Julian Assange – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Julian Paul Assange (// -SAHNJ;[2][3] born 3 July 1971) is an Australian publisher[4][5] and journalist.[6][7] He is known as the editor-in-chief and founder of WikiLeaks,[4] which publishes submissions of secret information,[8]news leaks[9] and classified media from anonymous news sources and whistleblowers.[10]

Assange was a hacker as a teenager, then a computer programmer before becoming known for his work with WikiLeaks, initially started in 2006.[11] WikiLeaks became internationally well known in 2010 when it began to publish U.S. military and diplomatic documents with assistance from its partners in the news media. Chelsea Manning (then Bradley Manning) has since pled guilty to supplying the cables to WikiLeaks. U.S. Air Force documents reportedly state that military personnel who make contact with WikiLeaks or "WikiLeaks supporters" are at risk of being charged with "communicating with the enemy",[12] and the United States Department of Justice reportedly has considered prosecuting Assange for several offenses.[13] During the trial of Manning, military prosecutors presented evidence that they claim reveals that Manning and Assange collaborated to steal and publish U.S. military and diplomatic documents.[14]

Since November 2010, Assange has been subject to a European Arrest Warrant in response to a Swedish police request for questioning in relation to a sexual assault investigation. In June 2012, following final dismissal by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom of his appeal against enforcement of the European Arrest Warrant, Assange has failed to surrender to his bail, and has been treated by the UK authorities as having absconded. Since 19 June 2012, he has been inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has since been granted diplomatic asylum.[15][16] The British government intends to extradite Assange to Sweden under that arrest warrant once he leaves the embassy, which Assange says may result in his subsequent extradition to the United States to face charges over the diplomatic cables case.[15]

While on bail in England during 2012, Assange hosted a political talk show World Tomorrow which was broadcast on the RT TV channel.[17][18]

Assange was born in Townsville, Queensland[19][20] and is a sixth-generation Australian.[21] His mother, Christine Ann Assange (ne Hawkins),[19] was born in Sydney, New South Wales.[22]

His biological father, John Shipton, met Christine when she was 19, on their way to a Vietnam war rally in Sydney in 1970. The relationship ended amicably when she became pregnant.[23]

As a single mother with infant Julian, Christine moved to a cottage in Picnic Bay, Magnetic Island, Queensland. She married theatre director Richard Brett Assange when Julian was one year old.[24][25] The name Assange is an anglicised form of "Ah Sang", Cantonese Chinese for "Mr. Sang",[26][27][28] another name for Sun Tai Lee, a Chinese immigrant to Thursday Island, Queensland.[29][30][31]

In 1976, they returned to live on Magnetic Island, where they lived in Horseshoe Bay in an old abandoned pineapple farm.[32][33] Assange and his mother lived with his grandfather, Warren, a Sydney-born academic, and grandmother Norma in Lismore from the mid-1970s to the early-1980s.[34][35][36][37] During Assange's upbringing, Brett and Christine ran a touring theatre company. In the mid-1970s, Assange and his parents moved to North Lismore, New South Wales, and Assange attended Goolmangar Primary School in the nearby town of Goolmangar from 1979 to 1983.[38]

In 1979, his mother married "Leif Meynall or Leif Hamilton".[39] The couple had a son, but broke up in 1982 and engaged in a custody struggle for Assange's half-brother. His divorced mother travelled across Australia, taking both children into hiding for the next five years. Assange moved thirty times before he turned 14, attending many schools, including Townsville State High School, and sometimes being home-schooled.[24][33][40][41][42] In an interview conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Assange stated that he had lived in 50 different towns and attended 37 different schools.[43] When questioned by Robert Manne, he clarified that the 37 schools he has attended include those he attended for only a single day. Manne reported a statement that Assange had been officially enrolled in 12 of those schools. He and his mother "by the time he was 16 or 17" lived in "a tiny cement bungalow in the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges, east of Melbourne", first in the town of "Emerald and then Tecoma", now in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne.[44][45]

In 1987, after turning 16, Assange began hacking under the name "Mendax" (derived from a phrase of Horace: "splendide mendax", or "nobly untruthful").[24] He and two other hackers joined to form a group they named the International Subversives. Assange wrote down the early rules of the subculture: "Don't damage computer systems you break into (including crashing them); don't change the information in those systems (except for altering logs to cover your tracks); and share information."[24] The Personal Democracy Forum said he was "Australia's most famous ethical computer hacker".[46]

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Julian Assange - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia