Julian Assange - WikiLeaks (22 page)

Light ‘em all up.
Come on, fire!

Come on!

All right. There were uh approximately four to five individuals in that truck, so I'm counting about twelve of fifteen.

Julian Assange, in good company, at the Hack In The Box (HITB) conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 2009.

Rickard Falkvinge, head of Sweden's political Pirate Party.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, former WikiLeaks/Assange collaborator, at the Chaos Computer Club conference in Berlin. December 29, 2010.

Jacob Appelbaum was a passionate man. He was not the nerd you'd picture in his basement, glued to his computer. He was a hacker, photographer, activist and security specialist for NGOs. He liked motorcycles, documentaries, traveling, robotics, scuba diving, piloting and writing. He was interested in the world and wanted to change it however he could.

Almost thirty years of age, he still has the air of a street kid: anarchist, raised by an addict father, left by a schizophrenic mother and molested by his entire family at a very young age.

Appelbaum dropped out of school, taught himself the finer points of code and developed a healthy dose of paranoia along the way. As a programmer and hacker he felt that the world as not a lost place. The Internet was his reason to live.

He lived on very little. His San Francisco apartment had very little furniture: a couch, a chair and a table. His travel pictures covered the walls of his office and in a corner there were small sandwich bags full of currency from the countries he had visited. He was a global citizen.

Appelbaum was like Julian's double. “I want to be left alone as much as possible. I don't want a data trail to tell a story that isn't
true.” He added: “You won't find anything about my childhood online.”

Appelbaum explained that they had transferred their most intimate information like bank accounts, e-mails, photographs, phone conversations, medical records to digital networks, trusting that it was all locked away in some secret crypt. He knew that this information wasn't really protected, because he could find it.

An extremely talented hacker, he could potentially access almost every computer network in the world. He had decided to dedicate his life to protecting people's private lives.

Appelbaum had traveled around the world to teach political dissidents, human rights activists and other ‘ghosts' how to use the Tor program and become anonymous on the Internet to those who would like to stop them from carrying out their actions.

Jacob considered himself an advocate of freedom of expression: “The only way we'll make progress in the human race is if we have dialogue,” he said. “Everyone should honor the United Nations human rights charter that says access to freedom of speech is a universal right. Anonymous communication is a good way for this to happen. Tor is just an implementation that helps spread that idea.”

By distributing Tor around the world, Appelbaum didn't distinguish between good guys and bad guys: “I don't know the difference between one theocracy or another in Iran. What's important to me is that people have communication free from surveillance. Tor shouldn't be thought of as subversive. It should be thought of as a necessity. Everyone everywhere should be able to speak and read and form his or her own beliefs without being monitored. It should get to a point where Tor is not a threat but is relied upon by all levels of society. When that happens, we win.”

Just like Julian, Jacob was a man who did exactly what he said. Beyond nice words, he worked hard to make a difference in the world. He chose to remain anonymous and knew to whom and how to provide information about himself. If during his travels his computer stayed out of his sight for too long, he would destroy it and throw it away. Someone could have bugged it, so he couldn't be too careful. His measures were radical, but anonymity was very difficult to keep when you were in this deep.

In July 2010, shortly before WikiLeaks released the classified Afghanistan war documents, Julian was scheduled to give the keynote speech at Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) in a major New York hotel. Federal agents were spotted in the audience, presumably waiting for Julian to appear. The lights of the auditorium went out so that the speaker could come on stage. A man entered, wearing a black hoodie. The drama was deliberate; the lights were turned on just as the man uncovered his face. To everyone's surprise, it wasn't Julian: it was Jacob Appelbaum.

“Hello to all my friends and fans in domestic and international surveillance. I am here today because I believe we can make a better world. Julian, unfortunately, can't make it, because we don't live in that better world right now, because we haven't yet made it. I wanted to make a little declaration for the federal agents that are standing in the back of the room and the ones that are standing in the front of the room, and to be very clear about this: I have, on me, in my pocket, some money, the Bill of Rights and a driver's license, and that's it. I have no computer system, I have no telephone, I have no keys, no access to anything. There's absolutely no reason that you should arrest me or bother me. And just in case you were wondering, I'm an American, born and raised, who's unhappy. I'm unhappy with how things are going.”
He paused, interrupted by thundering applause. “To quote from
Tron
³³
,
I fight for the user.”

He went on to talk about WikiLeaks, their need for volunteers and the interest in the cause. When the lights went out, he put his hoodie back on and left the auditorium, escorted by volunteers. The group headed to the hotel lobby. The hooded man later uncovered himself. It was not Jacob Appelbaum, but another young man. The real Appelbaum had slipped away backstage and left the hotel through a security door. He was already on his way to the airport to catch a plane to Berlin!

Less than two weeks later, Appelbaum was arrested and detained for several hours by the authorities at Newark airport, New Jersey. In the meantime, newspapers were reporting that the documents on the war in Afghanistan ‘leaked' by WikiLeaks helped identify dozens of Afghan informants and potential defectors who were cooperating with US troops. The response of American politicians came swiftly.

Appelbaum was questioned for a few hours on his relationship with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, and on his thoughts about Iraq and Afghanistan. They confiscated his computer and three of his cell phones. Even though they threatened him with not being able to enter his own country, the investigation led nowhere and he was released.

Two days later, while he was expected to speak at a hackers conference in Las Vegas, Appelbaum was approached by two FBI agents: “We'd like to chat for a few minutes,” one of them said. “We thought you might not want to. But sometimes it's nice to have a conversation to flesh things out.”

On January 10, 2011, in Seattle, coming back from Iceland, he was arrested and, despite asking for his lawyer, he was then
searched without his consent. Next, he was interrogated on the nature of his trip to Iceland. The authorities were obviously disappointed with not having found a computer or cell phone. Appelbaum informed his friends as quickly as possible about this situation using Twitter.

According to the WikiLeaks site, Jacob Appelbaum had then become the most dangerous man after Julian Assange. Although he was the only known WikiLeaks activist, he was surely not working alone on this sizable site. Targets were being unmasked one after the other. How many more have succeeded in hiding in order to continue their action thanks to such an intricate and perfect knowledge of the Internet?

Since 1996, cryptome.org had been broadcasting documents prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance – open, secret and classified documents – but not limited to those
³⁴
.

This American based site was structured with distant mirror sites in order to deal with attacks and guarantee online availability. The archive was accessible by donation as a DVD. The site was free and financed by funds and donations, and was considered the Godfather of whistleblower sites.