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WP:LEDE is for aspects of central importance, rm sensationalist manhunt claim - even democracy now! calls it "rumored" (see external links section), the actual facts are described more accurately below
m added sources that suggest he is being "hunted" by US gov...not sure how neutral that is 0.o, also restored part of quote
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| awards = [[Amnesty International UK Media Awards]] 2009
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'''Julian Paul Assange''' ({{IPA-en|əˈsɑːnʒ}}; born 1971) is an Australian journalist, programmer and Internet activist, best known for his involvement with [[Wikileaks]], a [[whistleblower]] website. He is currently being "hunted" by the [[US Government]].<!-- hunted isn't really neutral --><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/11/wikileaks-founder-assange-pentagon-manning|title=Pentagon hunts WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in bid to gag website | Media | The Guardian|last=McGreal|first=Chris|date=Friday 11 June 2010 19.02 BST|publisher=guardian.co.uk|accessdate=18 June 2010}}</ref><ref name="tdbmanhunt">{{cite web|url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-10/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-hunted-by-pentagon-over-massive-leak/|title=Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Hunted by Pentagon Over Massive Leak - The Daily Beast|last=Shenon|first=Philip|date=June 10, 2010 10:03pm|work=Pentagon Manhunt|publisher=The Daily Beast|accessdate=18 June 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/18/wikileaks/index.html|title=The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com|last=Greenwald|first=Glenn|date=Friday, Jun 18, 2010 08:20 ET|publisher=Salon Media Group (Salon.com)|accessdate=18 June 2010|quote="On June 10, former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, writing in The Daily Beast, gave voice to anonymous "American officials" to announce that "Pentagon investigators" were trying "to determine the whereabouts of the Australian-born founder of the secretive website Wikileaks [Julian Assange] for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security." Some news outlets used that report to declare that there was a "Pentagon manhunt" underway for Assange -- as though he's some sort of dangerous fugitive."}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/18/2930898.htm|title=Wikileaks founder fears for his life - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)|last=Lauder|first=Simon|date=Fri Jun 18, 2010 3:23pm AEST|work=[[ABC Online]]|accessdate=19 June 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/11/julian-assange-wikileaks_n_609123.html|title=Julian Assange, Wikileaks Founder, Hunted By Pentagon|last=Bosker|first=Bianca|date=06-11-10 05:22 PM|work=[[The Huffington Post]]|accessdate=19 June 2010}}</ref
'''Julian Paul Assange''' ({{IPA-en|əˈsɑːnʒ}}; born 1971) is an Australian journalist, programmer and Internet activist, best known for his involvement with [[Wikileaks]], a [[whistleblower]] website.


==Biography==
==Biography==
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<blockquote>"..any serious risk to that national security is extremely low. There may be 260,000 diplomatic cables. It’s very hard to think of any of that which could be plausibly described as a national security risk. Will it embarrass diplomatic relationships? Sure, very likely—all to the good of our democratic functioning..
<blockquote>"..any serious risk to that national security is extremely low. There may be 260,000 diplomatic cables. It’s very hard to think of any of that which could be plausibly described as a national security risk. Will it embarrass diplomatic relationships? Sure, very likely—all to the good of our democratic functioning..


<P>"[Assange is] obviously a very competent guy in many ways. I think his instincts are that most of this material deserves to be out. We are arguing over a very small fragment that doesn’t. He has not yet put out anything that hurt anybody’s national security.
<P>"[Assange is] obviously a very competent guy in many ways. I think his instincts are that most of this material deserves to be out. We are arguing over a very small fragment that doesn’t. He has not yet put out anything that hurt anybody’s national security."


<P>"..having read a hell of a lot of diplomatic cables, I would confidently make the judgment that very little, less than one percent, one percent perhaps, can honestly be said to endanger national security. That’s distinct [from the percentage that could cause] embarrassment—very serious embarrassment, [if people] realize that we are aware of highly murderous and corrupt operations by people and that we are supporting them. It is very seriously embarrassing..If the choice is between putting none of them out, as the State Department would like, and putting all of them out, I definitely feel our national security would be improved if they were put out. Between those two choices, I would rather see them all of them out. It would help understand our own foreign policy and give us the chance to improve it democratically. I hope they are out, I hope we get to see them.<ref>[http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-11/daniel-ellsberg-wikileaks-julian-assange-in-danger/2/ Daniel Ellsberg: Wikileaks' Julian Assange "in Danger" - The Daily Beast]</ref></blockquote>
<P>"..having read a hell of a lot of diplomatic cables, I would confidently make the judgment that very little, less than one percent, one percent perhaps, can honestly be said to endanger national security. That’s distinct [from the percentage that could cause] embarrassment—very serious embarrassment, [if people] realize that we are aware of highly murderous and corrupt operations by people and that we are supporting them. It is very seriously embarrassing..If the choice is between putting none of them out, as the State Department would like, and putting all of them out, I definitely feel our national security would be improved if they were put out. Between those two choices, I would rather see them all of them out. It would help understand our own foreign policy and give us the chance to improve it democratically. I hope they are out, I hope we get to see them.<ref>[http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-11/daniel-ellsberg-wikileaks-julian-assange-in-danger/2/ Daniel Ellsberg: Wikileaks' Julian Assange "in Danger" - The Daily Beast]</ref></blockquote>

Revision as of 00:50, 19 June 2010

Julian Assange
Born1971
Townsville, Queensland
Occupation(s)Journalist, programmer, internet activist
Known forWikileaks
Board member ofWikileaks
AwardsAmnesty International UK Media Awards 2009

Julian Paul Assange (/əˈsɑːnʒ/; born 1971) is an Australian journalist, programmer and Internet activist, best known for his involvement with Wikileaks, a whistleblower website. He is currently being "hunted" by the US Government.[1][2][3][4]Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). Assange has said that his parents ran a touring theatre company, and that he was enrolled in 37 schools and 6 universities in Australia over the course of his early life.[5]

During his childhood years, he lived on the run with mother and half-brother. They were avoiding his half-brother's father who was believed to belong to a cult led by Anne Hamilton-Byrne.[6]

Assange helped to write the 1997 book Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier which credits him as researcher.[7] It draws from his teenage experiences as a member of a hacker group named "International Subversives", which involved a 1991 raid of his Melbourne home by the Australian Federal Police.[8][9] Wired, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Sunday Times have pointed out that there exist similarities between Assange and the person called "Mendax" in the book.[10][11][12] The New Yorker has identified Assange as Mendax and explains its origin from a phrase of Horace. Assange allegedly accessed various computers (belonging to an Australian university, a telecommunications company, and other organizations) via modem[13] to test their security flaws; he later pleaded guilty to 24 charges of hacking and was released on bond for good conduct after being fined AU$2100.[8][9][11]

According to the Personal Democracy Forum, Assange founded a civil rights group for children called "Pickup".[14]

Computer programming

After the hacking trial, Assange lived in Melbourne as a programmer and a developer of free software.[11]

In 1995, Assange wrote Strobe, the first free and open source port scanner.[15][16] Strobe inspired Fyodor to develop the Nmap port scanner.[17]

Starting around 1997, Assange co-invented "Rubberhose deniable encryption", a cryptographic concept made into a software package for Linux designed to provide plausible deniability against rubber-hose cryptanalysis,[18] which he originally intended "as a tool for human rights workers who needed to protect sensitive data in the field".[19]

Other free software that Assange has authored or co-authored includes the Usenet caching software NNTPCache[20] and Surfraw, a command line interface for web-based search engines.

University studies and travel

Assange studied physics and mathematics at the University of Melbourne until 2006, when he began to focus heavily on Wikileaks.[6] He has been described as being largely self-taught and widely read on science and mathematics.[11] He has also studied philosophy and neuroscience.[14] On his personal web page Assange described how he represented his University at the Australian National Physics Competition around 2005.[21]

Assange has said that it is "pretty much true" that he is constantly on the move, and that he is "living in airports these days".[6][22] He has been to Vietnam, Sweden, Iceland, Siberia and the United States.[6][22][23] Assange began renting a house in Iceland on March 30, 2010, from which he and other activists, including Birgitta Jónsdóttir, worked on the collateral murder video.[6] In May 2010 upon landing in Australia, his passport was taken from him, and when it was returned he was told that his passport was to be cancelled.[24][25]

WikiLeaks

In 1999, Assange registered the website, Leaks.org; "but", he says, "then I didn't do anything with it".[23]

Wikileaks was founded in 2006.[6][22] Assange now sits on its nine-member advisory board,[26] and is a prominent media spokesman on its behalf. He has also been described as the site's director[27] and founder[8] (although he does not use the latter term for himself),[28] and has stated that he has the final decision in the process of vetting documents submitted to the site.[9] Like all others working for the site, Assange is an unpaid volunteer.[28]

Assange was the winner of the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award (New Media),[29] awarded for exposing extrajudicial assassinations in Kenya with the investigation The Cry of Blood - Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances.

In accepting the Amnesty International Media Award 2009, Mr. Assange stated:

Julian Assange at New Media Days '09 in Copenhagen

It is a reflection of the courage and strength of Kenyan civil society that this injustice was documented. Through the tremendous work of organizations such as the Oscar foundation, the KNHCR, Mars Group Kenya and others we had the primary support we needed to expose these murders to the world. I know that they will not rest, and we will not rest, until justice is done.

— “WikiLeaks wins Amnesty International 2009 Media Award for exposing Extra judicial killings in Kenya”.[30]

He has also won the 2008 Economist Index on Censorship Award; and various other media awards.[31]

Assange says that Wikileaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world press combined:

That's not something I say as a way of saying how successful we are - rather, that shows you the parlous state of the rest of the media. How is it that a team of five people has managed to release to the public more suppressed information, at that level, than the rest of the world press combined? It's disgraceful.[22]

Recent public appearances

Since WikiLeaks has opened, Assange has appeared at news-oriented conferences such as New Media Days '09 in Copenhagen,[32] the 2010 Logan Symposium in Investigative Reporting at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism,[33] and at hacker-oriented conferences, notably at the 25th and 26th Chaos Communication Congress (representing Wikileaks together with Daniel Schmitt).[34][35] In the first half of 2010, he has appeared on international news agencies such as Al Jazeera English,[36] CNN,[37] MSNBC,[38] Democracy Now,[39] RT,[40], and The Colbert Report[41] to discuss the release of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike video by Wikileaks. The same was covered in literary journalistic fashion by The New Yorker[6]

On June 3 he appeared via Skype at the Personal Democracy Forum conference with Daniel Ellsberg.[42][43] Daniel Ellsberg told MSNBC "the explanation he [Assange] used" for not appearing in person in the USA was that "it was not safe for him to come to this country".[44] On June 11 he was to appear on a Showcase Panel at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Las Vegas,[45] but there are reports that he cancelled several days prior.[46] There have been reports that U.S. officials want to apprehend Assange.[47] Ellsberg said that the arrest of Bradley Manning and subsequent speculation by U.S. officials about what Assange may be about to publish "puts his well-being, his physical life, in some danger now".[44]

Characterisation of Assange and his work

In 2006, Assange was described in the magazine CounterPunch as "president of a NGO and Australia's most infamous former computer hacker".[48] The Age has called him "one of the most intriguing people in the world" and "internet's freedom fighter".[23] Assange has called himself "extremely cynical".[23] The Personal Democracy Forum said that as a teenager he was "Australia's most famous ethical computer hacker".[14]

Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg stated in an interview that Assange "is serving our (American) democracy and serving our rule of law precisely by challenging the secrecy regulations, which are not laws in most cases, in this country." On the issue of national security considerations for the U.S., Ellsberg added that

"..any serious risk to that national security is extremely low. There may be 260,000 diplomatic cables. It’s very hard to think of any of that which could be plausibly described as a national security risk. Will it embarrass diplomatic relationships? Sure, very likely—all to the good of our democratic functioning..

"[Assange is] obviously a very competent guy in many ways. I think his instincts are that most of this material deserves to be out. We are arguing over a very small fragment that doesn’t. He has not yet put out anything that hurt anybody’s national security."

"..having read a hell of a lot of diplomatic cables, I would confidently make the judgment that very little, less than one percent, one percent perhaps, can honestly be said to endanger national security. That’s distinct [from the percentage that could cause] embarrassment—very serious embarrassment, [if people] realize that we are aware of highly murderous and corrupt operations by people and that we are supporting them. It is very seriously embarrassing..If the choice is between putting none of them out, as the State Department would like, and putting all of them out, I definitely feel our national security would be improved if they were put out. Between those two choices, I would rather see them all of them out. It would help understand our own foreign policy and give us the chance to improve it democratically. I hope they are out, I hope we get to see them.[49]

References

  1. ^ McGreal, Chris (Friday 11 June 2010 19.02 BST). "Pentagon hunts WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in bid to gag website". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 18 June 2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Text "Media" ignored (help); Text "The Guardian" ignored (help)
  2. ^ Shenon, Philip (June 10, 2010 10:03pm). "Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Hunted by Pentagon Over Massive Leak - The Daily Beast". Pentagon Manhunt. The Daily Beast. Retrieved 18 June 2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. ^ Greenwald, Glenn (Friday, Jun 18, 2010 08:20 ET). "The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com". Salon Media Group (Salon.com). Retrieved 18 June 2010. On June 10, former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, writing in The Daily Beast, gave voice to anonymous "American officials" to announce that "Pentagon investigators" were trying "to determine the whereabouts of the Australian-born founder of the secretive website Wikileaks [Julian Assange] for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security." Some news outlets used that report to declare that there was a "Pentagon manhunt" underway for Assange -- as though he's some sort of dangerous fugitive. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ Lauder, Simon (Fri Jun 18, 2010 3:23pm AEST). "Wikileaks founder fears for his life - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)". ABC Online. Retrieved 19 June 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ "Meet the Aussie behind Wikileaks". Fairfax New Zealand. July 8, 2008. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Khatchadourian, Raffi (June 7, 2010). "No Secrets: Julian Assange's Mission for Total Transparency". New Yorker. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
  7. ^ Dreyfus, Suelette (1997). Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier. ISBN 1-86330-595-5.
  8. ^ a b c Guilliatt, Richard (May 30, 2009). "Rudd Government blacklist hacker monitors police". The Australian. Retrieved 2010-06-16. [lead-in to a longer article in that day's The Weekend Australian Magazine]
  9. ^ a b c Kushner, David (April 6, 2010). "Inside WikiLeaks' Leak Factory". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  10. ^ Symington, Annabel (September 1, 2009). "Exposed: Wikileaks' secrets". Wired. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  11. ^ a b c d Lagan, Bernard (April 10, 2010). "International man of mystery". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  12. ^ "Profile: Julian Assange, the man behind Wikileaks". The Sunday Times. April 11, 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  13. ^ Weinberger, Sharon (April 7, 2010). "Who Is Behind WikiLeaks?". AOL News. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  14. ^ a b c "PdF Conference 2010: Speakers". Personal Democracy Forum. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  15. ^ In this limited application strobe is said to be faster and more flexible than ISS2.1 (an expensive, but verbose security checker by Christopher Klaus) or PingWare (also commercial, and even more expensive).[1]
  16. ^ "strobe-1.06: A super optimised TCP port surveyor". The Porting And Archive Centre for HP-UX. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  17. ^ "Prior to writing nmap, I spent a lot of time with other scanners exploring the Internet and various private networks. I have used many of the top scanners available today, including strobe by Julian Assange"[2]
  18. ^ Singel, Ryan (July 3, 2008). "Immune to Critics, Secret-Spilling Wikileaks Plans to Save Journalism ... and the World". Wired. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  19. ^ Dreyfus, Suelette. "The Idiot Savants' Guide to Rubberhose". Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  20. ^ "NNTPCache: Authors". Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  21. ^ Assagne, Julian (July 12, 2006). "Wed 12 Jul 2006 : The cream of Australian Physics". IQ.ORG. A year before, also at ANU, I represented my university at the Australian National Physics Competition. At the prize ceremony, the head of ANU physics, motioned to us and said, 'You are the cream of Australian physics'. {{cite web}}: |archive-url= requires |url= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
  22. ^ a b c d "The secret life of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange". The Sydney Morning Herald. May 22, 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  23. ^ a b c d Barrowclough, Nikki (May 22, 2010). "Keeper of secrets". The Age. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  24. ^ Arup, Tom (May 17, 2010). "Australian Wikileak founder's passport confiscated". The Age. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  25. ^ Davis, Mark (May 16, 2010). "SBS Dateline: The Whistleblower". Special Broadcasting Service. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  26. ^ "WikiLeaks:Advisory Board". Wikileaks. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  27. ^ McGreal, Chris (April 5, 2010). "Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  28. ^ a b Interview with Julian Assange, spokesperson of WikiLeaks: Leak-o-nomy: The Economy of WikiLeaks
  29. ^ Amnesty International Media Award (New Media) 2009
  30. ^ “WikiLeaks wins Amnesty International 2009 Media Award for exposing Extra judicial killings in Kenya”. Retrieved 2010-04-15.
  31. ^ "Julian Assange at the centre for investigative journalism". tcij.org. June 4, 2009. Retrieved 2010-04-01.
  32. ^ "The Subtle Roar of Online Whistle-Blowing". New Media Days. November 19, 2009. Retrieved 2010-04-08.
  33. ^ Video of Julian Assange on the panel at the 2010 Logan Symposium, April 18, 2010
  34. ^ [3]
  35. ^ "WikiLeaks Release 1.0: Insight into vision, motivation and innovation". 26th Chaos Communication Congress. December 30, 2009. Retrieved 2010-04-08.
  36. ^ "Video of US attack in Iraq 'genuine'". AlJazeeraEnglish. April 5, 2010. Retrieved 2010-04-09.
  37. ^ [4]
  38. ^ "MSNBC Panel discusses WikiLeaks.org's "Collateral Murder" Video - Part 1". 2010-4-05. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  39. ^ Goodman, Amy (April 6, 2010). "Massacre Caught on Tape: US Military Confirms Authenticity of Their Own Chilling Video Showing Killing of Journalists". Democracy Now. Retrieved 2010-04-07.
  40. ^ "WikiLeaks editor on Apache combat video: No excuse for US killing civilians". RussiaToday. April 6, 2010. Retrieved 2010-04-09.
  41. ^ Julian Assange Unedited Interview The Colbert Report, April 12, 2010
  42. ^ http://personaldemocracy.com/technology-politics-social-media-conference-personal-democracy-forum-new-york-0
  43. ^ http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/ellsberg_and_assange.php
  44. ^ a b http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/06/11/transcript-daniel-ellsberg-says-he-fears-us-might-assasinate-wikileaks-founder/
  45. ^ http://data.nicar.org/conference/lasvegas10/showcase
  46. ^ Poulsen, Kevin; Zetter, Kim (June 11, 2010). "Wikileaks Commissions Lawyers to Defend Alleged Army Source". Wired. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  47. ^ Taylor, Jerome (June 12, 2010). "Pentagon rushes to block release of classified files on Wikileaks". The Independent. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  48. ^ Julian Assange: The Anti-Nuclear WANK Worm. The Curious Origins of Political Hacktivism CounterPunch, November 25 / 26, 2006
  49. ^ Daniel Ellsberg: Wikileaks' Julian Assange "in Danger" - The Daily Beast

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