WikiLeaks Founder Added To The Interpol Wanted List

http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/30/wikileaks-julian-assange/

by aaronbrethorst • 16 years ago

119 103 16 years ago

techcrunch.com

Dramatize• 16 years ago

Anyone surprised he hasn't "disappeared" yet?

gregpilling• 16 years ago

I am surprised that he hasn't had a car accident or become depressed and suicidal. Maybe they just can't find him.

AndrewMoffat2• 16 years ago

I have a conspiracy theory that the day he does get rubbed out, he won't publicly die, he'll just be "hiding" forever. Some nefarious organization will privately fill his role and take over Wikileaks.

sliverstorm• 16 years ago

It's hard to imagine a government that routinely invites 'unhappy accidents' on people they don't like would be unable to find someone.

Devilboy• 16 years ago

That's what his 'insurance' file is for!

wooster• 16 years ago

Yeah, it's pretty clearly a dead man switch.

rbanffy2• 16 years ago

He's too high profile and disappearing him would not prevent the publication of other documents, or some already published in unredacted form.

rdtsc• 16 years ago

Because of that he would make a good target for a false flag operation.

FSB could make him disappear (they could fake a botched kidnapping operation by CIA or FBI) and everyone will instantly suspect the Americans, and it will damage relations between US and EU countries.

mechanical_fish• 16 years ago

Moreover, the risks of disappearing him are too great relative to the reward.

Assange is just the poster child. He's not the phenomenon. Literally any college student has the tools to leak stuff to the Web in a way that will be difficult or impossible to suppress. Just post it all over. Stick it on Digg and Facebook, link to it on Twitter, upload it to a few filesharing networks. Wikileaks is helpful to a leaker because everything that appears there gets instantaneous publicity and a slew of immediate mirrors, which gives authorities a very short window within which to try and censor it. But Wikileaks is hardly essential, and Assange is even less so.

So turning the guy into a martyr is utterly counterproductive. That'll just spawn copycats. Angrier copycats. A better strategy is to make his life seem miserable. Just the total opposite of fun. Try to convince people that leaking stuff onto the net is a recipe for being slandered, being followed, and being subjected to endless, unglamorous, thoroughly unsexy bureaucratic harassment. One parking ticket per day for the rest of your life.

He will be dragged into court over and over. On the days when he isn't in court they will make him out to be a fugitive, forced to live in caves and avoid all his friends and loved ones. On the days when he is in court he will tend to look like either a criminal or a victim. None of this will stop Assange, of course, but Assange is powerless without the rest of the world: The people who are in a position to leak stuff to Wikileaks. They are the audience. And the message to them is: You can leak, sure, but you'll be found out, and then you'll either be arrested or be followed continuously for the rest of your life by men in black who are just waiting for you to slip up.

ZachPruckowski• 16 years ago

He's not the only guy in the organization, he's the spokesman and maybe the director. Disappearing him hinders the organization, but doesn't cripple it, much less terminate it.

philk• 16 years ago

Perhaps I should be joining the tin-foil hat brigade but these allegations have always seemed conveniently timed.

There are few better ways to damage someone's credibility than alleging rape, even if the allegations don't hold water.

mpk• 16 years ago

I'll refrain from commenting on the allegations, but the timing is very suspicious. I mean, really, right after this big leak? And anyway, how many people make the Interpol Red Notice list for rape allegations?

As long as we're on the tin-foil hat path, being dragged to Sweden would place him into custody there. (I know, he's wanted 'for questioning' - that's what the Red Notice is based on). That would give the USA (which has an extradition treaty with Sweden) plenty of time to build a legal case against him without worrying about him disappearing or pulling more PR stunts.

As long as the USA doesn't charge him with something that is punishable with the death penalty (most EU countries won't extradite suspects that would face that), it's into the bureaucratic legal mill for him.

ceejayoz2• 16 years ago

The allegations are from back in August.

philwelch• 16 years ago

And anyway, how many people make the Interpol Red Notice list for rape allegations?

Most alleged rapists don't constantly relocate around the world like Assange. People who don't hop from country to country don't end up on Interpol watchlists because generally, the country that wants to take them into custody just directly negotiates with the country they're residing in.

I'm not saying Assange moves around a lot to avoid the Swedish justice system--the idea that he does it for the interests of Wikileaks is credible enough--but regardless of his motivation for moving around from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, that's the kind of behavior that elevates a matter from a simple extradition matter to an international watchlist.

jbooth2• 16 years ago

According to Al Jazeera, the charges were dropped in August. I clicked through to their original source link, though, and it says he's been "detained in absence". Have to assume it said something different when the article was originally published on 8/21.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/08/20108211530...

mambodog• 16 years ago

Certainly, the defamer's big guns are rape and child porn/molestation. Once someone has been accused of those, people seem to lose all objectivity.

pbhjpbhj• 16 years ago

>rape and child porn/molestation. Once someone has been accused of those, people seem to lose all objectivity.

The converse is true also. Those that support Wikileaks appear to believe that it is impossible for Mr Assange to have committed any crime and that the grievous nature of the accusations means that it's all a conspiracy.

If the accused were guilty the best thing to do would be to make a big leak (I gather they hold information and don't leak it immediately, a power play for sure) immediately before the accusations became widespread or before being arrested at the latest - that way the support of those without objectivity on your own side can be won.

In short, lack of objectivity is a two way street.

adambyrtek• 16 years ago

And the hunt has begun...

Vivtek• 16 years ago

The "hunt" consists of him showing up in public whenever he wants and the Americans stridently insisting that he's a shadowy, mysterious criminal, like Osama bin Laden.

This has nothing at all to do with any actual investigation, and everything to do with appearances in the American press. It's spin.

tptacek• 16 years ago

Or, maybe there is actually a serious investigation happening in Sweden? Maybe, just maybe, not everything in reality is governed by the Narrative.

FrankenTan• 16 years ago

As a Swede, I'm going to have to disappoint you.

The police have been proven to be rather.. sub-par in politically-loaded cases.

An example: Claiming Peter Sunde wrote the pirate bay search engine when the name and phone-number of the programmer who did was in the sourcecode on one of the seized harddrives.

The prosecutor in Assange's case has also been questioned by peers and media alike for questionable behaviour and decisions from day 1 of Assange's case.

He offered to give statements and be questioned in Sweden, and his lawyer asked the authorities for permission to leave Sweden. They declined his offers, and gave Assange permission to leave the country.

It's not being handled very well at all.

hugh38• 16 years ago

This doesn't really have anything to do with this case.

Look, there's a woman somewhere in Sweden who claims that Julian Assange raped her. Either he did, or he didn't. If he did, he should be hung from the tallest tree. If he didn't, she should be hung from the tallest tree. But it's an extremely serious charge either way.

Benjo• 16 years ago

Are you responding to someone in particular? The article itself seemed very neutral.

handelaar• 16 years ago

In fact, what this says is that Sweden has issued a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) because they want to bring him in for questioning.

His lawyers have pointed out that it's not a valid one since an EAW requires criminal charges to be filed first (and thus no EU state is obliged to pay it any attention and there's no chance whatsoever that it will result in an extradition).

And the Swedes have refused his offer to meet them both in Sweden and in the UK in the past eight weeks...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/30/interpol-wanted-...

lionhearted3• 16 years ago

I dislike Julian Assanage, I think he's reckless, and I think he's in it for celebrity and attention and power rather than his stated ideals. As an American, I hope my government investigates any crimes he's committed and prosecutes him to the full extent of the law.

However, tarring and feather his political/espionage/leaking work with personal allegations seems wrong to me. His work at Wikileaks and drunken party happenings don't bear any relation to each other. Pursue him for being reckless with stolen diplomatic materials and prosecute him for it if there's a case under the law. Don't tar and feather his reputation like this, I think it's the wrong way of going about it.

vaksel4• 16 years ago

What crime has he committed under American law?

And remember, he is an Australian citizen so the whole treason thing doesn't apply.

fname• 16 years ago

WikiLeaks founder could be charged under Espionage Act http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11...

lucasjung2• 16 years ago

Treason does not apply. Espionage does. Most countries have laws that provide for prosecution in absentia if the defendant refuses to appear in response to a summons. For espionage, the U.S. takes it one step further: our laws specifically give our federal law enforcement agencies permission to operate outside of normal international extradition processes for the purpose of arresting espionage suspects. In other words, if espionage charges were to be filed against Assange in the U.S., the FBI would be allowed to go wherever he is and more or less kidnap him. This would undoubtedly cause a huge international incident, as it would almost certainly violate the laws of the country where the arrest takes place, but it would be perfectly legal under U.S. law.

megablast• 16 years ago

> I think he's reckless, and I think he's in it for celebrity and attention and power rather than his stated ideals.

Then you are starting to believe all the misinformation that the government is trying to spread about him. This is how the discredit people and this information, since they can not actually deny it.

I really believe that this is one of the greatest actions to happen to democracy in a long time, and everybody should be rejoicing in these leaks.

We need more transparency in government, and there are people out there willing to do this, and get in all sorts of trouble for it. Fortunately he has left Australia, the government here would be more than happy to send him over to the USA on any trumped up charges.

akamaka4• 16 years ago

I feel the same way as the original poster, and I don't see how government misinformation has anything to do with it.

Do you remember when wikileaks launched, it was described as an anonymous organization "founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa"? When their website had a raw archive of documents on the front page?

The changes in wikileaks started happening before the government became very interested in them. They became much more focused on fund-raising, manipulating the media to their advantage, editorializing the leaked material, and Assange became the figurehead associated with every release of information.

kunley• 16 years ago

You know, western democracy isn't about leftist complaining and seeing oppression everywhere, but is about building things.

AndrewMoffat2• 16 years ago

> I really believe that this is one of the greatest actions to happen to democracy in a long time, and everybody should be rejoicing in these leaks.

He'll certainly be written into the history books* for it.

*wikipedia edit logs

sigzero• 16 years ago

You only have to read his interviews to that his "ideals" are taking backseat to everything else.

lionhearted3• 16 years ago

> Then you are starting to believe all the misinformation that the government is trying to spread about him. This is how the discredit people and this information, since they can not actually deny it.

Actually, I haven't heard a single government report about Assange or Wikileaks at all. It's my own judgment I came to.

There's a big gap between Wikileaks' stated goals and the actual results of their actions. I'm looking at the potential consequences of some of this - releasing documents related to nuclear disarmament in Pakistan, a Politburo agent risking his life to protect dissidents - this isn't greater transparency, this is stupidity.

> We need more transparency in government, and there are people out there willing to do this, and get in all sorts of trouble for it.

There's a place for secrecy - counter-terrorism, investigating human trafficking smuggling, sensitive negotiations where a local population is sympathetic to violence against minorities, but the country's leaders want to work with the USA to stop genocide and suicide bombing. Transparency sounds great as a buzzword, but you need some pragmatism and discretion too. That's not government misinformation - just my researched and studied opinion on the matter.

tomhoward3• 16 years ago

I really believe that this is one of the greatest actions to happen to democracy in a long time

That's nice. Because it's not the greatest thing to happen to Afghanistan democracy for a long time, given the vigour with which the Taliban seem to be using it (and previous leaks) to identify and punish (ie, murder) Afghani informers.

smokeyj• 16 years ago

These are old tactics, the FBI used it on MLK (yes, your guberment didn't like MLK either). How is someone making information available so offensive?

angrycoder• 16 years ago

celebrity and power?

You know he is basically living as a fugitive, moving from place to place, working underground, etc.

hugh38• 16 years ago

Except he's never been actually under threat of arrest until now. He's been "living as a fugitive" and "moving from place to place" for attention-whoring purposes, not because he needs to.

charlesattlan• 16 years ago

You do know there was a leak of Clinton telling her drones/diplomats to spy on anyone they could: biometric data, secure passwords, emails [1]. Even the UN was spied upon. Do not forget, Wikileaks is just a publishing company, people submit data, they release it.

The rest of the world already knows that the US will break any law if it sees fit (GTMO anyone?) and is a morally and financially bankrupt state. I understand: if the US invades a country, it is "bringing democracy"; if the US spies and gets information it is foreign policy/diplomacy; if the US through buying oil and selling ammunitions supports a totalitarian regime like Saudi Arabia, it is business as usual, but if Wikileaks publishes damaging material a US soldier submitted without coercion, it is terrorism.

[1] http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/clinton-ordered-diplomats...

alanh• 16 years ago

Anyone else notice the left-side nav in the INTERPOL website screenshot? Looks like someone’s using an outdated box model ;)

grantheaslip3• 16 years ago

I come to HN for the tech stories, not for completely ill-informed, conspiracy-theory-laden political speculation. I get that it's not my place to say what HN should or shouldn't be, but some of the nonsense I've been seeing recently, especially about the domain name seizures and WikiLeaks, is really making me lose respect for this community.

I'm a political science student and a web developer, and though I don't claim to be an expert on either, I think a lot of you seem to think that the world is a whole lot simpler than it actually is. I've said it before—I think a lot of what makes geeks great at conceptualizing data and logic makes them terrible at understanding nuance and subtlety, and without the ability to see shades of grey, you're always going to have simplistic, naive understandings of the world. How do you operate on a day-to-day basis when you think that the government is out there to take away your freedoms and cover up conspiracies at every turn?

daveying99• 16 years ago

It would be great if you can show instances of that nonsense and explain why they're nonsense.

grantheaslip3• 16 years ago

1. The belief on HN that the WikiLeaks release was a responsible thing to do, and will produce a net benefit because, you know, OPEN=GOOD and SECRETS=BAD! Here's my thoughts: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1949234

2. The belief that shutting down a few domains selling counterfeit goods and trafficking stolen goods is the first step toward widespread government censorship of the internet. My thoughts: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1945648

tel2• 16 years ago

To explain a downvote.

I don't think anyone here (or very few at least) honestly believes that the government is foundationally motivated to take away freedoms or cover up conspiracies. I'll concede only that considering Assange's point of view as one operational principle in the complex, subtle machinery of society is at least not a bad intellectual exercise --- if not more.

Moreover, Assange's tactics are fundamentally technological. Wikileaks and its operation both depend and reflect upon the capacity of the internet to share information with very low transaction costs. This is another face of the same arguments that Zuckerberg or Schmidt have made on the intersection of society, internet, and privacy.

Finally, Wikileaks is one gigantic hack with possibly global repercussions. I'm fanatically interested to see how it plays out.

For HN to have a greater than passing interest in this seems rather characteristic of the community. Moreover, meta-discussion of this nature has been repeatedly discouraged, and ad hominem rhetoric is pretty low on the discourse hierarchy. Cut it out.

grantheaslip3• 16 years ago

Don't get me wrong, the stories themselves are perfectly appropriate for HN, it's the comments (many of them very highly rated) that worry me. Comments like:

- "Anyone surprised he hasn't 'disappeared' yet?"

- "I have a conspiracy theory that the day he does get rubbed out, he won't publicly die, he'll just be "hiding" forever. Some nefarious organization will privately fill his role and take over Wikileaks."

From http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1948734:

- "The value of Wikileaks is that it makes secrecy more difficult for governments [...] Sadly, much of what has been leaked shows simply that the government is putting on a show for the American people and that much of what is kept secret is done so for propaganda reasons, not security reasons."

- "If public release of this information is damaging to US interest, the answer should not be to suppress this information, but rather to behave in an agreeable way in the first place."

- "So, yes. I do say that governments should have no secrets."

- "Every time I hear someone criticize Wikileaks it just seems to me like they simply don't want to know what's happening in the world."

From http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1945352:

- "...the only reason for political parties is to have places where various special interests can line up against each other."

- "The government is censoring our means of communications, end of story."

- "While it no longer makes economic sense to manufacture buggy whips, perhaps there is a Renaissance in the construction and sale of jack boots?"

I'm not 100% pro-government, and I'm not at all pro-American (though I think America has not-completely-deserved bad reputation), but these issues are complicated and nuanced, and I get the impression many of these commenters think they know a whole lot more than they actually do. A lot of this stuff is on the same level of discourse I expect from YouTube comments, not Hacker News, and I find it kind of upsetting because this is one of the few public communities where I'm pretty consistently impressed by the level of discourse.

So my apologies if it seems like I'm lashing out, but I really don't like seeing this bizarre late-night-AM-radio underside of HN.

jluxenberg• 16 years ago

"When fugitives flee...crime victims are denied justice." (from Interpol's blurb about fugitives)

I thought the criminal corrections system was about rehabilitation, not Hammurabi-style eye-for-an-eye justice.

nano81• 16 years ago

There are several reasons for having a criminal justice system; rehabilitation is but one. Others include deterring crime, incapacitating dangerous violent offenders to separate them from society, and yes, offering a sense of retribution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_law#Objectives_of_Crim...

ceejayoz2• 16 years ago

You seem to be confusing revenge with justice. A fugitive is hardly getting rehabilitated.

hugh38• 16 years ago

Well, you thought wrong. Or rather, you thought what a few squishy-minded idealists like to think. But that's not really what the criminal justice system is about.

The desire to revenge ourselves upon those who do us wrong is a perfectly natural and normal part of human nature -- as natural as curiosity or love. If you've ever been the victim of a crime or another injustice you'll know the strength of the feeling. Where there is no functioning criminal justice system, private vengeange is a major problem, often tearing societies apart in murderous generations-long feuds. So as a major part of civilization, we outsource our revenge to the state, allowing victims to gain satisfaction against their attackers in an ordered and sensible way.

Deterrence of future crimes, temporary removal of criminals from the streets, rehabilitation of bad people into good people (which, incidentally, hardly ever happens) -- these are all secondary goals. The primary goal is to enable our natural human thirst for vengeance to be satisfied in a neat and controlled way.

prawn2• 16 years ago

Anyone seen an article about the alleged rape with more up to date information than this?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101118/wl_afp/swedencrimeinter...

hugh38• 16 years ago

One would think that one's opinions on:

a) Whether wikileaks's recent actions have been good or bad, and

b) Whether one individual forced sex upon another individual in a hotel room in Enkoping last August

would be uncorrelated. And yet I can predict your opinion on one with quite high accuracy based on your opinion on the other.

steveklabnik4• 16 years ago

I can't possibly imagine that an intelligent person who's basically got a huge target on his head from every government in the world would act in any way that could be considered questionable.

They're looking for some way to crucify him; do you really think he'd just hand them something?

hugh38• 16 years ago

If he did do it, he was presumably drunk and horny and not really thinking straight. If he did do it, it's not a jump-out-with-a-knife rape, but a "hey stop that"/"naah c'mon" type rape.

The dude doesn't exactly seem to be one of life's alpha males. Suddenly getting a lot of action at the age of 39 due to newfound fame could easily have gone to his head. Who knows?

jbooth2• 16 years ago

The government hasn't even filed charges. More than that, the two women he's accused of raping (in the same weekend or something) haven't even filed a formal complaint. I dunno about Sweden but I'm pretty sure in the US, you need a crime report before you can charge anyone for anything.

I mean, not only don't you have any evidence, you don't even have a formal accusation. I'd think we can leave politics out of this one and delegate to common sense. As far as the guy's personal character, he's probably a bit of a prima donna -- that doesn't mean he robbed any banks (no evidence of that, either).

gamble2• 16 years ago

Anyone who wants to take on the US government would be better off if they didn't have a visible figurehead.

Americans need to personalize the enemy. It's one reason China is so confounding - Americans simply have no idea who's in charge there, and hating 'the Chinese' as a nation has more than a whiff of bigotry... yet it's hard to get worked up about nebulous concepts like 'the Communist party'. Americans need their Hitler or Tojo, Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam, Ahmadinejad, or Bin Laden.

iskander• 16 years ago

s/Americans/people

gamble2• 16 years ago

I'm not sure I'd agree. It's a continuum, certainly, but even compared to other western nations contemporary Americans are unusually individualistic and disinclined to see people as primarily defined by group affiliations like ethnicity, nationality, ideology, etc, since those elements are muted in American society compared to many other countries.

mcantelon2• 16 years ago

A figurehead is a target, yes, but also inspires people more than an amorphous organization.

WikiLeaks Founder Added To The Interpol Wanted List

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