Julian Assange – Can he Hack the Ecuadorian President?
Play on words there.
I have been pondering Julian Assange lately, every now and then I get a feeling to check on him. Yesterday a family member said he was being extradited to the US. My inner feeling is that he is revealing corruption, and hence putting a mirror up to people. The issue of hacking and even ethical hacking is anathema to me. But the words ‘what you do to another returns to the self’ comes back. As our world makes it okay to use cyber intelligence techniques to hack into people’s accounts legally or illegally they themselves will become the target of it. It creates distrust, it deepens insecurity it makes privacy impossible as people will feel vigilant. I feel with Julian Assange is that he is a counter-weight to what has happened in the intelligence community where they have done it for years. The entire US population is surveilled by the NSA as reported by whistleblower Snowden. These individuals become enemies as they challenge to expose power and corruption.
So I feel to add is it ethical to surveil to reveal corruption? I will sit with that for a moment. The short answer is yes. Why? Because to allow corruption to continue on is not to love the corrupt person. Now people will say what ‘love’, I will say yes. In a loving world which will be the world in the future, it is out of love for the tyrant that the person must be stopped for their own good and to prevent the harm of others. This surveillance would have to have oversight, checks and balances and must be in the public interest. It can’t just be everyone believing they are doing good by violating another’s privacy. There are extensive issues about the smart revolution happening around the world and data gathering through the various Silicon Valley platforms. The violation of privacy is a world wide web, I feel.
Julian is a teacher I feel.
I feel to add that I observe my own government and its relationships with other countries over its protection of its own citizens. He is under house arrest without a court or trial. I am not surprised his lawyer is the daughter of Geoffrey Robertson, a famous Barrister who is highly ethical and schooled in human rights law. So Julian does have some protection from those who believe in the rule of law and justice. Perhaps that is what has kept him in this void. A miracle for sure and a sign there are forces who are countering government pressure. I have heard the rhetoric from Canberra and I see allegiances reflective of power not sovereignty. Technically, there should be diplomatic protests to London and the US. There are charges apparently that have been created in respect to breaking bail and in the US I assume some sort of espionage. But what of the intelligence agencies and government departments who are illegally surveilling citizens or allowing others to do it through partnerships, information sharing arrangement. What of the oversight there? How ethical is it? Is it lawless? There are many questions in the public interest that must be asked as a result of revelations of surveillance of citizens and corruption. Silence is not peace in matters such as this.
I felt to check the meaning of wiki – “Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly.” Perhaps he is revealing the source code in syntax errors and finding cross links as the web of corruption is extensive at all levels. He is indeed on the fly.
I am listening deeply for voices who communicate – the rule of law, justice, fairness, international criminal court, freedom of speech, democracy, stopping corruption, civil liberties, privacy etc. I am deeply watching for these voices. They tell me who they are. Other voices reflect who they think they are. The question is – who we all become?
Here is the article that seems to be circulating.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/assange-to-be-expelled-from-ecuadorian-embassy-within-hours-or-days-wikileaks-20190405-p51b3t.html
Assange to be expelled from Ecuadorian embassy ‘within hours or days’: WikiLeaks
In a post on Twitter on Friday, WikiLeaks said “a high-level source within the Ecuadorian state” told the organisation that Assange would be expelled within “hours to days” from the embassy in London.
The Australian-born founder of the organisation has had asylum from the Ecuadorian government since 2012, when he sought to avoid extradition to the US after breaching bail terms on unrelated sexual assault charges in Sweden.
Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno has accused Assange of “repeatedly” violating the terms of his asylum in the embassy.
A senior Ecuadorian official said on Friday that no decision has been made to expel Assange from the country’s London embassy despite tweets from WikiLeaks.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorised to discuss the matter.
A small group of protesters and supporters of WikiLeaks’ founder have gathered outside the embassy.
In a speech to the Ecuadorian Broadcasting Association on Tuesday, Moreno accused the whistleblowing organisation of intercepting phone calls and private conversations and also complained about “photos of my bedroom, what I eat, and how my wife and daughters and friends dance.”
“Mr Assange has violated the agreement we reached with him and his legal counsel too many times,” Moreno said. “It is not that he cannot speak and express himself freely, but he cannot lie, nor much less hack private accounts or phones.”
While Moreno did not explicitly blame Assange for the hacked calls and provided no evidence, his remarks reflected ongoing tension between Assange and Ecuadoran officials.
The Ecuadorian government, however, has said it believes the WikiLeaks organisation shared the photos that depict a lavish lifestyle and date back several years, to when Moreno and his family lived in Geneva, The Guardian reports.
WikiLeaks, in a statement, called Moreno’s charges “completely bogus’, saying it reported on accusations of corruption against the president only after Ecuador’s legislature investigated the issue.
“If President Moreno wants to illegally terminate a refugee publisher’s asylum to cover up an offshore corruption scandal, history will not be kind,” WikiLeaks said in a statement.
Assange, 47, took refuge in the embassy in London 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning about rape allegations. Although the Swedish investigation was dropped last year, Assange still faces charges in Britain for jumping bail.
Assange, an Australian national, chose to remain in the embassy out of fear that the United States would immediately seek his arrest and extradition over the leaking of classified documents to WikiLeaks by then-US Army soldier Chelsea Manning.
Assange told The Telegraph in 2013 that he lives in a small office room converted into living quarters, equipped with a bed, telephone, sun lamp, computer, shower, treadmill and a small kitchenette.
The Ecuadorian authorities last year, for the second time, cut off Assange’s access to the internet because of concerns that he was damaging the country’s ties to Britain and other European nations, purportedly by criticising Spain’s handling of its separatist movement.
It also required Assange to pay his medical bills and clean up after his pet cat.
TNS