Wikileaks = terrorist organization?

[nathanm]

Folks might be interested to know that, while we were (probably) sleeping, Assange turned himself in in the UK, after a couple of hours of speculation that the police there had called him and let him know they were coming for him. It looks like he's going to make bail, but that remains to be seen. He's having a hearing as I type.

[Gaspar]

Folks might be interested to know that, while we were (probably) sleeping, Assange turned himself in in the UK, after a couple of hours of speculation that the police there had called him and let him know they were coming for him. It looks like he's going to make bail, but that remains to be seen. He's having a hearing as I type.

Apparently he's being charged with one case of Wiki-leakage and another of failure to wrap his Wicki. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1336291/Wikileaks-Julian-Assanges-2-night-stands-spark-worldwide-hunt.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

[nathanm]

Wow, no bail, despite an offer for 100,000 pounds from assange himself and 20,000 pounds each as surety from three others.

What confuses me is if he's charged with "having sex with woman without condom whilst she was asleep according to court evidence" and "holding a womans arms and forcing sex upon her without a condom," why were the charges dropped and then reinstated? That's what's so weird. That's not borderline anything. Forcing sex upon someone is straight up rape.

The more severe accusation than I expected actually makes me more inclined to think there's something off about the whole thing.

Edited to add: I also failed to mention that Visa and MasterCard have now decided they won't process payments for Wikileaks anymore. (MC a few hours ago, Visa just now) One person observed that we're better at cutting off funding for Wikileaks than we are at cutting off funding for actual terrorists.

[Gaspar]

Wow, no bail, despite an offer for 100,000 pounds from assange himself and 20,000 pounds each as surety from three others.

What confuses me is if he's charged with "having sex with woman without condom whilst she was asleep according to court evidence" and "holding a womans arms and forcing sex upon her without a condom," why were the charges dropped and then reinstated? That's what's so weird. That's not borderline anything. Forcing sex upon someone is straight up rape.

The more severe accusation than I expected actually makes me more inclined to think there's something off about the whole thing.

Edited to add: I also failed to mention that Visa and MasterCard have now decided they won't process payments for Wikileaks anymore. (MC a few hours ago, Visa just now) One person observed that we're better at cutting off funding for Wikileaks than we are at cutting off funding for actual terrorists.

It seems that the private sector has taken upon itself the task of fighting terrorism like this.

This guy made an outright terrorist threat against the U.S. and pushing Interpol for a honeypot sex crime is all we can get him on?  The administration it self has called him a "threat to national security."  Why are we not demanding extradition?  Is threatening the national security of the United States no longer a crime in our eyes?

How flaccid we are.

[nathanm]

What was this terrorist threat he made? I believe the only threat he made was that more documents would be released were he killed. If we expand the definition of "terrorist" to include nonviolent actions, I dare say we're rendering the term completely meaningless.

Also, Feinstein has just recently called for his prosecution under the Espionage Act.

I would presume that once Assange is extradited to Sweden, the US will attempt to get its hands on him.

[we vs us]

It's interesting that Assange/Wikileaks has gone with the "Limewire" strategy to protect itself:  essentially share its core document collections through a peer-to-peer network of likeminded hackers.  You can take Wikileaks down now and the secrets live on.  At this point, I think certain power players in the world community are gearing up to make an example of Assange/Wikileaks; you can't put the genie back in the bottle but you can scare the smile out of future genie bottle-breakers.

Another thing:  if Wikileaks has dirt on Bank of America, the gov of Russia, and/or other international players, it's become a much bigger thing that just Bradley Manning's personal dropbox account.  That would mean that it's a legit home for whistleblowers/leakers from around the world and in multiple disciplines.  That tells me that the Wikileaks function (an online repository for institutional secrets) still has a reason to exist.  There's essentially a demand for its service.

[patric]

CIA dirty tricks, from last August's WikiLeaks dump:


Wikileaks founder says Australian intelligence warned him on August 11 to expect personal attacks.

Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, has said the now-dropped charge of rape levelled against him in Sweden was "a smear campaign".

Assange said that the accusations were completely untrue and expected all charges to be dropped on Monday, adding that his lawyers were in the process of arranging a meeting with the prosecutors.

He also said that this was just one of many attempts to discredit him.

"This is the first sexual related we've had, but we have seen 14 fabricated documents, for example, that have appeared in various places about this organisation which have been shown to be clear fakes," he said.

"So there are significant forces pushing to perceive things in a particular way".

Swedish authorities had initially issued a warrant for Assange's arrest on Friday night, but dropped the warrant and the rape charge the next day.

Eva Finne, the country's chief prosecutor, reviewed the evidence and withdrew the warrant for his arrest,deciding there was "no longer reason to believe" Assange had committed rape, Karin Rosander, a spokeswoman for Finne, said.

Assange's organisation caused controversy in July when it released 75,000 classified US military reports containing information about the Nato war effort in Afghanistan.

The US government condemned the release of the documents, saying the website had "blood on its hands" for naming people who had helped its military against groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and ordered Wikileaks to return the files.

"The Pentagon so far says it not aware of any incident of people coming to harm by what we have released. At the time of the release we took aside 15,000 documents that we believed needed extra careful review and those are the documents we are reviewing and will be released."

Two women in their twenties made the allegations against Assange, according to Al Jazeera's Paul Brennan, reporting from London.

One woman claimed Assange raped her last weekend in Stockholm, while another alleged he molested her on Tuesday in a separate town in Sweden, Brennan said.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Apparently, rape in Sweden is defined as consensual sex with "groupies" that have actively worked to get connected to Assange, then bragged about how wonderful it was on their tweets and blogs after the fact, and how great a guy he was.  One was apparently connected to the Swedish foreign service somehow - working for an ambassador??  or something.

Very strange definition of rape.

Guess we will just have to wait and see what kind of "terrorist threat" he has made to the US.  So far, nothing has come out that is more than embarrassing "snarky" comments made by our diplomats. 

[patric]

Guess we will just have to wait and see what kind of "terrorist threat" he has made to the US.  So far, nothing has come out that is more than embarrassing "snarky" comments made by our diplomats. 

The State Department got a black eye.
That seems to be all that matters.

[nathanm]

WikiLeaks is bad news if your company is named DynCorp (I don't know how I didn't see this until now!)

At least that explains why Karzai decided there should be no more security contractors in Afghanistan.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Wikileaks is what happens when the entire US government is forced to go through a full-body scanner.



http://gizmodo.com/5709194/the-reaction-of-governments-to-wikileaks-should-scare-the-hell-out-of-you

[nathanm]

I'll just leave this here:

[Gaspar]

I'll just leave this here:

That is freeking hilarious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[guido911]

This punk/hypocrite Assange wanted to keep his bail address secret. Judge says "no".

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1338832/WikiLeaks-Julian-Assange-asked-judge-bail-address-secret.html

[Conan71]

I love this:

"Assange's lawyers argued that the location - a 10-bedroom stately home - should not be disclosed on grounds of privacy during yesterday's hearing at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court.

But the move was dismissed by District Judge Howard Riddle, who ruled not to reveal the address would conflict with Assange's commitment to open justice."


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1338832/WikiLeaks-Julian-Assange-asked-judge-bail-address-secret.html#ixzz18DEFYTBE

I hope Assange is getting donkey punched on a regular basis while in custody.  (Hey it's your fault I even know what that is Guido)