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Ecuador Jails Swedish Programmer Over Alleged Ties To WikiLeaks (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian: A judge in Ecuador has jailed a Swedish software developer whom authorities believe is a key member of WikiLeaks and close to Julian Assange, while prosecutors investigate charging him with hacking as part of an alleged plot to "destabilise" the country's government. Ola Bini, 36, was ordered to held in preventive detention on Saturday pending possible cyber-attack charges and his bank accounts were frozen. Prosecutors were examining dozens of hard drives and other material he had in his possession, according to local media reports...

On Thursday, Ecuador's interior minister, Maria Paula Romo, said they had identified a "key member of WikiLeaks" who was "close to Mr Julian Assange". Secret visitors' logs seen by the Guardian show that Bini was one of Assange's many visitors in Ecuador's embassy in Knightsbridge, west London.... Speaking to local media on Thursday, Romo said Ecuador was at risk of cyber attack, hinting Wikileaks could retaliate for the termination of Assange's asylum. She added the government did not want the country "to turn into an international [cyber] piracy centre"...

Last week, the government of president Lenin Moreno, 66, accused WikiLeaks of being involved in a campaign implicating Moreno and his family in corruption. Moreno, who has long expressed his unhappiness over Assange's asylum status, complained that "photos of my bedroom, what I eat and how my wife and daughters and friends dance" had been circulating on social media.

23 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Value for the dollar! by houstonbofh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Boy, when Ecuador is bought, they sure go all in! The dollar really does go a long way there... And $4.2 of them even longer!

    1. Re:Value for the dollar! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Next up: Ola Bini smells of Scandinavian fermented fish and tortures cute endangered animals in his basement.

    2. Re: Value for the dollar! by JonnyCalcutta · · Score: 1

      It's all one he'll of a coincidence.

    3. Re: Value for the dollar! by JonnyCalcutta · · Score: 1

      Hell, godammit!

    4. Re:Value for the dollar! by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      "The dollar really does go a long way there"

      The US dollar is literally their legal tender.

    5. Re: Value for the dollar! by astrofurter · · Score: 2

      I'm really not convinced Ecuadorian President Moreno was bought. He seems like a pretty traditional upper class, anti-worker Latin American politician. No need to take bribes - he and is family and friends directly benefit from every public policy that kicks the poor or gives a government handout to the super rich. Standard issue banana republic capitalist dog.

    6. Re: Value for the dollar! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No need to take bribes

      People who take bribes seldom do.

      The whole "it's harder to bribe rich" people is a myth.
      It has nothing to do with your financial situation and only to do with your morals.

      At most rich people will be more expensive to bribe, but when it comes to politics the value you get from bribing someone tends to become astronomical pretty quickly.
      Say that you want to start a mining operation in a natural preservation area. You can possible make billions from it, so a $100 million bribe isn't really something you can't afford and you can buy the President of the United States for a tenth of that.

      One can even argue that honest people won't get really rich, so it will be easier to bribe rich people.

  2. Teh hacker guilty is... by 3seas · · Score: 1

    ...Moreno himself. Isn't it obvious?

  3. Re:Probable being tortured right now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Once Assange admits that the DNC leaks came from Seth Rich it's game over for the Dems. Only the most goofey NPC could keep supporting them after that...

  4. "Secret visitors' logs seen by the Guardian" by bug1 · · Score: 1

    And how did they obtain these secret visitor logs ?

    They must be teh haxors !!! (surely not a leak)

    The guardian used to be a reputable media outlet, now they collaborate with sources hostile to society to disseminate propaganda.

    1. Re:"Secret visitors' logs seen by the Guardian" by evanh · · Score: 1

      The phrase will mean the logs are secret for the visitation only, as in a hidden camera scenario. Revealed after the recording is made.

      Ecuador will be spilling everything it has and spinning a yarn to go with it.

  5. Not a coincidence by XXongo · · Score: 1

    Not a coincidence, I think. One reason that Ecuador revoked Assange's asylum was that he was accused of leaking hacked information about Ecuadorian politicians.

  6. Deadman's switch? by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 2

    A commentor on a different blog (that I can't find ATM) stated that he knew from inside knowledge that Julian has a "dead-man's switch" to be triggered if he's ever arrested, with damaging information on Ecuador.

    He also stated that the recent arrest definitely triggered the switch, and we should expect some interesting wikileaks drops in the next week or so.

    (Wikileaks takes care to verify it's information, which usually takes a couple of days. For example, it verifies the encryption signatures of E-mails. Also, it scans and removes information that might get someone killed(*)).

    Ecuador is in a panic right now, expecting to be fatally hacked. This might be, and the character assassination might be, damage control right before getting pwned.

    Take this with a grain of salt, but it's not unreasonable to wait a week and see if Julian cleaned up and with a shave talks reasonable at a press conference, or if Ecuador is exposed for doing some nasty shit.

    (*) Note that the "people were killed" thing from the "collateral murder" drop was done by accident by a Guardian reporter, not Wiklileaks. Also, it was just John McCain spouting off crap about something he didn't like.

    1. Re:Deadman's switch? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

      [Wikileaks] scans and removes information that might get someone killed

      since when?! they dumped all quarter million pages of the Iraq stuff completely unredacted.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    2. Re:Deadman's switch? by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      So what you're saying is that Assange selectively releases information depending on what is personally beneficial and who he is and is not allied with?

    3. Re:Deadman's switch? by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      it's not unreasonable to wait a week and see if Julian cleaned up and with a shave talks reasonable at a press conference

      That seems unlikely. He's not going to be treated well.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    4. Re: Deadman's switch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Since forever and even after they were deprived of donations by the US illegal pressure on international payment providers and cooperation with the "free journalism". You can only do so much with a few good employees.

      Be that as it may, I still have to see a verifiable story of someone killed because of a wiki leak.

    5. Re: Deadman's switch? by Vintermann · · Score: 2

      No, Guardian's David Leigh did, by foolishly releasing the password to an archive that had been entrusted to him precisely to do "responsible" redactions.

      WikiLeaks then decided that since all the spy agencies, big boys etc. anyone with a budget basically, now had access to it, the rest of us should as well.

      --
      xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
  7. And he's also a retroactive rapist. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Next up, women who formerly fucked Ola Bini now regret their decision and claim he retroactively raped them. Also, underage girls claim he raped them too. And the gov will find child porn on every hard drive they inspect... and there's no evidence someone like NSA planted it there.

    Or some such crap. Anything to dehumanize a target of political suppression. The political stage is just a Clown World at this point. We should all just hold a vote of no confidence in all governments, fire everyone and hire a new batch of mossad compromised pedophiles. Can't really be worse than the current crop.

  8. Not in panic. by Ecuador · · Score: 1

    I can't say I am in any sort of panic right now. And what do you mean "fatally hacked"? You can only fatally hack an android or at least someone with a pacemaker...

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
  9. Link for you by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 1

    Here's a link for you.

  10. Guilty for associating with journalists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's clear that the country most hostile to exposing journalism and press freedom is good old America itself who always tauts its "freedom and democracy". And now the corrupt psychopaths and war criminals are going after anyone they can to send the message: don't talk about our war crimes, or we put you in prison for life.

    What a dishonest piece of shit country America has turned into.

  11. False flag? by MrL0G1C · · Score: 1

    Cui bono.

    --
    Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.