[liberationtech] International man of mystery

[Yosem Companys]

*International man of mystery*

[image: Julian Assange, who is behind the website WikiLeaks, and right,
frames from the US military video leaked to the site, showing the scene in
Baghdad after soldiers fired on a group of men, killing two journalists.]

BERNARD LAGAN

April 10, 2010

Julian Assange, who is behind the website WikiLeaks.

The founder of WikiLeaks lives a secret life in the shadow of those who blow
the whistle, writes Bernard Lagan.

On the Al Jazeera television network, an overbearing host was grilling
Julian Assange, one of the founders of WikiLeaks, the online drop zone for
whistleblowers.

Assange, an Australian who rarely makes public appearances and shuffles
around the world with little more than a rucksack and a laptop, quickly
dealt with his haughty inquisitor. Lean and tall with a handsome, distant
face, long grey locks and dressed in a a dark suit, Assange, in his late
30s, is a commanding presence.

He has a deep broadcaster's voice and gave measured, drum-tight answers
about the blow he had just dealt the US military with WikiLeak's release of
footage of an American helicopter gunship killing Iraqi citizens and two
Reuters journalists on a Baghdad street in July 2007.

The video, shot from the helicopter, includes the voices of soldiers urging
a gravely wounded Reuters photographer to pick up his weapon (they
apparently did not realise it was a camera) so he could be lawfully finished
off with the aircraft's deadly 30mm cannon. When a beaten-up van slithers to
a halt and its passer-by occupants tumble out to aid the wounded, they too
are gunned down. Only two maimed children survive.

It becomes clear why the military has resisted the demands of Reuters and
others for the release of the video; the military had long claimed it did
not know how the Reuters journalists had died and it initially withheld the
fact that children were present.

Assange resisted Al Jazeera's invitation to savage US authorities for their
years of dissembling, remarking simply: ''There was certainly spinning the
message and it does seem like there has been a cover-up.''

He didn't need to say more; by week's end the video had been viewed 4.8
million times. Its impact upon the reputation of US servicemen in Iraq is
devastating. Another US military video - showing last year's bombing of
Afghan villages as they siphoned fuel from a tanker hijacked by the Taliban
- is also coming to WikiLeaks.

Clearly someone inside the military has begun leaking, elevating WikiLeaks
and Assange overnight from mainstream journalism's fringes to a must-see
news breaker. ''This is a whole new world of how stories get out,'' declared
Sree Screenivasan, a professor of digital media at the Columbia University
journalism school in New York.

Yet for all its ideals in support of openness and freedom of information,
those behind WikiLeaks - especially its key founder, Assange - dwell in
shadows and intrigue.

They have no headquarters, no offices and the barest of a formal structure.
Assange is particularly elusive, part obviously through necessity and part
mercurial make-up. Home - or the nearest he has to one - is said to have
been eastern Africa for the past two years or so.

He has rarely spoken of his upbringing in Australia or life outside of his
work, arguing that to do so may assist those who want him and WikiLeaks
silenced.

But the trail of his life is across the internet, as coded and mysterious as
the man he is today. It begins - publicly at least - in October 1991 when
Assange, then a teenager, was charged with 30 computer hacking offences.

Prosecutors alleged he and others hacked the systems of the Australian
National University, RMIT and Telecom. They had even managed to remotely
monitor the Australian Federal Police investigation into their activities,
Operation Weather.

Assange admitted 24 hacking charges and was placed on a good behaviour bond
and ordered to pay $2100. The investigation in Australia began after an
audacious attack on NASA's computers in 1989.

The word ''WANK'' appeared in big letters on NASA monitors, an acronym for
Worms Against Nuclear Killers. Underneath was an Australian connection -
lines from a Midnight Oil song. Whoever did it was never identified.

In 1997 an astonishing book was published in Melbourne. It sold a
respectable 10,000 hard copies but, when it was made available free on the
internet it was downloaded 400,000 times within two years.

Underground told the riveting inside story of the city's computer hackers
and Assange was prominently billed in it as a researcher for the book's
author, Dr Suelette Dreyfus, now an academic researcher. It opened with a
detailed account of the NASA attack.

Dreyfus wrote glowingly of Assange's efforts: ''Julian had worked thousands
of hours doing painstaking research; discovering and cultivating sources,
digging with great resourcefulness into obscure data bases and legal papers
- not to mention providing valuable editorial advice.''

The book did not name the Melbourne hackers but used their online identities
and told their story. The records of Assange's court case and his
biographical details on WikiLeaks match the story of Mendax - one of the
hacker's online identities inUnderground.

Mendax is described as a super intelligent child who never knew his father
and was dragged from state to state by his mother who pursued a series of
turbulent relationships.

In 1988, Mendax was 16 years old and living in Emerald in central Queensland
- the age Assange was at that time. Dreyfus wrote: ''For a clever
16-year-old boy the place was dead boring. Mendax lived there with his
mother; Emerald was merely a stopping point, one of dozens, as his mother
shuttled her child around the continent trying to escape from a psychopathic
former de facto.''

Dreyfus continued: ''Sometimes Mendax went to school. Often he didn't. The
school system didn't hold much interest for him. It didn't feed his mind …
The computer system was a far more interesting place to muck around in.''

She also wrote that Mendax had a deep voice for his age. Assange has a
distinctively deep voice. Mendax fathered a son in his teens. Assange has
said he has a son at university. Mendax suffered a breakdown after he was
arrested by the police, and after a period in hospital he lived rough in the
Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne. When he finally appeared in court on the
hacking charges, Assange was living in the Dandenongs.

Was this the story of Assange's life? Was he Mendax? Dreyfus will not say,
citing the promise she made to the young hackers who had helped her with her
book, that she would not disclose their identities. She is protective of and
still obviously close to Assange.

She told the Herald this week: ''He is not politically motivated. He is more
concerned with truth and the quest for it. He is certainly not party
political. I think he sees that there are good people on both sides of
politics and definitely bad people. He is a very brave person. He is
absolutely convinced that it is worth taking high personal risks in exchange
for getting truth out to the community.''

Among WikiLeaks' volunteers, those who are close to Assange are similarly
protective and reluctant to speak on the record. They described on
background this week a man whose traits would not be unexpected if they
evolved from Mendax's turbulent and nomadic formative years. Assange, they
say, is noticeably self reliant, self contained, resourceful and apt to keep
a distance from others.

After his conviction, he stayed in Melbourne and built up his computer
skills as programmer and as a developer of freeware.

He read widely on science and maths - he is largely self taught in most of
his endeavours. He did enrol for a period at Melbourne University but did
not complete his studies in mathematics.

Less convincingly answered by those who know him is whether Assange's quest
to reveal secrets is the destiny of man moved by social conscience, or the
natural progression of a highly intelligent child raised on the run, who
found solace alone on a computer and anonymous camaraderie in cyber space.

For his epigraph in the online edition of Underground, Assange used an Oscar
Wilde quote: ''Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give
him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.''

Is Mendax the real Julian Assange?

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/international-man-of-mystery-20100409-ryvf.html
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