigation The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances. Accepting the award, Assange said, "It is a reflection of the courage and strength of Kenyan civil society that this injustice was documented."
In 2010, Assange was awarded the Sam Adams Award
, Readers' Choice in TIME magazine's Person of the Year poll, and runner-up for Person of the Year. In April 2011 he was listed on the Time 100
list of most influential people. An informal poll of editors at Postmedia Network
named him the top newsmaker for the year after six out of 10 felt Assange had "affected profoundly how information is seen and delivered".
Le Monde
, one of the five publications to cooperate with WikiLeaks' publication of the recent document leaks, named him person of the year with fifty six percent of the votes in their online poll.
In February 2011, it was announced that Assange had been awarded the Sydney Peace Foundation gold medal by the Sydney Peace Foundation of the University of Sydney
for his "exceptional courage and initiative in pursuit of human rights." There have been four recipients of the award in the foundation's fourteen year history: Nelson Mandela
; the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso; Daisaku Ikeda
; and Assange.
In June 2011, Assange was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism
. The prize is awarded on an annual basis to journalists "whose work has penetrated the established version of events and told an unpalatable truth that exposes establishment propaganda, or 'official drivel'". The judges said, "WikiLeaks has been portrayed as a phenomenon of the hi-tech age, which it is. But it's much more. Its goal of justice through transparency is in the oldest and finest tradition of journalism."
(EAW) to extradite him to Sweden for questioning.
An extradition hearing took place on 7–8 and 11 February 2011 before the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court
when the extradition warrant was upheld.
On 2 March 2011, his lawyers lodged papers at the London High Court
to challenge the ruling to extradite Assange to Sweden. Assange remains on conditional bail. After a hearing on 12 and 13 July 2011, the High Court deferred its decision, and on
2 November 2011, dismissed Assange's appeal. Assange is seeking permission to appeal to the UK Supreme Court and a decision is expected on 5 December.
, worked on the 'Collateral Murder' video.
For much of 2010, he was traveling around Europe, including the United Kingdom, Iceland, Sweden, and Austria. On 4 November 2010, Assange told Swiss public television TSR
that he was seriously considering seeking political asylum in neutral Switzerland and moving the operation of the WikiLeaks foundation there. In December 2010, it was reported that U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland Donald S. Beyer
had warned the Swiss government against offering asylum to Assange citing the arrest warrant issued by Interpol.
In late November 2010, Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas of Ecuador spoke about giving 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 may benefit from initiating a dialogue with Assange. Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño stated on 30 November that the residency application would "have to be studied from the legal and diplomatic perspective". A few hours later, President Rafael Correa
stated that WikiLeaks "committed an error by breaking the laws of the United States and leaking this type of information... no official offer was [ever] made." Correa noted that Lucas was speaking "on his own behalf"; additionally, he will launch an investigation into possible ramifications Ecuador would suffer from the release of the cables.
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, he 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. He was ultimately released, in part because journalist Vaughan Smith
offered to provide Assange with an address for bail during the extradition proceedings, Smith's Norfolk mansion, Ellingham Hall
.
Hacktivism
Hacktivism is the use of computers and computer networks as a means of protest to promote political ends. The term was first coined in 1994 by a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective named Omega...
. He is the editor in chief
Editor in chief
An editor-in-chief is a publication's primary editor, having final responsibility for the operations and policies. Additionally, the editor-in-chief is held accountable for delegating tasks to staff members as well as keeping up with the time it takes them to complete their task...
of WikiLeaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
, a whistleblower
Whistleblower
A whistleblower is a person who tells the public or someone in authority about alleged dishonest or illegal activities occurring in a government department, a public or private organization, or a company...
website and conduit for worldwide news leak
News leak
A news leak is a disclosure of embargoed information in advance of its official release, or the unsanctioned release of confidential information.-Types of news leaks:...
s with the stated purpose of creating open government
Open government
Open government is the governing doctrine which holds that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight. In its broadest construction it opposes reason of state and racist considerations, which have tended to legitimize...
s.
WikiLeaks has published material about extrajudicial killings in Kenya, toxic waste dumping in Côte d'Ivoire, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures
Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures
The Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures is a document that was written under the authority of Geoffrey D. Miller when he was the officer in charge of Joint Task Force Guantanamo....
, and banks such as Kaupthing and Julius Baer
Bank Julius Baer vs. Wikileaks lawsuit
Bank Julius Baer vs. Wikileaks lawsuit was filed by Bank Julius Baer against the website WikiLeaks.In early February 2008, a California judge forced Dynadot, the domain registrar of wikileaks.org, to disassociate the site's domain name records with its servers, preventing use of the domain name to...
. In 2010, WikiLeaks published Iraq War documents
Iraq War documents leak
The Iraq War documents leak is the unsanctioned disclosure of a collection of 391,832 United States Army field reports, also called the Iraq War Logs, of the Iraq War from 2004 to 2009 to several international media organizations and published on the Internet by WikiLeaks on 2010. The files record...
and Afghan War documents about American involvement in the wars, some of which was classified material. On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and its five international print media partners (Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and El País) began publishing U.S. diplomatic cables
United States diplomatic cables leak
The United States diplomatic cables leak, widely known as Cablegate, began in February 2010 when WikiLeaks—a non-profit organization that publishes submissions from anonymous whistleblowers—began releasing classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates,...
.
Assange was a computer hacker in his youth, before becoming a skilled programmer and internationally renowned activist. He has lived in several countries and has made public appearances in many parts of the world to speak about freedom of the press
Freedom of the press
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials...
, censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
, and investigative journalism
Investigative journalism
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, often involving crime, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Investigative journalism...
. He has received numerous awards and nominations, including the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award
Amnesty International UK Media Awards
The Amnesty International Media Awards are a set of awards for human rights journalism awarded annually by the UK section of Amnesty International...
, Readers' Choice for TIME magazine's 2010 Person of the Year, the 2011 Sydney Peace Foundation gold medal and the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism
Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism
The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, named for the renowned war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn, was established in 1999 by the Martha Gellhorn Trust. It is founded on the following principles:...
. He was also nominated for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
.
In 2010 a European Arrest Warrant
European Arrest Warrant
The European Arrest Warrant is an arrest warrant valid throughout all member states of the European Union . Once issued by a member state, it requires the receiving member state to arrest and transfer a criminal suspect or sentenced person to the issuing state so that the person can be put on...
was issued for Assange in response to a Swedish police request for questioning in relation to a sexual assault investigation. Assange voluntarily attended a police station in England on 7 December 2010, and was arrested and taken into custody. After ten days in Wandsworth
Wandsworth (HM Prison)
HM Prison Wandsworth is a Category B men's prison at Wandsworth in the London Borough of Wandsworth, south west London, England. It is operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service and is the largest prison in London and one of the largest in western Europe, with similar capacity to Liverpool...
prison, Assange was freed on bail with a residence requirement at Ellingham Hall in Norfolk, England, fitted with an electronic tag and ordered to report to police daily. Assange appealed a February 2011 decision by English courts to extradite him to Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, claiming the allegations of wrongdoing were "without basis". On 2 November 2011 the High court
High Court of Justice
The High Court of Justice is, together with the Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, one of the Senior Courts of England and Wales...
upheld the extradition
Extradition
Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...
decision and rejected all four grounds for the appeal as presented by Assange's legal representatives. £19,000 court costs
Court costs
Court costs are the costs of handling a case, which, depending on legal rules, may or may not include the costs of the various parties in a lawsuit in addition to the costs of the court itself. Court costs can reach very high amounts, often far beyond the actual monetary worth of a case...
was also awarded against Assange. A decision as to whether Assange will be allowed to further appeal to the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is the supreme court in all matters under English law, Northern Ireland law and Scottish civil law. It is the court of last resort and highest appellate court in the United Kingdom; however the High Court of Justiciary remains the supreme court for criminal...
will be taken on 5 December when the high court judges will consider Assange's claim that his case raises a question of public importance and consider his request that they allow him to appeal to the Supreme Court. If such an appeal is not allowed Assange will be then taken into custody and extradited to Sweden within ten days of that decision. Assange remains on conditional bail.
Early life
Assange was born in Townsville, Queensland, and spent much of his youth living on Magnetic IslandMagnetic Island
Magnetic Island is an island offshore from the city of Townsville, Queensland, Australia. This mountainous island in Cleveland Bay has effectively become a suburb of Townsville, with 2,107 permanent residents. The island is accessible from Townsville Breakwater to Nelly Bay Harbour by ferry...
.
Assange's mother Christine Ann Hawkins was the daughter of academic and principal of Northern Rivers College
Southern Cross University
Southern Cross University is a university based on the North and Mid North Coast of New South Wales, Australia. It is a regional University with more than 14,000 students. The University's primary campus is in Lismore, with other campuses located at Coffs Harbour and Tweed Heads.The University is...
, Dr. Warren Alfred Hawkins. Assange's maternal ancestors came to Australia in the mid-nineteenth century from Scotland and Ireland.
Assange says he did not meet his biological father, John Shipton, until the age of 25. When he was one year old, his mother Christine married theatre director Brett Assange, "who raised him from the age of one and gave him his surname". It is unclear if Julian Assange was born with the name Assange or Shipton, or if the name was changed. Brett and Christine Assange ran a touring theatre company
Showman
Showman can have a variety of meanings, usually by context and depending on the country.- Australia :Travelling showmen are people who run amusement and side show equipment at regional shows, state capital shows, events and festivals throughout Australia...
. Assange has reportedly claimed that his grandfather was a Taiwanese pirate who settled on Thursday Island "where he met and married a Thursday Islander
Torres Strait Islanders
Torres Strait Islanders are the indigenous people of the Torres Strait Islands, part of Queensland, Australia. They are culturally and genetically linked to Melanesian peoples and those of Papua New Guinea....
woman". In his autobiography, as well as in an article from The Independent, he says that Brett Assange "was the descendant of a Chinese immigrant who had settled on Thursday Island, Ah Sang or Mr Sang", "or ah-sang in Cantonese"., "his great-great-great-grandfather was a Taiwanese pirate". Brett, Julian's first "real dad", described Julian as "a very sharp kid" with "a keen sense of right and wrong ... He always stood up for the underdog ... he was always very angry about people ganging up on other people." Assange revealed that he created "an amalgam of Brett Assange and John Shipton" when speaking about his father to worldwide audiences, and that this father had "taught him the most fundamental lesson in life: to nurture victims rather than to create them".
In 1979, his mother remarried; her new husband was a musician whom Assange believed belonged to a New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
group called the Santiniketan Park Association
Santiniketan Park Association
The Santiniketan Park Association, also known as The Family and The Great White Brotherhood, is a controversial New Age group formed in Australia under the leadership of the Yoga teacher Anne Hamilton-Byrne.-Beginnings:...
led by Yoga teacher Anne Hamilton-Byrne. The couple had a son, but broke up in 1982 and engaged in a custody
Child custody
Child custody and guardianship are legal terms which are used to describe the legal and practical relationship between a parent and his or her child, such as the right of the parent to make decisions for the child, and the parent's duty to care for the child.Following ratification of the United...
struggle for Assange's half-brother. His divorced mother fled her boyfriend across Australia, taking both children into hiding for the next five years. Assange moved 30 times before he turned 14, attending many schools, including Goolmangar Primary School from 1979 to 1983, sometimes being home-schooled. In an interview conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Hans Ulrich Obrist is a contemporary art curator, critic and historian of art. He is currently Co-director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery, London...
, Assange stated that he had lived in 50 different towns and attended 37 different schools.
Hacking and conviction
In 1987, after turning 16, Assange began hackingHacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
under the name "Mendax" (derived from a phrase of Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
: "splendide mendax", or "nobly untruthful"). He and two other hackers joined to form a group 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". The Personal Democracy Forum
Personal Democracy Forum
Personal Democracy Forum is a website and annual conference that follows how the internet is changing politics, governance, and advocacy founded by Andrew Rasiej and co-Founder Micah Sifry.- Website :...
said he was "Australia's most famous ethical computer hacker."
The Australian Federal Police
Australian Federal Police
The Australian Federal Police is the federal police agency of the Commonwealth of Australia. Although the AFP was created by the amalgamation in 1979 of three Commonwealth law enforcement agencies, it traces its history from Commonwealth law enforcement agencies dating back to the federation of...
became aware of this group and set up "Operation Weather" to investigate their hacking. In September 1991 Mendax was discovered in the act of hacking into the Melbourne master terminal of Nortel
Nortel
Nortel Networks Corporation, formerly known as Northern Telecom Limited and sometimes known simply as Nortel, was a multinational telecommunications equipment manufacturer headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada...
, the Canadian telecommunications company. In response the Australian Federal Police
Australian Federal Police
The Australian Federal Police is the federal police agency of the Commonwealth of Australia. Although the AFP was created by the amalgamation in 1979 of three Commonwealth law enforcement agencies, it traces its history from Commonwealth law enforcement agencies dating back to the federation of...
tapped Assanges' phoneline and subsequently raided his Melbourne home in 1991. He was also reported to have accessed computers belonging to an Australian university, the USAF 7th Command Group in the Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
and other organisations, via modem
Modem
A modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
.
It took three years to bring the case to court, where he was charged with 31 counts of hacking and related crimes. Nortel said his incursions cost them more than $100,000. Assange's lawyers represented his hacking as a victimless crime. He pleaded guilty to 25 charges of hacking, after six charges were dropped, and was released on bond for good conduct with a fine of A$
Australian dollar
The Australian dollar is the currency of the Commonwealth of Australia, including Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, and Norfolk Island, as well as the independent Pacific Island states of Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu...
2,100. The judge 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" and stated that Assange would have gone to jail for up to 10 years if he had not had such a disrupted childhood.
In 2011, court records revealed that in 1993, Assange helped the Victoria Police
Victoria Police
Victoria Police is the primary law enforcement agency of Victoria, Australia. , the Victoria Police has over 12,190 sworn members, along with over 400 recruits, reservists and Protective Service Officers, and over 2,900 civilian staff across 393 police stations.-Early history:The Victoria Police...
Child Exploitation Unit by providing technical advice and assisted in prosecuting persons.
Child custody issues
In 1989, Assange started living with his girlfriend and they had a son, Daniel Assange. They split up during the period of Assange's arrest and conviction. They subsequently 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. In an interview with ABC Radio
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
, his mother explained their "most important" issue was demanding "that there be direct access to the children's court by any member of the public for an application for protection for any child that they believe is at serious risk from abuse, where the child protection agency has rejected that notification."
Employment and university studies
In 1993, Assange was involved in starting one of the first public internet service providerInternet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
s in Australia, Suburbia Public Access Network. Starting in 1994, he lived in Melbourne as a programmer and a developer of free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
. In 1995, he wrote Strobe, the first free and open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
port scanner
Port scanner
A port scanner is a software application designed to probe a server or host for open ports. This is often used by administrators to verify security policies of their networks and by attackers to identify running services on a host with the view to compromise it.A port scan or portscan is "An attack...
. He contributed several patch
Patch (computing)
A patch is a piece of software designed to fix problems with, or update a computer program or its supporting data. This includes fixing security vulnerabilities and other bugs, and improving the usability or performance...
es to the PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...
project in 1996. He helped to write the book Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier (1997), which credits him as a researcher and reports his history with International Subversives. Starting around 1997, he co-invented the Rubberhose deniable encryption
Deniable encryption
In cryptography and steganography, deniable encryption is encryption that allows its users to convincingly deny that the data is encrypted, or that they are able to decrypt it. Such convincing denials may or may not be genuine. For example, although suspicions might exist that the data is...
system, a cryptographic
Cryptography
Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
concept made into a software package for Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
designed to provide plausible deniability
Plausible deniability
Plausible deniability is, at root, credible ability to deny a fact or allegation, or to deny previous knowledge of a fact. The term most often refers to the denial of blame in chains of command, where upper rungs quarantine the blame to the lower rungs, and the lower rungs are often inaccessible,...
against rubber-hose cryptanalysis
Rubber-hose cryptanalysis
In cryptography, rubber-hose cryptanalysis is the extraction of cryptographic secrets from a person by coercion or torture, in contrast to a mathematical or technical cryptanalytic attack....
; he originally intended the system to be used "as a tool for human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
workers who needed to protect sensitive data in the field." Other free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
that he has authored or co-authored includes the Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
caching software NNTPCache and Surfraw
Surfraw
Surfraw is a free POSIX-compliant command-line shell program for interfacing with a number of web-based search engines...
, a command-line interface for web-based search engines
Web search engine
A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web and FTP servers. The search results are generally presented in a list of results often referred to as SERPS, or "search engine results pages". The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other...
. In 1999, he registered the domain leaks.org; "But", he says, "then I didn't do anything with it." Assange was characterised as a "cryptographer" in a Suelette Dreyfus article published in The Independent, November 15, 1999 - "This is just between us (and the spies)", and was was said to have been the moderator of "the online Australian discussion forum AUCRYPTO", and during this time Assange claimed to have found a new patent relating to the US National Security Agency's technology for monitoring calls, "while investigating NSA capabilities". Assange said that "this patent should worry people. Everyone's overseas phone calls are or may soon be tapped, transcribed and archived in the bowels of an unaccountable foreign spy agency".
During this period he worked "in a number of different fields, as a security consultant, a researcher in journalism and started his own IT company", he has said. From 2003 to 2006, Assange attended the University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
, mainly studying physics and mathematics and briefly studying philosophy and neuroscience. In most of his maths courses, he received the minimum "pass" grade. He did not graduate; the fact that his fellow students were doing research for Pentagon's DARPA was reportedly a factor in motivating him to drop out and start WikiLeaks.
After founding 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 is the most prominent media spokesman on WikiLeaks' behalf. In June 2010, he was listed alongside several others as a member of the WikiLeaks advisory board. 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
Editor in chief
An editor-in-chief is a publication's primary editor, having final responsibility for the operations and policies. Additionally, the editor-in-chief is held accountable for delegating tasks to staff members as well as keeping up with the time it takes them to complete their task...
of WikiLeaks, and has stated that he has the final decision in the process of vetting documents submitted to the site. 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." He 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
Counterpunch
Counterpunch can refer to:* Counterpunch , a punch in boxing* CounterPunch, a bi-weekly political newsletter* Counterpunch , a type of punch used in traditional typography* Punch-Counterpunch, a Transformers character...
called him "Australia's most infamous former computer hacker." The Age
The Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
has called him "one of the most intriguing people in the world" and "internet's freedom fighter." Assange has called himself "extremely cynical". He has been described as being largely self-taught and widely read on science and mathematics, and as thriving on intellectual battle.
WikiLeaks has been involved in the publication of material documenting extrajudicial killings in Kenya, a report of toxic waste dumping on the coast of Côte d'Ivoire
Côte d'Ivoire
The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast is a country in West Africa. It has an area of , and borders the countries Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998 and was estimated to be...
, Church of Scientology
Church of Scientology
The Church of Scientology is an organization devoted to the practice and the promotion of the Scientology belief system. The Church of Scientology International is the Church of Scientology's parent organization, and is responsible for the overall ecclesiastical management, dissemination and...
manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures, the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike video, and material involving large banks such as Kaupthing and Julius Baer among other documents. In 2008, Assange published an article entitled "The Hidden Curse of Thomas Paine", in which he wrote "What does it mean when only those facts about the world with economic powers behind them can be heard, when the truth lays naked before the world and no one will be the first to speak without payment or subsidy?"
In late 2010, Assange was in the process of completing his memoirs for publication in 2011.
Public appearances
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 CongressChaos Communication Congress
The Chaos Communication Congress is an annual meeting of the international hacker scene, organized by the Chaos Computer Club. The congress features a variety of lectures and workshops on technical and political issues....
. In the first half of 2010, he appeared on Al Jazeera English, MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...
, Democracy Now!
Democracy Now!
Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...
, RT
RT (TV network)
RT, previously known as Russia Today, is a global multilingual television news network based in the Russian Federation run by the state-owned state-run RIA Novosti....
, and The Colbert Report to discuss the release of the Baghdad airstrike video by WikiLeaks. On 3 June he appeared via videoconferencing at the Personal Democracy Forum
Personal Democracy Forum
Personal Democracy Forum is a website and annual conference that follows how the internet is changing politics, governance, and advocacy founded by Andrew Rasiej and co-Founder Micah Sifry.- Website :...
conference with Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg, PhD, is a former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War,...
. Ellsberg told MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...
"the explanation he [Assange] used" for not appearing in person in the U.S. was that "it was not safe for him to come to this country." On 11 June he was to appear on a Showcase Panel at the Investigative Reporters and Editors
Investigative Reporters and Editors
Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. is a nonprofit organization that focuses on the quality of investigative reporting. Formed in 1975, it presents the IRE Awards and holds conferences and training classes for journalists. Its headquarters is in Columbia, Missouri, at the University of...
conference in Las Vegas, but there are reports that he cancelled several days prior.
On 10 June 2010, it was reported that Pentagon officials were trying to determine his whereabouts. Based on this, there were reports that U.S. officials wanted to apprehend Assange. 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." In The Atlantic, Marc Ambinder
Marc Ambinder
Marc Ambinder is an American editor and journalist. He is a White House correspondent at National Journal and is a contributing editor at The Atlantic. He previously worked at ABC News and was chief political consultant to CBS News from 2008 to 2011. For years he was the author of an influential...
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." In Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
, Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald is an American lawyer, columnist, blogger, and author. Greenwald worked as a constitutional and civil rights litigator before becoming a contributor to Salon.com, where he focuses on political and legal topics...
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.
On 21 June 2010, he took part at a hearing in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
, Belgium, appearing in public for the first time in nearly a month. He was a member on a panel that discussed Internet censorship
Internet censorship
Internet censorship is the control or suppression of the publishing of, or access to information on the Internet. It may be carried out by governments or by private organizations either at the behest of government or on their own initiative...
and expressed his worries over the recent filtering
Content-control software
Content-control software, also known as censorware or web filtering software, is a term for software designed and optimized for controlling what content is permitted to a reader, especially when it is used to restrict material delivered over the Web...
in countries such as Australia. He also talked about secret gag order
Gag order
A gag order is an order, sometimes a legal order by a court or government, other times a private order by an employer or other institution, restricting information or comment from being made public.Gag orders are often used against participants involved in a lawsuit or criminal trial...
s preventing newspapers from publishing information about specific subjects and even divulging the fact that they are being gagged. Using an example involving The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, he also explained how newspapers are altering their online archives sometimes by removing entire articles. He told The Guardian that he does not fear for his safety but is on permanent alert and will avoid travel to America, saying "[U.S.] 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 U.S. during this period."
On 17 July, Jacob Appelbaum
Jacob Appelbaum
Jacob Appelbaum is an independent computer security researcher and hacker. He is currently employed by the University of Washington, and is a core member of the Tor project. Appelbaum is known for representing Wikileaks at the 2010 Hope conference...
spoke on behalf of WikiLeaks at the 2010 Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference in New York City, replacing Assange due to the presence of federal agents at the conference. He announced that the WikiLeaks submission system was again up and running, after it had been temporarily suspended. Assange was a surprise speaker at a TED conference on 19 July 2010, in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, and confirmed that WikiLeaks was now accepting submissions again. On 26 July, after the release of the Afghan War Diary, he appeared at the Frontline Club
Frontline Club
The Frontline Club is a media club near London's Paddington Station. With a strong emphasis on conflict reporting, it aims to champion independent journalism, provide an effective platform from which to support diversity and professionalism in the media, promote safe practice, and encourage both...
for a press conference.
On 14 February 2011, Assange filed for the trademark JULIAN ASSANGE in Europe. The trademark is to be used for "public speaking services; news reporter services; journalism; publication of texts other than publicity texts; education services; entertainment services".
On 15 March 2011, Assange gave a speech at the Cambridge Union Society
Cambridge Union Society
The Cambridge Union Society, commonly referred to as simply "the Cambridge Union" or "the Union," is a debating society in Cambridge, England and is the largest society at the University of Cambridge. Since its founding in 1815, the Union has developed a worldwide reputation as a noted symbol of...
. After initially discouraging recording, a video of this has been made available by the Society.
Release of U.S. diplomatic cables
On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing some of the 251,000 American diplomatic cableDiplomatic cable
A diplomatic cable, also known as a diplomatic telegram or embassy cable, is the term given to a confidential text message exchanged between a diplomatic mission, like an embassy or a consulate, and the foreign ministry of its parent country....
s in their possession, of which over 53 percent are listed as unclassified
Classified information
Classified information is sensitive information to which access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of persons. A formal security clearance is required to handle classified documents or access classified data. The clearance process requires a satisfactory background investigation...
, 40 percent are "Confidential" and just over six percent are classified "Secret". The following day, the Attorney-General of Australia, Robert McClelland
Robert McClelland (Australian politician)
Robert Bruce McClelland is the Attorney-General of Australia. He has been an Australian Labor Party member of theAustralian House of Representatives since March 1996, representing the Division of Barton, New South Wales...
, told the press that Australia would inquire into Assange's activities and WikiLeaks. He said that "from Australia's point of view, we think there are potentially a number of criminal laws that could have been breached by the release of this information. The Australian Federal Police
Australian Federal Police
The Australian Federal Police is the federal police agency of the Commonwealth of Australia. Although the AFP was created by the amalgamation in 1979 of three Commonwealth law enforcement agencies, it traces its history from Commonwealth law enforcement agencies dating back to the federation of...
are looking at that". McClelland would not rule out the possibility that Australian authorities will cancel Assange's passport, and warned him that he might face charges should he return to Australia. The Federal Police inquiry found that Assange had not committed any crime.
The United States Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
launched a criminal investigation related to the leak. U.S. prosecutors are reportedly considering charges against Assange under several laws, but any prosecution would be difficult. In relation to its ongoing investigations of WikiLeaks, on 14 December 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
issued a subpoena
Twitter subpoena
On 14 December 2010, the United States Department of Justice issued a subpoena accompanied by a national security letter to Twitter in relation to ongoing investigations of WikiLeaks...
ordering Twitter to release information relating to Assange's account, amongst others.
Pentagon Papers
Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967...
whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg, PhD, is a former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War,...
said that Assange "is serving our 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, "He's 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." Assange told London reporters that the leaked cables showed U.S. ambassadors around the world were ordered "to engage in espionage behavior", which he said seemed to be "representative of a gradual shift to a lack of rule of law in U.S. institutions that needs to be exposed and that we have been exposing."
The WikiLeaks diplomatic cable revelations have been credited with sparking the Tunisian Revolution
Tunisian revolution
The Tunisian Revolution is an intensive campaign of civil resistance, including a series of street demonstrations taking place in Tunisia. The events began in December 2010 and led to the ousting of longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011...
.
Recognition as a journalist
Assange received the 2009 Media award from Amnesty InternationalAmnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
for Kenya: The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances, and he has been recognized as a journalist by the Centre for Investigative Journalism
Centre for investigative journalism
The Centre for Investigative Journalism is a non-profit organisation providing training to journalists, researchers, producers and students in the practice and methodology of investigative journalism...
. Assange has been a member of the Australian journalist union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance
Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance
The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance is the Australian trade union and professional organisation which covers the media, entertainment, sports and arts industries...
, for several years, and in 2011, was made an honorary member. Alex Massie
Alex Massie (journalist)
Alex Massie is a Scottish journalist. A former Washington correspondent for The Scotsman, he has also written for The Daily Telegraph, Scotland on Sunday, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, National Review Online, The Sunday Telegraph, The New York Times ,...
wrote an article in The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
called "Yes, Julian Assange is a journalist", but acknowledged that "newsman" might be a better description of Assange. Alan Dershowitz
Alan Dershowitz
Alan Morton Dershowitz is an American lawyer, jurist, and political commentator. He has spent most of his career at Harvard Law School where in 1967, at the age of 28, he became the youngest full professor of law in its history...
said "Without a doubt. He is a journalist, a new kind of journalist". Assange has said that 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".
Financial developments
On 6 December, the Swiss bank, PostFinancePostFinance
PostFinance is founded in 1906 and the financial services unit of Swiss Post, and the fifth largest retail financial institution in Switzerland...
, announced that it had frozen assets of Assange's totalling 31,000 euros, because he had "provided false information regarding his place of residence" when opening the account. MasterCard
MasterCard
Mastercard Incorporated or MasterCard Worldwide is an American multinational financial services corporation with its headquarters in the MasterCard International Global Headquarters, Purchase, Harrison, New York, United States...
, Visa Inc., and Bank of America
Bank of America
Bank of America Corporation, an American multinational banking and financial services corporation, is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets, and the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by market capitalization. The bank is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina...
also halted dealings with WikiLeaks. Assange described these actions as "business McCarthyism". The English-language Swedish newspaper web-site "Local" quoted Assange on 27 December 2010, as saying that legal costs for the whistleblowing website and his own defence had reached £500,000. The decisions to halt donations to WikiLeaks by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
had cost it £425,000, the same amount it costs the website to publish for six months. Assange said WikiLeaks had been receiving as much as £85,000 a day at its peak.
"Autobiography"
In December 2010, Assange sold the publishing rightsPublishing rights
Literally, the right to publish a work.In the music industry, "publishing" is used as a catch-all shorthand for the administration of matters relating to the songwriter's and composer's share of income from a musical composition or recorded work....
to his proposed autobiography for over £1 million
Million
One million or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian millione , from mille, "thousand", plus the augmentative suffix -one.In scientific notation, it is written as or just 106...
. He told The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
that he was forced to enter the deals for an autobiography due to the financial difficulties he and the site encountered, stating "I don't want to write this book, but I have to. I have already spent £200,000 for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat".
A draft
Draft document
Drafting is the preliminary stage of a written work in which the author begins to develop a more cohesive product. A also describes the product the writer creates in the initial stages of the writing process.In the drafting stage, the author:...
of this work was published, without Assange's consent, in September 2011. The book was ghostwritten
Ghostwriter
A ghostwriter is a professional writer who is paid to write books, articles, stories, reports, or other texts that are officially credited to another person. Celebrities, executives, and political leaders often hire ghostwriters to draft or edit autobiographies, magazine articles, or other written...
by Andrew O'Hagan
Andrew O'Hagan
Andrew O'Hagan, FRSL is a Scottish novelist and non-fiction author. He is also an Editor at Large of Esquire and is currently a creative writing fellow at King's College London. He was selected by for inclusion in their 2003 list of the top 20 young British novelists. His novels appear...
and was given the title Julian Assange – The Unauthorised Autobiography, (2011). Assange and the publisher, Canongate
Canongate Books
Canongate Books is a Scottish independent publishing firm based in Edinburgh; it is named for The Canongate, an area of the city. It is most recognised for publishing the Booker Prizewinner Life of Pi...
, gave differing accounts of the circumstances around the publication.
Criticism
A number of political and media commentators, as well as current and former U.S. government officials, have accused Assange of terrorism. U.S. Vice President Joe BidenJoe Biden
Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama...
said "I would argue it is closer to being a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon papers." In May 2010, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
Mitch McConnell
Addison Mitchell "Mitch" McConnell, Jr. is the senior United States Senator from Kentucky and the Republican Minority Leader.- Early life, education, and military service :...
had used the phrase, calling Assange "a high-tech terrorist", and saying "he has done enormous damage to our country. I think he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law". Also in May 2010, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
Newt Gingrich
Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich is a U.S. Republican Party politician who served as the House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995 and as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999....
said: "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."
In July 2010, after WikiLeaks released classified documents related to the war in Afghanistan, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is by law the highest ranking military officer in the United States Armed Forces, and is the principal military adviser to the President of the United States, the National Security Council, the Homeland Security Council and the Secretary of Defense...
, Mike Mullen
Michael Mullen
Michael Glenn "Mike" Mullen is a retired United States Navy four-star admiral, who served as the 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 1, 2007 to September 30, 2011. Mullen previously served as the Navy's 28th Chief of Naval Operations from July 22, 2005 to September 29, 2007...
, said at a Pentagon news conference, "Disagree with the war all you want, take issue with the policy, challenge me or our ground commanders on the decisions we make to accomplish the mission we've been given, but don't put those who willingly go into harm's way even further in harm's way just to satisfy your need to make a point. 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 responded later in an interview by saying, "There is, as far as we can tell, no incident of that. So it is a speculative charge. Of course, we are treating any possible revelation of the names of innocents seriously. That is why we held back 15,000 of these documents, to review that".
Support
The Australian government had considered charging Assange for treason, but later retracted its previous statements that Assange's actions were criminal. They also found no grounds to withdraw his Australian passport after an investigation by the Australian Federal Police. Since then, government representatives and the major opposition, including Craig EmersonCraig Emerson
Craig Anthony Emerson , Australian politician, has represented the House of Representatives seat of Rankin in Queensland for the Australian Labor Party since the 1998 federal election...
the Minister for Trade and Helen Coonan
Helen Coonan
Helen Lloyd Coonan is a former Australian politician, who was a Liberal member of the Australian Senate representing New South Wales from July 1996 to August 2011.-Early life:...
the former minister for Communications, have made statements supportive of WikiLeaks and deprecated some threats. Emerson stated on ABC's Q&A program; "We condemn absolutely the threats that have been made by some people in the United States against Julian Assange and he deserves all of the rights of being an Australian citizen."
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , known popularly as Lula, served as the 35th President of Brazil from 2003 to 2010.A founding member of the Workers' Party , he ran for President three times unsuccessfully, first in the 1989 election. Lula achieved victory in the 2002 election, and was inaugurated as...
, then president of Brazil
President of Brazil
The president of Brazil is both the head of state and head of government of the Federative Republic of Brazil. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the Brazilian Armed Forces...
, expressed his "solidarity" with Assange following his 2010 arrest in the United Kingdom. He further criticised the arrest of Assange as "an attack on freedom of expression".
Prime Minister of Russia
Prime Minister of Russia
The Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation The use of the term "Prime Minister" is strictly informal and is not allowed for by the Russian Constitution and other laws....
, Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
condemned Assange's detention as "undemocratic". A source within the office of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is the third President of the Russian Federation.Born to a family of academics, Medvedev graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987. He defended his dissertation in 1990 and worked as a docent at his alma mater, now renamed to Saint...
suggested that Assange be nominated for a Nobel Prize, and said that "Public and non-governmental organisations should think of how to help him."
In December 2010, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Frank LaRue, said Assange or other WikiLeaks staff should not face criminal charges for any information they disseminated, noting that "if there is a responsibility by leaking information it is of, exclusively of the person that made the leak and not of the media that publish it. And this is the way that transparency works and that corruption has been confronted in many cases."
Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg, PhD, is a former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War,...
, who was working in the U.S. Department of Defense when he leaked the Pentagon Papers
Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967...
in 1971, was a signatory to a statement by an international group of former intelligence officers and ex-government officials in support of Assange's work, which was released in late December 2010. Other signatories included David MacMichael
David MacMichael
David MacMichael is a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst. A ten-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, he was a counter-insurgency expert in South-East Asia for four years. He also served as an analyst for the National Intelligence Council from 1981-1983. MacMichael graduated with an MA...
, Ray McGovern
Ray McGovern
Raymond McGovern is a retired CIA officer turned political activist. McGovern was a Federal employee under seven U.S. presidents over 27 years, presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House for many of them.-Early life:...
, and five recipients of annual Sam Adams Award
Sam Adams Award
The Sam Adams Award is given annually by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, a group of retired CIA officers, to an intelligence professional who has taken a stand for integrity and ethics. It is named after Samuel A. Adams, a CIA whistleblower during the Vietnam War, and takes...
: Frank Grevil
Frank Grevil
Frank Søholm Grevil had the rank of major in Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste [FE] .On February 22, 2004 he acted as a whistle blower leaking classified information about the FE's assessment of the possibility of weapons of mass destruction [WMD] in Iraq...
, Katharine Gun
Katharine Gun
Katharine Teresa Gun is a former translator for Government Communications Headquarters , a British intelligence agency...
, Craig Murray
Craig Murray
Craig John Murray is a British political activist, former ambassador to Uzbekistan and former Rector of the University of Dundee....
, Coleen Rowley
Coleen Rowley
Coleen Rowley is a former FBI agent and whistleblower, and was a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party candidate for Congress in Minnesota's 2nd congressional district, one of eight congressional districts in Minnesota in 2006...
and Larry Wilkerson. Ellsberg has said, "If I released the Pentagon Papers today, the same rhetoric and the same calls would be made about me ... I would be called not only a traitor – which I was [called] then, which was false and slanderous – but I would be called a terrorist... Assange and Bradley Manning are no more terrorists than I am."
Prime Minister Julia Gillard
Julia Gillard
Julia Eileen Gillard is the 27th and current Prime Minister of Australia, in office since June 2010.Gillard was born in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales and migrated with her family to Adelaide, Australia in 1966, attending Mitcham Demonstration School and Unley High School. In 1982 Gillard moved...
has come under widespread condemnation and a backlash within her own party for failing to support Assange after calling the leaks "an illegal act" and suggesting that his Australian passport should be cancelled. Hundreds of lawyers, academics and journalists came forward in his support with Attorney-General Robert McClelland
Robert McClelland (Australian politician)
Robert Bruce McClelland is the Attorney-General of Australia. He has been an Australian Labor Party member of theAustralian House of Representatives since March 1996, representing the Division of Barton, New South Wales...
, unable to explain how Assange had broken Australian law. Opposition Legal Affairs spokesman, Senator George Brandis
George Brandis
George Henry Brandis, SC , Australian politician, has been a Liberal member of the Australian Senate representing Queensland since May 2000.-Education & Early Career:...
, a Queen's Counsel
Queen's Counsel
Queen's Counsel , known as King's Counsel during the reign of a male sovereign, are lawyers appointed by letters patent to be one of Her [or His] Majesty's Counsel learned in the law...
, accused Gillard of being "clumsy" with her language, stating, "As far as I can see, he (Assange) hasn't broken any Australian law, nor does it appear he has broken any American laws." Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd
Kevin Rudd
Kevin Michael Rudd is an Australian politician who was the 26th Prime Minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010. He has been Minister for Foreign Affairs since 2010...
, who supports Assange, stated that any decision to cancel the passport would be his, not Gillard's. Queen's Counsel Peter Faris
Peter Faris
George Peter Faris, QC is a criminal lawyer, media commentator and former radio broadcaster in Melbourne, Australia.He commenced practice as a solicitor in 1963 under the tutelage of the Australian defence lawyer Frank Galbally...
, who acted for Assange in a hacking case 15 years ago, said that the motives of Swedish authorities in seeking Assange's extradition for alleged sex offences are suspect: "You have to say: why are they [Sweden] pursuing it? It's pretty obvious that if it was Bill Bloggs
John Q. Public
John Q. Public is a generic name in the United States to denote a hypothetical member of society deemed a "common man." He is presumed to represent the randomly selected "man on the street."...
, they wouldn't be going to the trouble." Following the Swedish Embassy issuing of a "prepared and unconvincing reply" in response to letters of protest, Gillard was called on to send a message to Sweden "querying the way charges were laid, investigated and dropped, only to be picked up again by a different prosecutor."
On 10 December 2010, over five hundred people rallied outside Sydney Town Hall
Sydney Town Hall
The Sydney Town Hall is a landmark sandstone building located in the heart of Sydney. It stands opposite the Queen Victoria Building and alongside St Andrew's Cathedral...
and about three hundred and fifty people gathered in Brisbane where Assange's lawyer, Rob Stary, criticised Julia Gillard's position, telling the rally that the Australian government was a "sycophant" of the U.S. A petition circulated by GetUp!, who have placed full page ads in support of Assange in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and The Washington Times
The Washington Times
The Washington Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and until 2010 was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the...
, received more than signatures.
Awards
He won the 2009 Amnesty International UK Media Award (New Media)Amnesty International UK Media Awards
The Amnesty International Media Awards are a set of awards for human rights journalism awarded annually by the UK section of Amnesty International...
, for exposing extrajudicial assassinations in Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
by distributing and publicizing the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights
Kenya National Commission on Human Rights
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights is an autonomous national human rights institution established by a Kenyan Act of Parliament in 2002. KNCHR became operational in July 2003...
(KNCHR)'s investigation The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances. Accepting the award, Assange said, "It is a reflection of the courage and strength of Kenyan civil society that this injustice was documented."
In 2010, Assange was awarded the Sam Adams Award
Sam Adams Award
The Sam Adams Award is given annually by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, a group of retired CIA officers, to an intelligence professional who has taken a stand for integrity and ethics. It is named after Samuel A. Adams, a CIA whistleblower during the Vietnam War, and takes...
, Readers' Choice in TIME magazine's Person of the Year poll, and runner-up for Person of the Year. In April 2011 he was listed on the Time 100
Time 100
Time 100 is an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, as assembled by Time. First published in 1999 as a result of a debate among several academics, the list has become an annual event.-History and format:...
list of most influential people. An informal poll of editors at Postmedia Network
Postmedia Network
Postmedia Network Canada Corp. is a Canadian media company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, consisting of the publishing properties of the former Canwest, with primary operations in newspaper publishing, news gathering and Internet operations....
named him the top newsmaker for the year after six out of 10 felt Assange had "affected profoundly how information is seen and delivered".
Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
, one of the five publications to cooperate with WikiLeaks' publication of the recent document leaks, named him person of the year with fifty six percent of the votes in their online poll.
In February 2011, it was announced that Assange had been awarded the Sydney Peace Foundation gold medal by the Sydney Peace Foundation of the University of Sydney
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
for his "exceptional courage and initiative in pursuit of human rights." There have been four recipients of the award in the foundation's fourteen year history: Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
; the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso; Daisaku Ikeda
Daisaku Ikeda
is president of Sōka Gakkai International , a Nichiren Buddhist lay association which claims 12 million members in 192 countries and territories, and founder of several educational, cultural and peace research institutions.-Life and establishment of SGI:...
; and Assange.
In June 2011, Assange was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism
Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism
The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, named for the renowned war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn, was established in 1999 by the Martha Gellhorn Trust. It is founded on the following principles:...
. The prize is awarded on an annual basis to journalists "whose work has penetrated the established version of events and told an unpalatable truth that exposes establishment propaganda, or 'official drivel'". The judges said, "WikiLeaks has been portrayed as a phenomenon of the hi-tech age, which it is. But it's much more. Its goal of justice through transparency is in the oldest and finest tradition of journalism."
Allegations of sexual molestation
On 20 August 2010, Swedish police began an investigation into allegations concerning Assange's behaviour in separate sexual encounters involving two different women. Assange has said allegations of wrongdoing are "without basis", describing all the sexual encounters as consensual. In December 2010, Assange, then in Britain, learned that the Swedish authorities had issued a European Arrest WarrantEuropean Arrest Warrant
The European Arrest Warrant is an arrest warrant valid throughout all member states of the European Union . Once issued by a member state, it requires the receiving member state to arrest and transfer a criminal suspect or sentenced person to the issuing state so that the person can be put on...
(EAW) to extradite him to Sweden for questioning.
An extradition hearing took place on 7–8 and 11 February 2011 before the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court
City of Westminster Magistrates' Court
The City of Westminster Magistrates' Court was a magistrates' court located at 70 Horseferry Road, in the City of Westminster, London. It was originally called Horseferry Road Magistrates' Court, after Horseferry Road where it was sited,. However, it was renamed in July 2006 following the closure...
when the extradition warrant was upheld.
On 2 March 2011, his lawyers lodged papers at the London High Court
High Court of Justice
The High Court of Justice is, together with the Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, one of the Senior Courts of England and Wales...
to challenge the ruling to extradite Assange to Sweden. Assange remains on conditional bail. After a hearing on 12 and 13 July 2011, the High Court deferred its decision, and on
2 November 2011, dismissed Assange's appeal. Assange is seeking permission to appeal to the UK Supreme Court and a decision is expected on 5 December.
Residency
Though an Australian citizen, Assange has not lived in Australia since leaving after beginning work on WikiLeaks. He did have a permanent address for several years, and lived for periods in Australia, Kenya, Tanzania and Germany, and began renting a house in Iceland on 30 March 2010, from which he and other activists, including Birgitta JónsdóttirBirgitta Jónsdóttir
Birgitta Jónsdóttir is a member of parliament of Althing, the Icelandic parliament, formerly representing the Citizens' Movement, but now representing The Movement. Her district is the Reykjavík South Constituency. She was elected to the Icelandic parliament in April 2009 on behalf of a movement...
, worked on the 'Collateral Murder' video.
For much of 2010, he was traveling around Europe, including the United Kingdom, Iceland, Sweden, and Austria. On 4 November 2010, Assange told Swiss public television TSR
Télévision Suisse Romande
Télévision Suisse Romande is a TV network with 2 channels: TSR 1 and TSR 2. They are the main French language channels in Switzerland, part of SRG SSR idée suisse...
that he was seriously considering seeking political asylum in neutral Switzerland and moving the operation of the WikiLeaks foundation there. In December 2010, it was reported that U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland Donald S. Beyer
Don Beyer
Donald Sternoff "Don" Beyer, Jr. is the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein. In addition, he owns automobile dealerships in Virginia, and has a long record involved in community, political and philanthropic work....
had warned the Swiss government against offering asylum to Assange citing the arrest warrant issued by Interpol.
In late November 2010, Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas of Ecuador spoke about giving 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 may benefit from initiating a dialogue with Assange. Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño stated on 30 November that the residency application would "have to be studied from the legal and diplomatic perspective". A few hours later, President Rafael Correa
Rafael Correa
Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado born is the President of the Republic of Ecuador and was the president pro tempore of the Union of South American Nations. An economist educated in Ecuador, Belgium and the United States, he was elected President in late 2006 and took office in January 2007...
stated that WikiLeaks "committed an error by breaking the laws of the United States and leaking this type of information... no official offer was [ever] made." Correa noted that Lucas was speaking "on his own behalf"; additionally, he will launch an investigation into possible ramifications Ecuador would suffer from the release of the cables.
In a hearing at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court
City of Westminster Magistrates' Court
The City of Westminster Magistrates' Court was a magistrates' court located at 70 Horseferry Road, in the City of Westminster, London. It was originally called Horseferry Road Magistrates' Court, after Horseferry Road where it was sited,. However, it was renamed in July 2006 following the closure...
on 7 December 2010, Assange identified a post office box
Post Office box
A post-office box or Post Office box is a uniquely addressable lockable box located on the premises of a post office station....
as his address. When told by the judge that this information was not acceptable, he submitted "Parkville, Victoria
Parkville, Victoria
Parkville is an inner city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3 km north from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Melbourne. At the 2006 Census, the population was 4,980....
, Australia" on a sheet of paper. His lack of permanent address and nomadic lifestyle were cited by the judge as factors in denying bail. He was ultimately released, in part because journalist Vaughan Smith
Vaughan Smith
During the 90s Smith also ran Frontline News TV, an agency set up in 1989 to represent the interests of young video journalists who wanted to push the envelope of their profession. The workings of Frontline News TV captured the imagination of a generation of young freelancers and was described by...
offered to provide Assange with an address for bail during the extradition proceedings, Smith's Norfolk mansion, Ellingham Hall
Ellingham Hall, Norfolk
-External links:* *...
.
Political and economic views
According to Assange, "It’s not correct to put me in any one philosophical or economic camp, because I’ve learned from many. But one is American libertarianism, market libertarianism. So as far as markets are concerned I’m a libertarian, but I have enough expertise in politics and history to understand that a free market ends up as monopoly unless you force them to be free."Works
- State and Terrorist Conspiracies (2006)
- Conspiracy as Governance (2006)
- The Hidden Curse of Thomas Paine (2008)
External links
- home page on Julian Assange's web site iq.org (at the Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
) - Profile: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at BBC NewsBBC NewsBBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
- Interview with Julian Assange on release of Afghan war files – 1 August 2010 Russia TodayRussia TodayRussia Today may refer to:* Russia Today, an English language 24-hour television news channel from Russia. It was launched in 2005 and is not related to an online news service of the similar name operated by EIN News...
via YouTube - Frost Over the World – Julian Assange – December 2010. Al Jazeera English via You tube
- Julian Assange interviewed by John PilgerJohn PilgerJohn Richard Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary maker, based in London. He has twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries have received academy awards in Britain and the US....
on New StatesmanNew StatesmanNew Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
January 2011 - Julian Assange: The "60 Minutes" Interview interviewed by Steve KroftSteve KroftSteve Kroft is an American journalist and a longtime correspondent for 60 Minutes. His investigative reporting has garnered him much acclaim, including three Peabody Awards and nine Emmy awards, one of which was an Emmy for Lifetime Achievement.-Early life:Born on August 22, 1945 in Kokomo,...
on 60 Minutes60 Minutes60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
January 2011. - Interview Julian Assange. Frontline. 4 April 2011.