WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has put out a statement saying that both Barcelona and Madrid are actively using IT in waging war against Catalan independence, in what could be described as the worlds first internet war.

Assange tweeted Saturday, What is happening in Catalonia is the most significant Western conflict between people and state since the fall of the Berlin wall.

The worlds first internet war has begun, in Catalonia, as the people and government use it to organize an independence referendum on Sunday and Spanish intelligence attacks, freezing telecommunications links, occupying telecoms buildings, censors 100s of sites, protocols etc., Assange wrote on his Twitter page.

Sputnik reports:

On Sunday, Catalonia is expected to hold an independence referendum. The Spanish federal government has filed a complaint with the countrys Constitutional Court over the Catalan government and parliament approving the law on the independence vote. The court has taken the complaint under review, outlawing the plebiscite.

He added that the tensions around Catalonias vote could be described as the most significant western conflict between people and the state since the fall of the Berlin wall.

Opinion polls show that Catalonias independence is supported by 41 percent of its residents, with 49 percent against it, while as much as 80 percent of Catalans are in favor of the referendum itself, most of them believe that the vote should be agreed upon with the central government in Madrid.

Catalonia defies Spanish government and makes independence vote official

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The 'World's First Internet War' Has Begun: Julian Assange ...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has offered to prove that Russia didnt leak the e-mails of the Democratic National Committee last year. But he wants a deal a pardon for spilling the beans.

There is absolutely no reason that President Trump shouldnt take him up on the offer.

WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of DNC e-mails, as well as ones from the computer of campaign head John Podesta and others. If the Russians didnt hack the DNC computers and release the e-mails, then someone else did.

And the best candidate for the role of leaker is someone inside the DNC perhaps a supporter of Bernie Sanders who felt his candidate wasnt getting a fair shake.

This would change history and render moot any investigation of the Trump administration, except where it pertains to the much less serious allegation of obstruction of justice. I say lesser allegation, because it would involve obstruction of justice for a crime (the Russian hacking) that didnt happen.

Heres my best educated guess on the whole thing: A very good source of mine says the Russians stole Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clintons e-mails, but never released them, while someone inside the DNC was responsible for making the e-mails of Podesta and other Democrats public.

Whats the bigger effect of all this? Well, all else being equal and it never is in the Trump administration this would remove a cloud over the president and strengthen his hand in tax reform, ObamaCare repeal and lots of other things.

The financial markets would like that.

Trump should take Assange up on his offer.

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Why Trump should listen to Julian Assanges DNC email offer

A vigorous campaign by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to break Catalonia off from Spain, further splintering Europe, is landing him in hot water with the government of Ecuador that has provided him with diplomatic refuge in its embassy in London.

Assange and Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno have traded barbs this week over whether his behavior comports with that of someone granted political asylum.

Assange challenged Moreno Thursday to try to silence him.

If President Moreno wants to gag my reporting of human rights abuses in Spain he should say so explicitlytogether with the legal basis, Assange tweeted.

Friction between Assange and his Ecuadorean hosts has grown since May, when Moreno took office and surprised his nations voters by departing sharply from the path set by his predecessor, the fiery populist Rafael Correa. Moreno was considered Correas protg.

Moreno has told two international television networks in the past week that Assange should watch his tongue and not harm Ecuadors relations with its allies.

Assange has resided in Ecuadors Embassy in London since 2012, granted asylum by the Andean nation to sidestep possible espionage charges that he feared the U.S. government sought to bring against him for publicizing classified U.S. government documents and cables.

We gave him asylum but we have asked him in a cordial way to stop commenting on the politics of Ecuador and that of friendly countries because his status as an asylum seeker does not allow it. So he is surpassing that condition," Moreno told CNN en Espaol.

Moreno offered similar sentiments in an interview late last week with RT, the Russian state network.

Assange has taken a fierce interest in the Catalonia independence drive, and has tweeted more than 100 times in multiple languages in the past three days about the independence referendum set for Sunday.

Earlier Friday, Assange tweeted: The Spanish government in Madrid is trying every way it can to stop Catalonia's independence referendum Sunday.

Spains Constitutional Court ruled Sept. 6 that the Catalan independence referendum was unconstitutional, and that ruling was followed by weeks of protests in the autonomous regions capital, Barcelona. Last week, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy deployed 4,000 police officers to Catalonia with orders to suppress what Spain considers an illegal referendum.

What may come of the referendum is uncertain, given Spains insistence that the vote is illegal. Some analysts say it may be a step toward Spains disintegration and a further challenge to broader Europes unity.

Ecuador, like most Latin American countries that won independence from Spain two centuries ago, maintains vigorous, even emotional, relations with Madrid.

The friction in Catalonia drew the attention of U.N. experts, who on Thursday called on Spain to respect freedom of expression and assembly ahead of the scheduled vote.

Regardless of the lawfulness of the referendum, the Spanish authorities have a responsibility to respect those rights that are essential to democratic societies, said the two U.N. experts, David Kaye and Alfred de Zayas.

Kaye is the U.N.s special rapporteur on freedom of expression while de Zayas is an independent expert on promotion of a democratic international order.

The frictions between Assange and Moreno appear unlikely to lead Ecuador to end his status in its London embassy. But the personal antipathy between the two appears to be growing.

Shortly after taking office, Moreno dismissed Assange as a hacker and said hacking is an activity I personally reject. Moreno affirmed that Assange would be allowed to remain in the Ecuadorean embassy but warned him not to interfere in Ecuadors relations with other countries.

Assange responded by saying that Moreno had slandered him as a hacker.

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in war of words with nation ...

Swedish prosecutors announced this morning that they were terminating their 7-year-old sex crimes investigation into Julian Assange and withdrawing their August 20, 2010, arrest warrant for him. The chief prosecutor,Marianne Ny, said at a news conference this morning (pictured below) that investigators had reached no conclusion about his guilt or innocence, but instead were withdrawing the warrant because all prospects of pursuing the investigation under present circumstances are exhausted andit is therefore no longer proportionate to maintain the arrest of Julian Assangein his absence.

Chief prosecutor Marianne Ny speaks during a press conference in Stockholm on Friday, May 19, 2017. Swedens top prosecutor said Friday she is dropping an investigation into a rape claim against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after almost seven years.

Photo: Maja Suslin/TT News Agency/AP

In February of last year, a UN human rights panel formally concluded that the British government was violating Assangesrights by arbitrarily detaining him, and it called for his release. But the U.K. government immediately rejected the UN finding and vowed to ignore it.

Ecuadors rationale for granting asylum to Assange hasoften been overlooked. Ecuadorian officials, along with Assanges supporters, have always insisted that they wanted theinvestigation in Sweden to proceed, and vowed that Assange would board the next plane to Stockholm if Sweden gave assurances that it would notextradite him to the U.S. to face chargesrelating to WikiLeakss publication of documents. It was Swedens refusal to issue such guarantees and Ecuadors fears that Assange would end up being persecuted by the U.S. that has been thebasis for itsasylum protections.

After years of refusing Assanges offers to interview him in the embassy, Swedish prosecutors finally agreed to do so last November. But the Swedes last hope for advancing the case seemed to evaporate last month, when the candidate of the ruling party in Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, won a narrow victory over his right-wing opponent, who had vowed to terminate Assanges asylum.

With the new president signaling thatAssanges asylum would continue indefinitely, there wasvirtually nothing else for prosecutors to do. Upon hearing the news, Assange, on his Twitter account this morning, posted a smiling photograph of himself.

But that celebration obscures several ironies. The most glaring of which is that the legal jeopardy Assange now faces is likely greater than ever.

Almost immediately after the decision by Swedish prosecutors, British police announced that they would nonetheless arrest Assange if he tried to leave the embassy. Police said Assange was still wanted for the crime of failing to surrender meaning that instead of turning himself in upon issuance of his 2012 arrest warrant, he obtained refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy. TheBritish police also, however, noted that this alleged crime is a much less serious offence than the one that served as the basis for the original warrant, and that the police would therefore only provide a level of resourcing which is proportionate to that offence.

That could perhaps imply that with a seriously reduced police presence, Assange could manage to leave the embassy without detection and apprehension. All relevant evidence, however, negates that assumption.

Just weeks ago, Donald Trumps CIA director, Mike Pompeo, delivered an angry, threatening speechabout WikiLeaksin which he argued, We have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. The CIA directorvowed to make good on this threat: To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.

Days later, Attorney General Jeff Sessions strongly suggested that the Trump DOJ would seek to prosecute Assange and WikiLeaks on espionage charges in connection with thegroups publication of classified documents. Trump officials then began leaking to news outlets such as CNN that U.S. authorities have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

For years, the Obama DOJ had extensively considered the possibility of prosecuting WikiLeaks and Assange, even convening a grand jurythatsubpoenaedmultiple witnesses. Though the Obama DOJ refused to say they had terminated that investigation which is what caused Ecuador to continue to fear persecution Obama officials strongly signaled that there was no way to prosecute WikiLeaks without also prosecuting news organizations that published the same documents, or at least creating a precedent that would endanger First Amendment press freedoms. As the Washington Post reported in 2013:

The Justice Department has all but concluded it will not bring charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing classified documents because government lawyers said they could not do so without also prosecuting U.S. news organizations and journalists, according to U.S. officials.

That same article noted that officials stressed that a formal decision has not been made, and a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks remains impaneled. But it seemed that, under Obama, prosecution was highly unlikely. Indeed, last month, in response to my denunciation ofPompeos threat as endangering press freedoms, former Obama DOJ spokesperson Matthew Miller tweeted this:

But the Trump administration at least if one believes its multiplestatements and threats appears unconstrained by those concerns. They appear determined to prosecute WikiLeaks, which has published numerous secret CIA hacking documents this year.

Press freedom groups, along with the ACLU and some journalists, such as the Washington Posts Margaret Sullivan, have warned of the grave dangers such a prosecution would pose to media outlets around the world. But that seems an unlikely impediment to an administration that has made clear that they regard the press as an enemy.

Indeed, Sessions himself refused to rule out the possibility that the prosecution of Assange could lead to the criminal prosecution of other news organizations that publish classified documents. Trumps leading candidate to replace James Comey as FBI director, Joe Lieberman, has long called for the prosecution not only of WikiLeaks but also possibly media outlets such as the New York Times that publish the same classified information. And anonymous sources recently claimed to the New York Times that when Trump met with Comey early on in his administration, the new U.S. presidentexpressly inquired about the possibility of prosecuting news outlets.

The termination of the Swedish investigation is, in one sense, good news for Assange. But it is unlikely to change hisinability to leave the embassy any time soon. If anything, given the apparent determination of the Trump administration to put him in a U.S. prison cell for the crime of publishing documents, his freedom appears further away than it has since 2010, when the Swedish case began.

Top photo: Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on May 2, 2016.

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Sweden Withdraws Arrest Warrant for Julian Assange, but He ...

Swedish prosecutors have dropped their preliminary investigation into an allegation of rape against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, bringing an end to a seven-year legal standoff.

The decision was taken after prosecutors concluded that at this point, all possibilities to conduct the investigation are exhausted, Swedens director of public prosecutions, Marianne Ny, said on Friday.

In order to proceed with the case, Julian Assange would have to be formally notified of the criminal suspicions against him. We cannot expect to receive assistance from Ecuador regarding this. Therefore the investigation is discontinued.

If he, at a later date, makes himself available, I will be able to decide to resume the investigation immediately.

The WikiLeaks founder sought asylum in Ecuadors embassy in London in 2012 after losing court battles to avoid extradition to Sweden over the claims, which he denies.

Separate allegations of sexual assault, made by a second Swedish woman, were dropped by Swedish authorities in 2015 after the statute of limitations expired.

Shortly after the announcement on Friday morning, an image of Assange smiling was posted to his Twitter account.

Later he tweeted again: Detained for 7 years without charge while my children grew up and my name was slandered. I do not forgive or forget.

However, a lawyer representing the woman who made the allegation of rape described the decision as a scandal.

It is a scandal that a suspected rapist can escape justice and thereby avoid the courts, Elisabeth Massi Fritz told Agence France-Presse in an email. My client is shocked and no decision to [end the case] can make her change [her view] that Assange exposed her to rape.

With the threat of extradition to Sweden removed, the 45-year-old Australian could potentially opt to leave the embassy.

However, Assanges lawyers have repeatedly said he will not do so without assurances that he willnot face extradition to the US over possible espionage charges linked to WikiLeaks publishing activities the basis on which Ecuador granted him asylum.

The Metropolitan police in London said Assange would also face immediate arrest for breaching his bail conditions; a warrant was issued when he failed to attend a magistrates court after entering the embassy.

The Metropolitan police service is obliged to execute that warrant should he leave the embassy, the statement said.

It added: Whilst Mr Assange was wanted on a European arrest warrant (EAW) for an extremely serious offence, the MPS response reflected the serious nature of that crime. Now that the situation has changed and the Swedish authorities have discontinued their investigation into that matter, Mr Assange remains wanted for a much less serious offence. The MPS will provide a level of resourcing which is proportionate to that offence.

Per Samuelson, Assanges Swedish lawyer, told reporters the decision represented a total victory.

This is one of the happiest days of my legal career. The decision was taken because he was interrogated in November 2016 and could give a good explanation of what happened This is obviously about consensual sex between two adults.

Ecuadors foreign minister, Guillaume Long, also welcomed the decision, adding that he regrets that the Swedish prosecutor delayed more than four years in carrying out this interview. Given that the European arrest warrant no longer holds, Ecuador will now be intensifying its diplomatic efforts with the UK so that Julian Assange can gain safe passage, in order to enjoy his asylum in Ecuador.

But Claes Borgstrm, the lawyer who originally represented Assanges two accusers but is no longer involved in the case, said he found the decision regretful. He told the Guardian: I understand why the prosecutors have dropped the case now. Such a long time has passed. But I regret that Julian Assange was not brought to the Swedish court of law to answer the allegations against him.

All the time since he left Sweden it has been in his hands. He decided to avoid the arms of justice. He didnt want to come to court. He didnt want to answer the allegations, so he decided to escape.

The EAW against Assange was formally withdrawn at Westminster magistrates court on Friday morning, the Crown Prosecution Service confirmed. The UK Home Office said the decision to drop the rape investigation was a matter for the Swedish authorities, and not one in which the British government had any involvement.

Reuters reported in March that a long-running US grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks had been expanded to include recent leaks of CIA documents, a move that Assanges lawyers said strengthened the grounds for his asylum claim.

Assange was interviewed by Swedens deputy public prosecutor, Ingrid Isgren, in the embassy in November, following a lengthy diplomatic and legal impasse between the Swedish and Ecuadorian authorities.

Fridays announcement in Sweden followed the Swedish government receiving a letter from the government of Ecuador which accused the prosecutor of serious failure, including a lack of initiative to complete inquiries.

The letter raised questions about developments in the US since the election of Donald Trump as president, including a speech by the CIA director, Mike Pompeo, describing WikiLeaks as a hostile intelligence service and a threat to US national security.

Public declarations such as this constituted an obvious risk for Assange, the letter said.

The US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said last month that arresting Assange was a priority. There are no charges against him, although media reports have suggested the US justice department is considering how to bring them.

Weve already begun to step up our efforts and whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail, Sessions said.

Asked at a Conservative party campaign event in Edinburgh if the UK would now support a request to extradite Assange to the US, Theresa May said: We look at extradition requests on a case-by-case basis.

The prime minister added: In relation to Julian Assange, any decision that is taken about UK action in relation to him were he to leave the Ecuadorian embassy would be an operational matter for the police.

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The Washington Post's Fact Checker took a closer look at Julian Assange's assurance that there is no link between the Russian government and the hacked DNC emails that WikiLeaks released during the 2016 presidential campaign. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Host Sean Hannity: Can you say to the American people unequivocally that you did not get this information about the DNC, John Podestas emails can you tell the American people 1,000 percent you did not get it from Russia . . . Julian Assange: Yes. Hannity: . . . or anybody associated with Russia? Assange: We we can say and we have said repeatedly . . . Hannity: Right. Assange: . . . over the last two months, that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.exchange on Hannity on Fox News, Jan. 3, 2017

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, categorically denied links between the Russian government and the hacked documents his organization released during the 2016 presidential campaign.

After the interview aired on Fox News, President-elect Donald Trump pointed to Assanges claim to cast doubt on allegations of Russian involvement in the WikiLeaks emails:

We will stipulate that governments regularly spy on each other, and the United States also gathers intelligence on governments such as Russia, China and India. The difference here is that intelligence operations allegedly led to the release of information to the public, via WikiLeaks and media coverage.

Note the wording in the exchange. Hannity asks Assange if he can guarantee 1,000 percent that WikiLeaks did not get it [hacked information] from Russia or anybody associated with Russia. Assange interjects with yes before Hannity finishes his question, then says that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party. His answer leaves open the possibility that the information could have come through an intermediary. As seen in Trumps tweet, this exchange was ultimately interpreted as Assange saying the Russians did not give him the info.

While Assange and subsequently, Trump appear to claim that Russia is 1,000 percent certain not to be the source of the documents published on WikiLeaks, the facts are not nearly as certain. We dug into it.

U.S. intelligence officials have formally accused the Russian government of interfering in the 2016 U.S. elections. One of the allegations of Russian involvement is that Russian hackers breached the Democratic National Committees network and provided tens of thousands of internal DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC, said in June 2016 that Russian hackers had breached the DNC network.AfterCrowdStrikesassessment, a hacker named Guccifer 2.0 publicly claimed credit.

Im very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly))) But in fact, it was easy, very easy, Guccifer 2.0 wrote on its website in June 2016.

Then in July, WikiLeaks released thousands of internal DNC emails. Assange did not disclose the source of the leaked emails, but security experts said Russian government hackers may have been involved. After the release, Guccifer 2.0 claimed to be WikiLeakss source of the DNC emails.

At least two independent cybersecurity firms have confirmed CrowdStrikes findingsthat two Russian hacker groups had penetrated the DNC network. One group is believed to have actually stolen and distributed the emails.

While the independent analysts suspected that Guccifer 2.0 was linked to the Russian groups that hacked the DNC or were a part of a Russian government influence operation, they did not have hard evidence because the documents were posted anonymously. The FBI is still investigating ties between Russian hackers and the WikiLeaks emails.

Then there are the emailsof John Podesta, former chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.Private security researchers confirmedthat the Russian foreign intelligence service hacked into Podestas email account after tricking him to log in to a fake Google log-in page, then leaked the emails. WikiLeaks obtained these emails and published them on its website, but it is less clear as to who exactly sent the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks.

Assange hasrepeatedly disputed claims that the emails came from the Russian government. Yet, in a December interview on Hannitys radio show, he left open the possibility that Guccifer 2.0s activities were linked to the Russians.Now, who is behind these, we dont know, he said. These look very much like theyre from the Russians. But in some ways, they look very amateur, and almost look too much like the Russians.

We will note that in general, the public should be skeptical of any definitive statements that Assange makes about WikiLeaks sources. WikiLeaks has a longstanding policy of mutual anonymity with its sources, and allows sources to send information through an anonymous drop box.

The Russian government has denied links to the DNC hack or the WikiLeaks releases. Guccifer 2.0 claims to be a single individual from Romania unaffiliated with the Russian government. But some experts believe Guccifer 2.0 may comprise multiple hackers of varying levels of expertise. And others have questioned Guccifer 2.0s proficiency with the Romanian language.

Security experts have found links between Guccifer 2.0s malware and hacking activity similar to known Russian hackers, and assessed that Guccifer 2.0 likely is a Russian denial and deception effort.

Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clintons campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clintons chances, The Washington Post reported.

In October 2016, the U.S. intelligence community took the extraordinary step of formally naming Russia as the culprit for the breach, and linked Guccifer 2.0 to Russian intelligence:

The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russias senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.

Susan Hennessey, a fellow in National Security in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, said there is an overwhelmingly strong body of evidence that the DNC emails that WikiLeaks published are tied to Russian sources. The U.S. intelligence community tends to be conservative in making public attributions, she said.

Is it absolute? Is there any room for margin of error? Sure . . . attribution is quite complex. But thats not the same as saying it isnt the Russians. Maybe its the Chinese, maybe a 14-year-old, maybe a 400-pound hacker thats just not credible, Hennessey said. Short of a videotape of Vladimir Putin at the keyboard himself narrating it, its hard to imagine [being able to prove definitively that the Russians were involved in WikiLeaks]. This really is, from an intelligence standpoint, a dream in the sort of level of intelligence that were seeing here.

Other analysts are still skeptical that the Russian government was involved in WikiLeaks, or that Guccifer 2.0 is associated with Russian intelligence. In a December 2016 article, The Intercept wrotethat there is not enough evidence to prove Russia hacked the DNC, or that Guccifer 2.0 is, indeed, linked to Russia.

The Intercept article notes that federal officials have not disclosed how they arrived at the October 2016 announcement formally accusing Russia: Whats missing is any evidence at all. If this federal confidence is based on evidence thats being withheld from the public for any reason, thats one thing secrecy is their game. But if the U.S. Intelligence Community is asking the American electorate to believe them, to accept as true their claim that our most important civic institution was compromised by a longtime geopolitical nemesis, we need them to show us why.

[Update: In its Jan. 6, 2017,assessment on Russian activities relating to 2016 U.S. elections, the Intelligence Community said it had high confidence thatRussian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim dataobtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks."]

WikiLeaks offered this comment to The Fact Checkers inquiry: We stand by our statement.

Assange assured the American public that he is 1,000 percent confident that the Russian government, or anybody associated with Russia, was not the source of hacked DNC emails published on WikiLeaks. But the situation is much less certain than he makes it seem.

Guccifer 2.0, a hacking entity, has claimed credit for providing the hacked DNC emails to WikiLeaks. Independent cybersecurity experts have found Guccifer 2.0s links to Russian hackers, noting that Guccifer 2.0s malware and hacking activity are similar to known Russian hackers. Researchers have assessed that Guccifer 2.0 likely is connected to Russians. But Guccifer 2.0 has denied ties to the Russian government.

Assange assured the public that he is 1,000 percent sure that there was no Russian involvement, without providing any evidence in the interview or in response to our inquiry. The facts we know contradict Assanges assurance, and the situation is much too complex for him to make such a sweeping statement.

Further, he does not disclose any of the independent assessments that have been made about Guccifer 2.0, who has claimed credit for providing WikiLeaks with DNC emails. We award AssangeThree Pinocchios for his distortion of the facts. Obviously, we will also keep an eye on this and update as further information becomes available.

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On WikiLeaks emails: "Our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.

Julian Assange

Founder of WikiLeaks

in an interview on Fox News "Hannity"

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

-01/-03/2017

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Julian Assanges claim that there was no Russian involvement ...

Two Moscow-linked figures have emerged as the loudest voices on Twitter amplifying news and commentary about Catalonia's secession referendum.

Research independently confirmed by Fairfax Media shows Twitter accounts of WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange as well as former National Security Administrator contractor Edward Snowden now account for nearly a third of all Twitter traffic under the hashtag #Catalonia.

Assange has peppered his followers with more than 80 original tweets supporting the Catalan independence referendum, suggesting "the future of Western civilisation is being revealed" by the renewed push by regional secessionists.

Those tweets have been generously shared.

Of the 150,279 tweets and retweets using the #Catalonia hashtag in the 10 days until Sunday, more than 40,368 came from the Julian Assange account, according to one measure by social media analysis account Conspirator Norteno. A further 8198 came from the Edward Snowden Twitter account.

Others included the WikiLeaks account, with 2120 #Catalonia tweets and retweets, while Russia-owned network RT generated 598 tweets and retweets.

The surge in pro-secession messages comes as authorities in Madrid contend with a new move for independence in the autonomous region of Catalonia. Spanish authorities have moved to quash a October 1 referendum by dissolving the region's election commission, arresting local officials and seizing campaign materials.

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Neither WikiLeaks' Julian Assange nor Edward Snowden, have a deep history of involvement with Spanish politics.

Assange, the Australian self-proclaimed editor or transparency activist living in exile at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, is also famous for pushing out information hacked by Russian outfits and used to discredit US politicians and political process. WikiLeaks has also actively promoted conspiracy theories such as that surrounding the unsolved murder of Democrat worker Seth Rich.

Snowden, a former contractor for the US National Security Agency, absconded to Moscow, where he now lives, with thousands of classified documents in 2013.

Hashtag analysis service Hashtagify, accessed on Tuesday, identified the Snowden account as the biggest "influencer" for the hashtag, followed by Julian Assange.

While neither Assange nor Snowden, a US citizen, have been known for links to Spain, they do have links to Russia, which has embraced coordinated social media campaigns to weaken Western governments by fomenting division within borders.

As seen during the US election, Brexit in the UK, and the French election, Russian-linked trolls and bot networks have been active in trying to shape national political discourses.

This strategy, often employing intermediaries, leverages the information power of Russian strategists against the greater wealth and military might of NATO members.

The Twitter accounts of both Snowden and Assange have published statements that distort or exaggerate what is happening in Spain.

Recent polls show 49 per cent of Catalans oppose independence. That segment is less likely to participate in the referendum. However, the 41 per cent who support becoming an autonomous nation, are likely to participate.

A "discredited" vote is expected to go ahead in Catalonia. Whether Assange and Snowden tweeting about Catalonia in English would make much difference on the ground, is not clear.

However, casting doubt about the legitimacy of the Spanish government over Catalonia may have a longer-term effect.

"The right of self-determination - for people to freely decide their own system of government - cannot simply be outlawed. It is a human right," Snowden's account tweeted on September 21.

Fairfax Media has sought comment from Assange's and Snowden's Twitter accounts.

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On Catalan independence, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden ...