Julian Assange - Wikileaks: Warrior For True Part 4

"Internet Relay Chat, a real-time Internet chat forum."

"Ah yes, like the BBS9 in Underground where hackers of the 1990s would connect to give advice in forums and possibly share highly illegal information."

"Yes, but back then it took thirty minutes to connect to these kinds of systems and it felt more like activists meeting in someone's bas.e.m.e.nt. On IRC things are shared globally, so you'll see messages from WikiLeaks and Anonymous."

"Anonymous, who's that?"

"It's the idea behind a mask. The idea never dies because thanks to its anonymity, it can be taken up by anybody. If one of them dies, another one takes its place. It's the idea of infinite reproduction, the idea of sharing information on the Internet like a constant flow. The symbol of the movement is the mask of Guy Fawkes, the one created by Alan Moore and David Lloyd in the graphic novel V for Vendetta."

"Who started this movement?"

"It's a movement that's been around for a very long time. It started from an idea on a forum and took off from there. There are several versions of Anonymous. Anybody can commit an act of piracy and say Anonymous did it. It's an idea. In fact, it doesn't have a head and n.o.body knows who the sympathizers are or what their job is or where they live. We don't ask ourselves these kinds of questions."

"We? Are you one of them?"

"For some actions, yes. And I believe in the idea that the Internet is sacred. We shouldn't mess it up. We should leave it alone. I want to have a say when someone encroaches on this freedom, knowing that freedom belongs to everyone, and so I'm OK with it being hidden behind a mask. It's a powerful idea. Since the group doesn't have a command structure, it's not at the mercy of an attack against its leader. If someone tries to take over, the entire world will put him back in his place. If we were to rally around a leader and the leader became the target of an attack, the entire movement would be in danger."

"That's exactly what's happening to Julian a.s.sange: he's being attacked personally, which will weaken the movement. What's Anonymous fighting for?"

"The idea is to protect the neutrality of the Internet. Anonymous defines itself as a group that wants to avoid censorship. We stand together and are active with the WikiLeaks network to defend the freedom of information and the broadcasting leaks. We're for the existence of WikiLeaks, and if the authorities throw a wrench in the works, we'll intervene one way or another."

"Is it dangerous?"

"We coordinate DDoS10 attacks: we send useless requests to sites and when there are enough of them, we can paralyze servers. It doesn't damage the system; it just makes the connection unavailable for a few hours. It's like a sit-in in front of a large chain store. It's like the demonstrations of the 1960s when the only way to be heard was to hand out flyers, round up as many people as possible and go down into in the streets. Today without leaving the comfort of your own home, you can rally people from around the world. It's the expression of the people with the means of today. Governments don't like someone slipping through the net and so they do what they can to kill off movements like Anonymous. Search warrants have already been issued in England and the Netherlands. The IP address to attack is posted in an IRC forum. When there's an attack, you can find a computer attacking its own IP address, which can be traced on the Internet. You understand why beefing up control would give us away."

"I understand very well why Julian a.s.sange calls himself a journalist. It gives him the right to express himself and broadcast his information."

"Yes, that's how he wants to have his rights respected. The United States still wants to make him out as terrorist. Just like the Anonymous movement, the media are afraid and will describe the movement as a terrorist one by using disinformation."

"How would you explain it?"

"Chris Landers of the Baltimore City Paper wrote this nice definition: 'Anonymous is the first Internet-based superconsciousness. Anonymous is a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they're a group? Because they're traveling in the same direction. At any given moment, more birds could join, leave, and peel off in another direction entirely.'"

"It's very libertarian...."

"You know, on a forum there's a guy who says what upsets him and what he wants to do, but the attack only works if the idea is approved by a large number of people, so if he's just spewing nonsense, nothing will happen."

"That's if people at their computers have democratic ideas, but what if it's the contrary?"

"Not having a leader is also a problem. Anybody can have a good or bad idea and want to turn it into action. There are always sheep that would follow and it could become dangerous. Anonymous can be dangerous if people don't think about what they're doing. Personally I trust collective common sense. In any case, I'd rather act from inside the movement and voice what I believe in using my computer."

"But if the entire world can join chat forums, the governments could also be in them."

"Yes, but hackers have always had less things to hide than governments. It's not a real problem for us. When we have an idea or when an IP address is posted, the action is very quickly copied hundreds, even thousands of times, which makes it really difficult to find out where it came from."

"The same goes for WikiLeaks. There's no use in forbidding the site, because all the information is mirrored on hundreds of other sites."

"There's no link between Anonymous and WikiLeaks. Anonymous acts like the nice defender of the Internet. Their actions are solely done with the goal of maintaining Internet neutrality. WikiLeaks lives off the Internet neutrality. Anonymous backs up WikiLeaks indirectly, by supporting their right to exist and to express themselves."

"And what do you think of Julian a.s.sange?"

"I think that he's a die-hard hacker. He sees everything like a system to be improved. And at one time he decided to make agreements with the press and expose himself more and more to strengthen his movement, which annoyed a lot of people, but it's the solution he chose. And you, where does this sudden interest come from?"

"For two months I've been blogging about heroes. I draw a parallel the greats of our time with their demise. We can imagine them like prophets who have come bearing a message to move the world forward and who have been a.s.sa.s.sinated or so misunderstood that they have become depressed, alcoholics, addicts or something else. Then, with a.s.sange's story, I'm wondering if he's also a prophet of our time: a hero. So it would be important to recognize this to help humanity progress."

"Hero maybe, but with a real human ego."

"Do you think he's a better man because he's given himself a global sized mission? I don't think so."

"Sure, WikiLeaks is still a small business even if it has a global impact. And like any start-up, the boss or leader of the movement is very important. The idea is based on him, on what he thinks. He's the character under attack. To say that it's a move by the government to diminish the movement is ridiculous! You could also say that the American government was waiting for the man's weakness to be expressed to put him back in his place."

"He's still very interesting to me as a man, adventurer, prophet or hero..."

elise and Xavier talked for more than an hour. They left the bar, promising to share information on the subjects they were both interested in: freedom, Anonymous, WikiLeaks and Julian a.s.sange.

7.

LIFE EXPERIENCE.

Julian was candid when at age sixteen he discovered a new playground with his Commodore 64. It was such an extraordinary inspiration for his mind to be challenged in such a simple and direct way. He was like a child who had discovered a world where everything was possible, a world where he could find his place and where he felt 'at home.' He enjoyed this return to nature, to his human nature. He felt his mind being shaped, its density and vitality, which made him stronger.

At the beginning of 1990 Julian, his mother and her new friend lived in a shack in a Melbourne suburb. When he was eighteen, Julian met a woman two years younger than him, intelligent and slightly introverted, and quickly started a relationship with her.

The young couple then moved a few kilometers away from their 'parents' and set up house in a cottage divided into two apartments. Julian spent most of his time in front of a computer screen, and as the Internet continued to expand, the number of computers to hack into grew, offering Julian an exceptional place to learn.

His skin color changed. Mendax took on a pale, vampire-like tint and fed at night, as the sun and the light of day couldn't give him what he needed. His drink was a row of binary code, ideally some Basic or a.s.sembly language.

Even the birth of his son Daniel didn't pry Julian away from his newly acquired Amiga 500. His neighbors were surprised to see this young girl alone, shopping with a baby in a stroller, going to the laundromat to wash baby clothes. It was so rare to see them together!

A little while later, feeling isolated, the little family returned to Melbourne. When the police broke into their apartment, the young mother was shocked. The couple fell apart completely and split up. His wife left with their child and Julian ended up alone.

In October 1991, Julian was in terrible shape. Sleeping at night brought its share of ghosts, as he knew he was being watched. Mendax started to dream of police raids. He dreamt of noises on the steps of the gravel parking lot, shadows in the dark near daybreak, armed police squads busting down the door and crashing into the room at 5 a.m. He rarely slept, rarely ate. His house was a real mess. His collection of old Scientific American and New Scientist magazine were piled up in a corner. He had been dumped. He only communicated with his friends at International Subversives by phone.

He found a vital balance thanks to the beehive he kept. Bees fascinated him. He liked watching them interact and studying their sophisticated social structure. He took advantage of their impressive number to hide his diskettes under the cover. It was only after he hid them that he could try to get some proper sleep. Julian trained the bees not to sting him when he archived his diskettes. He fed the bees using a cloth moistened with sugar water and the sweat from his armpits. The bees had a.s.sociated his odor to flower nectar.

He connected his phone to a radio and listened to police signals. It wasn't surprising when a police officer knocked at his door. He was however shocked to be accused of some thirty cyber crimes without even having taken the time to put away his diskettes in their honey-filled hideout.

While waiting for the verdict of the trial, Julian fell into a depression and was hospitalized for a week. He then tried to spend some time with his mother, but after a few days, he set off to wander and slept in parks. He lived and rambled through dense eucalyptus forests of the national park Dandenong Ranges11, full of mosquitoes that ate at his face. This was a mystical experience for him. First, his internal dialogue was strongly stimulated by a desire to talk, tell stories and express himself. There weren't any echoes in this forest, as his inner voice finally calmed down. His vision of himself disappeared to give way to more philosophical questions. What I am doing with my life?

He felt a need: the need for experience. He then saw what to do with it, which would satisfy his internal thirst. He had an idea: "After a certain amount of experimenting, I'll know how to feed my character."

In 1994, he registered with Central Queensland University for a beginner's course in programming. Why would a hacker like him sign up for a beginner's course in programming? Did he need to update his programming skills?

In the world of geeks, hackers exchange programs and information, and so training continues. Computer languages are like human languages: the more you learn them, the quicker you learn them. But this is obviously not why he registered.

Did he want to show his good behavior after this long trial? It was possible, but why sign up for an option he knew perfectly well? To ace exams "with two hands tied behind his back" or to forge a new ident.i.ty? It remained a mystery, as he was engaged in another battle, this one for the custody of his son, which he had started at the beginning of his own trial.

Julian and his mother were engaged in a battle to get complete custody of Daniel, a legal battle that proved difficult, and on some points, harder than his own defense as a 'criminal.' Julian and Christine were convinced that the mother of little Daniel and her new boyfriend were putting the child's life in danger and had firmly decided to limit her rights. What did he have to offer in return? Maybe an all-new registration at the university would make him look like a good young father? But the report of the child protection agency (Health and Community Services) turned down their request.

The advanced explanations by the agency were so inadmissible that Julian and his mother weren't satisfied. They were confronted with a lack of professionalism and respect for their request.

The agency concluded that the child lived in a healthy family environment. Julian and Christine couldn't find any means to appeal the decision. They felt helpless toward the bureaucratic machine, a fine example of injustice. They found out very quickly that the agency didn't pay enough attention to their request. They also noticed that their case wasn't isolated and that there were many things wrong with the administration.

Christine always said that bureaucracy is a system that crushes people. She raised Julian to have profound antipathy for this absurd system, which only led to injustice. At that moment, he experienced it firsthand. The battle for custody turned into a bitter fight against the inst.i.tution. Christine and Julian organized a campaign against the local child authorities. They called it Parent Inquiry Into Child Protection (PIICP).

Christine had a past as an activist, she knew how it worked: find people on the inside of the agency, meet them, talk to them, establish trust so that they would confide in you and divulge the secrets weighing down on them over time. Then patiently, with presence and insistence, give them the strength to express themselves to a greater number. By meeting them, the PIICP members wanted to force them to speak and then secretly record them. The Australian organization called Action for the Freedom of Information and obtained doc.u.ments from the Health and Community Services. Then, they distributed flyers "You can remain anonymous if you want" to the workers of the child protection agency, encouraging them to provide information from inside the agency, which fed a database they had just created. One of the workers gave them an important internal handbook.

The battle was almost won, as they had a mole on the inside that guaranteed the veracity of the information and digging burrows with ease in the ground from the inside of a movement falling apart. They said moles were blind and didn't need to rise above their action in order to understand the implications and consequences. Others were there to a.n.a.lyze and guide those who wanted to rebel.

A WikiLeaks embryo was growing: digging for the truth, encouraging leaks, collecting the information for citizens' needs.

In 1995, a parliamentary committee accused the agency of vagueness and not properly handling some less straightforward cases. Only in 1998, and after three-dozen phone calls and hearings, Julian received an arrangement with his ex-wife concerning Daniel's custody.

This experience was extremely difficult and stressful for Julian. Christine said that he was totally committed. He felt like after a post-traumatic shock, like coming back from war, and his once brown hair lost all its color.

Julian needed to get away from everything for a while. He decided to take a trip during the entire last semester of 1998. He wrote this e-mail: I'm about to escape from the perils of a summer in "the planet's most livable city" (Melbourne, Australia) and go trekking about the wonderful world of snow, ice, slush, and imploding communism.

I'll be hopscotching though the US, Western/Eastern Europe, Russia, Mongolia and China (in that order). If anyone feels like getting together for beer, Vodka, Siberian bear steak, or just a good yarn, please let me know.

What follows is a (very) approximate itinerary. Homegrown accommodation, a warm hearth, pulsating Ethernet, interesting company (or a pointer to it) is capable of shifting dates and leagues. I am backpacking through eastern Europe and Siberia, so no hovel, couch or spare room is too small (even in the SF bay area), and would be highly thought of:) 28 Oct 98 San Francisco.

05 Nov 98 London

06 Nov 98 Frankfurt/Berlin

09 Nov 98 Poland / Slovenia / Eastern-Europe-on-a-shoe-string

15 Nov 98 Helsinki

16 Nov 98 St Petersburg

20 Nov 98 Moscow (Trans-Siberian express)

25 Nov 98 Irkutsk

29 Nov 98 Ulan Bator.

03 Dec 98 Beijing.

Cheers, Julian.

Back from his trip, he decided to lead a normal life. It was time for him to put his knowledge to the service of businesses and organizations. He wanted some peace of mind and some new experiences in the real world.

His view on equality had him gravitate toward open source. In 1995, he wrote Strobe, a free and open-source security tool for computers. In 2000, he created Surfraw, a command-line interface for web-based search engines. The hacker community considered him to be a good developer.

Julian had a large part to play in the development of Internet in Australia. As of 1993, he was a system administrator at Suburbia, Australia's oldest public access network. It was launched in 1990 and open to everyone in 1993 even before the Internet became a commercially viable network. While other compet.i.tors forged a commercial ident.i.ty, Suburbia remained true to its original ambition: offer a private and secure system that supports newsgroups and the editing of online content.

Suburbia was and is a non-profit organization that has always fought for freedom of the press. The organization didn't receive any grants and existed only thanks to the generosity of its members who gave their time and equipment without obligation.

The members included convinced judges and politicians as well as hackers. They agreed on the idea that everyone online had the right to publish without worrying about politics, opinions, pressure or financial means.

Since 2008, Suburbia stopped accepting new members, as the demands were too high. Nevertheless, they said that they could be contacted by NGOs with a specific need or if co-opted by a current member. They could then filter out nasty intrusions that didn't serve Suburbia's basic interests.

By a.n.a.lyzing domain names, one could see that suburbia.com. au hosted www.whistleblowers.org.au on one of their servers. A whistleblower's standard procedure was to expose bad practices by providing evidence of wrongdoing. The whistleblower then investigated using different means that were not divulged, especially not to the media. The risk to informers was high, as the people they accused were sometimes criminals, people in important positions or entire organizations. They often made serious enemies in political parties, state departments and major corporations.

As retaliation, the whistleblower was often attacked personally by being called a troublemaker, crazy person or malicious liar. They might have been given the cold shoulder from colleagues and superiors or have been attacked in other ways, even physically.

Brian Martin, Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong, Australia had been active in the organization since 1991 and was president of Whistleblowers Australia from 1996 to 1999.

In an article of the UPIU, an advice paper for future journalists, Martin explained: "The wider picture is exercise of power in society. I think we're all mostly better off when people are more equal. That means we're able to speak out and freely negotiate things. In most organizations, and certainly in governments, they're very hierarchical and people at the bottom don't have free speech. People can stand up on a street corner and say lots of things, or these days you can set up a blog and write any comments that you like. Basically, if you say a bunch of tripe, you're going to lose credibility." The journalist added: "Perhaps losing one's credibility and reputation should be the only punishment for people who make false accusations, and when unethical and criminal actions are brought to light, it seems natural that whoever is exposed suffers public embarra.s.sment. Too often however, the whistleblower is attacked for going public with his evidence."