Julian Assange
Julian Assange | |
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.jpg) Assange at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival[a] | |
| Born | Julian Paul Hawkins 3 July 1971 Townsville, Queensland, Australia |
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| Known for | Founder and publisher of WikiLeaks |
| Title | Director[2] and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks (2006–2018); publisher (since 2018)[3] |
Political party | WikiLeaks Party (2013–2015) |
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Criminal penalty |
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| Father | John Shipton |
| Relatives | Gabriel Shipton (half-brother) |
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| Global surveillance |
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Julian Paul Assange (/əˈsɑːnʒ/ ⓘ ə-SAHNZH;[4] né Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, programmer, and publisher who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. He came to international attention in 2010 after WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from Chelsea Manning, a United States Army intelligence analyst:[5] footage of a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad showing war crimes committed by the U.S. Army, U.S. military logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and U.S. diplomatic cables. Assange has won over two dozen awards for publishing and journalism.
Assange was raised in various places around Australia until his family settled in Melbourne in his middle teens. He became involved in the hacker community and was convicted of hacking in 1996.[6][7][8] Following the establishment of WikiLeaks, Assange was its editor when it published the Bank Julius Baer documents, footage of the 2008 Tibetan unrest, and a report on political killings in Kenya with The Sunday Times. Publication of the leaks from Manning started in February 2010.
In November 2010 the Swedish Police Authority wanted to question Assange in an investigation and sought to extradite him from the UK.[9] In June 2012, Assange breached his bail and took refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London.[10] He was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012[11] on the grounds of political persecution and fears he might be extradited to the United States.[12] Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation in 2019.[13] In 2013, Assange launched the WikiLeaks Party and unsuccessfully stood for the Australian Senate while remaining in the embassy.[14][15] During the 2016 U.S. election campaign, WikiLeaks published confidential Democratic Party emails, showing that the party's national committee favoured Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the primaries and it had sought to undermine the Sanders campaign.[16][17] In March 2017, WikiLeaks published a series of documents which detailed the CIA's tools for hacking into smartphones and other internet devices,[18] after which senior CIA officials discussed potentially kidnapping or assassinating Assange.[19]
On 11 April 2019 Assange's asylum was withdrawn following a series of disputes with Ecuadorian authorities; the police were invited into the London embassy and he was arrested.[20] A British judge found him guilty of breaching bail and sentenced him to 50 weeks in prison.[21] The U.S. government unsealed an indictment charging Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion related to the leaks provided by Manning.[22] In May 2019 and June 2020, the U.S. government unsealed new indictments against Assange, charging him with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and alleging he had conspired with hackers.[23][24][25] The key witness for the new indictment, whom the justice department had given immunity in return for giving evidence, stated in 2021 that he had fabricated his testimony. Critics described these charges as an unprecedented challenge to press freedom with potential implications for investigative journalism worldwide.[26][27] Assange was incarcerated in HM Prison Belmarsh in London from April 2019 to June 2024, as the U.S. government's extradition effort was contested in the UK courts.[28][29] In 2022, the incoming Labor government of Anthony Albanese reversed the position of previous Australian governments and said it would lobby for Assange's release.[30]
In 2024, following a High Court ruling that granted Assange a full appeal to extradition, Assange and his lawyers negotiated a plea deal with US prosecutors. Assange pleaded guilty in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defence documents, in return for a sentence of time served.[31][32] Following the hearing Assange flew to Australia, arriving on 26 June 2024.[33]
Early life
[edit]Assange was born Julian Paul Hawkins on 3 July 1971 in Townsville, Queensland,[7][34] to Christine Ann Hawkins,[35] a visual artist,[36]: 34 and John Shipton, an anti-war activist and builder.[37] The couple separated before their son was born.[37] When Julian was a year old his mother married Brett Assange,[38][39][40] an actor with whom she ran a small theatre company and whom Julian Assange regards as his father (choosing Assange as his surname).[34][41] Christine and Brett Assange divorced around 1979. Christine then became involved with Leif Meynell, also known as Leif Hamilton, whom Julian Assange later described as "a member of an Australian cult" called The Family. Meynell and Christine Assange separated in 1982.[42][36][43]
Julian Assange lived in more than thirty Australian towns and cities during his childhood.[44] He attended several schools, including Goolmangar Primary School in New South Wales (1979–1983)[41] and Townsville State High School in Queensland[45] as well as being schooled at home.[39] In his mid-teens, he settled with his mother and half-brother in Melbourne. He moved in with his girlfriend Teresa at age 17.[38][46]
Assange studied programming, mathematics, and physics at Central Queensland University (1994)[47] and the University of Melbourne (2003–2006),[38][48] but did not complete a degree.[49][50] Assange started the Puzzle Hunt tradition at the University of Melbourne, which was modelled after the MIT Mystery Hunt.[51] He was involved in the Melbourne rave scene, and assisted in installing an internet kiosk at Ollie Olsen's club night called "Psychic Harmony", which was held at Dream nightclub. Assange's nickname at the raves was "Prof".[52]
Hacking
[edit]By 1987, aged 16, Assange had become a skilled hacker[53][54] under the name Mendax,[55][56] taken from Horace's splendide mendax (Latin for "nobly untruthful").[50][57][46] Around this time, the police raided his mother's home and confiscated his equipment. According to Assange, "it involved some dodgy character who was alleging that we had stolen five hundred thousand dollars from Citibank". Ultimately, no charges were raised and his equipment was returned, but Assange "decided that it might be wise to be a bit more discreet".[39]
In 1988 Assange used social engineering to get the password to Australia's Overseas Telecommunications Commission's mainframes.[51][46] Assange had a self-imposed set of ethics: he did not damage or crash systems or data he hacked, and he shared information.[46][58][51] The Sydney Morning Herald later opined that he had become one of Australia's "most notorious hackers",[59] and The Guardian said that by 1991 he was "probably Australia's most accomplished hacker".[56] Assange's official biography on WikiLeaks called him Australia's "most famous ethical computer hacker",[60] and the earliest version said he "hacked thousands of systems, including the Pentagon" when he was younger.[60][61][62]
He and two others, known as "Trax" and "Prime Suspect", formed a hacking group called "the International Subversives".[39][63][55][56] According to NPR, David Leigh, and Luke Harding, Assange may have been involved in the WANK hack at NASA in 1989, but this has never been proven.[64][6][36]: 42 Assange called it "the origin of hacktivism", and the Swedish television documentary WikiRebels, which was made with Assange's cooperation, also hinted he was involved.[38]
In mid-1991 the three hackers began targeting MILNET,[61] a data network used by the US military, where Assange found reports he said showed the US military was hacking other parts of itself.[46] Assange found a backdoor and later said they "had control over it for two years."[56][61] In 2012 Ken Day, the former head of the Australian Federal Police computer crime team, said that there had been no evidence the International Subversives had hacked MILNET. In response to Assange's statements about accessing MILNET, Day said that "Assange may still be liable to prosecution for that act—if it can be proved."[65]
Assange wrote a program called Sycophant that allowed the International Subversives to conduct "massive attacks on the US military".[38] The International Subversives regularly hacked into systems belonging to a "who's who of the U.S. military-industrial complex"[46][66][67] and the network of Australia National University.[56][39][61][68] Assange later said he had been "a famous teenage hacker in Australia, and I've been reading generals' emails since I was 17". Assange has attributed his motivation to this experience with power.[69][70]
Arrest and trial
[edit]The Australian Federal Police (AFP) set up an investigation called Operation Weather targeting The International Subversives.[39][46][71] In September 1991 Assange was discovered hacking into the Melbourne master terminal of Nortel, a Canadian multinational telecommunications corporation.[39][50][68] Another member of the International Subversives turned in himself and the others,[55][46] and the AFP tapped Assange's phone line (he was using a modem) and raided his home at the end of October.[72]
The earliest detailed reports about Assange are 1990s Australian press reports on him and print and TV news of his trial.[73][74][75] He was charged in 1994 with 31 counts of crimes related to hacking, including defrauding Telecom Australia, fraudulent use of a telecommunications network, obtaining access to information, erasing data, and altering data.[39][56][74][75] According to Assange, the only data he inserted or deleted was his program.[75] The prosecution argued that a magazine written by the International Subversives would encourage others to hack, calling it a "hacker's manual" and alleging that Assange and the other hackers posted information online about how to hack into computers they had accessed.[46][74] His trial date was set in May 1995[76] and his case was presented to the Supreme Court of Victoria, but the court did not take the case, sending it back to the County Court.[77] Assange fell into a deep depression while waiting for his trial and checked himself into a psychiatric hospital; he then spent six months sleeping in the wilderness around Melbourne.[51]
In December 1996, facing a theoretical sentence of 290 years in prison,[38] he struck a plea deal[8] and pleaded guilty to 24 hacking charges.[56][75][60] The judge called the charges "quite serious" and initially thought a jail term would be necessary[56][71] but ultimately sentenced Assange to a fine of A$2,100 and released him on a A$5,000 good behaviour bond[6][38][78] because of his disrupted childhood and the absence of malicious or mercenary intent.[56][79][78][71] After his sentencing, Assange told the judge that he had "been misled by the prosecution in terms of the charges" and "a great misjustice has been done". The judge told Assange "you have pleaded guilty, the proceedings are over" and advised him to be quiet.[71][79] Assange has described the trial as a formative period and according to The New Republic, "the experience set him on the intellectual path" leading him to found WikiLeaks.[55][67]
In 1993, Assange provided technical advice and support to help the Victoria Police Child Exploitation Unit to prosecute individuals responsible for publishing and distributing child pornography.[80][75] His lawyers said he was pleased to assist, emphasising that he received no benefit for this and was not an informer. His role in helping the police was discussed during his 1996 sentencing on computer hacking charges.[81][82] According to his mother, Assange also helped police "remove a book on the Internet about how to build a bomb".[75]
Cypherpunks and programming
[edit]In the same year, he took over running one of the first public Internet service providers (ISPs) in Australia, Suburbia Public Access Network, when its original owner, Mark Dorset, moved to Sydney.[38][83] He joined the cypherpunk mailing list in late 1993 or early 1994.[38][84] According to Robert Manne, Assange's main political focus at this time seems to have been the information-sharing possibilities created by the internet and its threats.[38] He began programming in 1994, authoring or co-authoring network[85] and encryption programs, such as the Rubberhose deniable encryption system.[38][86][75] Assange wrote other programs to make the Internet more accessible[85] and developed cyber warfare systems like the Strobe port scanner which could look for weaknesses in hundreds of thousands of computers at any one time.[75]
During this period of time he also moderated the AUCRYPTO forum,[87] ran a website that gave advice on computer security to 5,000 subscribers in 1996,[36]: 45 and contributed research to Suelette Dreyfus's Underground (1997), a book about Australian hackers including the International Subversives.[46][88] According to Assange, he "deliberately minimized" his role in Underground so it could "pull in the whole community".[89]
In 1998 he co-founded with Trax the "network intrusion detection technologies" company Earthmen Technology which developed Linux kernel hacking tools.[71][51] During this period he also earned a sizeable income working as a consultant for large corporations.[75] In October 1998, Assange decided to visit friends and announced on the cypherpunks mailing list he would be "hopscotching" through Russia, Mongolia, China, Poland and Eastern Europe.[75]
Leaks
[edit]According to Assange, in the 1990s, he and Suburbia Public Access Network facilitated leaks for activists and lawyers.[90] Assange told Suelette Dreyfus that he had "acted as a conduit for leaked documents" when fighting local corruption.[38] While awaiting trial and trying to get custody of his son Daniel, Assange and his mother formed the activist organisation Parent Inquiry Into Child Protection.[75] An article in the Canadian magazine Maclean's later referred to it as "a low-tech rehearsal for WikiLeaks".[66] The group used the Australian Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents, and secretly recorded meetings with Health and Community Services. The group also used flyers to encourage insiders to anonymously come forward, and according to Assange they "had moles who were inside dissidents." An insider leaked a key internal departmental manual about the rules for custody disputes to the group.[38][39]
In November 1996 Assange sent an email to lists he had created and mentioned a "LEAKS" project.[38] Assange stated that he registered the domain "leaks.org" in 1999, but did not use it.[71][51] He publicised a patent granted to the National Security Agency in August 1999, for voice-data harvesting technology saying "This patent should worry people. Everyone's overseas phone calls are or may soon be tapped, transcribed and archived in the bowels of an unaccountable foreign spy agency."[87]
WikiLeaks
[edit]Early publications
[edit]
Assange and a group of other dissidents, mathematicians and activists established WikiLeaks in 2006.[75]: 145–148 [38] Assange became a member of its advisory board.[91] From 2007 to 2010, Assange travelled continuously on WikiLeaks business, visiting Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America.[39][92][93]
In December 2006, the month WikiLeaks posted its first leak, Assange published a five-page essay that outlined the "thought experiment" behind the WikiLeaks strategy: use leaks to force organisations to reduce levels of abuse and dishonesty or pay "secrecy tax" to be secret but inefficient. Assange explained:[38][94][95]
The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in the leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaptation.
Assange found key supporters at the Chaos Computer Club conference in Berlin in December 2007, including Daniel Domscheit-Berg and Jacob Appelbaum and the Swedish hosting company PRQ.[96]: 134
During this period, Assange was WikiLeaks' editor-in-chief and one of four permanent staff.[38] The organisation maintained a larger group of volunteers, and Assange relied upon networks of others with expertise.[97]: 97 The organisation published internet censorship lists, leaks,[98] and classified media from anonymous sources. The publications include revelations about drone strikes in Yemen, corruption across the Arab world,[99] extrajudicial executions by Kenyan police,[100] 2008 Tibetan unrest in China,[101] and the "Petrogate" oil scandal in Peru.[102] From its inception, the website had a significant impact on political news in a large number of countries and across a wide range of issues.[97]
From its inception, WikiLeaks sought to engage with the established professional media. It had good relations with parts of the German and British press. A collaboration with the Sunday Times journalist Jon Swain on a report on political killings in Kenya led to increased public recognition of the WikiLeaks publication, and this collaboration won Assange the 2009 Amnesty International New Media Award.[97]: 99 Assange said that six men with guns tried to attack the compound that he slept at in Kenya after the report was published, but were scared away when a guard shouted.[62] The Kenya leak led to corruption being a major issue in the election that followed, which was marred by violence. According to Assange, "1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak. On the other hand, the Kenyan people had a right to that information and 40,000 children a year die of malaria in Kenya. And many more die of money being pulled out of Kenya, and as a result of the Kenyan shilling being debased". Reporters have discussed the moral dilemma involved in reporting the corruption in Kenya.[103][104]
WikiLeaks' international profile increased in 2008 when a Swiss bank, Bank Julius Baer, tried via a Californian court injunction to prevent the site's publication of bank records.[105] Assange commented that financial institutions ordinarily "operate outside the rule of law", and he received extensive legal support from free-speech and civil rights groups.[106] Bank Julius Baer's attempt to prevent the publication via injunction backfired. As a result of the Streisand effect, the publicity drew global attention to WikiLeaks and the bank documents.[96]: 135
By 2009 WikiLeaks had succeeded in Assange's intentions to expose the powerful, publish material beyond the control of states, and attract media support for its advocacy of freedom of speech, though not as much as he hoped; his goal of crowd-sourcing analysis of the documents was unsuccessful and few of the leaks attracted mainstream media attention.[96]: 135
In July 2009 Assange released through Wikileaks the full report of a commission of inquiry, set up by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, into corruption in the Turks and Caicos Islands.[107]: 335 The report had been due for publication earlier in the year but an injunction obtained by some of those named had prevented its publication.[108] According to Assange, the Commission released a redacted report and then removed it. WikiLeaks obtained and restored the full text.[109] The report found that foreign property developers had given millions of US dollars in payments and secret loans to senior politicians in the islands, including the TCI's former premier, Michael Misick.[107]: 335 [110]
In September 2009 Assange published the Minton Report, a scientific report about the 2006 Ivory Coast toxic waste dump.[115] Thirty‑thousand claimants were suing the oil firm Trafigura in London, in one of the largest class-action suits brought before a British court, after the firm had illegally exported toxic waste and then had it dumped in Abidjan in Ivory Coast.[116][117] When the Guardian newspaper had asked the company about the report, it responded by having its law firm Carter‑Ruck obtain a super-injunction (in RJW v Guardian News and Media Ltd) to prevent discussion by the media of either the contents of the report or the existence of the injunction.[97][114] After publication on WikiLeaks of the document itself, Assange published two editorials about the situation:[114][118]
Assange argued that the secret gag order "remains in effect, and entirely prevents the reporting of the report's contents"....Assange said that because of the damaging threat of legal costs, UK newspapers had silently removed some of the original dumping investigations from their databases. "For example, the Independent's 'Toxic shame: thousands injured in African city' no-longer 'exists' except at WikiLeaks"
Wikileaks maintained the report on its site and linked to it on the social network Twitter, where they encouraged journalists to break the injunction's censorship. After a question was tabled about the report in the House of Commons under parliamentary privilege, Trafigura's law firm Carter‑Ruck claimed the injunction was sub judice and tried to prevent discussion of the affair in parliament itself.[114][119][120] The publicity generated about the easy availability of the report on the Wikileaks website, and subsequently its publication by the Norwegian broadcaster NRK, led Carter-Ruck to agree to a modification of the injunction.[114][121] The affair caused a furore and prompted a wider discussion in the British press about the continued use of super-injunctions.[125]
As Wikileaks' editor, Assange commented on super-injunctions to the publishing industry news service Journalism.co.uk: "In 2008, the paper was served with six. In 2007, five. Haven't heard of these? Of course not, these are secret gag orders; the UK press has given up counting regular injunctions".[126][114]
Manning leaks
[edit]The Cablegate as well as Iraq and Afghan War releases had an effect on diplomacy and public opinion globally, with responses varying by region.[127]
Collateral murder video
[edit]In April 2010 WikiLeaks released video footage of the 12 July 2007, Baghdad airstrike, that have been regarded by several debaters as evidence of war crimes committed by the U.S. military.[128][129][130] The news agency Reuters had earlier requested the footage through a US Freedom of Information Act request, but the request was denied. Assange and others worked for a week to break the U.S. military's encryption of the video, which they titled Collateral Murder and which Assange first presented at the U.S. National Press Club.[131] It shows United States soldiers fatally shooting 18 civilians from a helicopter in Iraq,[132] including Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen and his assistant Saeed Chmagh.[133][128][134]
Iraq and Afghan War logs
[edit]WikiLeaks published the Afghan War logs in July 2010. It was described by The New York Times as "a six-year archive of classified military documents [that] offers an unvarnished and grim picture of the Afghan war".[135] In October 2010 WikiLeaks published the Iraq War logs, a collection of 391,832 United States Army field reports from the Iraq War covering from 2004 to 2009.[136] Assange said that he hoped the publication would "correct some of that attack on the truth that occurred before the war, during the war, and which has continued after the war".[137]
Regarding his own role within WikiLeaks, Assange said, "We always expect tremendous criticism. It is my role to be the lightning rod... to attract the attacks against the organization for our work, and that is a difficult role. On the other hand, I get undue credit."[138] Assange travelled often and tried to stay away from Western intelligence agencies by checking into hotels under false names, sleeping on sofas and floors, and using encrypted phones and cash.[139]
According to David Leigh and Luke Harding they had to persuade Assange to redact the names of Afghan informants, expressing their fear that they could be killed if exposed. In their book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy they say Declan Walsh heard Assange say at a dinner when asked about redaction "Well, they're informants, so if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it."[140][141]
Assange denies making this statement;[142] speaking on PBS Frontline about the accusations he said "It is absolutely right to name names. It is not necessarily right to name every name."[143] John Goetz of Der Spiegel, who was also at the dinner, says that Assange did not make such a statement.[144][145][146]
Release of US diplomatic cables
[edit]In November 2010 WikiLeaks published a quarter of a million U.S. diplomatic cables,[147] known as the "Cablegate" files. WikiLeaks initially worked with established Western media organisations, and later with smaller regional media organisations while also publishing the cables upon which their reporting was based.[148][127] Assange told a media partner that he owned the information and had a financial interest in how it was released.[131][149] The files show United States espionage against the United Nations and other world leaders,[150][151][152] revealed tensions between the U.S. and its allies, and exposed corruption in countries throughout the world as documented by U.S. diplomats, helping to spark the Arab Spring.[153][154]
In March 2010 a member of WikiLeaks using the handle "Ox", widely believed to be Julian Assange, talked to Chelsea Manning by text chat while she was submitting leaks to WikiLeaks.[155][156][157][158] The US referred to these chat logs in the 2018 indictment of Julian Assange and filed an affidavit which said they were able to identify Assange as the person chatting with Manning using hints he made during the chats and that Manning identified him as Assange to Adrian Lamo.[159][160][161][162]
In the chat logs, Manning asks if he was "any good at LM hash cracking", which would decrypt passwords. Assange said he was, and told Manning about rainbow tables that WikiLeaks used to crack hashes and find passwords associated with them.[162][163] An affidavit by an FBI agent involved in bringing the case against Assange claimed this showed an "illegal agreement" to help crack a password.[162][164] When Manning told Assange she had nothing else to submit to WikiLeaks, he replied that "curious eyes never run dry in my experience."[155][165][166][167]
During her court martial, Manning said she downloaded the detainee assessment briefs (DABs) for Guantanamo Bay after speaking to a member of Wikileaks via a secure online chat log. While discussing files on Guantanamo Bay, Manning asked Assange about detainee assessment briefs. She said that "although he did not believe that they were of political significance, he did believe that they could be used to merge into the general historical account of what occurred at Guantanamo." She added that "after this discussion, I decided to download the data."[157]
Release of unredacted cables
[edit]In 2011 a series of events compromised the security of a WikiLeaks file containing the leaked US diplomatic cables.[168] In August 2010, Assange gave Guardian journalist David Leigh an encryption key and a URL where he could locate the full file. In February 2011 David Leigh and Luke Harding of The Guardian published the encryption key in their book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy. Leigh said he believed the key was a temporary one that would expire within days. WikiLeaks supporters disseminated the encrypted files to mirror sites in December 2010 after WikiLeaks experienced cyber-attacks. When WikiLeaks learned what had happened it notified the US State Department. On 25 August 2011, the German magazine Der Freitag published an article giving details which enabled people to piece the information together. On 1 September 2011, WikiLeaks announced they would make the unredacted cables public and searchable.[169][170]
The Guardian wrote that the decision to publish the cables was made by Assange alone, a decision that it and its four previous media partners condemned.[171] Glenn Greenwald wrote that "WikiLeaks decided—quite reasonably—that the best and safest course was to release all the cables in full, so that not only the world's intelligence agencies but everyone had them, so that steps could be taken to protect the sources and so that the information in them was equally available".[172][173]
The US established an Information Review Task Force (IRTF) to investigate the impact of WikiLeaks' publications. It involved as many as 125 people working over 10 months.