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(b. 1971) |
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Julian
Assange (b.
July 3, 1971) Julian Assange was born in
Townsville, Queensland, Australia in
1971. parents ran a touring theatre
company. In 1979, his mother,
Christine, remarried; her new husband
was a musician who belonged to a
controversial New Age group led by Anne
Hamilton-Byrne. In 1987, at the age of 16, Assange
began his career as a computer hacker,
hacking under the name "Mendax"
(derived from a phrase of Horace:
"splendide mendax," or "nobly
untruthful"). Assange and two other
hackers formed a group called
International Subversives. As a result of his hacking, in 1991,
the Australian Federal Police raided
Julian Assange's home in Melbourne. He
was charged with hacking into computers
belonging to an Australian university,
the Canadian telecommunications company
Nortel, and other organizations. In
1992, he pleaded guilty to 24 charges
of hacking into computer systems. After
the 1991 raid and his arrest, his
girlfriend left him, taking his son,
Daniel. He worked on several open-source,
and free software projects before
founding WikiLeaks in 2006. Assange
wrote two essays in 2006 establishing
the philosophy behind WikiLeaks: In his personal blog he also
wrote, Since 2006, WikiLeaks publicly
released material documenting
extra-judicial killings in Kenya, a
report of toxic waste dumping on the
African coast, Church of Scientology
manuals, Guantánamo Bay
procedures, the July
12, 2007 Baghdad airstrikes video,
(also,
see below). and material involving
large banks such as Kaupthing and
Julius Baer among other documents. On November 28, 2010, WikiLeaks
began releasing more than 251,000
American diplomatic cables, mostly
unclassified but including many
labelled "classified" or "secret." The
release of information that was never
intended for public viewing generated
some embarrassing moments for the U.S.
Government and created some problems
for American allies. For example, some
diplomatic documents indicated that
many Arab governments secretly agreed
with the Israeli position that Iran is
a significant threat, and that the
United States needed to take strong
action to prevent an Iranian nuclear
weapons capability from developing. On 20 August 2010, Swedish
authorities began an investigation of
allegations that Julian Assange had
raped a woman in Enköping on the
weekend of August 14, 2010 after a
seminar, and two days later had
sexually harassed a second woman he had
been staying with in Stockholm. On November 24, 2010, Assange lost a
legal in Sweden, and is under arrest in
absentia and has an arrest warrant out
in his name. On November 30, 2010, the
international police agency Interpol
issued a "red notice" against Assange
on behalf of Sweden for questioning on
allegations of "sex crimes." Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny filed
charges of rape, sexual molestation and
unlawful coercion against Julain
Assange. On December 7, 2010, Julian Assange
voluntarily surrendered to the London
Police. He was denied bail by a judge,
and is awaiting an extradition
hearing. Soon after his jailing, WikiLeaks
supporters began a campaign of
cyber-attacks on businesses and
institutions that they felt were
against WikiLeaks and against Assange.
The targets of these attacks included
Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, the office of
the Swedish prosecutor, and others. "The
History Guy" is a Registered Trademark. Contact
the webmaster |
Family,
Career, and Personal
Highlights Christine
Assange --Mother Daniel
Assange-Son Site
Map--revision
in progress Julian
Assange and WikiLeaks Links and
Sources: WikiLeaks
loses PayPal revenue
service-- CNN, Dec. 4,
2010 Julian
Assange--Wikipedia
Article |
