He is, of course, the lean, tall, as well as pale 39-year-old Australian master copy hacker at the white-hot centre of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks and, after revealing thousands of clandestine Afghan battlefield reports this week, the dependent of investigation yesteryear U.S. authorities.
By straight off we've heard quite a fleck most the Assange mystique as well as his cutesy-named website. WikiLeaks devotes itself to obtaining as well as posting clandestine regime documents as well as data from unidentified sources. With WikiLeaks' heightened profile, stories most Assange require maintain appeared latterly inward several publications, on TV, on the Internet, on cable, all the same he remains i of the most elusive as well as enigmatic figures of the moment.
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian journalist, publisher, as well as Internet activist. He is best known every bit the spokesperson as well as editor inward principal for WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website. Before working amongst the website, he was a reckoner programmer. He has lived inward several countries, as well as has made occasional world appearances to utter most liberty of the press, censorship, as well as investigative journalism.
Assange founded the WikiLeaks website inward 2006 as well as serves on its advisory board. He has been involved inward publishing fabric most extrajudicial killings inward Kenya, for which he won the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award. He has also published fabric most toxic waste product dumping inward Africa, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures, as well as banks such every bit Kaupthing as well as Julius Baer. In 2010, he published classified details most United States interest inward the wars inward Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan as well as Iraq. Then, on 28 Nov 2010, WikiLeaks as well as its 5 media partners began publishing clandestine U.S. diplomatic cables. The White House calls Assange's actions reckless as well as dangerous.
With a handful of unpaid volunteers working inward clandestine inward remote places similar Iceland, Assange -- amongst a backpack carrying non a laptop but a desktop reckoner -- has obtained classified fabric that cast a shadow on the American military, both inward Republic of Iraq as well as Afghanistan.
He rattled official Washington as well as its allies as well as drew the world's attending amongst the disclosure this calendar week of 76,000 leaked classified documents from Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan on its website as well as inward the pages of The New York Times, the Guardian inward United Kingdom of Great Britain as well as Northern Ireland as well as the mag Der Spiegel inward Germany.
In a weeklong serial of press conferences as well as interviews from London, the publicity-savvy Assange, donning a professorial musical note as well as Zen-like demeanor, contended that the documents showed that perchance thousands of state of war crimes powerfulness require maintain been committed inward Afghanistan.
"It is upwardly to a courtroom to produce upwardly one's heed clearly whether something is inward the halt a crime," he said. "That said, on the human face upwardly of it, at that topographic point does appear to live testify of state of war crimes inward this material." That is a major reason, he suggested, why he released the documents.
The Pentagon struck back. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Th called the leak a breach the armed services would "aggressively investigate as well as prosecute." Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "Mr. Assange tin tell whatever he likes most the greater expert he thinks he as well as his sources are doing, but the truth is they powerfulness already require maintain on their hands the blood of some immature soldier, or that of an Afghan family."
Assange, who is reportedly working as well as living inward northern Europe, has said he had no plans to locomote to the United States for fearfulness of beingness detained. U.S. regime lawyers are reportedly looking into the possibility of charging WikiLeaks as well as Assange amongst a crime, similar "inducing or serving every bit co-conspirators inward violations of the Espionage Act, a 1917 police that prohibits the unauthorized disclosure of national safety information,'' according to The New York Times.
On Thursday, U.S. authorities said they had establish testify linking Pfc. Bradley Manning, 22, of Crescent, Oklahoma, to the leak of the Afghan state of war reports. Manning was charged inward July amongst illegally obtaining State Department cables as well as disseminating a clandestine video, which he is believed to require maintain turned over to WikiLeaks, showing a U.S. helicopter firing on as well as killing a grouping of civilians, including 2 Reuters journalists, inward Baghdad. Manning, an Army news specialist, has been held inward State of Kuwait as well as is beingness moved to Quantico, Virginia, where he volition live held as well as may human face upwardly court-martial.
The swirl surrounding WikiLeaks has increased the media focus on Assange.
Julian Paul Assange (pronounced AH-SANJ), an obsessive hacker as well as reckoner master, is a citizen of the globe, an itinerant warrior of the cyber age, a philosopher as well as visionary of the encrypted universe. He has been called "The Robin Hood of Hacking," to a greater extent than a physicist as well as mathematician, the 2 disciplines he studied at the University of Melbourne, than a swashbuckling James Bond. His mission -- "to maximize the stream of data to maximize the amount of activity leading to merely reform" -- may seem grandiose as well as quixotic but he is said to attract a modest next of volunteers as well as donors.
In a relatively brusk time, he has fashioned a persona tailor-made for a media fascinated amongst celebrity. His life seems to live an accumulation of charming as well as intriguing anecdotes. Like a graphic symbol out of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," he is a stealth operator, living secretively as well as pursuing his destination single-mindedly. He moves nether the radar unopen to the world, though he seems to favor the icy countries of northern Europe.
But he's no European Viking. He's a production of the Asian tropics. He was born inward 1971 inward Townsville inward northeastern Australia. He was partly home-schooled as well as partly non schooled at all. By the fourth dimension he was 14, he as well as his mother, a painter, actress as well as artist's model, had reportedly moved 37 times.
His parents met at a protestation against the Vietnam War. According to the Guardian, his begetter studied architecture. But the distich evidently did non get hitched amongst as well as separate when Julian was really young. His woman raise as well as hence married a theatre director. They moved often, as well as when Julian was 8 years old, his woman raise left her married adult man as well as began dating a instrumentalist amongst whom she had a child, a boy. That relationship, according to a profile of Assange inward The New Yorker, became abusive as well as they separated. Afraid that the instrumentalist would require maintain away her younger son, she took Julian as well as the kid as well as disappeared. Julian moved from urban meat to urban meat amongst her from the historic stream of eleven to 16.
H5N1 computer-smart teenager, Assange began hacking as well as assumed the code mention Mendax, from the Latin splendide mendax, or "nobly untruthful." He joined amongst 2 hackers to shape a grouping that became known every bit the International Subversives and, according to The New Yorker, they successfully broke into reckoner systems inward Europe as well as North America, including Pentagon networks. Websites did non be all the same -- it was 1987 -- but hackers could disrupt reckoner networks as well as telecom systems. Assange was inward his element.
But his life was most to change. At 18, he roughshod inward dearest amongst a 16-year-old inward Melbourne as well as married her after she became pregnant. They had a son. But similar his ain mother, he couldn't settle downward to a domestic, ordinary life. Hacking remained a grand passion.
H5N1 few years later, inward 1991, when Assange was 20, he as well as a few beau hackers broke into the master copy terminal of Nortel, the Canadian telecom company. He was caught, charged as well as eventually tried, but a sympathetic guess allow him off amongst a fine. While he awaited case for 3 years, his married adult woman left him, taking their son. He became hence depressed he checked himself into a hospital, moved inward amongst his mother, as well as slept inward parks. But the worst fourth dimension of his life came later, during his eight-year custody battle for his son. In 1999, a custody understanding was lastly worked out. By as well as hence his hair, which had been black brown, had turned completely white.
In 2006, Assange founded WikiLeaks. He wanted to operate the website every bit "an musical instrument of data warfare.'' With a fervor that would go a trademark, Assange didn't slumber for days spell edifice the site, as well as he wouldn't eat. The website plant inward mysterious ways. It is hosted on a Swedish Internet server. Submissions to WikiLeaks are routed through a cyber maze that crosses inward as well as out of several nations. Secrecy is at a premium.
Assange as well as his volunteers get together documents as well as videos that governments as well as agencies proceed clandestine as well as let on them on WikiLeaks.org. The site is entirely three-and-a-half years former but it has already made a mention for itself, publishing online an archive of clandestine information, including Sarah Palin's individual Yahoo work organisation human relationship as well as the Standard Operating Procedures at the U.S. facility at Guantanamo, Cuba. In the spring, WikiLeaks released a clandestine U.S. helicopter cockpit video showing American soldiers killing at to the lowest degree eighteen people, including 2 Reuters journalists, inward Baghdad inward 2007. The video ignited a debate most U.S. bear inward the war.
Then on sun came "The War Logs," i of the biggest leaks inward U.S. armed services history. Now WikiLeaks as well as Assange are famous. Assange said this calendar week that he was expecting a "substantial increment inward submissions" from whistleblowers.
Now that he is a celebrity, Assange may honor it harder to escape the media's scrutiny. For the fourth dimension beingness he is presumably moving quietly from identify to place, carrying his desktop reckoner inward a rucksack, his clothe inward a bag, finding shelter somewhere far from prying eyes, staying upwardly all night, his fingers busily tapping on the keyboard, decrypting the adjacent trove of secrets.
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