Slashdot Mirror
Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Has Passport Confiscated
Taco Cowboy writes "The Australian founder of the whistleblower website Wikileaks had his passport confiscated by police when he arrived in Melbourne last week. While Assange has made himself particularly unpopular with the US military by publishing video of attacks on civilians in Iraq, he's been something of a thorn in the side for the Australian government too. Last year, Wikileaks published a list of websites which were to be banned under the government's proposed Internet filter. While the aim of the filter is to block extreme pornography and the like, the blacklist included a number of more prosaic sites such as those of a travel company and a dentist.
Mod parent up. This is a ~complete non-story~. Same thing happened to me a few years ago with my old and tatty passport. They routinely do this for damaged passports (for various reasons, the primary one being they don't go through the auto passport readers so well). They'll also do this for passports with 6 months validity on them when you enter (most countries do this). The only 'unusual' thing here is that it happened to someone in the public spotlight.
The TFA also includes a massive non-sequitur, mentioning an unrelated case (that was dropped by the AFP) that has nothing whatsoever to do with the passport issue. I doubt the immigration officer concerned even knew who he was.
Can't believe this actually made the Slashdot front page.
I remember a time when Americans would be bothered by being detained by any government official for more than 0 minutes. Looks like consent's been well manufactured in you.
It's unfortunate that you expected better treatment because of your license plate/looks, and not because _nobody_ should by treated like that without strong probable cause or preferably a warrant.