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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Gawker (my god, I'm about to favorably cite a Gawker story) pretty convincingly rebutted this:

http://gawker.com/5543141/wikileaks-founder-thinks-everyones...

Far less than a convincing rebuttal, more like a character assassination.

Sure it's hard to prove or even be sure of oppressive campaigns, but more importantly, it's hard to talk about because people who themselves are not experienced with activism have a hard time believing it, and they are right, some large percentage of the time the fears are not true.

I think that article is objectively biased because it made no reasonable attempt to break it down with any sort of counterpoint risk analysis. That's what Government v Activists from the activist's point of view is all about, you have almost none of the power, and all of the risk, and entrenched powers have motivation to abuse typically for the greater good. And how on earth does the activist convince the skeptical Joe Sixpack (or Joe Corporate-Software-Developer, for that matter.)

Which of his observations could be correct? Are any? Is he just paranoid? Well, if there's one Australian who can reasonably be paranoid it is Julian Assange.

The dude is pissing off governments big time, all governments have a track record of oppression, hell the U.S. surpreme court just placed the decision for detention without habeus corpus for sex offenders who have done their time into the hands of local bumpkins. Hell, the POTUS just approved a targetted assassination of a U.S. citizen with no due process or proven claim without which we can only call it a political assassination.

Thanks Gawker for fucking with the activists. Good luck Nick Denton when you publish your next dangerous article, why should activists fight for you?

Strong disagree. When you make overblown claims that later don't pan out, you do in fact sacrifice credibility. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to restate these ones:

* That Assange was "tailed" on his trip to Iceland because two state department functionaries on their way to a conference shared a flight with him

* That someone was harassed by Iceland for Wikileaks involvement when in fact he was being questioned about having stolen from Wikileaks.

* That Facebook was squelching Wikileaks [thx, jm] when in fact they were replacing an unofficial unaffiliated Wikileaks group with an official one.

I don't know what to think about the Kenyan "assassination attempt" claim, or Gawker's counterclaim, except to tell you that if you told me someone was engaging in political activism in Africa, I wouldn't see an assassination attempt as part of a global conspiracy involving the US, Australia, or Europe.

The balance of your article presumes that governments are in fact threatened by Wikileaks. I don't think they are.

Maybe by a hundred wikileaks.

Maybe by a culture that demands government transparency through fast and cheap Internet distrubution.

LOL, no point arguing with a rock. Activism is so dangerous, you're funny.

I don't think we have a fundamental disagreement about activism so much as that you are far, far more impressed with Wikileaks than I am.

I'm impressed with activism, particularly activists like Assange who get off their butts and do far more than I've ever done. Sure it's not perfect, and sure its hyperbolic. I think you're far, far more concerned about hyperbole than I am.

And if we need a better wikileaks, well that's an interesting point, clearly we need more, but better is hard, achievable, of course, but hard. And it costs a lot of safety, security, and mental peace for the individuals who take the plunge.

And how to do it without paranoia in all its forms. It's a stressful career. And simply shouting when someone's murdered is all great and all, but it's nice not to be murdered, imprisoned, or restricted from travel in the first place.

In his own article about the alleged tailing by state department officials Adrian Chen said:

It seems a bit paranoia-tinged, but Wikileaks has good reason to be paranoid. They've already been labeled a security threat by the Pentagon, and if they do in fact have this air-strike video—and their past record suggests they do—there's no question that the U.S. is keeping a very close eye on them.

http://gawker.com/5502461/exclusive-secret+sharing-website-w...

> That Facebook was squelching Facebook

I think you meant that 'facebook was squelching wikileaks' ?

(I'm not saying anything here, rather just to stimulate your fantasy)

However, the best way to kill your enemies, is to kill their credibility. The government has the power to make you believe something (by actually doing it), till you spread what happened, and than provide counter evidence that the thing never happened.

To make that more clear:

* They tailed him, but later they did something else, and report that to the media

* They harassed him, but then told the story differently, even to him

* ...

To kill a political enemy, you can't kill him physically, you just kill the credibility. This has to have a name in political strategy, which I don't remember.

And keep in mind that politicians/CEOs/upper managements are strategists.

I agree that its not a great rebuttal, especially because there are much better rebuttal's available for this particular instance. Cancelling worn passports and questioning people over their criminal conviction is absolutely standard operating procedure for customs, and I can't see why it shouldn't be? I'm not even sure how Assange thinks he was inconvenienced by it, let alone oppressed.

Powers choose who to apply legislation to.

Until there is any suggestion that Assange hasn't or won't be issued a new passport all the "Powers" have chosen to do is replace a worn passport and question someone at customs.

My immediate thought when I read the original report of this was exactly this. I am Australian and I travel frequently - I have a 64-page passport which is mostly full with 100s of stamp, and is so worn the laminate is peeling off the ID page.

When I enter Australia in particular they often take it away to study and check, and advise me that I need to get it replaced or it will become a problem. I just had a customs official at Heathrow in the UK tell me the same just last month.

What's more realistic? They want him to replace his tattered passport, or everyone is out to get him?

Its not that I doubt that governments want to screw with him, its just that this doesn't seem to be an example. This article makes it sound like they took his passport away - in his comments at the time he said they took the passport for 15 minutes then returned it and told him it would be or was cancelled because its worn.

Little know fact, Julian's into Haskell. http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2001-January/006410...

Maybe that's why they confiscated his passport ;)

Another little known fact: Julian wrote Strobe, the first "fast" portscanner, and the immediate predecessor/inspiration for nmap.

I do think your posted article is relevant, but claiming they "convincingly rebutted this" is not accurate.

Sounds to me as though the second paragraph sums it up pretty well; the police in AU have been far more aggressive about hacking offences in the last few years. It's quite probable that the worn passport, plus the fact he was caught hacking that would have sent up a red flag when he came through, not so much the wikileaks stuff, or a combination of all the things he's done, not the wikileaks stuff by itself. Mind you, Australia does have a history of arresting those who "leak" protected reports [1], but then he would have been arrested, not just had his passport confiscated!

But it's easy to speculate!

[1] http://www.caslon.com.au/whistlecasesnote4.htm#kessing

Side note: it's interesting you were able to post that link. When I tried to submit that story, it was [dead]ed automatically. Perhaps submitting gawker articles is disallowed, but are okay in comments? (NB: that's an inquisitive question...I'm not bitter about a submission being [dead]ed!)

I agree those are questionable circumstances and I do not know enough to rebut that particular article you gave. Perhaps there are other circumstances of him freaking out and it being harder to disprove than these examples and it also doesn't disprove this example from the more recent article.

This one sounds a lot more curious, and given the way Australia is acting I would not doubt these circumstances. The fact that a) Wikileaks is blocked in their country, b) passport was taken because of wear-and-tear (pretty drastic, and he doesn't lie about their reasoning), c) he received a letter that could have reasonably raised his "threat" level with the police. (And it appears the police do not facilitate checking passports at airports as far as I can tell - that is some other agency.)

You're right, police do not check passports at the airport building, they're immigration officers - often they do have members who are trained police officers, but they're very rarely the people at the front dealing with the 300 people getting off a plane; the real officers are in the back who deal with the few hand picked out.

This holds true for every country I've been in, and I know for sure actual police officers are only in the back in Canada and the UK (I'd safely assume Australia uses the same commonwealth practices though) as I've been directed back there a couple of times (entering Canada) and my wife was directed into the back (entering the UK).

Wikileaks is not blocked in Australia.

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