How pioneering WikiLeaks collaboration ended in distrust and legal threats | Ian Katz | Media. There are memorable episodes in the gestation of any big story: the breathless reporter arriving in the office with news of his or her catch, the fearsome legal threat landing in your inbox, the thrilling moment a scoop is unleashed into the world. For me though, the enduring, and still stomach-churning, memory from months of work on the WikiLeaks disclosures was the day I accidentally leaked the biggest leak in decades to the BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson. If that sounds like an act of incompetence to rival putting 250,000 diplomatic cables on a database accessible by two million people, let me offer a few facts in mitigation. The Guardian has its own Nick Robinson, a senior production journalist. One day in July I sent him an email detailing the final tweaks to the hush-hush project we had been preparing for weeks: 12 pages of reports based on 90,000 secret military logs of the war in Afghanistan.
From then on it was pretty much downhill. Assange fights extradition at U.K. hearing - U.S. news - WikiLeaks in Security. LONDON — The lawyer for Julian Assange argued Monday the embattled WikiLeaks founder would face a secret trial that violates international standards of fairness if sent to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations. Assange could also end up being extradited to the United States, where he could be executed, the lawyer warned at the first of a two-day extradition hearing.
Assange, who has been free on bail under strict conditions since December, said at the end of the day he was confident the hearing would dispel the rape allegations hanging over him. "For the past five-and-a-half months, we have been in a condition where a black box has been applied to my life. On the outside of that black box has been written the word 'rape'. That box is now, thanks to an open court process, being opened," he told reporters massed outside the maximum-security Belmarsh magistrates' court in southeast London.
"That box is, in fact, empty. " "That is a contradiction in terms," he said. Julian Assange - Blackboard. Swedish Pirate Bay to Host New Wikileaks Servers. The Pirate Party will host several new WikiLeaks servers. This was agreed during Julian Assange’s visit to Stockholm last weekend, and the Pirate Party is happy to announce that everything has been finalized. The contribution of WikiLeaks is tremendously important to the entire world, says Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Pirate Party in Sweden. We desire to contribute to any effort that increases transparency and accountability of power in the world. Last week, the Pirate Party challenged the other Swedish parties to assist WikiLeaks in its democratic effort. The Pirate Party will provide bandwidth and hosting to WikiLeaks free of charge as part of its political mission, the press release stated.
"This is one of our signatures. WikiLeaks have been under constant threat of being sabotaged by corrupt or abusive organisations trying to conceal the truth from the public. "We welcome the help provided by the Pirate Party. Support free media by signing up to Flattr: # U.S., British Govts Keep Pressure on WikiLeaks.
Smears & Misconceptions. December 30, 2010 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. The corporate media's tendency to blare misinformation and outright fabrications has been particularly egregious in coverage of WikiLeaks. As Glenn Greenwald has argued, mainstream news outlets are parroting smears and falsehoods about the whistleblower site and its founder Julian Assange, helping to perpetuate a number of "zombie lies" -- misconceptions that refuse to die no matter how much they conflict with known reality, basic logic and well-publicized information.
Here are the bogus narratives that keep appearing in newspapers and on the airwaves. 1. That's not to say that the exposure of secret government files can't somehow lead to someone, somewhere, someday, being hurt. 2. Greenwald and others have battled to kill the myth that the whistleblower site threw up all the cables without taking any precautions to protect people, but it keeps coming up. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Paper Cut: NYT dumps WikiLeaks after cashing in on nobel cause. Anti-WL lies & propaganda. The Swiss postal system stripped WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of a key fundraising tool Monday, accusing him of lying and immediately shutting down one of his bank accounts. The swift action by Postfinance, the financial arm of Swiss Post, came after it determined the “Australian citizen provided false information regarding his place of residence during the account opening process.”
Assange had told Postfinance he lived in Geneva but could offer no proof that he was a Swiss resident, a requirement of opening such an account. Postfinance spokesman Alex Josty told The Associated Press the account was closed Monday afternoon and there would be “no criminal consequences” for misleading authorities. “That’s his money, he will get his money back,” Josty said. “We just close the account and that’s it.” The setback leaves Assange with only a few options for raising money for his secret-spilling site through a Swiss-Icelandic credit card processing center and accounts in Iceland and Germany. The Julian Assange before WikiLeaks. Melbourne, Dec 11 (ANI): He has been labelled as 'the most dangerous man alive' by his increasing army of enemies and an 'apostle of free speech' by his followers. Now in a rare interview, a friend of Julian Assange has described what he was like in the years before WikiLeaks. He was apparently a brilliant, socially awkward crusader, a 'hard-core geek' who would rather interact with a machine than a person but who was also determined to change the world, reports News.com.au.
Assange was described as a humanist, a man who serves no masters, a Renaissance man with 21st-century tools at his disposal, who 'decided early on that the world is not as fair a place as it could be, but that Internet provides a way of creating a more level playing field in terms of justice'. When asked about Assange's political beliefs, the friend said he flirted with the Left but became disillusioned. Today, Assange is the most famous man in the world. Assange had been hacking from 1987 under the moniker 'Mendax'. Assange moved to prison isolation | World | BigPond News. Runner-Up: Julian Assange - Person of the Year 2010. Assange Denies Charges Central to U.S. Leak Case - 60 Minutes.
Just a few months ago, most people had never heard of a Web site called WikiLeaks, or of its mysterious and eccentric founder, Julian Assange. But in that short period of time both have managed to rattle the worlds of journalism, diplomacy, and national security. WikiLeaks, which solicits and publishes secrets and suppressed material from whistleblowers around the world, has been under cyber attack from governments that want to shut it down. And Assange is currently under legal attack from the U.S. government which would like to charge him with espionage for publishing volumes of classified material from the Pentagon and the State Department.
"60 Minutes" and correspondent Steve Kroft spent two days with him in Great Britain where he is under house arrest, while fighting extradition to Sweden for questioning in two sexual assault cases, which he's called part of a smear campaign against him. Assange: WikiLeaks Played "Inside the Rules"Poll: What's your take on WikiLeaks? Kroft: Right. Why WikiLeaks And Facebook Are The Future Of Global Politics. Posted on February 15, 2011 in Articles He had the cops buying drugs on camera. Two plainclothes officers yanked Khaled Said from an Internet café in broad daylight. They dragged him into a dingy apartment lobby and smashed his head against an iron door, the stairs, and the wall. They left him there to die and thought that was that. Khaled Said’s fate was sadly nothing new. Five days after the murder, a Human Rights worker set up a We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page. Cartoonists used Khaled Said’s likeness to rally the uprising.
We have been warned not to be mesmerized by social media’s role in the revolution. True. Governments have never had to reckon with a force like this before. We want to believe Cairo ’11 is a Berlin ’89 moment. The region will be freer but not free. Now ruling families across the Middle East scramble to avoid a similar fate. George W. But the truth lies with neither, and this is why Middle Eastern leaders are so skittish. Kevin Zeese: Julian Assange: At the Forefront of 21st Century Journalism. How WikiLeaks is democratizing journalism, redistributing power and increasing transparency If there were ever a doubt about whether the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is a journalist, recent events erase all those doubts and put him at the forefront of a movement to democratize journalism and empower people. The U.S. Department of Justice is still trying to find a way to prosecute Assange and others associated with WikiLeaks.
A key to their prosecution is claiming he is not a journalist, but that weak premise has been made laughable by recent events. The list of WikiLeaks revelations has become astounding. WikiLeaks has been credited by many with helping to spark the Tunisian Revolution because they provided information about the widespread corruption of the 23 year rule of the Ben Ali regime. Another set of documents described how Israel and the U.S. wanted Omar Suleiman to replace Mubarak. WikiLeaks has been criticized by U.S. enemies. Julian Assange claims WikiLeaks is more accountable than governments | Media.
WikiLeaks is more accountable than democratically elected governments because it accepts donations from members of the public, Julian Assange has claimed, in his first formal public appearance since being arrested in December following accusations of rape and sexual assault. Questioned at a public debate about the whistleblowing organisation's own transparency, Assange told an audience of 700 people, many of them supporters: "We are directly supported on a week-to-week basis by you. You vote with your wallets every week if you believe that our work is worthwhile or not. If you believe we have erred, you do not support us. If you believe we need to be protected in our work, you keep us strong.
"That dynamic feedback, I say, is more responsive than a government that is elected after sourcing money from big business every four years. " "What gives you the right to decide what should be known or not? The Guardian has not received any notification of such action from WikiLeaks or its lawyers. WikiLeaks exclusive / Chinese company selling chemical weapons equipment to Iran. WikiLeaks and Julian Paul Assange. The house on Grettisgata Street, in Reykjavik, is a century old, small and white, situated just a few streets from the North Atlantic. The shifting northerly winds can suddenly bring ice and snow to the city, even in springtime, and when they do a certain kind of silence sets in. This was the case on the morning of March 30th, when a tall Australian man named Julian Paul Assange, with gray eyes and a mop of silver-white hair, arrived to rent the place.
Assange was dressed in a gray full-body snowsuit, and he had with him a small entourage. “We are journalists,” he told the owner of the house. Eyjafjallajökull had recently begun erupting, and he said, “We’re here to write about the volcano.” After the owner left, Assange quickly closed the drapes, and he made sure that they stayed closed, day and night. The house, as far as he was concerned, would now serve as a war room; people called it the Bunker.
Assange is an international trafficker, of sorts. “That’s for you,” she said. Ten Things You Should Know Before Moving In With Julian Assange - Kashmir Hill - The Not-So Private Parts. Leaked: Julian Assange on the Dance Floor - Kashmir Hill - The Not-So Private Parts. Sydney Peace Foundation. News : WikiLeaks cables “inspired” anti-corruption campaign in India. AP WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange speaks during a public debate at Kensington Town Hall in London on Saturday. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said the “tremendous” anti-corruption movement “building up” in India is a result of the publication of “cablegate” revelations by The Hindu in recent weeks. Citing the campaign, led by Anna Hazare, as an example of the impact of WikiLeaks cables, he said what was happening in India was “something that has not happened since the time of Gandhi.”
Mr. Assange singled out The Hindu's coverage of the leaked U.S. diplomatic cables while speaking in a debate organised by the Frontline Club and New Statesman here on Saturday. Stating that he could “speak for hours” about the reverberations sparked by the cables around the world, he noted: “Just yesterday [on Saturday], the Editor of The Hindu, the most respected paper in India, brought over 21 front pages from the past six weeks that were based on cablegate material. Making a difference Mr. Mr. Rory O'Connor: The Coming Media Convergence. For the second week in a row, a top executive of one of the leading international newspapers that recently collaborated with WikiLeaks recounted what it was like to work with the group's controversial founder Julian Assange. Ian Katz, deputy editor of the Guardian, detailed his experiences "on the hazards of co-ordinating five newspapers and an information insurgent" in a remarkable piece last weekend. Following Bill Keller's catty account in the New York Times, in which Assange was judged to be "alert but disheveled, like a bag lady walking in off the street," Katz found Assange "ferociously intelligent, with a control freak's mastery of detail and an infectious enthusiasm.
" This despite the fact that the Guardian's "pioneering WikiLeaks collaboration," ended like that of the New York Times before it, "in distrust and legal threats," as the headline on Katz's article explained. Julian Assange: the teen hacker who became insurgent in information war | Media. Glimpsed in the half-light of a London evening, the figure may just have passed for female. She emerged cautiously from a doorway and folded herself into a battered red car. There were a few companions – among them a grim-visaged man with Nordic features and a couple of nerdy youngsters. One seemed to have given the old woman her coat. The car weaved through the light Paddington traffic, heading north in the direction of Cambridge. There was no obvious sign of pursuit. Nonetheless, they periodically pulled off the road into a lay-by and waited – lights killed – in the gloom.
By 10pm they reached the flatlands of East Anglia, a sepia landscape where the occasional disused sugar factory hulked out of the blackness. Fifteen miles inland, at the village of Ellingham, they turned left. Close up, it was obvious that this strange figure was Julian Assange, his platinum hair concealed by a wig. Date with danger There were a few demerits OKCupid left out. High-level hacking Kenyan breakthrough. “Hi, this is Julian Assange” » Article » OWNI, Digital Journalism. While WikiLeaks relied on the greatest news outlets in the world, Julian Assange entrusted OWNI with the conception, the design and the development of the crowdsourcing application. Here is the story. Our questions. His answers. On Friday, October 8, an email appeared in our inbox, citing an “urgent request” for the team that developed the Afghanistan warlogs application. It was forwarded to me, as I was the datajournalist behind the project. It was Sunshine Press. After such excitement, we of course accepted to go to the meeting Assange had proposed, in London, three days later.
“We have the same dataset as the one you worked on. “What is the risk that this file encounters the same criticism as the first ones, especially with regards to the names of the informants?” In the end, we were told that many journalists were investigating the current corpus and that we wouldn’t have to dig out stories by ourselves. 1. WikiLeaks defies the “war on hi-tech terror” Julian Assange: Rape allegations are a smear. How I met Julian Assange and secured the American embassy cables. Don't shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths. WikiLeaks: US military cannot find evidence linking Julian Assange to Bradley Manning. Entering The Secret World Of Wikileaks. ABC The Drum - Tweeting Assange's first day in court. Profiles of WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange. Assange Calls Rape Accusation 'Empty' : The Two-Way. Julian Assange faces 'man-hater prosecutor and media trial' in Sweden | Media.