Slashdot Mirror
WikiLeaks' International Man of Mystery
AcidAUS writes "The founder of WikiLeaks lives a secret life in the shadow of those who blow the whistle. Here's a detailed profile of the Australian founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, by Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald."
This is the second time I've seen Julian Assange come up in reference to the video. I wonder why he's giving all this publicity? Surely this will hamper his efforts and get him on watch lists that make it difficult for him to travel. Maybe he's succumbing to the temptation to become infamous. Or maybe he just feels this is the best way to make sure the media hangs onto this story to make sure something changes. The interesting thing is that if he is a hacker, it makes it all that more interesting about how wikileaks is getting their stuff. Is it really even being leaked?
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
He only supports Wikileaks as charity work.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
More information on Assanage the reporter doesn't know about...
Back in the early 90's, APANA, The Australian Public Access :/
Network Association, kicked 'proff' out because he was using
their network to crack into overseas systems. APANA was
threatened with disconnection because of his attempts were traced
easily. proff was already a known kook, who was attempting to
make his system 'suburbia' (later suburbia.net) a global
CyBeRpUnK HQ, his quest being to become the ULTIMATE CYBERPUNK
who could overthrow governments (sound familiar..?) When we
kicked him out, he spammed and attempted to DDoS apana.org.au.
Er ... although I certainly am opposed to any form of censorship on the Internet, I do feel obliged to point out that Mr. Evers is not Australian. His lawyer has simply informed him that because he has broken an Australian law (whether or not you agree with the appropriateness of that law, which in this case pertains to racially discriminatory language/hate speech ... conveniently omitted from what you've quoted), setting foot in Australia in the future ~may~ result in his being detained.
The same would apply to an Australian who breaks a US law (and believe me, you have your fair share of wacky laws too, including some that are very similar to the law Mr. Evans is alleged to have breached) - if they attempt to visit the US in the future they are likely to be arrested at the border. Mr. Evans may have family in Australia (as referred to in what you have quoted above), but he himself is not Australian. So the whole "he cannot return to his homeland" thing doesn't really apply.
Having said that I agree with the main anti-censorship sentiment of your post :)
You gotta hand it to the CIA. When they attack something like Wikileaks, they really take the long view.
Well, I don't see anything in the article as being particularly discrediting to Julian Assange. It appears that he has a secret past involving nomadic life and computer hacking. I don't know about the rest of you, but considering his current career pretty much consists of being constantly on the move and publish classified documents online I find that amazingly non-shocking.
Not that the CIA might not be involved in this, they might, what do I know? But if they are, they are either taking the long, long, infinity-can-be-seen-on-a-good-day-long view or are just really inept.
I am not a vegetarian werewolf.
I think the article was just trying to milk the whole wikileaks publicity train for an extra 15 minutes of fame :-)
Espionage in real life is more likely to land your backside in jail (naturally a few exceptions here and there): Back when I was working for 'them' (secret 3 letter agency) there was a guy who tried to sell a certain ELINT publication to a foreign country - as far as classified documents go, this one was (and still is) pretty damned important, with a short shelf life. Ultimately not of much interest to anyone other than the people that make use of it. What struck me as both amusing and interesting was that representatives of this particular country returned the document and helped out with the investigations. Naturally the guy is sitting in a cell. A good many classified documents and publications can sometimes (read: very rarely) be interesting, but it's often not the publication itself that is important, it's how it came to exist. Politicians are a terribly leaky bunch, but they are also usually a little smarter than they look, you rarely, virtually never, hear them talk about collection systems.
My point: throughout all of the agencies I worked for over the years, WikiLeaks was pretty low on the Radar. So low that most people, until now, had no idea it actually existed. It might be a very small PR problem every once in a while, but this little pony show you saw on CNN is about publicity just at the moment. Nothing more, nothing less. War sucks for sure, but cherry picking pieces of a story to highlight ones own agenda, that's not cool, though it probably does bring in the money, fame, hookers and whatever.
Disclaimer: I'm just one guy though, so what matters to me might not be viewed the same way by another. If you feel differently this is okay. I'm good with it. Slashdot actually gets far higher publicity than WikiLeaks anyway. Some of these 3 letter agencies may or may not have even approached Mr Taco (and others) for permission to graft certain articles along with their comments such that they are visible 'on the other side of the air gap' so to speak.
This is going back a few years, but permit me to explain the logic used:
Because the stories were being 'transplanted' from the real slashdot to some server or other 'as is', completely unmodified, everyone involved was okay with it.
Possibly I've made it sound a bit more frequent that it actually was, though the stories were usually pretty high profile in so far as they related directly to the agencies themselves along with public knowledge and perception thereof.
I would definitely give you an irony mod if such a thing existed, some people here do indeed have fame they don't realize they have.