Was Julian Assange Involved With Wiretapping Iceland's Parliament?

An anonymous reader writes "Wired reports that the chat logs between Bradley Manning and Julian Assange that were used as evidence in Manning's trial have made it onto the web, at least briefly. One of those logs contained something very interesting on page 4, which was picked up on by the News of Iceland, which reports, '"Jesus Christ. I think that we have recordings of all phone calls to and from the Icelandic parliament during the past four months". This text can be found in documents that the US military published on its website and is said to be part of the conversations between Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. According to the documents, Assange claims to have phone call recordings from Althingi, the Icelandic parliament, but this is the first time that the existence of such data is mentioned publicly. ... According to Icelandic laws, it is required to inform the person you are speaking with if the phone call is being recorded. Given that the parliament is not violating laws it is clear that Assange or his associates would have to have installed recording devices or wiretaps in the parliament.' — What makes it even more interesting is that Wired also reports in this recent story: Someone's Been Siphoning Data Through a Huge Security Hole in the Internet."

Comments

Assange said he likes crushing bastards

[cold fjord]

Unfortunately I think most of us are bastards to him.

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Re:Assange said he likes crushing bastards

[cold fjord]

So you're saying the people that know Julian don't know Julian? Sounds like more FUD to me.

Re:Assange said he likes crushing bastards

[cold fjord]

For most of the stories about Assange and Wikileaks on Slashdot you can generally count on two things: massive praise for both, and heavy down mods for any criticism of them. It doesn't matter if they are verifiably true or personal opinions, down they go, -1. Assange effectively has his own cult of personality that will defend him no matter what. I have little doubt that will be true even if he is eventually convicted of rape.

I don't claim that what I post is, to use your phrase, "everything that person is." But there are serious issues, and serious criticisms regarding Wikileaks from serious people. They are worth considering to balance out the praise and defense that is all but guaranteed to come from others. And how many of the Assange / Wikileaks fans are going to offer any criticism at all? Precious few.

As far as I go, it seems to me you are at best the pot calling the kettle black. I don't see you really adopting a balanced criticism of me. Shall I say that is your usual modus operandi? That you are a troll?

Rest easy though, the moderators will almost certainly be gentle with you. You come to defend Julian, not to criticize him. But frankly, your criticism in this case has little credibility with me. I've seen the pattern these discussions take all too often. It is already occurring - the head of this thread is -1. No surprise, the pattern is well established. Criticize Assange at your peril.

Let us close with this piece of wisdom for Julian: " A reporter worried that Assange would risk killing Afghans who had co-operated with American forces if he put US secrets online without taking the basic precaution of removing their names. "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it.""

You better hope you never come between him and his goal, or he'll take pleasure in crushing you.

Re:The conclusion is not clear to me

[cold fjord]

You seem to be insinuating that Julian Assange is either an asset of, or associates with, one or more intelligence agencies. But a TLA is a bit restrictive, don't you think? It seems unlikely that it would be CIA or NSA since he has directed a great deal of his attention on the US. Maybe FSB or some other foreign agency? Or maybe he's gone SPECTRE. Or were you thinking something else?

Re:Install wiretaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Assange doesn't publish things that aren't critical of the USA, so we can conclude that it was probably someone else that did it and he didn't give a fuck.The whole organization went down the toilet when it stopped being a wiki. They should have dumped Assange when it became clear that he was an Kim Dotcom-grade attention whore and focused on the actual leaks. Then maybe they wouldn't just send gigabytes of raw leaks to bad journalists and trust that they'll be careful with the source's identity, and Manning wouldn't have had is life ruined.

That rant complete, this article is complete nonsense full of logical fallacies and leaps of faith. How did they get from "Wikileaks claims to have some logs of an event" to "Assange did it!"? I've seen better journalism in the tabloids that fill the racks in a grocery store check out line. I'll make a counter claim that God did it and a disillusioned angel sent the leak in.