Wikileaks appeared on the internet three years ago. It acts as an electronic dead drop for highly sensitive or secret information: the pure stuff, in other words, published straight from the secret files to the world. No filters, no rewriting, no spin.
No spin? So here's an article about Assange and Wikileaks that doesn't actually even know much about Wikileaks.
Incidentally, if Julian Assange isn't his real name (unlike "proff", his #hack handle from back-when), it has been his not-real name since the early '90s, long before Wikileaks.
Yes, that's a somewhat better article. I would have submitted that one had I seen it first.
Moderator --- perhaps you could switch to it?
[Interesting, apparently there's no way to flag your own comment to grab a moderator's attention. Probably not a common desire! Perhaps someone could flag this comment for this purpose?]
Given this guy's pattern of turning everything into an episode of Spy vs. Spy, I'd say odds are that some minor Australian official did in fact confiscate his passport simply because it was tattered. If they mail him a new copy in a few weeks, will that get reported?
As an Australian, it's been incredibly frustrating to see how incredibly distorted the commentary has been on reddit and occasionaly here on news.ycombinator.
Assange's passport was confiscated for 15 minutes while customs officials examined it because of wear and tear. This is a common procedure. It was then returned to him, and he was told that it may be cancelled (because of damage). If that's the case, he simply has to reapply for another passport.
>(At the time of writing, his passport status was apparently back to normal after immigration officials at Melbourne Airport said that his passport was going to be cancelled on the grounds that it was too tatty).
>''It has been in a couple of rivers,'' Assange allows, of the state of his passport. The first time, as he recalls, in December, 2006, when he was crossing a swollen river during heavy rain, in southern Tasmania, and was swept out to sea. He swam back in.
I concur that Aussie cops and immigration officers are the most civil of the 30+ countries I have been to.
I know the government can be pressured by "allies" to act int nefarious ways, but I will always defer to good judgment and kind heart of Aussies to do the right thing.
It's an unassuming, proletariat country, where even the usual government goons are suspicious of bureaucracy. I felt the first whiff of their professionalism when computer ate my online electronic visa application, and the consulate in D.C. gave me a hand-signed "Pass" into Australia few hours before my flight. Second time was when I was renewing my visa, the clerk found out I had 3 days left, of which 2 were weekend days; she escorted me out of the line into an express booth and everything was sorted out. Can't wait to return here in 2 months and for my immigration papers to get approved. I am eager to call it home, what not with an aussie mrs.
FWIW, fellow yanks should google Australian "COPS" type shows, where they show police arresting criminals, etc. It's a laughable joke! I have seen drunks and thieves abuse, spit and attack police officers. In the U.S. that would mean a one way ticket to the operating room, and if you're lucky to make it out alive, a prison cell.
Even though she was engaged to be married to an Aussie, a Melbourne immigration official kicked my sister out of the country for a year because he was having a bad day, so YMMV.
I think Aussies just want to make sure you can take care of yourself. When I was renewing my visa, I made it clear to the officer that if necessary, I could fly to NZ that night and reapply from there.
My suggestion is, until you have your TR/PR visa, be lightweight and be mobile. Always have your bank statements and few grands in cash to show you're not a burden and you're not moonlighting illegally in the country.
However, there is always the possibility of someone having a bad day to mess up your plans.
She was employed by the state of Victoria as well as enrolled part time at unimelb. The immigration official made it clear he didn't like Americans. What I found interesting was that although Australia touts its algorithmic "points based" immigration system, the end decision is arbitrarily made by a human, just like any other country's immigration system.
That's exactly what I guessed (worse, really) based on his track record. I wonder who it could possibly be who kicked up a media storm about this? The guy who took the passport for 15 minutes? Reporters in the room at the time? Hmm, that's a hard one.
It's very disappointing. We badly need something like Wikileaks, but it can't work in the long run unless it's done in a principled and scrupulous way. Exactly the opposite of these ego games.
Edit: something's odd about this, though. Assange's no dummy. But you'd have to be an idiot to think you could spin a triviality like this into an international incident.
There isn't a media storm. All of the articles I've read have accurately stated that the passport was only temporarily confiscated while customs officials examined the passport because of wear and tear. The hysteria only exists on places like reddit where college students with mediocre educations don't bother reading articles, and have created a distorted image within their minds of Australia based on sensationalist headlines.
Anything interesting in there? I read the first half of the article and Assange seems to talk himself up as dark and mysterious, but I didn't really see anything particularly insightful or interesting. Does the rest of the piece have anything more substantial?
"How is it that a team of five people has managed to release to the public more suppressed information, at that level, than the rest of the world press combined? It's disgraceful."
He's playing smart PR by building up this cyberpunk persona of Julian Assange. Considering Wikileaks has gone from zero to CNN front page in under a year, this is the critical period of time when Wikileaks establishes itself as a media "brand."
It's a smart move to make all coverage about Wikileaks and the mission, and not like some celebrity fluff piece about the founder. No matter how much the MSM tries to TMZ-ify everything it touches, information is power, and the stakes are very real here.
In a counter-intelligence sense, the dominant strategy is to hold your cards & remain a blank slate as long as possible. Let everybody fill in the blanks themselves on an empty canvas, introducing their own wrong biases, rather than tell them what to think.
It's informative to flip through history books, and see what has happened to the guy telling the King's secrets.
In almost every instance, that guy ends up dead. (The usual method being suicide via two gunshots in the back of the head.)
With that in mind, it makes perfect sense to publicly reveal as little as possible about one's personal life, just in case pissed off Mossad agents seek vengeance decades later, for example.
No spin? So here's an article about Assange and Wikileaks that doesn't actually even know much about Wikileaks.
Incidentally, if Julian Assange isn't his real name (unlike "proff", his #hack handle from back-when), it has been his not-real name since the early '90s, long before Wikileaks.