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.

Comments

For a Whole Fifteen Minutes

[eldavojohn]

While it was returned 15 minutes later

Man, they are brutal down in Melbourne. And from the original article linked at TG Daily:

The Age has been told that Assange's passport is classified "normal" on the immigration database, meaning the Wikileaks director can travel freely on it.

They really know how to shake people up and intimidate you. Sounds almost as bad as my trip through United States customs coming back from vacation. They abducted me for three hours as I was forced to stand in line awaiting inspection and approval. They called it standard processing but I tell you what--it was more of a death march.

Australia would have to be insane to do something like that to Assange. He would trot that out in front of the media for weeks if that was what happened. What a claim to legitimacy. And for that reason I'm guessing this is likely a natural passport process turned into a PR stunt.

Assange mentioned it in an SBS Dateline interview.

So basically Australia said, "We need to renew your overly used passport and the authorities are looking into how you got a hold of a blacklist from our government." <sarcasm>The poor man! When will the persecution stop?! The only way you can only mitigate his suffering by making a tiny donation to Wikileaks.org.</sarcasm>

Re:For a Whole Fifteen Minutes

[Rogerborg]

Well, Ghandi said it best: first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they point out that your passport has expired, then they ignore you again.

Re:For a Whole Fifteen Minutes

[Cimexus]

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.

Re:For a Whole Fifteen Minutes

[FuckingNickName]

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.

Re:For a Whole Fifteen Minutes

[Rob the Bold]

It's "Gandhi".

OK, First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they correct your spelling.

Re:For a Whole Fifteen Minutes

[psm321]

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.

Re:Assassinated

[Yamata no Orochi]

Did anyone else see "Wikileaks founder Assassinated" before taking a second look?

No, most of us can read.

Re:Absolute power

[JustOK]

AC power corrupts, then it doesn't then it does then it doesn't...