Julian Assange - Wikileaks: Warrior For True Part 6

10.

THE GENESIS OF WIKILEAKS.

Throughout his philosophical journey, Julian a.s.sange has come to believe that humans are not a left-wing idea against a right-wing one, or faith against reason, but rather individuals against inst.i.tutions.

After having read Kafka, Koestler and Solzhenitsyn, he believes that hierarchical inst.i.tutions have corrupted truth, creativity, art, love and compa.s.sion.16 His trips, his involvement in the Internet for all, his four years of study, as well as his political activities, all represent a sum of experiences pushing him to envision the world in a new, more global way.

He mirrored the world between philosophy and the scientific mind, and wanted to share this vision, mixing personal thoughts with famous quotes.

Julian launched his blog in June 2006, which he amusingly called 'IQ' for Intellectual Quotient. Later on, he posted on the potential significance of this acronym. He particularly liked Infinite Quest, International Question and even Isaac's Quest, a reference to the Bible character in Genesis. In the Bible, G.o.d asks Abraham, Isaac's father, to sacrifice his only son. Abraham fears G.o.d and obeys him, but just before killing him, an angel stops him and saves Isaac. During the First and Second Crusades, Isaac was considered a martyr and an example to follow. He's the one we sacrifice out of fear, and the one G.o.d saves.

Julian started his first post with a quote by Douglas Adams, English author and dramatist who died in 2001. He used this quote, but omitted the author: "The history of warfare is subdivided into three equal parts: Retribution: I'm going to kill you because you killed my brother.

Antic.i.p.ation: I'm going to kill you because I killed your brother.

Diplomacy: I'm going to kill my brother and then kill you on the pretext that your brother did it."

His view of diplomacy and war was dominated by logic. Julian was increasingly interested in how governments work and a.n.a.lyzed them with his literary culture and scientific sensibility.

Julian weeded through research project reports tagged 'MDA904.' Reports with this code name were research doc.u.ments ordered by the Maryland Procurement Office, accused today of being an umbrella for the National Security Agency (NSA), one of the branches of the CIA.

In November 2006, Julian wrote his first article ent.i.tled 'State and Terrorist Conspiracies,' as if it were a research paper. In it, he described a report by mathematicians and applied the graph theory to a.n.a.lyze terrorist conspiracies.

In December 2006, Julian re-used the a.n.a.lysis applying it to state conspiracies and wrote his manifesto ent.i.tled 'Conspiracy as Governance.' He then expanded on "this understanding of terrorist organizations and turns it on the likes of its creators, where it becomes a knife to dissect the power conspiracies used to maintain authoritarian government."

Julian also explained what bad governance is by defining it as 'conspiratorial': Civil servants who secretly collaborate work to the detriment of populations. According to him, when internal lines of communication within organizations are interrupted, the flow of information among conspirators starts to disappear. When the flow approaches zero, the conspiracy dissolves. That's when leaks become a weapon of information warfare.

Even though Julian kept working for a few years as a developer, network administrator and security advisor, he felt destined for something greater: exposing state secrets to the light of day to see the true workings of the world and its geopolitical interaction. He was convinced that the world would be revolutionized and felt he had a duty to history.

His IT knowledge and hacker past provided him with a certain kind of power. If major power implied great responsibilities, then Julian felt as though he needed to use his abilities for the greater good. Carrying out actions against conspiracies means carrying out a war against secrecy and tirelessly weakening bad governance, state or inst.i.tutional.

Julian was imbued with hacker ethics. He believed that sharing information was a powerful source of good and it was his duty as a hacker to share his expertise by offering free software and easy access to IT resources any time he could.

That was what he had started to do with Suburbia.

Most hackers and free and open-source software programmers adhere to this 'rule,' and many act accordingly by creating and giving away software. Some go even further and believe that any information must be free and any proprietary control is bad.

The similarity between these ethics and WikiLeaks' philosophy is fundamental: to be a tool for sharing information. The quality of information was seen as particularly defining. 'Bad information' has to be fought without question.

WikiLeaks main goal is to provide raw, quality information following the founding principles of Wikipedia: online encyclopedia (knowledge for all), a neutral point of view (information remains pure), free content (content can be re-used), interacting in a respectful and civil manner (ethics ensured by members), and not having firm rules (errors are self-regulated by the community).

However, the nature of the content aimed by WikiLeaks convergence with the world of journalism, which was also involved in sharing information had to be questioned.

In the beginning, Julian didn't see himself as a journalist, but did say he'd provide journalists with quality information. He felt a burning desire to bring some cla.s.s to said profession. He believed in freedom of the press (Suburbia mission) and easily understood that the press remained a choice as means of distribution.

Defined in theses terms: what was considered quality information? It was first and foremost relevant information that would touch readers: secret doc.u.ments that concerned the way the world was run, major corporations, banks and religions.

A journalist also needed 'trustworthy' information, which was verified, checked and regrouped. WikiLeaks must be provided with false leaks to be able to check their veracity.

Then it was up to journalists to select the information to be considered and regroup it if necessary, cross-reference it and use it. This information had to be complete and easily accessible.

WikiLeaks didn't want to replace journalism. Some members still thought that traditional journalism, in its current state, was in transformation and they had little confidence in mainstream media, which struggled with commercial and political pressure.

This was why their choice of broadcasting would first be done using alternative Internet media. WikiLeaks wanted to give birth to 'intensified' journalism, where competences and responsibilities would be divided along the way and where some people would take side roads to give the world something to think about.

Julian a.s.sange was looking for no less than the biggest collaboration with independent and organically modern media on the basis of correct information which had not been tampered with or cloaked by any kind of secrecy in order to be able to extract some sense and ideally, more truth. The people who partic.i.p.ated in the workings of war machines had to face their responsibilities, even cases of conscience, which were previously preserved by the nature of secrecy.

11.

THE ORGANIZATION.

Julian a.s.sange had been hatching his plan for a long time. Back in 2001, he had already started looking for a server to host critical content, and eventually called upon the Cypherpunk hacking network to host doc.u.ments and images. Under the name 'Proff', he shared his philosophical thoughts, security tips and program discoveries on the Cypherpunk mailing list. "The content is legal for the moment, const.i.tutionally protected in the United States. If you're happy to host cryptome.org, then you'll perhaps be happy to host this material," he wrote in his contact email to the network.

Cryptome is a website hosted in the United States that has been collecting thousands of doc.u.ments since 1996 that were either controversial or have been censured by various governments. John Young, a New York architect, is the owner of the site.

It was quite logical for Julian to ask him for help to launch WikiLeaks in October 2006. Here's his e-mail request: Dear John, You knew me under another name from Cypherpunk days. I am involved in a project that you may have feeling for. I will not mention its name yet in case you feel you are not able to be involved.

The project is a ma.s.s doc.u.ment-leaking project that requires someone with backbone to hold the .org domain registration. We would like that person to be someone who is not privy to the location of the master servers, which are otherwise obscured by technical means.

We expect the domain to come under the usual political and legal pressure. The policy for .org requires that registrants' details not be false or misleading. It would be an easy play to cancel the domain unless someone were willing to stand up and claim to be the registrant. This person does not need to claim any other knowledge or involvement.

Will you be that person?

John Young accepted and created wikileaks.org, wikileaks.cn and wikileaks.info. He then received a pa.s.sword for the members' mailing list of the WikiLeaks project.

Every email sent has the following header: This is a restricted internal development mailing list for w-i-k-i-l-e-a-k-s-.-o-r-g. Please do not mention that word directly in these discussions; refer instead to 'WL.' This list is housed at riseup.net, an activist collective in Seattle with an established lawyer and plenty of backbone.

This mailing list was set up for members to collaborate on the project, give advice, share their views on the visual ident.i.ty of the site, the layout, realization, etc.

The goal was to stick to the look and feel of a wiki, a collaborative website known for its simple graphics and ease of use. The pages feature interconnected hyperlinks with content such as writing, ill.u.s.trations, etc. that can be modified by any of the pages' visitors.

Now they needed an ill.u.s.tration, a logo to establish WikiLeaks' ident.i.ty. The discussions were going well on the proposal sent in by someone called Ani Lovins; he drew the first WikiLeaks logo: the mole.

E-mails were exchanged among WikiLeaks members throughout the world. The Germans loved it, the Americans discussed it, and Ani Lovins explained: "The group has already prototyped the platform; some technical details regarding security have been changed."

Every WikiLeaks volunteer had an alias as a minimum guarantee of security. Julian gave them the following tips when making a name for themselves on the Internet: "An alias has to be easy to remember. It has to be a name that you can spell in one or two ways, be gender neutral or masculine. Two syllables for the first name and one for the last name is the best alias so that it can be easily found, even with a typo. In fact, search engines are designed to improve queries: when you do a word search, it also searches for synonyms and similar spellings. If you type the complete name in Google, the alias should return as many hits as possible. It's a plus if this also happens with just the last name. Finally, it has to be simple, and the owner has to feel a sense of pride using their name."

Here are a few famous aliases of Australian Labor Party members that Julian gives as an example, specifying that all the good aliases do not necessarily meet all the above-mentioned criteria: Hillary Bray, Spi Ballard, Lee Kline, Harry Harrison, Jack Lovejack, Larry Lovedocs, etc.

Once a WikiLeaks member created their alias, they could become visible, and in order to divulge information they needed maximum visibility.

Let's have a look at the name Harry Harrison, the alias Julian used. First, it has to be said that Harrison is a science fiction author, so his name is indexed because of his novels. Next, the author is the first hit that appears when this name is typed into Google. However, by making a typo in the name while respecting the phonetics, the links referenced on the author always appear on top. This is the perfect alias to be able to hide!

For WikiLeaks, it was imperative to find support from known, respectable and serious people. On December 9 2006, Julian decided to send an e-mail to Daniel Ellsberg, his mentor, for the activities he carried out on revealing secrets. He also enjoyed quite a bit of public notoriety.

Dear Mr. Ellsberg, We have followed with interest and delight your recent statements on doc.u.ment leaking. We have come to the conclusion that fomenting a world wide movement of ma.s.s leaking is the most cost effective political intervention available to us. *

We believe that injustice is answered by good governance and for there to be good governance there must be open governance.

Governance by stealth is governance by conspiracy and fear. Fear, because without it, secrecy does not last for long. (...) When governance is closed, man's eyes become cataracts. When governance is open, man can see and so act to move the world towards a more just state. (...) us*: some attributes may have been swapped to protect selected ident.i.ties, no particular order.

1) Retired New York architect and notorious intelligence leak facilitator 2) Euro cryptographer/programmer 3) Pacific physicist and ill.u.s.trator 4) A pacific author and economic policy lecturer 5) Euro, Ex-Cambridge mathematician/cryptographer/programmer 6) Euro businessman and security specialist/activist 7) Author of software than runs 40% of the world's websites.

8) US pure mathematician with criminal law background 9) An infamous US ex-hacker 10) Pacific cryptographer/physicist and activist 11) US/euro cryptographer and activist/programmer 12) Pacific programmer 13) Pacific architect / foreign policy wonk New technology and cryptographic ideas permit us to not only encourage doc.u.ment leaking, but to facilitate it directly on a ma.s.s scale. We intend to place a new star in the political firmament of man.

We are building an uncensorizable branch of Wikipedia for leaked doc.u.ments and the civic inst.i.tutions & social perceptions necessary to defend and promote it. We have received over 1 million doc.u.ments from 13 countries, despite not having publicly launched yet!

We have approached you now for two reasons.

Firstly, we have crossed over from 'prospective' to 'projective'. The basic technology has been prototyped and we have a view as how we must proceed politically and legally. We need to move and inspire people, gain volunteers, funding, further set up the necessary political-legal defenses and deploy. Since you have thought about leaking more than anyone we know, we would like you on board. We'd like your advice and we'd like you to form part of our political armor. The more armor we have, particularly in the form of men and women sanctified by age, history and cla.s.s, the more we can act like brazen young men and get away with it.(...) Please tell us your thoughts. If you are happy, we will add you to our internal mailing list, contacts, etc.

Solidarity!

WL.

The clout of someone like Ellsberg would be perfect for the movement. It would ensure the credibility of the site and would give them greater lat.i.tude to act as they please. This e-mail showed that the entire structure was already well thought out. They then needed public and political credibility as well as incentives to provide information. Their way of motivating their informers would be to award Ellsberg prizes, which is in fact the second reason invoked to contact this man. They also had the idea of regionalizing the prizes in order to encourage patronage.

While waiting for a response from Daniel Ellsberg, they continued to set up the site. The main preoccupation of the original WikiLeaks members was to make sure people knew about the organization. In December 2006, they were invited to partic.i.p.ate in the World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, from January 20th to the 25th of 2007. They saw it as a way to promote themselves and decided to be present on every day of the forum.

On December 13, 2006, Julian wrote to a close friend to invite him to join the WikiLeaks advisory board. He started by telling him about his trip to Hanoi in 2005 and what he had seen. Imbued with the lack of information issue, he linked it to his memories of Hanoi. The travel story is then transformed into a long political and lyrical a.n.a.lysis that is so powerful; he posted it on his blog, ent.i.tled 'Road to Hanoi.'

WikiLeaks members were not naive. They were waging war, and to do so they needed money. They needed to find money, as it would determine, along with the number of volunteers, the scope of their actions.

One of the members told the story of a man who could have asked for three million US dollars from George Soros for the development of an online anonymity management system (a compet.i.tor of Tor, used by WikiLeaks).

George Soros is an American-Hungarian billionaire, financier and philanthropist who became famous for his speculative activities on currency, which broke the Bank of England in 1992. He also founded the Open Society Inst.i.tute, which supports democratic actions mainly in Central and Eastern Europe. Soros' detractors criticize the doings of his investment fund located in the fiscal paradise of Curacao, in the Dutch Antilles. Curacao was known as one of the most important places for drug money laundering. By operating out of Curacao, Soros could keep the nature of his investors as well as the use of the investment fund's money a secret. Should a secretive man sponsor a movement whose objective was to reveal hidden abuse?

The idea was controversial in the ranks of WikiLeaks, but wasn't rejected!

It was a tough start. WikiLeaks members were not yet very self-a.s.sured when it came to editing the leaks. They liked getting advice, and Daniel Ellsberg had yet to answer. They decided to use the postal services.

Later on, they received an e-mail from a communications expert who advised them on publishing a leak about Somalia. The leak came from China. Young, who was usually very quiet on the list, told the team to watch out for this leak. What if it were false? They had to be more vigilant.

E-mailing was going well. One person a.n.a.lyzed the leak for Young: content, local context in Somalia, translation and source (Chinese diplomacy apparently). Young was rea.s.sured and gave his advice on publishing the leaks.

Julian thanked him using lyrical and flattering terms: John, you set an example to us humble rabble and lift our spirits with your gentile tidings.

Keep up our hopes, our e-spirit de corpuscular; draw forth our anger, our courage and our fire to lick at the damp paper of uncivilization until it catches and our hearts are warmed by the conflagration of bas.e.m.e.nt mendacities the world over. Let our smiles be woken by flowers of openness pushing through the ash from below. We are compelled to act, as we are best able, for a man who witnesses injustice but does not act, becomes a party to a cascade of injustice, via the iterative diminution and pacification of his character.

We noticed that Julian's writing style was embellished with images, drama and flowery words. All WikiLeaks members took into account the considerations of setting up a website with the risk of repercussions they knew to be huge, dangerous and compromising for every one of them.

To read an e-mail that sounded like preaching made them wonder. Julian suddenly seemed supernatural, almost mystical in his fervent desire to expose lies.

It was Christmas of 2006 and WikiLeaks members felt up to their first leak. However, they needed support, information relays and knowledgeable people. Julian thought of partners he could use to broadcast WikiLeaks reports, as he didn't want to call upon the mainstream press. He believed that the future of journalism was on the Internet, and so he opted for CounterPunch. CounterPunch was a bi-weekly newsletter published online and prided itself on telling stories that the corporate press didn't tell, and so exposed scandals. They especially liked to provide information on fighting against war machines and major corporations to their readership.

Julian didn't stop at his first idea and asked all WikiLeaks members to think of other alternatives to CounterPunch. They came up with other suggestions like 'znet,' 'zmag,' 'csmonitor,' 'village voice,' and 'aljazeera,' but no decision was made. They were more preoccupied with problems of tracing doc.u.ments according to the format used (PDF, Word, etc.).

WikiLeaks enjoyed support in China, which supplied them with this information: on December 26, 2006, an e-mail came in mentioning correspondence from Somalia to their amba.s.sador in China, forcing them to modify the doc.u.ment they had planned to publish. They thoroughly discuss the content of the information and one of them wrote: "I hope that this will bring help to the poor Somalis. They really need it."

The research of the advisory board continued using an e-mail template sent to anyone likely to be part of the board: Subject: advisory board inquiry [wikileaks]

x.x.xx.x.xx, please pa.s.s this around to the relevant folks (is that just you?).

WikiLeaks is developing an uncensorable version of Wikipedia for untraceable ma.s.s doc.u.ment-leaking and discussion. Our primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and central Eurasia, but we also expect to be of a.s.sistance to those in the west who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their own governments and corporations.

We aim for maximum political impact; this means our technology is (like the Wikipedia) fast and usable by non-technical people.

We have received over one million doc.u.ments so far (...) [http://www.wikileaks.org/]

We believe fostering a safe, easy, socially sanctified way for uncensorable ma.s.s doc.u.ment leaking, publishing and a.n.a.lysis is THE most cost effective generator of good governance.

We seek good governance, because good governance does more than run trains on time. Good governance responds to the sufferings of its people. Good governance answers injustice.

We are looking for initial advisory board members to advise us politically, since our strengths are in building large technical projects such as the Wikipedia. In particular we'd like your advice on: 1. How can WikiLeaks help you as a journalist and consumer of leaks?

2. How can WikiLeaks motivate, protect, and help your sources or people like them?

3. Who are some other good people to approach, of the figurehead variety and of the will-actually-do-work variety?

4. What is your advice on political frame setting and possible funding bodies?

We expect difficult state lashback unless WikiLeaks can be given a sanctified frame ("center for human rights, democracy, good government and apple pie press freedom project" vs "hackers strike again").

Our initial reputation is carried over from the success of the Wikipedia, but we do not feel this a.s.sociation is, by itself, enough to protect us. The public support of organisations like FAS, who are in some sense sanctified, is vital to our initial survival.

Advisory board positions will at least initially, be unpaid, but we feel the role may be of significant interest to you.

This email showed how important security issues were to WikiLeaks members from the very start. They all knew that they were involved with highly explosive material. The information they possessed was a time bomb, and they were very aware of it.

A few days later, they received an e-mail with questions about their editorial guidelines. Were they publishing private data? Their quick answer promised collaborative self-censorship like Wikipedia did. WikiLeaks didn't really have editorial guidelines, but tried to maintain an ethical standard shared among all its members who explain the need to communicate expansively as quickly as possible.

On December 29 2006, when the first responses of the press regarding the site and its first Somali leak appeared, WikiLeaks only had a potential advisory board, so Julian proposed contacting Soros. The members were open to the idea, but Young explained to them that Soros would only join according to who was already on the board. WikiLeaks was going around in circles, and at that time, it could only confirm three people, including Young, as Ellsberg still had yet to respond.

12.

THE FIRST LEAKS.