Is there any safe harbor in the world for Assange at this point?
I Think Assange's life is now in great danger.
From Time Magazine:
He even told the global media that new leaks would expose more secrets not only about the U.S. military but about other "repressive regimes," such as Russia and China. The signals coming from Moscow, however, suggest that the Russian reaction will not be as reserved as America's. So is WikiLeaks really ready to take on the world's more callous states?
So far Russia has had no official response. But on Wednesday, an official at the Center for Information Security of the FSB, Russia's secret police, gave a warning to WikiLeaks that showed none of the tact of the U.S. reply to the Iraq revelations. "It's essential to remember that given the will and the relevant orders, [WikiLeaks] can be made inaccessible forever," the anonymous official told the independent Russian news website LifeNews.
The most spectacular "leak supression assassination" the Putin government pulled off was that of former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko...
From Time Magazine:
...[Litvinenko] who had published damning books about the agency and Russia's leadership, was poisoned with a rare and highly radioactive polonium isotope while living in London in 2006. British police suspect former Russian security agent Andrei Lugovoi of murdering Litvinenko. But the Russian government, which vehemently denies any connection to the murder, has refused to extradite Lugovoi, and a nationalist party has since made him a member of the Russian parliament.
And Litvinenko hardly dumped nearly a gigabyte of internal government documents, in the raw, like Assange did with the US government.
Even one of the Wikileaks US diplomatic docs leaked says the State Department assesses the current power structure of Russia to be that "Medvedev plays Robin to Putin's Batman."
I think this young man is martyring himself to bring the truth to the common citizens of the world about the dealings of government.
Being InfoSec, I could see Wikileaks as being potentially as informative as "The Pentagon Papers"...but I never thought Wikileaks would reach for the ultimate potential of such a movement, as it would bring down the combined silencing abilities of the Three Great Superpowers onto your house and head in a heartbeat. And that usually means, for both, rather certain death.
I thought someone with my bona fides (see at end of diary) as an "old hand" who had worked with the range of clients that informed my policy philosophy of information security might volunteer and contribute as a voice of caution.
A disability interfered with my ideas about volunteering...anywhere.
And a voice of caution sounds very parochial and certainly prosaic at this juncture in Mr. Assage's trajectory.
Whatever your thinking on what Mr. Assange has done, with his most recent statement, he leaves his personal safety at great risk. I have my own ideas on how such an organization might be fashioned to make a clear whistleblower's contribution, without causing the present problems, but this diary is mainly concerned with Mr. Assange's ability to continue to exist in the environment as it is today.
Julian Assange has sown the wind of data, and there will be a real-world whirlwind.
If Assange does indeed have anywhere near quarter-size leaks on Russia and China that he had on the US, his days are quite frankly frighteningly, and hexadecimally, numbered.
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(The diary author has spent 18 years in the Information Security field with clientèle including military command, defense contractors, the federal government, and both major US stock exchanges. She has worked liaison duties with the FBI and the DOJ. She has also given presentations on the Homeland Security track at InfoWarCon in Washington D.C. and at DefCon on the Influence of Napster as former Chief of Security, Napster/Bertlesmann AG.)
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UPDATE 1: Poster Sagebrush Bob found an article where Ecuador is offering unconditional asylum to Julian Assage:
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange offered asylum in Ecuador; calls for Hillary Clinton's resignation
BY Jaime Uribarri
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Originally Published:Tuesday, November 30th 2010, 5:13 PM
Updated: Tuesday, November 30th 2010, 5:54 PM
He's one of the world's most wanted men, but WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange still has some friends left.
One day after WikiLeaks' most devastating release rocked the diplomatic world, sparking the ire of the U.S. and its allies in the process, Assange was offered asylum by Ecuador.
"We are open to giving [Assange] residency in Ecuador, without any problem and without any conditions," Kintto Lucas, the country's deputy foreign minister, told the website Ecuadorinmediato.
Currently wanted by Sweden and Interpol on rape charges, Assange, 39, also will likely face the wrath of the U.S. Justice Department, which is looking into ways to prosecute the infamous whistleblower over WikiLeaks' latest bombshell exposure.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said he's pursuing possible criminal charges against Assange, and Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.) requested that WikiLeaks be labelled a "foreign terrorist organization."
Even Assange's native country of Australia may pursue legal action against him.
"Australia will support any law enforcement action that may be taken, the U.S. will be the lead government in that respect, but certainly Australian agencies will assist," Attorney General Robert McClelland told local reporters, according to Agence France-Presse.
Far from being intimidated by these threats, Assange continued on the offensive Tuesday, telling Time Magazine that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should resign "if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the U.S. has signed up."
Assange's latest interview was done via Skype from an undisclosed location. The elusive whistleblower is said to be constantly on the move, never staying in one place, or country, for long periods of time.
Contrary to the majority of the international community, the government of Ecuador applauded the release of the nearly 250,000 cables that, according to Lucas, exposed the mixing of espionage with diplomacy.
UPDATE 2: Julian Assange's mother says "Don't Hunt Down My Son":
"Don't hunt down my son," says mother of WikiLeaks founder
CANBERRA | REUTERS Tue Nov 30, 2010 11:24pm EST
CANBERRA (Reuters) - The mother of Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Wednesday she was distressed by an international police alert for her son's arrest and did not want him "hunted down and jailed."
Global police agency Interpol issued a "red notice" on Tuesday to assist in the arrest of Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, who is wanted in Sweden on suspicion of sexual crimes.
Assange, 39, a former computer hacker now at the center of a global controversy after WikiLeaks released a trove of classified U.S. diplomatic cables at the weekend, denies the Swedish allegations.
UPDATE 3: Not good. Ecuador drops offer of asylum to Assange.
Ecuador backs off offer to WikiLeaks' Assange
By Hugh Bronstein
QUITO | REUTERS Tue Nov 30, 2010 8:40pm EST
QUITO (Reuters) - Ecuador on Tuesday backed off the idea of inviting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to visit the country as President Rafael Correa accused the whistleblower website of breaking the law by releasing U.S. documents.
UPDATE 4: Bank of America next Wikileaks target, stock falls
BofA may be next WikiLeaks target
(Reuters) - Bank of America Corp's shares declined 3 percent on Tuesday amid investor fears the largest U.S. bank by assets may be at the center of WikiLeaks next document release.
On Monday, Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks, said his group plans to release tens of thousands of internal documents from a major U.S. bank early next year, according to an interview posted online by Forbes Magazine.
He declined to identify to Forbes which bank would be the subject of the release, but expected the leak to spawn investigations.
The statement came just one day after Assange's group released 250,000 U.S. government diplomatic and military documents on November 28, and analysts said the timing spooked investors.
BofA's share price "continues to be driven by sentiment and not hard numbers," said Dick Bove, bank analyst with Rochdale Securities in a research note to clients.
In an October 9, 2009 interview, Assange told Computerworld that the group had obtained five gigabytes of data from a Bank of America executive's hard drive.