JULIAN ASSANGE; the man who is every government’s nightmare

Julian Assange; the man who is every government’s nightmare

Wikileaks’ director and editor-in-chief has been an international topic of discussion for information published on his website and is a wanted man by Interpol in connection with a sex crime investigation. Jacobs Seaman Odongo compiled information about him.

The thing with this 39-year-old Australian born man is not the obvious that the world has been chiming out to—hacking secret codes. No, not even his intrepid and profound belief in fighting injustice in society in whatever form, nor is it his blonde locks. It is rather his rare species.

While species like serial killers start their villainy by torturing small animals before they graduate to killing humans, Julian Paul Assange started serious computer hacking in 1987, aged 16. He and two other hackers joined to form a group which they named the International Subversives. Assange wrote down the early rules of the subculture: “Don’t damage computer systems you break into; don’t change the information in those systems (except for altering logs to cover your tracks); and share information”.

So sleek for a 16-year-old at a time when the Internet was just gaining its global footing. But not as sleek as when it comes to covering his tracks. When the police sought to arrest his gang for hacking into computers, Assange pulled out an even bigger move; he started tracking down the movement of his pursuers using a more intricate system than the authorities were using.

Since his early 20s, he has been using network technology to prod and probe the vulnerable edges of administrative systems. This obsession with computers led to the founding of the controversial WikiLeaks website in 2006. “…to radically shift regime behaviour we must think clearly and boldly, for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed,” he expounded on the philosophy behind the website. “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.”

As the site gained notoriety for leaking secret government and diplomatic documents, Assange wrote on his blog, “The more secretive or unjust an organisation is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie.” But this did not stop name-calling from lashing in on his person. To his fans, he is a valiant champion of truth. To his critics, he has become the face of a creature that, simply, many powerful organisations would rather see the world rid of. They see him as an attention seeker who is inconsiderate to humanity. They call him a computer hacker—a criminal spy.

In response he said, “It’s a bit annoying, actually. Because I co-wrote a book about being a hacker, people talk about that a lot. They can cut and paste. But that was 20 years ago. It’s very annoying to see modern day articles calling me a computer hacker. I’m not ashamed of it, I’m quite proud of it. But I understand the reason they suggest I’m a computer hacker now. There’s a very specific reason.”

Since its inception as a kind of Wikipedia for secret government documents, WikiLeaks has gone from a relatively unknown Internet troublemaker to an influential web insurgency, with a loosely affiliated group of thousands of volunteers led by an advisory board with the ability to command the attention of a dedicated, 120-member response team in the Pentagon.

The identities of WikiLeaks’ employees, volunteers and sources remains almost entirely unknown, yet the authentic, often classified documents released through the site have provoked responses from the highest levels of the US government.

This year, WikiLeaks’ influence has reached a crescendo following three major releases: a video of a US helicopter’s fatal attack on a Reuters journalist in Iraq, a trove of more than 70,000 US military reports from Afghanistan and, most recently, another batch of US military documents from Iraq totalling nearly 400,000 in all - the largest leak of US government material in history. With that newfound fame—or infamy, depending on your perspective—has come controversy.

On November 28, 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing more than 251,000 American diplomatic cables, mostly unclassified but including many labelled “classified” or “secret”. On November 30, 2010, Interpol placed Assange on its red notice list of wanted persons.

The US launched a criminal investigation related to the leak of US government information by Assange and WikiLeaks on November 29. US prosecutors are reportedly preparing charges against Assange under the Espionage Act. Assange now faces charges of rape and molestation in Sweden, where his application for permanent residency has been rejected.

But whether he can be caught remains to be seen, for Assange has been as dicer about his public life as how he hacks or acquires secret documents is. To escape arrest for hacking into a university computer system in 1991, Assange devised an intricate system of tracking down the police movement to evade them. His luck, though, later ran out and he was caught and fined after the judge felt there was no crime other than surfing the content of the system.

Assange was born in Townsville, Australia, and spent much of his youth living on Magnetic Island. His parents ran a touring theatre company. In 1979, his mother, Christine, remarried. The couple had a son, but broke up in 1982 and engaged in a custody struggle for Assange’s half-brother. His mother then took both children into hiding for the next five years. Assange moved several dozen times during his childhood, attending many schools, sometimes being home schooled, and later attending several universities at various times in Australia.

In 1989, Assange started living with his girlfriend and soon they had a son. She separated from him after the 1991 police raid and took their son. In 1993, Assange started one of the first ISPs in Australia, known as “Suburbia”. He later co-wrote a book, Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier (1997), with Suelette Dreyfus, in which he is credited as a researcher and reports his history with International Subversives.

Assange has reportedly attended six universities. From 2003 to 2006, he studied physics and mathematics at the University of Melbourne. On his personal web page, he described having represented his university at the Australian National Physics Competition around 2005. He has also studied philosophy and neuroscience. He says he advocates for 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.” He was the winner of the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award (New Media), awarded for exposing extrajudicial assassinations in Kenya with the investigation The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances.

In accepting the award, he said: “It is a reflection of the courage and strength of Kenyan civil society that this injustice was documented. Through the tremendous work of organisations such as the Oscar foundation, the KNHCR, Mars Group Kenya and others we had the primary support we needed to expose these murders to the world.”
He also won the 2008 Economist Index on Censorship Award. He was awarded the 2010 Sam Adams Award by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence. In September 2010, Assange was voted as number 23 among the The World’s 50 Most Influential Figures 2010 by the British magazine New Statesman.

In their November/December issue, Utne Reader magazine named Assange as one of the 25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World. On November 12, he was leading in the poll for Time magazine’s “Person of the Year, 2010. Whether the charges the Pentagon are preferring against Assange can hold out, remains to be seen.

Source: The Monitor, Posted Monday, December 6 2010 at 00:00

Author: Jacobs Seaman Odongo  (email the author)