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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.
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.
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!
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.