Julian Assange - Wikileaks: Warrior For True Part 3

Neo212: And Neo saw the source in front of him eliminating everything, so he moved forward to merge with it!

Xavier thought that Neo212 must be quite young to keep coming back to these Matrix references.

Fkb00: Our action online started on its own, with curiosity and a technical challenge. We're all connected. It's definitely a type of resistance.

Clue: That's why we have to use it for the greater good. Once discovered, plans that a.s.sist in the action of an authoritarian regime will provoke more resistance from people.

Neo212: The people, the people, it's all very Bolshevik sounding...

Clue: The problem is that the conspirators and conspiracies are all connected. It's like a network of twine on nails. Nail = conspirator, twine = communication. All the nails are connected either two by two or by going through another nail. Some are on the fringe of the conspiracy, others are central and communicate with many conspirators and others still may know only two conspirators, but act as a bridge between two important sections of the conspiracy.

Neo212: Let's get crafty now. Your engineer side is showing.

Clue: It reminds me of the Heroes timeline. Knowing that a conspirator cannot conspire alone, what's the minimum number of links that have to be cut to separate the conspiracy into two groups? Come on guys, it's time to start using your brains!

Fkb00: a.s.sa.s.sinating a 'bridge' conspirator would be a radical and efficient method.

Clue: True, but we'll use our brains to find an answer that holds true for all conspiracies, except if Fkb00 wants to become a mercenary.

Fkb00: I'm sure I'd be good at it. My job at the university is depressing. Should I dare say that it smells like a conspiracy?

Neo212: Something is missing in your theory for it to be representative.

Clue: ????

Neo212: We have to add some importance to the type of information, some weight, like in logical diagrams. When you look at diplomacy, there are diplomats who don't communicate anything of importance, while others deal with war and peace in some parts of the world.

Clue: Thanks for your a.n.a.lytical insight. You're right, the weight of the link is essential, but I wonder about conspiracies in general, no matter the weight of the links because it changes from one conspiracy to the next.

Neo212: To cut a conspiracy in two, you have to cut the network that links the conspirators in two. Divide and conquer.

Clue: There is a crucial difference between a conspiracy and the individuals that make it up because individuals don't conspire when they're isolated. It's probably here that we have to add the abstract value of the weight of the link between two conspirators, and then we can calculate conspiratorial power. It's the sum of the weight of the links between the conspirators.

Neo212: Oh, he's stealing my idea! It's always the same between the engineer and the a.n.a.lyst.

Clue: Get back to your craft with the nails and putting bigger or smaller twine according to the importance or the number of information shared.

Fkb00: Your total conspiratorial power is also independent of the specific disposition of the links between the nails.

Clue: Exactly. Separating a conspiracy in two is separating the total conspiratorial power in two. Any half split could then be considered a conspiracy itself and we could continue to indefinitely cut it in the same way.

Neo212: It's true that it's possible to have fun implementing it graphically, with beeps and whooshes like in War Games.

Fkb00: Another possibility: throttling the conspiracies by reducing the weight of the heavy links that acts as bridges between regions of equal total conspiratorial power.

Clue: A guy I really like wrote: "A man in chains knows he should have acted sooner for his ability to influence the actions of the state is near its end." Faced with powerful conspiratorial actions, we must therefore antic.i.p.ate. We can foil a conspiracy by drastically restricting the information available to it. If we attack it properly, it will no longer be able to comprehend its environment or formulate an action plan.

Neo212: Nice demo. That's going to cause h.e.l.l in US diplomacy. It's about attacking the way information is transmitted and the type of information. IT resources today strengthen the capacity of the US to conspire. And us hackers are actually the only ones able to fight on this level to find more fair systems.

Fkb00: Seems clear to me. I'd like to talk about it in person on Thursday.

Neo212: Sure, but if that's why we have to form a party, count me out. It's just not my thing. But I'm OK with supporting the action using my technical skills. Keep me posted.

Clue: Thanks for the sparring, guys.

Fkb00: Send me the info for Thursday.

Neo212: I'm off to have some fun, until next time.

Xavier left the channel and toggled to Twitter to check his recent DMs. He had new followers. Someone called @SciF0r seemed to be interested in his ideas. New tweets appeared on the corner of his screen, but he didn't pay any attention to them. He decided to spend the night on a new encryption code.

5.

SOPHOX.

Hacker.

Published on 28 November 2010 by sophox Leave a comment .

n.o.body is left unscathed from childhood. Parents, people and places brand us for life. Julian has had quite an epic life. Like an Australian Tom Sawyer, he lived very free in the middle of nature the first years of his life. Sometimes home-schooled, sometimes at school or taking correspondence courses, this shapes a man to be inevitably self-centered. Julian seems happy to say that he's lucky to do what he likes, to have a pa.s.sion. He's proud of himself.

When I think about his childhood I think he was marked by life with a stepfather who was part of a sect or linked to it in some way or another. His stepfather was a son of Anne Hamilton Byrne who founded a sect often referred to as 'The Family.' She would dress all her supposed children the same way and bleach their hair. If you've seen the film Village of the d.a.m.ned, you get the idea. It's very scary. While searching for pictures of Julian I was surprised to see that he's had white hair for a long time. Was he part of the sect? When he was on TSR, his hair was light chestnut, which begs the question: did he dye his hair? Since he became a public figure, he's wanted to change his physical image. The question very often comes back to his hair. His mother said that his hair turned white after a stressful custody battle for his son. Julian tells a whole other story: I was very blond until 12-ish, until p.u.b.erty. I built a cathode ray tube at 15, at school, and connected it backwards. The Geiger counter went 1000, 2000, 3000, 40,000. That was about the time. Also I had some head scans, because I had something like viral encephalitis. It was very mild. I just lost feeling in one cheek. Earlier on, at nine, I'd had head X-rays because I'd headb.u.t.ted a giant earth ball.

I did some research on his stepfather, but Julian is very discreet about his relation with the man from the sect, a man who had five ID cards, lied about his past, his studies... He must be a great manipulator. Is Julian one as well?

Christine a.s.sange fled to protect her children, but at the same time denied them any roots. If they were always moving and on the run like criminals, how could he make any friends?

Is it because of this life that he's more attached to machines, as he didn't have any friends, or is it a natural inclination?

In any case he doesn't talk about his childhood and there's not much to find on that part of his life on the Internet. Maybe he has a secret to uncover. When you're related to a grandmother by marriage whose head of a sect, you can make up anything.

Let's move on to his hacker life. I know, I understand! Why did society see this as a negative thing from the start? Ignorance is afraid of knowledge! Absorbing the knowledge of the network and the technology of the Internet on a daily basis was a real revolution. It was fascinating for those who grew up with it like Julian, but a bit overwhelming for older people. NASA personnel, departments of defense and major laboratories work with the Internet, but he just had fun with it and was even an integral part of its creation. It must give you a feeling of power to dominate machines when most people are so ignorant as to how they work.

Why have hackers always been considered criminals? Hacker ethics are quite clear: knowledge and improvement. It's true that sometimes n.o.body asks them to do anything and yet they fiddle with software that doesn't belong to them. Illegality is only present because the system is hidden. If it could be accessed freely, hackers would poke around anyways to quench their thirst for knowledge and possibly improve software.

Imagine considering everything a system with flaws and trying to find a way to solve them. After having spent a few years with a hacker, I can tell you that they're obsessed with their computer. Today the computer is just a means to get involved directly in the world. For us it's Facebook and Wikipedia, and for hackers it's source codes and chat forums.

But who is Julian a.s.sange?

I found out what he was doing in Switzerland in early November. He spoke at a conference organized at the UN by an NGO called International Inst.i.tute for Peace, Justice and Human Rights (IIPJDH). Director Mehdi Ben Hamida explained that the organization is fighting against the war in Iraq. It took three months to convince Julian to speak at their conference on the sidelines of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Ben Hamida asked him to present the cases of tortures practiced by the United States in Iraq and elsewhere, published in doc.u.ments on the WikiLeaks site. This NGO was unknown, and Julian was very suspicious at first, then he accepted to go to Geneva on the condition that bodyguards would protect him.

On Friday, November 5th, the Human Rights Council examined the case of the United States. Ben Hamida thought that this would be an opportunity to influence American politics. Friday afternoon Julian went to the Palace of Nations for a meeting organized by the NGO on the sidelines of the council's session. He was flanked by two bodyguards and the international police of Geneva ensured the building's security.

Inside, in a hall in the bas.e.m.e.nt, he gave a one-hour presentation as an expert witness who was able to follow the 400,000 doc.u.ments on Iraq and Afghanistan in a journalistic way.

He's is in a strange position because not only is he an expert witness of all the 'secret' actions of the United States, he's also had his freedom of expression violated with regards to his organization.

The threat weighing down on him is quite real, as the vice is tightening on his organization. The US government declared that it's trying to prosecute him and eventually trying to bring a lawsuit against other WikiLeaks members. Even if he's sure he's respected journalistic procedures, Julian knows that some branches of governments operate above the law. Will WikiLeaks hold tight under the threat of the world's greatest power?

a.s.sange explained that he'd had a one-hour briefing with Geoff Morrell, chief spokesman of the Pentagon. The United States demanded that WikiLeaks destroy everything that was published on Iraq, Afghanistan and the Pentagon.

How did this briefing on behalf of the Secretary of Defense, Department of State and the White House impact the volunteers? I imagine what it would be like if it were my ex Xavier who's just a hacker working at telecoms in Switzerland. He wants to help change the world and all of a sudden he'd be caught up in a war that is much more dangerous than the fight for truth.

There they go again with their authoritarianism and censors.h.i.+p! And Julian doesn't like the Pentagon any more than he did twenty years earlier.

He knows the secrets and plays off the world's greatest power all too well. He imagines blowing it all up, so that the ma.s.ses wake up and start wanting to enjoy freedom and the naked truth.

The US government demands that the organization stop dealing with its sources. This case of intimidation is the first in American jurisprudence. Have they gone nuts? They went as far as saying that they'd force the organization to respect these demands. When Julian asked them how they planned to enforce this, they answered: "We're the Pentagon, law doesn't concern us. That's the responsibility of other organizations."

And this is exactly what Julian is fighting against. Is he the Don Quixote of truth?

For once he'd like a government to be accountable for its actions, including circ.u.mstances and consequences. For once a government should stop acting like a bureaucratic system, dividing up responsibilities that cause irresponsibility.

Lawyers warned Julian of some of the possibilities the government had in starting this fight. a.s.sa.s.sinating him is one of them, as they have enough agents who do that very well. Friends advised him to watch out for open windows and avoid parking near bridges because 'accidents' happen. It sounds like a bad spy film, but when it happens to you, it's not cool anymore. Julian is a marked man.

To discredit WikiLeaks, they will try to discredit him, the man carrying the message. Now he must run again like he did so long ago as a child. He has to antic.i.p.ate attacks on his personal life. What kind of attacks could they be? Is he no longer allowed to be a man?

BACK TO REALITY.

Before a ram attacks, it will first back up.

Anonymous.

6.

eLISE AND XAVIER.

elise had been fascinated by Julian a.s.sange's adventures for a week now. She kept collecting tons of information, having entered into a new world she had once glimpsed at briefly when she was living with Xavier. Xavier sent her a text message to suggest meeting up for coffee at a bar on a shopping street of Geneva the next day at 10 a.m.

elise arrived a little bit late for their meeting. She wanted to make sure that Xavier would be there.

"I'm happy to see you," she said, giving him a kiss.

"You called me first," he said jokingly. "In fact you kind of startled me, you sounded worried. I didn't really understand why."

"Well, I had just watched an interview with Julian a.s.sange and I suddenly remembered that you were interested in the WikiLeaks organization. Is that still the case?"

"Yes, I read what WikiLeaks releases. I downloaded the cables and looked into the sources, and I wrote a program that a.n.a.lyzes and reads them. I wanted to see how it was published and in what format. In the beginning I wanted to build an application to make the cables available on the iPad and see if Apple would authorize it on the Apple Store. In the meantime, someone built an unofficial WikiLeaks application that was refused by Apple, so I didn't bother. Now I just follow the news. And you, why this newfound interest in WikiLeaks?"

"Julian a.s.sange really intrigued me when I saw him on television and I felt like learning more about him. Since then, I've been looking for a lot of information on the Internet and in newspapers. I just read Underground, the book he co-wrote with Australian journalist Suelette Dreyfus on the world of hackers. Then, I felt like forging an opinion on his honesty. He shows up like that all of a sudden on center stage with all his secrets..."

"You know, until now, what WikiLeaks has divulged is a compilation of what's already around on the Internet with, I agree with you, a few new facts that don't add anything important because they just repeat what the entire world already knows. They're especially getting people worried with what they're going to release. WikiLeaks has apparently only released about one per cent of the doc.u.ments already in their possession, which is what governments are worried about."

"What can they do? Kill the guy?"

"I imagine if they wanted to they could, but I don't think they'd want to turn him into a victim. Governments usually try to leverage him to reduce freedom on the Internet. In France, the LOPPS I and HADOPI laws have already shut out part the Internet."

"Can you refresh my memory?"

"LOPPS I is a law that reorganizes the structures responsible for the country's domestic security, a law dating back to 2002. The French government is currently voting on LOPPSI 2, a law that will help control information on the Internet. The law plans to store information on the content shared online for a year: IP addresses, nicknames, equipment used and even the person's personal data, including content identifiers as well as logins and pa.s.swords."

"And HADOPI?"

"HADOPI is a 2009 law that intends to block free broadcasting and protect creation on the Internet. The government wants to stop illegal file sharing."

"And who decides if it's illegal or not? Major record labels?" Xavier shrugged his shoulders.

"For mp3s maybe, but the goal of the government is mainly to insert an independent organization between the local ent.i.ty that manages the IP address register and the Internet service provider. In the end, this organization will have the authority to block Internet access to anyone the government designates as a pirate."

"The problem is that security and freedom don't mix very well."

"I think that less freedom doesn't mean more security, and that's what they're trying to make us believe. France's Internet liberties will be as restrictive as the ones in China with these laws!"

"They keep scaring us with all these baddies running around, but other countries will not necessarily follow suit."

"In Belgium they tried to pa.s.s the same kind of law, but they didn't succeed. And look what they're doing to a.s.sange! It really bothers them to see that guys like him are able to broadcast things on a large scale. Music bothers major record labels, but the secrets WikiLeaks could reveal terrifies governments."

"Can we do something about it in our little corner of the world?"

"elise, when you have a computer in your hands, your corner is the world! The days of being scared of the hacker who knows machine language while you just use your computer as a television and a post office are over. Today, all knowledge is accessible to everybody thanks to the Internet: music, information, or even courses at Stanford. Everything you want is there and I'm ready to fight for freedom. Free flow, free access."

"And how would you go about it?"

"By logging into IRC, there are a lot of things going on."

"IRC?"