Assange surrenders

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Julian Assange has surrendered to police in London. He will, however, fight extradition back to Sweden. Assuming he is innocent of these charges I would think he would prefer to return of his own doing to clear things up.



WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrested in UK



LONDON – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange surrendered to London police Tuesday to face a Swedish arrest warrant, the latest blow to an organization that faces legal, financial and technological challenges after releasing hundreds of secret U.S. diplomatic cables.

Assange was at Westminster Magistrate's Court on Tuesday afternoon, waiting to attend a hearing. His Swedish lawyer told The Associated Press his client would challenge any extradition from Britain to Sweden.

If that is the case, Assange will likely be remanded into U.K. custody or released on bail until another judge rules on whether to extradite him, a spokeswoman for the extradition department said on customary condition of anonymity.

Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, has been accused by two women in Sweden. He faces rape and sexual molestation allegations in one case and sexual molestation and unlawful coercion in the other. Assange denies the allegations.
His British attorney Mark Stephens says the allegations stem from a "dispute over consensual but unprotected sex" last summer.

Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny has rejected claims by Stephens and Assange that the prosecution has political overtones. She planned to comment on the arrest later Tuesday.

Assange's Swedish lawyer Bjorn Hurtig said his client would contest any extradition.

"He will absolutely do that," he told the AP in a telephone interview.

Hurtig said it was difficult to say how long the extradition process in Britain would take — anywhere from a week to two months. He said if Assange was extradited to Sweden, he wouldn't be kept in detention after he's been questioned, "because it's been for the sake of the questioning that he's been detained."

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, visiting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. troops in Afghanistan, was pleased by the arrest.

"That sounds like good news to me," he said.

Beginning in July, WikiLeaks angered the U.S. government by releasing tens of thousands of secret U.S. military documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That was followed last week by the ongoing release of what WikiLeaks says will eventually be a quarter-million cables from U.S. diplomatic posts around the world. The group provided those documents to five major newspapers, which have been working with WikiLeaks to edit the cables for publication.

In the past week, WikiLeaks has seen its bank accounts canceled and its web sites attacked. The U.S. government has launched a criminal investigation, saying the group has jeopardized U.S. national security and diplomatic efforts around the world.

WikiLeaks has also seen an online army of supporters come to its aid, sending donations, fighting off computer attacks and setting up over 500 mirror sites around the world to make sure that the secret documents are published regardless of what happens to Assange.

A spokesman for WikiLeaks called Assange's arrest an attack on media freedom and said it won't prevent the organization from releasing more secret documents.

"This will not change our operation," Kristinn Hrafnsson told The Associated Press.

But Hrafnsson also said the group had no plans at the moment to release the key to a heavily encrypted version of some of its most important documents — an "insurance" file that has been distributed to supporters in case of an emergency. Hrafnsson said that will only come into play if "grave matters" involving WikiLeaks staff occur — but did not elaborate on what those would be.

The campaign against WikiLeaks began with an effort to jam the website as the cables were being released. U.S. Internet companies Amazon.com, Inc., EveryDNS and PayPal, Inc. then severed their links with WikiLeaks in quick succession, forcing it to jump to new servers and adopt a new primary Web address — wikileaks.ch — in Switzerland.

Swiss authorities closed Assange's new Swiss bank account Monday, and MasterCard has pulled the plug on payments to WikiLeaks, according to technology news website CNET.

The attacks appeared to have been at least partially successful in stanching the flow of secrets: WikiLeaks has not published any new cables in more than 24 hours, although stories about them have continued to appear in The New York Times and Britain's The Guardian, two of the newspapers given advance access to the cables.

WikiLeaks' Twitter feed, generally packed with updates, appeals and pithy comments, has been silent since Monday night, when the group warned that Assange's arrest was imminet.


WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrested in UK - Yahoo! News

 

[Pilgrim]

Well, that's a start. He probably got to the point where he thought he was safer in jail than on the outside.

 

[EnglishLady]

According to the BBC news - Assange was denied Bail, court date looks set for December 14.

BBC News - Wikileaks founder Julian Assange refused bail

 

[RLENT]

Well, that's a start. He probably got to the point where he thought he was safer in jail than on the outside.

Possible .... although I highly doubt it (considering the dirty tricks already evident in the matter)

Other possibility: he's actually a law-abiding citizen, who responded to (an apparently valid) arrest warrant, when his lawyers were served with it ...

Now the real fun begins:

Kangaroo Court:

A kangaroo court or kangaroo trial is a colloquial term for a sham legal proceeding or court. The outcome of a trial by kangaroo court is essentially determined in advance, usually for the purpose of ensuring conviction, either by going through the motions of manipulated procedure or by allowing no defense at all. A kangaroo court's proceedings deny due process rights in the name of expediency.

Such rights include the right to summon witnesses, the right of cross-examination, the right not to incriminate oneself, the right not to be tried on secret evidence, the right to control one's own defense, the right to exclude evidence that is improperly obtained, irrelevant or inherently inadmissible, e.g., hearsay, the right to exclude judges or jurors on the grounds of partiality or conflict of interest, and the right of appeal.

In any event, it may make no difference whatsoever, in terms of the further release of documents.

 

[Turtle]

I have a feeling that this "insurance" "thermonuclear device" of a 1.4 GB encrypted file is 1.4 GB of random data bluffing.

The file was supposed to be released if anything happened to Assange or WIkileaks. Assange is in jail and Wikileaks can't find a bank account, or a credit card.

 

[RLENT]

I have a feeling that this "insurance" "thermonuclear device" of a 1.4 GB encrypted file is 1.4 GB of random data bluffing.

We shall see ......

My guess however is that it probably wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to do so, because it's fairly likely that the USG already knows what he has .....

If he has nothing and they know it, it wouldn't be much of a bluff ......

One might view the concerted efforts against Assange as evidence of the import of what is contained in the files.

The file was supposed to be released if anything happened to Assange or WIkileaks. Assange is in jail and Wikileaks can't find a bank account, or a credit card.

My guess on this one is that he moves on his own pace ....... not yours, or mine, or anyone elses ...

 

[RLENT]

The file was supposed to be released if anything happened to Assange or WIkileaks. Assange is in jail and Wikileaks can't find a bank account, or a credit card.

"Will WikiLeaks now release the key to open the insurance file? Not yet. The Associated Press reports that a WikiLeaks spokesman said the file will be "used only if 'grave matters' take place involving WikiLeaks staff."

One could characterize in the above in all sorts of way ... one of them could be:

That Wikileaks would prefer to avoid releasing unredacted files if possible ..... which would be the responsible thing to do .....

However they have made it quite clear they will do so, if their hand is forced.

Source:

Will WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, now arrested, take the 'nuclear' option?

 

[Turtle]

"One might view the concerted efforts against Assange as evidence of the import of what is contained in the files."

That one really doesn't make sense, though, since the file is sitting out there on thousands of servers, including Usenet, and all of them out of the control of Assange or the government. Even if they were to completely eliminate Wikileaks and Assange and his staff, the files are still there, and unless Assange is a complete fool (which he's not) there are instructions for decrypting that file, somewhere, in case Assange himself can't pull the trigger. More than likely the password is on a time-release bot (kind of like a time or date triggered worm) that requires periodic contact with Assange (or someone) to prevent it from being auto-released into the wild. It's probably on a 15 or 30 day countdown, that gets reset by a simple command. It's a pretty common method used by hackers to launch certain kinds of attacks at specific times.

"Will WikiLeaks now release the key to open the insurance file? Not yet. The Associated Press reports that a WikiLeaks spokesman said the file will be "used only if 'grave matters' take place involving WikiLeaks staff."

One could characterize in the above in all sorts of way ... one of them could be:

That Wikileaks would prefer to avoid releasing unredacted files if possible ..... which would be the responsible thing to do .....

Except that he's shown himself to be quite irresponsible by releasing damaging cables that were released solely to inflict embarrassment and political damage, in direct opposition to the stated goals of Wikileaks. So you can't count on him to be responsible. Staying with his "thermonuclear device" analogy, when all hope is lost and the fight is over, launching a nuke out of revenge isn't exactly the responsible thing to do.

"Will WikiLeaks now release the key to open the insurance file? Not yet. The Associated Press reports that a WikiLeaks spokesman said the file will be "used only if 'grave matters' take place involving WikiLeaks staff."

One can also see the inconsistency between the above and the below...

"If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically," he said in a live chat with readers of the Guardian newspaper this week.

So within the span of 4 days time it went from "if something happens to us" to "only if grave matters take place."

My guess on this one is that he moves on his own pace ....... not yours, or mine, or anyone elses ...

Of that there is no doubt. Responsibility aside, he's in charge, and he's not about to let people forget that. It's the quintessential hacker mentality.

It's too late, I think, but I wish he'd put his political agenda aside and just go back to being a whistleblower conduit for exposing lies and corruption. He has, in effect, made the classic fatal mistake of a news reporter becoming a part of the story.

In any case, if Assange really had something and wanted to prove that the "insurance" was the real thing, he should have done this:

1. Encrypt each document with a separate AES key.
2. Ask someone to publicly tell them to choose a random document.
3. Publish the decryption key for that document only.

That would be slam-dunk proof that he's not bluffing.

 

[RLENT]

"One might view the concerted efforts against Assange as evidence of the import of what is contained in the files."

That one really doesn't make sense, though, since the file is sitting out there on thousands of servers, including Usenet, and all of them out of the control of Assange or the government.

Never underestimate the willingness of a tyranny to further its own ends by using violence or force (including the deprivation of freedom) to make an example of someone ..... and as a means of compelling others.

BTW, the file is not out of Assange's control .... he's possesses they key and without that no one is doing anything.

 

[Turtle]

Well, by out of his control, by that I mean there's a copy of the file on my hard drive, too, and he (or the government) can't get to it (to delete, or edit it), so what's out there is out there. All he or someone else has to do is release the password.

In addition to the NSA, obviously, there are untold thousands of uber-geeks around the world dedicating bazillions of CPU cycles in a brute force attempt to crack that password.

One big problem, incidentally, is that it's not exactly clear how the file was encrypted. It might be AES (as indicated by Assange himself and in the filename of the file), but it might be Blowfish, or any one of a dozen other encryption schemes. Assange stated outright that it was AES, which is kind of a clue that it's not.

 

[RLENT]

In addition to the NSA, obviously, there are untold thousands of uber-geeks around the world dedicating bazillions of CPU cycles in a brute force attempt to crack that password.

Good luck to them I say .... they'll need it .....

 

[greg334]

BTW, the file is not out of Assange's control .... he's possesses they key and without that no one is doing anything.

Actually it is out of his control and what he should be really concern about is if it is decrypted and released, his life and those who had a hand in this are pretty much worthless.

It is not a good thing to threaten a world; there are far too many people out there who make a living at decrypting files who may already have this file all ready to either publish or defend the contents.

He isn’t a great mind who can put together a file that is impossible to crack, he is a little person who thinks he is better than us.

Kangaroo Court:

A kangaroo court or kangaroo trial is a colloquial term for a sham legal proceeding or court. The outcome of a trial by kangaroo court is essentially determined in advance, usually for the purpose of ensuring conviction, either by going through the motions of manipulated procedure or by allowing no defense at all. A kangaroo court's proceedings deny due process rights in the name of expediency.

Such rights include the right to summon witnesses, the right of cross-examination, the right not to incriminate oneself, the right not to be tried on secret evidence, the right to control one's own defense, the right to exclude evidence that is improperly obtained, irrelevant or inherently inadmissible, e.g., hearsay, the right to exclude judges or jurors on the grounds of partiality or conflict of interest, and the right of appeal.

You know that a lot of what you are saying does not exist in foreign courts in the form that you describe, Due Process Rights, the right to a speedy trial and other rights are not always used in courts outside of the US. I think you mistaken the difference between an extradition hearing where bail is refused and a trial.

 

[EnglishLady]

Kangaroo Court:

A kangaroo court or kangaroo trial is a colloquial term for a sham legal proceeding or court. The outcome of a trial by kangaroo court is essentially determined in advance, usually for the purpose of ensuring conviction, either by going through the motions of manipulated procedure or by allowing no defense at all. A kangaroo court's proceedings deny due process rights in the name of expediency.

Such rights include the right to summon witnesses, the right of cross-examination, the right not to incriminate oneself, the right not to be tried on secret evidence, the right to control one's own defense, the right to exclude evidence that is improperly obtained, irrelevant or inherently inadmissible, e.g., hearsay, the right to exclude judges or jurors on the grounds of partiality or conflict of interest, and the right of appeal.

In any event, it may make no difference whatsoever, in terms of the further release of documents.

I do hope that you are not inferring that a British Court would do anything but its duty in this matter of the extradition.

 

[greg334]

Sue,

Of course he is and he seems to think that the Crown is being unfair to this little man by refusing him bail. It is being handled rather well by the Brits and as it is standard practice with non-citizens in EU countries who have no family ties NOT to get bail in extradition cases, so everything is actually quite normal.

 

[EnglishLady]

I found this pretty interesting ....

Barriers to possible US Assange prosecution

BBC News - Wikileaks: Barriers to possible US Assange prosecution

 

[RLENT]

Excellent Find !

It's really, really gonna make some readers here very, very unhappy tho' .....

You can clearly see a number of footbullets delivered by various retardo-ficials of the USG to their prospective case as a consequence of opening their big yaps ... all of which being driven by the nearly utterly psychotic reaction that the revealing of the jewels of the national security state causes in the inmate population .....

My prediction: expect more of same from said retardo-ficials ....