Julian Assange - WikiLeaks (20 page)
Read Julian Assange - WikiLeaks Online
Authors: Sophie Radermecker
His message, the work already accomplished by the organization, and his particular style made Julian one of the major media personalities of 2010.
Forbes
called him one of the most powerful people on the planet, while
Time
magazine elected him Person of the Year. The US government, very irritated by the film and everything that ensued, made him Public Enemy No. 1: A cyber terrorist!
For Rop, all the days spent around
Collateral Murder
are like a storm that transformed into a cyclone. First the raw material, the images, editing, and managing the team in a small Icelandic
house. It then took courage to finish the job, face powerful authorities, which all attracted lightning. Even as a close observer, these were trying times for Rop. He had seen the crossing of the threshold into the other world, but didn't want to press on, and went back to the reality of voting system. He remained available for WikiLeaks if they needed him, but nobody called. In fact, he was afraid of the future he saw before him. Courage wasn't always contagious! He didn't want to permanently live out of a backpack, traveling the world. Anyways, Julian's style and soft voice had more of a media impact. They were both in the same fight, but Julian was more magnetic. He was made to be seen and be part of the world's great men. Julian had what it took to face the gods of the world he had angered.
Prophet of journalism and truth, Julian was unmasked. Everything had been there since the beginning in his blog, IQ
Isaac Quest
, the one who was ready to be sacrificed for a greater cause. At the end of 2010, that was actually the case.
For a long time now, the freedom of the Internet has worried him. Governments have waited for a man to sacrifice in order to regulate this Internet force that expresses individuality. Julian came, and the fight began. The underworld has broken loose. The Anonymous group, black belts of the IT world, carry out actions in favor of WikiLeaks to safeguard the sharing of knowledge.
A F
RIEND
W
HO
W
ISHES
Y
OU
W
ELL
In August 2010, the U.S. and Australian governments put pressure on Moneybookers, an online fund transfer service similar to PayPal, to block WikiLeaks as a client. Both governments announced that they had placed the online service on a Watch List to force it to comply, taking measures against the âleaking' site.
In the past, WikiLeaks had often been faced with considerable financial difficulties. In December 2009, victim of its own success, the site saw its expenses go through the roof, while its income was stagnating. The management decided to close the site down temporarily, obliging militants to put more effort into collecting donations. At the end of May 2010, WikiLeaks collected more than EUR 570,000 (about USD 777,000) and the site opened again.
The site operated entirely on funds from private donors and quite often by accumulating small amounts from ordinary people. Donations were made through secure sites like Moneybookers, PayPal, Visa and MasterCard.
The barrage of blocked money transfers to WikiLeaks immediately threatened the site's survival. When Julian went to Switzerland for the conference presentation at the UN in November 2010,
he opened a Swiss PostFinance bank account. Back then he was thinking of asking for political asylum in said country.
Mid-November 2010, Julian left Switzerland for Great Britain to prepare the launch of the diplomatic cables and stayed there for several months.
At the beginning of December, WikiLeaks explained that Julian's defense fund, created to pay for the lawyers handling the Swedish charges against him as well as his personal assets, were frozen by the Swiss PostFinance. PostFinance took said measure when the bank discovered that Julian had given the address of his lawyers living in Geneva because he didn't have his own address in Switzerland.
The online payment sites claimed that WikiLeaks violated their terms and conditions by broadcasting stolen documents, which could potentially put other people's lives in danger. Because of these measures, the existence of the site was very quickly called into question.
As of December 7 2010, the Anonymous movement reacted by launching a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on the PayPal and MasterCard websites. The sites were unavailable for a few hours, although the underlying infrastructure for online payments wasn't affected.
Aside from physical demonstrations, Anonymous' main weapon was the DDoS: a coordinated attack aimed at crashing or rendering a computer unavailable by bombarding it with useless traffic. It was quite easy to download open-source software like LOIC, which helped target a server and flood it. The sites coordinated were passed on through Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Anyone could join an IRC-based chat room, friend or foe.
The strength of the DDoS attack was in the amount of computers sending disruptive connection demands to the target
site. If numerous computers at once were causing this âdistributed' attack on a server, a subnet or other, it would crash. On the other hand, this attack was hard to counter or avoid, given the number of computers used, and so it would inevitably spread throughout the world.
Since October 2010, and more specifically after Julian's arrest in December, Anonymous publicly declared its solidarity with the WikiLeaks network to defend the freedom of information and the spreading of leaks, as well as the existence and right of the organization to finance itself. Anonymous then declared âOperation Payback' open: several DDoS attacks were coordinated on the different sites that had originally impeded WikiLeaks and Julian.
Although Anonymous didn't have any specific links to the organization, their fight had a few similar points: Anonymous was fighting for freedom of the Internet and the free information found on it.
Anonymous was playing with fire, as their actions were considered illegal in some countries. Governments could quite easily prove that they were heading toward becoming a danger to national security.
That was why WikiLeaks had distanced itself from the Anonymous movement, without actually approving or condemning their actions. However, Anonymous had clearly declared itself in favor of the WikiLeaks organization and of its leader, Julian Assange.
A H
OLOGRAPHIC
C
OMMITTEE
Julian spent a lot of time searching for advisory board members. For WikiLeaks to be recognized as a respectable and structured global organization, they needed a board to advise the management. It was even more of an issue when an organization was unknown, its management anonymous and its mission potentially subject to criticism and attacks. Julian was looking for people to provide support and possibly advise, all the while remaining within the strict perimeter of an advisory board without being an authority on any action or content.
An ideal advisory board should combine expertise, notoriety, experience, multiculturalism and respectability. Julian sent out a lot of invitations and received some answers, although not all positive ones. He had to have a list of names to launch the site.
Here are the names that were featured:
Julian Assange:
Most information on the WikiLeaks site is difficult to verify or sometimes exaggerated like “he's the most famous âethical' Australian hacker,” a quote from
Underground
, a book he co-authored.
Tashi Namgyal Khamsitsang:
Tibetan dissident, originally exiled with the Dalai Lama in 1960, has spent thirty-five years working for the Tibetan government in exile.
Having fled Tibet at age five, he only went back forty-five years later in 2005 to visit his family and other dissidents. He's the president of the Tibetan Association of Washington. Tashi barely remembers receiving an e-mail from WikiLeaks. He was never contacted for any advice whatsoever.
Wang Youcai:
Born June 29, 1966, he's an active dissident of the Chinese democracy movement and was one of the student leaders of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. He was a graduate student of physics from Peking University when he was arrested in 1989 and sentenced in 1991 for “conspiring to overthrow the Chinese government.”
In 1998, he helped found the Chinese Democracy Party, which was banned by the Chinese government who sentenced him at the end of the same year to eleven years in prison for subversion. He was exiled in 2004 under international pressure, especially from the United States where he now lives.
Xiao Qiang:
He's the founder and Editor-in-Chief of China Digital Times, a bilingual news website on China. He's a professor at the School of Journalism and School of Information, University of California at Berkeley where he teaches digital activism and blogging.
He also became a human rights activist following the massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
The China Digital Times is supported by NED (National Endowment for Democracy), which is funded by the US State Department.
He's a commentator on Radio Free Asia, supported by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which describes itself as an organization that monitors American media abroad to ensure the credibility of the United States. Eight of the nine members of this board are appointed by the President and confirmed by the US Senate. The ninth member is the Secretary of State.
Wang Dan:
He's one of the leaders of the Chinese democracy movement after having been one of the most visible students in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Wang holds a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University.
From August 2009 to February 2010 Wang taught history at the National Chengchi University in Taiwan. He also actively promotes democracy and freedom for China. He travels the world to get support from overseas Chinese communities as well as from the public at large.
He's also part of the editorial board of
Beijing Spring
, a magazine founded by the NED.
CJ Hinke:
In the 1970s, he helped organize the pacifist movement opposed to the Vietnam War in the United States. He was arrested more than thirty-five times during civil disobedience demonstrations. He deserted and left for Canada in 1976.
Today, he's a translator, editor and bibliographer of children's books in Latin and Thai, and has been living
in Thailand since 1989. In 2006, he founded the Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) movement to campaign against pervasive censorship in Thai society. FACT is supported by American organizations and is part of Privacy International, supported by the Fund for Constitutional Government of Washington, whose member includes Steven Aftergood, also invited to join WikiLeaks' advisory board.
Chico Whitaker:
Born in Brazil in 1931, he's an architect and social activist in the Workers' Party in Brazil. He's one of the organizers of World Social Forum in Porto Alegre and executive secretary of the Brazilian Committee of Justice and Peace, a body linked to the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil. He has also been awarded the Right Livelihood Award, often referred to as the Alternative Nobel Prize.
He's also a member of the World Future Council and member of the sponsoring committee of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, founded in March 2009 to mobilize public opinion so that Member States of the United Nations may take necessary measures to arrive at a just and long-lasting settlement for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ben Laurie:
He's the Security Director at The Bunker Secure Hosting and often a member or founder of different organizations promoting open source.
Laurie laughs when telling
Mother Jones
magazine that, “WikiLeaks allegedly has an advisory board, and allegedly I'm a member of it.”
He admitted having seen Julian a few times when he was looking for advice on securing the sending of confidential documents. “He's a weird guy,” Laurie said. “He seems to be quite nomadic, and I don't know how he lives like that, to be honest. He turns up with a rucksack, and I suspect that's all he's got.”
Phillip Adams:
Australian writer, film producer, television host and radio host of
Late Night Live
on ABC for 20 years. He's written more than thirty books and films for which he has won many awards. He was named Australian Humanist of the Year in 1987. He's a member of many advisory boards, including Centre of the Mind at the University of Sydney and the Australia National University, created by Allan Snyder, a professor of neurobiology. His goal is to scientifically study the creativity and making of champions. He's also part of Australia's Commission for the Future, which makes social and political predictions.
He's a politically and socially committed artist, and a communications expert. He's also held key posts in the Australian governmental media administration. He's written for newspapers such as
The Times
,
Financial Times
and
The New York Times
. He's the representative of the International Committee of Index on Censorship, from which WikiLeaks received in 2008 the Economist Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression ward.
The most surprising is that according to an article in
The Australian
, Adams never met Julian and has never been to a meeting of the WikiLeaks advisory board.
The list on the site was the only one that boasts names of real people. It's obvious that when WikiLeaks started making headlines, some journalists were curious or simply being professional and so contacted these people. The responses from the
Mother Jones
journalist were quite surprising. Since January 2011, the list disappeared and there has been no more talk of an advisory board. Are we to assume that these people are no longer (if they ever were) tied to WikiLeaks? Why announce a list of people, if they're not clearly committed and dedicated to their role? Launching an endeavor like WikiLeaks has never been done before. It was in fact experimental, and Julian Assange and his young team had been gaining their experience on a daily basis.