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Ecuador Spent $5 Million Protecting and Spying On Julian Assange, Says Report (theverge.com)
Citing reports from The Guardian and Focus Ecuador, The Verge reports that Ecuador's intelligence program spent at least $5 million "on an elaborate security and surveillance network around WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange." The intelligence program was known as "Operator Hotel," which began as "Operation Guest" when Assange took refuge in Ecuador's UK embassy in 2012. From the report: Operation Hotel has allegedly covered expenses like installing CCTV cameras and hiring a security team to "secretly film and monitor all activity in the embassy," including Assange's daily activities, moods, and interactions with staff and visitors. The Guardian estimates Ecuadorian intelligence agency Senain has spent at least $5 million on Assange-related operations, based on documents they reviewed. The report details attempts to improve Assange's public image and potentially smuggle him out of the embassy if he was threatened. But it also writes that relations between Assange and Ecuador have badly deteriorated over the past several years. In 2014, Assange allegedly breached the embassy's network security, reading confidential diplomatic material and setting up his own secret communications network.
... allegedly breached the embassy's network security, reading confidential diplomatic material and setting up his own secret communications network. ...
Rough translation: Assange found that little placard with the WiFi password written on it for all to freely use, discovered an open share on one of the embassy's network-connected computers (but probably didn't find anything particularly interesting on it) and then he casually turned on his VPN to tunnel through the embassy firewall and log into Wikileaks.
It feels to me like certain high profile personalities in the media (like Assange, but certainly not limited to him) are all-too-often treated like they possess some sort of super-intelligence, and can do shockingly amazing things with computers. The reality is likely to be underwhelming most of the time, when you break down the colorful but vague terminology into layman's terms.