Ecuador cuts off Julian Assange's internet access at London embassy
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Not in the least bit arrogant. "Well, I hid out here because I feared extradition. That should basically count as my sentence for violating bail, right?"
That's the best the forces of the US/ UK/ Swedish intelligence communities could come up with?
That doesn't effect his work, or shouldn't really, but it does explain his personal actions and martyr complex.
Given his scenario, information he has, he may simply find himself resolved to a very difficult life, willing to work to maximize it's impact.
The reason is that he was tweeting again in favour of Catalan Republicans, more precisely against the current wave of political prisoners that Spain is taking, including probably the last Catalan elected president, now under custody in Germany.
This is confirmed by Assange himself in his last tweet "I have no right to twit about political prisoners."
The guy is now a hero to many catalans. He will be an honorary citizen of the forthcoming Catalan Republic, and there are already talks of erecting a statue of him in the center of Barcelona!
> Wikileaks editor @julianassange has been gagged and isolated by order of Ecuador's new president @Lenin Moreno. He cannot tweet, speak to the press, recieve visitors or make telephone calls. Ecuador demanded that he remove the following Tweet:
> [Assange's tweet] "In 1940 the elected president of Catalonia, Lluís Companys, was captured by the Gestapo, at the request of Spain, delivered to them and executed. Today, German police have arrested the elected president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, at the request of Spain, to be extradited."
> This is the only tweet the government of Ecuador asked to be removed. In an email to his London lawyers on 27 March at 14:54 BST the Ecuadorian foreign ministry referenced no other matter.
Complete shot in the dark-time.
Since many say that Russia is behind Wikileaks and Russia said they would respond to the diplomat expulsion.. Russia somehow pressured Ecuador into cutting his internet to trigger Assange's dead mans switch?
1) the spanish nationalist media is all histerical about this event, thanking Ecuador for its help and solidarity
2) this comes just one day after Assange started re-tweeting again about Catalonia, after several months of radio silence about the subject
3) he has always been commenting about russia, the uk, and many other things.
4) The UK can not effectively cut the connection to Assange, only Ecuador (by threatening to expel him from his embassy).
Unless they threaten to throw him out for accessing the internet.
Come to think of it, the nature of the Wifi environment around the embassy must, at the very least, be an interesting subject for a pen-test white-paper ..
The Pringles antenna for wifi, or a Yagi or parabolic dish, is strongly directional and can pass through the voids in a cage when aligned. It just needs 12.5cm between the cage elements, like a window.
> The Ecuadorian government said in statement that it had acted because Assange had breached “a written commitment made to the government at the end of 2017 not to issue messages that might interfere with other states”.
Ecuador would at this point in time be fully justified in declaring that Assange was no longer welcome on their territory and expelling him from his hidey-hole. That they are merely cutting off his internet is extremely generous of them given the trouble and expense he has caused them.
What changed their mind? His behavior certainly hasn't changed.
Given how many times he has promised leaks and not delivered, most likely it won't.
So far WikiLeaks' publications are what they claim the publications are, and WikiLeaks has released a number of "insurance" files such as:
https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/8823724/WikiLeaks_insurance...
https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/8823728/WikiLeaks_insurance...
https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/8823733/WikiLeaks_insurance...
https://archive.org/details/WikiLeaks_Insurance_File
which I understand we're all encouraged to share widely in the event the key to decrypt one or more of them is released. I don't know what's in any of the insurance files.
Personally I think that by now he should get it over with and walk out, be arrested, do the time for skipping bail and then he can put his extradition theory to the test. The current political leadership in the USA is about as pro Assange as it is ever going to get.
His opponents -- ie: the entire western MSM apparatus -- have been working harder at that, and certainly done much more damage to Wikileaks than Assange could ever manage. Though I don't see how he's damaged the image of Wikileaks or himself much in the last couple of years. With Wikileaks' good works around the 2016 US elections you'd think would have won them plenty of goodwiil -- exposing the sham that is the US electoral system directly from the mouths of its brightest and most powerful.
That's where the immense, ongoing smear via Western MSM outlets comes in though, I suppose.
> walk out, be arrested, do the time
Definitely, just do it. It's easy for us to say, but imagine how terrifying that must be for him: who knows whose dungeon he'll end up in, but that he'll be effectively neutralized in his efficacy in regards to Wikileaks permanently is almost certain -- at the very least!
They are also a much better shot than crime movies would lead you to believe.
Wikileaks releases documents it claims detail Russia mass surveillance apparatus https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/19/wikileaks-releases-documen...
> It’s the _first_ time the organization has leaked (what it claims is) material directly pertaining to the Russian state.
So... first time for how many years? And as, article points out, the leak itself is rather minor.
He was getting low on funds, and then was cutoff from the credit card system for contributions. shortly after that, he started getting RU appearances. RUS influence likely a combination of providing critical funding and also developing Kompromat - compromising, coercing information, whether true or not.
In short, he's not a free, independent agent working to strengthen democratic principles and institutions.
(note that 'asset' does not mean necessarily the classic willing spy, could be merely duped or coerced)
It sounds like you're describing a game with two players where one is being disproportionally punished for breaking the rules.
There is a good chance that reviewing all that Iraq war footage resulted in some good old radicalization.
Assange basically did what he could to damage the interests of the USA, and probably succeeded wildly beyond his dreams. He's made a whole bunch of stupid calls and he's blown his own credibility and that of WikiLeaks by showing an overt agenda instead of just being a 'dumb pipe'.
Funny though, the one time that he did act as a dumb pipe everybody was screaming blue murder about how irresponsible that was.
If Assange is a Russian asset, he is one that it is critical for Russia to conceal it's connection to if he is to continue to have value. Not running to Russia's embassy has helped him continue to spread propaganda that serves Russian interests, so it's not incompatible with him being an (even actively managed) Russian asset.
In this case: Assange/WikiLeaks have an agenda: to hit America where it hurts, by exposing their actions on the world stage and by creating as big a rift between the different political sides in the United States as they could manage. In that they are no different from Al Queada or the Russians, their goals align and so you get some pretty strange bedfellows.
Assange is a 'useful idiot' to Russia when he's go between for content hacked from US servers by the Russians that they can't be seen to release directly.
I agree with you that it is not incompatible but it is too paranoid for me to take into account until there is some actual proof. He could be a double agent too, he could be anything. But my money is on him being an idealistic, narcissistic hacker with a political agenda that amounts to 'Reduce American Influence in any way possible'. And if that involves cooperating with the Russians (knowingly or otherwise) that does not necessarily mean he is a Russian agent.
By contrast, Paul Manafort, who made many millions of dollars working for the Russians and who has his hands all over the 2016 election cycle and the damage done to Ukraine to me would qualify as a Russian agent.
I'm pretty sure if there was any proof that Assange was an actual Russian agent it would have been used to pressure Ecuador to turn him over since the Ecuadorians would definitely not want to be seen as 'harboring a Russian agent' versus 'harboring a left wing anti-American hacker'. The former doesn't play nearly as good at the home front as the latter.
That might explain Assange’s US-related actions, but not those related to Catalonia or a number of other issues, all of which align with Russian interests and Russian propaganda conducted through other channels.
If Assange isn't a Russian asset, he simply has an amazing coincidental multidimensionsl confluence of interests with Russia. At some point, collaboration becomes more plausible than coincidence.
The whole Spanish argument that secession is 'against the constitution of Spain and therefore invalid' doesn't hold much water with me, obviously no country will be happy about a part of it wanting to break away and the Spanish government handled the whole affair about as heavy handed and wrong as they possibly could.
Keep in mind that Spain is afraid of something that it doesn't want the general public to realize: that the Basques and the Catalans have as much claim to wanting to be independent as the Irish, the Scots, the Slowaks, the Czechs and so on had, and that Europe to a large extent managed to accommodate these smaller chunks of larger entities because it made the dominance of Germany and France all that much stronger.
And that circles us back to Germany, which is why it is funny how Germany is now 'damned if they do and damned if they don't', if they extradite then they will alienate the Catalonians (which, incidentally is going to cause a lot of trouble for German visitors to Catalonia this summer) and if they don't then they will be at loggerheads with Spain which they need badly in the EU.
So this is quite the little clusterfuck and Assange/Russians role is just bit players, anything to fuck up the various houses of power is to their advantage so I'm not too surprised to see Assange do this.
Neither Snowden (living in Russia), Manning nor Assange strike me as 'Russian agents', though they definitely did as much more more damage to US interests than if they had been.
Australian.
EDIT: Nevermind, I managed to miss the "anti"
'jacquesm, I have a couple of extra hyphens if you're running low.
Let me see if I can source them locally, if not I will be happy to take some of your hands.
"Damaging" Russia makes no sense. They don't make the rules!
This criticism only makes sense if they are sitting on a pile of leaked material that is unflattering Russia. There’s no reason to believe that is the case.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-le...
So, you mean, WikiLeaks is merely a useful-but-innocent tool of Russian intelligence, rather than an active collaborator?
So there is a huge amount of hypocrisy there. But that does not excuse Russia for meddling in the affairs of The USA or Europe either.
They're all guilty of this, some more than others.
In fact, less so, given the historial record. Funding revolutions, killing 100 000 civilians in another country on other side of the planet from them, was not on Russias list of deeds for past 25 years.
Yemen.
How about judging the information on its merits, not its source? Why does it matter one wink if you don't like the leakers?
There's a difference between a whistleblower wanting to expose things that violate the constitution because they want those things to stop, and a foreign agent exposing the same actions, but with the intent to destabilize people's trust in their government.
The end result might be the same. But to say it doesn't matter where a leak came from, is to also say that whistleblowers are no different from foreign spies.
Update to add my bias here: This is why I can respect the actions of Edward Snowden, but find Julian Assange completely untrustworthy.
Well I guess we have to agree to disagree then. If a "foreign spy" reports that Dow Checmial is dumping pollution in the river, I'm gonna question Dow first, not the spy.
No one is saying the information is false or should be ignored. To use your example, if there were reason to believe that this spy was revealing this information on behalf of Dow's competitors to influence the market and shield/draw attention away from their own malfeasance, that's a concern. The source and the intent of the source does actually matter.
That was precisely the intention behind characterizing Assange as a Russian spy during the election.
More broadly, it's that Assange uses the guise of a seemingly-neutral Teller of Truths to dole out information for the purpose of manipulation, either for his own or other people's agendas.
Exactly. This accusation was intended to be equal parts distraction from the contents and ad hominem.
They also mooted the idea that he was a pedophile for a while, but it didn't really take.
>either for his own or other people's agendas.
But of course. She literally expressed a desire to see him murdered because of him doling out secrets. Who would take kindly to that?
I full support Russia Today (RT) despite being obviously backed by the Russian government because they are willing to talk about things that no US media outlet will touch. It's despicable that Google publicly and vocally denounces them and de-rates their results in search and news.
Go ahead and question it.
Have you come up with any evidence that it's fabricated?
So it's actually not so wrong to think that Russia is not >proven< guilty after all.
I doubt that here, on HN, most of us would go so deep with conspiracy, but rational thinking did not lead me to the conclusion that Putin is responsible this time.
Of course we don't know the whole story, but shouldn't people like Assange reveal it?
Also, why would the UK-Ecuador relations be in danger of a tweet of a fugitive?
Putin is given far too much credit. But the Russian wetworks division, under Putin's authority, has its fingerprints all over the Salisbury attack.
> shouldn't people like Assange reveal it?
Largely Assange has been an anti-liberal democracy apologist for the last 5+ years. A sad turn for someone starting at a radical anarchist position, but it's been pretty obvious. He's also largely destroyed any of Wikileaks rep as a honest broker and reduced it to the reputation of "anti-US intelligence". AFAICT, he's operating as a (probably unwitting) Russian front these days.
There is strong circumstantial evidence, but proof is a slightly different game. It would be nice, for example, to have a clear motive for why Russia might have poisoned the man. According to the wiki article the Russian justice system had sentenced him to 13 years in a penal colony in 2006, and then handed him over in a prisoners exchange in 2010. What happened to upgrade that to a death sentence in 2018 that the GRU didn't know about in 2006-2010?
Evidence should be a high bar. We might suspect the Russians, but lets not pretend there is any clear public evidence beyond government say-so. The government can be wrong, just like the rest of us.
The UK government can be wrong, but it the absence of any plausible alternative candidates, it's probably right to conclude the perpetrator is the party known to have carried out similar attacks against similar targets using similar deniable but too sophisticated to be regular criminal means using a murder weapon identified as one they are known to have created. Especially when their public response is trolling and branding the victim a traitor rather than alarm.
On the other hand, having a clearly Russian pedigree may be precisely the reason it was used; either to send a strong message to would-be dissenters in the Russian intelligence sphere or to make it look like a Russian hit.
Spooks doing what spooks do, it seems.
this is the dicey bit with spy games. part of the goal is to ensure courtroom proof isn't available.
> why Russia might have poisoned the man
Kill double agents as warnings? disloyal spies aren't exactly popular.
My impression is Russia is moving to an execution phase for a plan of action.
If you genuinely think the UK needed a couple more dead Russian dissidents (and pretty unsympathetic ones at that) to justify stricter sanctions on Russia, you really, really don't understand the relevant politics.
It reminds me how some religious communities go after the people who don't follow their rules even after they flee to other country [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky#Assassination
[2] https://meduza.io/en/feature/2017/05/25/we-will-set-them-str...
https://cs9.pikabu.ru/post_img/2018/03/13/8/1520947357114473...
And
http://i12.pixs.ru/storage/2/3/6/Bezimyanni_3398267_29746236...
Nobody is stupid enough to honestly believe that. Nobody. Jog on troll.
He took a meeting, hoping to be allowed back, and instead was poisoned. Sounds plausible to me, but then again its really similar to the plot of McMafia.
But it just as easily could be a false flag. I don't trust the Orwellian British anymore than I do the ruskies.
There is just too little public info to say for sure. For example, how are the Brits so sure it was a Novochik agent? Especially since they are designed to be untraceable.
So, no. You can't claim its only available in Russia, if you've positively identified it using these signatures .. since you'd have had to have the material to compare with, yourself ..
I don't entertain the false flag narrative because it is so difficult to disprove. If the UK was willing to kill this man and endanger the lives of their citizens to destabilize Russian relations, then pretty much anything is possible. Even if this was some special nerve agent that only Russia is able to make, the UK could simply kill the man with a similar nerve agent and claim it was the special Russia one. If you can't trust the UK government here, than they could easily fabricate or claim they have hard proof of Russian involvement. You also have to ask yourself what hard proof of Russian involvement would even look like, and how realistic it would be to find such a thing even if Russia were to be involved.
I agree, he changed dramatically sometime around or during the Trump campaign; I hardly recognize him any longer.
He's turned Wikileaks into his own personal vendetta machine.
Because the fugitive is occupying a Ecuadorian diplomatic facility in the UK and using it inconsistently with it's diplomatic function, which, if permitted by Ecuador, is a violation by Ecuador of Article 41, Paragraph 3 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
Because he's a fugitive that they are sheltering. They've taken responsibility for him.
Please lay out evidence supporting this claim. Given you're being rational about it, you should be able to do so.