About
Julian Assange is an Australian journalist and political activist best known as the founder and editor-in-chief of the international whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks. Since November 2010, Assange has been wanted by the British government for extradition to Sweden under an European Arrest Warrant relating to a sexual assault investigation and currently resides inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London as a political refugee.
Online History
WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks was launched in December 2006 as a non-profit project under the directorship of Julian Assange. Within the first year of launch, the site claimed a database of more than 1.2 million documents. Assange also serves as member on the Board of Directors for the website’s parent company The Sunshine Press.
2010 U.S. Diplomatic Cable Leaks
Following WikiLeak’s unprecedented expose of sensitive documents containing US diplomatic cables in February 2010, the U.S. government criticized the WikLeaks founder Julian Assange, and began pressing on the affiliates of WikiLeaks to halt their transactions with the Swiss-based website. As a result, WikiLeaks’ server host Amazon dropped their service, while Mastercard and PayPal ceased all transactions of funds donated by the supporters of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
Beginning in December 2011, Amazon took down their hosting of the WikiLeaks servers less than a day after being contacted by the office of Senator Joe Lieberman and was then followed by PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and most recently, MasterCard.[1][2] Official statements from these respective companies cite things like ToS violations and pending investigations but the government intervention in all this is somewhat suspect.[3][4] There is a letter from the US State Department floating around that was sent to Assange on November 27th, which is now making it’s rounds to the organizations still supporting WikiLeaks.[5]
Financial Blockade
On October 24th, 2011, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in an hour-long press conference that the financial blockade imposed by major American e-commerce companies has made it impossible for the organization to continue operating on donations provided by its supporters. Streamed in real-time via UStream, Assange also revealed during the conference that WikiLeaks has been running on cash reserves for the last 11 months due to the increasing problems with means to receive donations.
Operation Avenge Assange
Following WikiLeak’s unprecedented expose of sensitive documents containing US diplomatic cables in February 2010, the U.S. government criticized the WikLeaks founder Julian Assange, and began pressing on the affiliates of WikiLeaks to halt their transactions with the Swiss-based website. As a result, WikiLeaks’ server host Amazon dropped their service, while Mastercard and PayPal ceased all transactions of funds donated by the supporters of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
Beginning in December 2011, Amazon took down their hosting of the WikiLeaks servers less than a day after being contacted by the office of Senator Joe Lieberman and was then followed by PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and most recently, MasterCard.[1][2] Official statements from these respective companies cite things like ToS violations and pending investigations but the government intervention in all this is somewhat suspect.[3][4]
There is a letter from the US State Department floating around that was sent to Assange on November 27th, which is now making it’s rounds to the organizations still supporting WikiLeaks.[5] In retaliation against the US-led counter-measures and support of Assange, Anonymous contingent launched several waves of DDoS attacks against various companies whom they perceived as “enemies of Julian Assange,” under the catchy-sounding codename Operation Avenge Assange.
The Next Web Media[22] reported that Paypal has released funds left over in their WikiLeaks account, which was terminated in by the company after an apparent “terms of usage violation” where WikiLeaks[6] was said to have been “used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity.” The account, however, is still closed.
The Fifth Estate
In March 2011, The Guardian[21] and other news sources[20] reported that DreamWorks Studio will produce a Hollywood adaptation of Wikileaks and Julian Assange based on WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange and the World’s Most Dangerous Website by former Wikileaks spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg and WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding. Titled The Fifth Estate and envisioned as a political investigative thriller, the film will chronicle the history of the organization through the eyes of Domscheit-Berg, from its early days to the eventual fallout between Assange and Domscheit-Berg following their rise to fame.
During the Sundance Film Festival in January 2013, more details about the film and the cast were revealed through a press release, along with the first official photograph of the lead actors (shown above).[22] Set for theatrical release on November 15th, 2013, the film is directed by Bill Condon and stars Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) as Wikileaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange and German actor Daniel Brühl as the former spokesperson of the website Daniel Domscheit-Berg. On January 28th, Assange revealed that he has obtained a leaked copy of the film script and critiqued it as a “mass propaganda attack” during a speech at the Oxford Union (shown below).