Assange Arrested - BOYCOTT SWEDISH PRODUCTS!!!

[snusgetter]

‘Chaos’ at WikiLeaks Follows Assange Arrest

The arrest without bail of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Tuesday has left the organization in a state of uncertainty, despite transition plans laid out prior to his surrender to British police, according to one dispirited WikiLeaks activist who spoke to Threat Level on condition of anonymity.

Assange left Icelandic television journalist Kristinn Hrafnsson in charge of the group in his absence, the activist said. But now the embattled organization’s secrecy and compartmentalization are apparently hindering its operations.

Specifically, midlevel WikiLeaks staffers have been mostly cut off from communicating with hundreds of volunteers whose contact information was stored in Assange’s private online-messaging accounts, and never shared with others.

“There is an ongoing plan, but that plan was only introduced to a few staffers — key staffers,” explained the source. “We are experiencing chaos.”

WikiLeaks was scrambling to produce a statement in a dozen languages Tuesday to address Assange’s arrest.

Assange appeared in Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London Tuesday. The judge cited Assange’s itinerant lifestyle and denied him bail, despite the fact that he turned himself in.

The arrest came nine days after WikiLeaks began publishing from its cache of more than 250,000 leaked U.S. State Department diplomatic cables, which are trickling out at a rate of about a hundred a day.

That publication schedule will continue uninterrupted, according to a tweet on WikiLeaks’ Twitter feed following Assange’s detention. “Today’s actions against our editor-in-chief Julian Assange won’t affect our operations: We will release more cables tonight as normal,” read one message. A second tweet added: “Let down by the UK justice system’s bizarre decision to refuse bail to Julian Assange. But #cablegate releases continue as planned.”

Assange “is accused by the Swedish authorities of one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape, all alleged to have been committed in August 2010,” British police said.

Assange indicated in court that he would fight extradition to Sweden, according to reports. He is set to appear in court again Dec. 14.

Charismatic and driven, Assange has been WikiLeaks’ public face and prime mover for four years. It was Assange who personally managed the site’s most important leaker — Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, according to Manning’s conversations with the ex-hacker who turned him in.

And when Assange’s autocratic leadership style was challenged by some staffers last year, he described his importance to the organization in no uncertain terms. “I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier and all the rest.”

His absence, says the source, is being felt acutely. “The organization will most likely start to fall apart now.”




It pretty much looks like this may be the beginning of the end for Wikileaks.

[raptor]

Wikileaks might be done, but just like shut-down torrent sites another one will appear.

[Bigblue1]

this is the internets 9/11. It goes on lock down from here........

[sgreger1]

Just wondering cause i cant really tell from the above post, are you guys in support of Wiki or don't matter either way? Anyway I read MasterCard was pulling the plug on WikiLeaks cause they were engaging in illegal activities. I don't/ haven't really been following any of this. I just catch an article from time to time.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20...?tag=cnetRiver

Yes, mastercard shut them down because they are afraid of bad publicity. There are no criminal charges against wikileaks, they havent done anything illegal yet. Mastercard is just distancing themselves so they dont lose business.

[CoderGuy]

Huh? You're against these leaks (and future ones) which will reveal to the world the extent of our manipulative diplomacy?

Yes, I am against anything that harms my country but am patriotic enough to accept there are others out there that aren't

[justintempler]

I am in support of Wikileaks.

If you want to keep secrets you don't put them on a computer network that 3 million people have access to.

I watched BBC Newsnight and they talked about the endgame. Assange fully expected the reaction he got. He expects governments to try and restrict freedom and become more secret. It's a strategy of highlighting the contradiction and hypocrisy of governments. They talk about freedom and openess and do exactly the opposite.

[raptor]

I really really cannot wait til more is released, this stuff is small stuff compared to what's in store...

[justintempler]

Here's a more in depth explanation.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...548361870.html

In 2006, Mr. Assange wrote a pair of essays, "State and Terrorist Conspiracies" and "Conspiracy as Governance." He sees the U.S. as an authoritarian conspiracy. "To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed," he writes. "Conspiracies take information about the world in which they operate," he writes, and "pass it around the conspirators and then act on the result."

His central plan is that leaks will restrict the flow of information among officials—"conspirators" in his view—making government less effective. Or, as Mr. Assange puts it, "We can marginalize a conspiracy's ability to act by decreasing total conspiratorial power until it is no longer able to understand, and hence respond effectively to its environment. . . . An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think efficiently cannot act to preserve itself."

Berkeley blogger Aaron Bady last week posted a useful translation of these essays. He explains Mr. Assange's view this way: "While an organization structured by direct and open lines of communication will be much more vulnerable to outside penetration, the more opaque it becomes to itself (as a defense against the outside gaze), the less able it will be to 'think' as a system, to communicate with itself." Mr. Assange's idea is that with enough leaks, "the security state will then try to shrink its computational network in response, thereby making itself dumber and slower and smaller."

Or as Mr. Assange told Time magazine last week, "It is not our goal to achieve a more transparent society; it's our goal to achieve a more just society." If leaks cause U.S. officials to "lock down internally and to balkanize," they will "cease to be as efficient as they were."

It's a way of making government smaller because the bigger it becomes the more likely it is to fail.

I sometimes wonder if that is why some people are in support: of extending the tax cuts, unemployment, and increasing the money supply. They intentionally support things they know will lead to the downfall of the system. They can't control government so their intent is to break the system.

Here is a link 2 both of his essays (in one file) from 2006. http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf

[justintempler]

Here is the archive of Assange's website before Wikileaks:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://iq.org

http://web.archive.org/web/200701102...http://iq.org/

The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its 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 adaption.

Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.

Only revealed injustice can be answered; for man to do anything intelligent he has to know what's actually going on.

[Joe234]

I have to wonder if he was set up by some intelligence agency or big bank/corporation.
They could have engineered a scenario where two women had consensual sex with him
and were instructed to lie about rape and molestation later.. They then sat on it as a sort of
sleeper set up.

Tonight one news cast reported that his extradition could take several months.
He is out of commission even if he is never charged and convicted.

[snusgetter]

Wikileaks: Australia FM says US to blame, not Assange

8 December 2010 Last updated at 02:53 ET

Australia's foreign minister has said the US is to blame for the release of thousands of diplomatic cables on Wikileaks, not its Australian founder, Julian Assange.

Kevin Rudd said the release raised questions about US security.

Mr Rudd said he did not "give a damn" about criticism of him in the cables.

Mr Assange, arrested in the UK over sex crime allegations in Sweden, has accused the Australian government of "disgraceful pandering" to the US.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard had earlier called Mr Assange's release of the cables "grossly irresponsible".

Over the past two weeks, Wikileaks has released thousands of classified messages from US envoys around the world, from more than 250,000 it has been given.

Washington has called their publication "irresponsible" and an "attack on the international community".

'First class job'
In an interview with Reuters news agency, Mr Rudd said: "Mr Assange is not himself responsible for the unauthorised release of 250,000 documents from the US diplomatic communications network. The Americans are responsible for that."

Mr Rudd, the former prime minister who was replaced by Julia Gillard in June, added: "I think there are real questions to be asked about the adequacy of [the US] security systems and the level of access that people have had to that material.

"The core responsibility, and therefore legal liability, goes to those individuals responsible for that initial unauthorised release."

Mr Rudd was dismissed in one leaked US cable as a "mistake-prone control freak".



REST OF THE STORY



Hey, here's a buck. Pass it around!!

[devilock76]

It is interesting as PayPal's statement on pulling service from WikiLeaks was based on US assertions of illegal activities.

Here is the thing, this guy was more the stop gate and filter than the head pilferer. Locking him up will make things worse. This might be one of those things that actually unifies the global network of hackers towards a target.

Yes this may just change the internet forever. Better or worse really depends on your perspective and who wins.

Ken

[raptor]

Here is the thing, this guy was more the stop gate and filter than the head pilferer. Locking him up will make things worse. This might be one of those things that actually unifies the global network of hackers towards a target.

This has already happened. The Swiss bank which froze Assange's accounts has been DDOS'd.

[devilock76]

This has already happened. The Swiss bank which froze Assange's accounts has been DDOS'd.

Exactly, and apparently several Paypal servers have been attacked as well.

Ken

[TheJanitor]

I think it's funny when people say stuff like wikileaks puts our troops in harm's way. Um, no. Sending them off to war puts them in harm's way. It's not like they went to disney land.