After living 7.5 years in an Ecuadorian embassy, I wonder if he feels like that portion was all a waste of time, going to those lengths to avoid extradition. Though maybe the timing worked in his favor in this case, given its been years since Wikileaks was relevant, whereas had he been extradited years ago he might’ve be faced a harsher situation.
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024
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Hopefully he can safely return to his home country and take a long deserved rest from this all.
It'll probably take a decade or more to recover mentally from all the shit he has gone through.
I just hope he takes his time to recover and passes the wikileaks torch as all the accumulated resentment and paranoia will probably take a while to shed off. Going all out on anti-american frenzy on social media and whatnot would likely lead to undesirable outcome for him in public eye.
I’m wondering if it was worth the sacrifice. The governments and tech companies are spying more than ever on everyone.
Snowden revelations and Wikileaks have made E2EE pretty much a standard for most internet services. People are also far less naive when it comes to online privacy which has spawned bunch of regulations like GDPR and bunch of investigations on how well services and products handle information security.
He is a dick, who used to be important for wikileaks but has kept tergeting specific angles for his leaks, which seems to indicate pushing a political agenda, which reduces trust in him and his platform.
The work he started is too important to leave in his care.
Example: During the DNC email leak, Wikileaks was clearly in a rush to publish the documents without removing credit card information and social security numbers, this is just sloppy.
Assange also worked to draw out the release of documents to increase Wikileaks publicity, this went on far enough that he publicly made announcements of releases that never came.
Wikileaks also published evidence that the DNC was behind the killing of Seth Rich, a DC staffer that Assange alluded to have given him the emails, this evidence came from a PI who has freely admitted not having seen any emails between Wikileaks and Seth not having seen the laptop containing the emails, or even having spoken with someone who had. The PI in question is a known FOX contributer.
Assange also seems to have weirdly close ties to Russia, he only had his morning talkshow broadcast on RT, supposedly they were the only ones to take up his show for syndication.
When he was first exiled, he requested that the Russian security service FSB should handle his security detail.
Today, the largest sponsor of Wikileaks is the Russian Government.
All of this speaks to Wikileaks not being the supreme beacon of free speach, but rather part of the Russian propaganda machine.
I don't think it started this way, Assange and Wikileaks probably started with the best of intentions, but the reality of our society came into play and Assange/Wikileaks sold thier credibillity for money from the Russian government.
While I agree on the facts I want to offer a slightly different (possible) conclusion: a organisation like wikileaks needs resources and supporters. If they are targeted by all the "good guy"-countries and the only one willing to support them is "evil guy" Russia, then they are not in a position to resist. They chose to compromise their integrity instead of just not existing.
If the western world wants a whistleblower/leaks organisation that follows journalistic integrity and ethics, they need to fund it even if it leaks their own internal documents.
Oh, absolutely!
I get why they accepted the money, but they doesn't seem to have accepted the consequences yet.
And I don't have an answer as to how to solve the issue.
We need an organization like Wikileaks, but no one will want to fund it, as they don't want their skeletons out of the closet.
The only way I could see it working would be if someone inherits shitload of money, and funds the organization directly, else there are allways conflicts of interests.
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If anybody needs a catch up on the facts of this case:
https://apnews.com/article/assange-wikileaks-plea-deal-39b72e6be6a775dae9b008728a46e595
I wonder what he had to give up in the plea deal.
Or, who.
Asking the real question.
Assange has been held in [...] Prison on the outskirts of London for five years, and he previously spent seven years in self-exile at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London [...] until his asylum was withdrawn and he was forcibly carried out of the embassy and arrested in April 2019.
12 years... fuck...
Good for him, I hope he is ok
This feels unreal.