Julian Assange - WikiLeaks (7 page)

For once he'd like a government to be accountable for its actions, including circumstances 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. Assassinating 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 anticipate attacks on his personal life. What kind of attacks could they be? Is he no longer allowed to be a man?

Before a ram attacks, it will first back up

–Anonymous

Élise had been fascinated by Julian Assange'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.

Élise 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 Assange 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 analyzes 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 Assange 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 documents 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 passwords.”

“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 entity 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 pass the same kind of law, but they didn't succeed. And look what they're doing to Assange! 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?”

“Élise, 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?”

“Internet Relay Chat, a real-time Internet chat forum.”

“Ah yes, like the BBS
⁹
in
Underground
where hackers of the 1990s would connect to give advice in forums and possibly share highly illegal information.”

“Yes, but back then it took thirty minutes to connect to these kinds of systems and it felt more like activists meeting in someone's basement. On IRC things are shared globally, so you'll see messages from WikiLeaks and Anonymous.”

“Anonymous, who's that?”

“It's the idea behind a mask. The idea never dies because thanks to its anonymity, it can be taken up by anybody. If one of them dies, another one takes its place. It's the idea of infinite reproduction, the idea of sharing information on the Internet like a constant flow. The symbol of the movement is the mask of Guy Fawkes, the one created by Alan Moore and David Lloyd in the graphic novel
V for Vendetta
.”

“Who started this movement?”

“It's a movement that's been around for a very long time. It started from an idea on a forum and took off from there. There are several versions of Anonymous. Anybody can commit an act of piracy and say Anonymous did it. It's an idea. In fact, it doesn't have a head and nobody knows who the sympathizers are or what their job is or where they live. We don't ask ourselves these kinds of questions.”

“We? Are you one of them?”

“For some actions, yes. And I believe in the idea that the Internet is sacred. We shouldn't mess it up. We should leave it alone. I want to have a say when someone encroaches on this freedom, knowing that freedom belongs to everyone, and so I'm OK with it being hidden behind a mask. It's a powerful idea. Since the group doesn't have a command structure, it's not at the mercy of an attack against its leader. If someone tries to take over, the entire world will put him back in his place. If we were to rally around a leader and the leader became the target of an attack, the entire movement would be in danger.”

“That's exactly what's happening to Julian Assange: he's being attacked personally, which will weaken the movement. What's Anonymous fighting for?”

“The idea is to protect the neutrality of the Internet. Anonymous defines itself as a group that wants to avoid censorship. We stand together and are active with the WikiLeaks network to defend the freedom of information and the broadcasting leaks. We're for the existence of WikiLeaks, and if the authorities throw a wrench in the works, we'll intervene one way or another.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“We coordinate DDoS
¹⁰
attacks: we send useless requests to sites and when there are enough of them, we can paralyze servers. It doesn't damage the system; it just makes the connection unavailable for a few hours. It's like a sit-in in front of a large chain store. It's like the demonstrations of the 1960s when the only way to be heard was to hand out flyers, round up as many people as possible and go down into in the streets. Today without leaving the comfort of your own home, you can rally people from around the world. It's the expression of the people with the means of today. Governments don't like someone slipping through
the net and so they do what they can to kill off movements like Anonymous. Search warrants have already been issued in England and the Netherlands. The IP address to attack is posted in an IRC forum. When there's an attack, you can find a computer attacking its own IP address, which can be traced on the Internet. You understand why beefing up control would give us away.”

“I understand very well why Julian Assange calls himself a journalist. It gives him the right to express himself and broadcast his information.”

“Yes, that's how he wants to have his rights respected. The United States still wants to make him out as terrorist. Just like the Anonymous movement, the media are afraid and will describe the movement as a terrorist one by using disinformation.”

“How would you explain it?”

“Chris Landers of the
Baltimore City Paper
wrote this nice definition: ‘Anonymous is the first Internet-based superconsciousness. Anonymous is a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they're a group? Because they're traveling in the same direction. At any given moment, more birds could join, leave, and peel off in another direction entirely.'”

“It's very libertarian....”

“You know, on a forum there's a guy who says what upsets him and what he wants to do, but the attack only works if the idea is approved by a large number of people, so if he's just spewing nonsense, nothing will happen.”

“That's if people at their computers have democratic ideas, but what if it's the contrary?”

“Not having a leader is also a problem. Anybody can have a good or bad idea and want to turn it into action. There are always sheep that would follow and it could become dangerous. Anonymous can be dangerous if people don't think about what
they're doing. Personally I trust collective common sense. In any case, I'd rather act from inside the movement and voice what I believe in using my computer.”

“But if the entire world can join chat forums, the governments could also be in them.”

“Yes, but hackers have always had less things to hide than governments. It's not a real problem for us. When we have an idea or when an IP address is posted, the action is very quickly copied hundreds, even thousands of times, which makes it really difficult to find out where it came from.”

“The same goes for WikiLeaks. There's no use in forbidding the site, because all the information is mirrored on hundreds of other sites.”

“There's no link between Anonymous and WikiLeaks. Anonymous acts like the nice defender of the Internet. Their actions are solely done with the goal of maintaining Internet neutrality. WikiLeaks lives off the Internet neutrality. Anonymous backs up WikiLeaks indirectly, by supporting their right to exist and to express themselves.”

“And what do you think of Julian Assange?”

“I think that he's a die-hard hacker. He sees everything like a system to be improved. And at one time he decided to make agreements with the press and expose himself more and more to strengthen his movement, which annoyed a lot of people, but it's the solution he chose. And you, where does this sudden interest come from?”

“For two months I've been blogging about heroes. I draw a parallel the greats of our time with their demise. We can imagine them like prophets who have come bearing a message to move the world forward and who have been assassinated or so misunderstood that they have become depressed, alcoholics,
addicts or something else. Then, with Assange's story, I'm wondering if he's also a prophet of our time: a hero. So it would be important to recognize this to help humanity progress.”

“Hero maybe, but with a real human ego.”

“Do you think he's a better man because he's given himself a global sized mission? I don't think so.”