Julian Assange
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. He came to international attention in 2010 after WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from Chelsea Manning, a United States Army intelligence analyst: footage of a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad showing probable war crimes committed by the U.S. Army, U.S. military logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and U.S. diplomatic cables. Assange has won over two dozen awards for publishing and human rights activism.
Assange was raised in various places around Australia until his family settled in Melbourne in his middle teens. He became involved in the hacker community and was convicted for hacking in 1996. Following the establishment of WikiLeaks, Assange was its editor when it published the Bank Julius Baer documents, footage of the 2008 Tibetan unrest, and a report on political killings in Kenya with The Sunday Times. Publication of the leaks from Manning started in February 2010.
In November 2010 Sweden wished to question Assange in an ostensibly unrelated police investigation and sought to extradite him from the UK. In June 2012, Assange breached his bail and took refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. He was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012 on the grounds of political persecution and fears he might be extradited to the United States. Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation in 2019. In 2013, Assange launched the WikiLeaks Party and unsuccessfully stood for the Australian Senate while remaining in the embassy. During the 2016 U.S. election campaign, WikiLeaks published confidential Democratic Party emails, showing that the party's national committee favoured Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the primaries and it had sought to undermine the Sanders campaign. In March 2017, WikiLeaks published a series of documents which detailed the CIA's tools for hacking into smartphones and other internet devices, after which senior CIA officials discussed potentially kidnapping or assassinating Assange.
On 11 April 2019, Assange's asylum was withdrawn following a series of disputes with Ecuadorian authorities; the police were invited into the embassy and he was arrested. He was found guilty of breaching the United Kingdom Bail Act and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison. The U.S. government unsealed an indictment charging Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion related to the leaks provided by Manning. In May 2019 and June 2020, the U.S. government unsealed new indictments against Assange, charging him with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and alleging he had conspired with hackers. The key witness for the new indictment, whom the justice department had given immunity in return for giving evidence, stated in 2021 that he had fabricated his testimony. Critics described these charges as an unprecedented challenge to press freedom with potential implications for investigative journalism worldwide. Assange was incarcerated in HM Prison Belmarsh in London from April 2019 to June 2024, as the U.S. government's extradition effort was contested in the UK courts. In 2022, the incoming Labor government of Anthony Albanese reversed the position of previous Australian governments and said it would lobby for Assange's release.
In 2024, following a High Court ruling that granted Assange a full appeal to extradition, Assange and his lawyers negotiated a plea deal with US prosecutors. Assange pleaded guilty in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defence documents in return for a sentence of time served. Following the hearing Assange flew to Australia, arriving on 26 June 2024. Subsequent to his release, Assange has again taken up advocacy.
Early life
Assange was born Julian Paul Hawkins on 3 July 1971 in Townsville, Queensland, to Christine Ann Hawkins, a visual artist, and John Shipton, an anti-war activist and builder. The couple separated before their son was born. When Julian was a year old his mother married Brett Assange, an actor with whom she ran a small theatre company and whom Julian Assange regards as his father. Christine and Brett Assange divorced around 1979. Christine then became involved with Leif Meynell, also known as Leif Hamilton, whom Julian Assange later described as "a member of an Australian cult" called The Family. Meynell and Christine Assange separated in 1982.Julian Assange lived in more than thirty Australian towns and cities during his childhood. He attended several schools, including Goolmangar Primary School in New South Wales and Townsville State High School in Queensland as well as being schooled at home. In his mid-teens, he settled with his mother and half-brother in Melbourne. He moved in with his girlfriend Teresa at age 17.
Assange studied programming, mathematics, and physics at Central Queensland University and the University of Melbourne, but did not complete a degree. Assange started the Puzzle Hunt tradition at the University of Melbourne, which was modelled after the MIT Mystery Hunt. He was involved in the Melbourne rave scene, and assisted in installing an internet kiosk at Ollie Olsen's club night called "Psychic Harmony", which was held at Dream nightclub. Assange's nickname at the raves was "Prof".
Hacking
By 1987, aged 16, Assange had become a skilled hacker under the name Mendax, taken from Horace's splendide mendax. Around this time, the police raided his mother's home and confiscated his equipment. According to Assange, "it involved some dodgy character who was alleging that we had stolen five hundred thousand dollars from Citibank". Ultimately, no charges were raised and his equipment was returned, but Assange "decided that it might be wise to be a bit more discreet".In 1988 Assange used social engineering to get the password to Australia's Overseas Telecommunications Commission's mainframes. Assange had a self-imposed set of ethics: he did not damage or crash systems or data he hacked, and he shared information. The Sydney Morning Herald later opined that he had become one of Australia's "most notorious hackers", and The Guardian said that by 1991 he was "probably Australia's most accomplished hacker". Assange's official biography on WikiLeaks called him Australia's "most famous ethical computer hacker", and the earliest version said he "hacked thousands of systems, including the Pentagon" when he was younger.
He and two others, known as "Trax" and "Prime Suspect", formed a hacking group called "the International Subversives". According to NPR, David Leigh, and Luke Harding, Assange may have been involved in the WANK hack at NASA in 1989, but this has never been proven. Assange called it "the origin of hacktivism", and the Swedish television documentary WikiRebels, which was made with Assange's cooperation, also hinted he was involved.
In mid-1991 the three hackers began targeting MILNET, a data network used by the US military, where Assange found reports he said showed the US military was hacking other parts of itself. Assange found a backdoor and later said they "had control over it for two years." In 2012, Ken Day, the former head of the Australian Federal Police computer crime team, said that there had been no evidence the International Subversives had hacked MILNET. In response to Assange's statements about accessing MILNET, Day said that "Assange may still be liable to prosecution for that act—if it can be proved."
Assange wrote a program called Sycophant that allowed the International Subversives to conduct "massive attacks on the US military". The International Subversives regularly hacked into systems belonging to a "who's who of the U.S. military-industrial complex" and the network of Australia National University. Assange later said he had been "a famous teenage hacker in Australia, and I've been reading generals' emails since I was 17". Assange has attributed his motivation to this experience with power.
Arrest and trial
The Australian Federal Police set up an investigation called Operation Weather targeting The International Subversives. In September 1991, Assange was discovered hacking into the Melbourne master terminal of Nortel, a Canadian multinational telecommunications corporation. Another member of the International Subversives turned in himself and the others, and the AFP tapped Assange's phone line and raided his home at the end of October.The earliest detailed reports about Assange are 1990s Australian press reports on him and print and TV news of his trial. He was charged in 1994 with 31 counts of crimes related to hacking, including defrauding Telecom Australia, fraudulent use of a telecommunications network, obtaining access to information, erasing data, and altering data. According to Assange, the only data he inserted or deleted was his program. The prosecution argued that a magazine written by the International Subversives would encourage others to hack, calling it a "hacker's manual" and alleging that Assange and the other hackers posted information online about how to hack into computers they had accessed. His trial date was set in May 1995 and his case was presented to the Supreme Court of Victoria, but the court did not take the case, sending it back to the County Court. Assange fell into a deep depression while waiting for his trial and checked himself into a psychiatric hospital; he then spent six months sleeping in the wilderness around Melbourne.
In December 1996, facing a theoretical sentence of 290 years in prison, he struck a plea deal and pleaded guilty to 24 hacking charges. The judge called the charges "quite serious" and initially thought a jail term would be necessary but ultimately sentenced Assange to a fine of A$2,100 and released him on a A$5,000 good behaviour bond because of his disrupted childhood and the absence of malicious or mercenary intent. After his sentencing, Assange told the judge that he had "been misled by the prosecution in terms of the charges" and "a great misjustice has been done". The judge told Assange "you have pleaded guilty, the proceedings are over" and advised him to be quiet. Assange has described the trial as a formative period and according to The New Republic, "the experience set him on the intellectual path" leading him to found WikiLeaks.
In 1993, Assange provided technical advice and support to help the Victoria Police Child Exploitation Unit to prosecute individuals responsible for publishing and distributing child pornography. His lawyers said he was pleased to assist, emphasising that he received no benefit for this and was not an informer. His role in helping the police was discussed during his 1996 sentencing on computer hacking charges. According to his mother, Assange also helped police "remove a book on the Internet about how to build a bomb".