Julian Assange - WikiLeaks (23 page)

The site's founder, John Young was respected by anyone who deals with secrecy and confidentiality. He managed the site himself, with the help of his wife, Deborah Natsios.

It was only logical that Julian Assange would contact Young in 2006 to register the wikileaks.org domain name. WikiLeaks needed to personify the holder of the name with a man known for his integrity in the Internet world.

Assange and Young didn't know each other personally, but they were both members of the Cypherpunks mailing list. This high place of sharing between all the fans and activists of cryptography
in the 1990s was created by John Gilmore, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that helped the legal defense of court cases related to the digital world and rights issues.

This forum helped make spectacular advances in encryption technology and the liberalization of open-source software for personal protection. It was the first time in the history of the electronic age that private citizens had access to powerful encryption software allowing them to communicate amongst themselves without government agencies being able to listen in on them. This was why in this list, suggested by John Young back in 1994, he offered some personal Internet space so that some members could publish confidential documents, sowing the seeds for his site Cryptome.

Anonymity and using pseudonyms were major themes of the mailing list and so John Young (JYA) happily accepted to support this new adventure with Proff, aka Julian Assange. He saw in it an opportunity to consolidate his commitment with a new dynamic and innovative partner. The intention of WikiLeaks came very close to that of Cryptome.

There were so many secrets to reveal, so many realities to clear up. Young liked to remind people: “There are no secrets that shouldn't be published.” Young couldn't stand the engineering of intelligence agencies and threw spotlights on them as quickly as he possibly could.

When Young published the contacts of 116 MI6 agents (British secret services) in 1999 and 400 Japanese secret services agents in 2000, the FBI paid him a visit every time. After a cordial chat, he'd hurry up and publish the names and contacts of the agents that left his house.

John Young had a clear idea of confidentiality on the Internet: it was non-existent. And publishing secret documents didn't endanger States, because their enemies had already had access to these documents. It was merely a public service announcement.

He also refuted the complaints about the security of agents when he stated their names. He had discussed this at length with former agents (his stepfather worked for the CIA): “They lie so much and run so many false operations and plant so many false agents. They expose their own agents so much – there's nothing you can do that they haven't already done. In fact, they hope you will do it. To muddy the waters.”

Actually, he thought that the promises made by WikiLeaks about protecting the identity of their sources were a bit utopian and totally fraudulent: “They do have a lot of smoke blowing on their site. Page after page after page about how they're going to protect you. And I say uh-oh. That's over-promising. The very over-promising is an indication that it doesn't work. And we know that from watching [...] how governments operate. When they over-promise, you know they're hiding something. People who are really trustworthy do not go around broadcasting how trustworthy they are.”

Today Cryptome stands across from WikiLeaks like an artist faced with the industrialization of a concept. The site is very rudimentary, listing leaks one under the other as hyperlinked texts, classified by publication date. They also publish classified information, but claim not to depend exclusively on leaks. The biggest part of the Cryptome collection consists of documents accessible elsewhere, open-source information and public domain documents. John Young himself takes care of reposting
the information he finds or receives from his network of friends and sympathizers.

Every morning John Young reads the
Federal Register
³⁵
and the files on information requests to the FOIA agency (Freedom of Information Act, a federal law of 1966 that allows the public's right to obtain information from federal agencies). Steven Aftergood, who visits the site every day, said of him: “John Young sees many things that others do not see, and posts things others do not, or would not, post.”

For John Young, always active as a famous architect in New York, it was a pastime: “It's not a lot of work, it's something I do periodically. As long as there's no personal intent behind it, my business can't fail. It just takes its course. The pastimes continue on and on until one day they consume themselves.”

He was an amateur in the noblest sense of the term, at the service of his cause and passion: “I've never had any desire to overturn governments [...] or jack up journalism.”

It was because of this crucial difference that John Young didn't join Julian Assange. Although he was a member of the original mailing list of WikiLeaks prior to launching the site in January 2007, John Young responded brutally (he's known for being totally unpredictable) to a message from Julian Assange who wanted to raise a budget of five million US dollars to launch WikiLeaks into cyberspace. He estimated that hosting his site didn't cost him more than a hundred dollars a month and just couldn't agree with this highly suspicious ambition. He left the organization on January 7, 2007 and deleted his JYA account from the members list.

However, John Young took care of creating another more anonymous account and continued to follow the e-mail circulating within the project. He regularly published messages about financial and ethical questions on actions and even on the divisions discussed among members. He made everyone who opposed WikiLeaks very happy.

In any case, his position was more complex. He often repeated that nobody should trust him and that you couldn't trust anybody, and even said, “I'm a member of WikiLeaks… I am critic of WikiLeaks. My current
shtick
is to pretend that I am an opponent of WikiLeaks. It's called friendly opposition. Praising each other is so insipid. Your parents praise you. Your friends never do. They know it's a con job, so praise is manipulation. Criticism is more candid.” He added with some irony: “Assange hasn't returned the favor.”

According to John Young, the problem was what Julian had done with WikiLeaks: “I have separated WikiLeaks from Julian. He has now taken off on his own path... He's on the verge of a career of being Julian Assange. He's used WikiLeaks to leverage that. So now WikiLeaks is breaking away from him and other wikis are being set up by other people disaffected by his monomania.”

In fact, he was always a bit suspicious of this ‘humorless' character, poking fun at pretentious people. He recognized his acting talent. He wasn't at all surprised to see WikiLeaks picked up by mainstream media: “The mainstream media have used flattery, attention and bribery, all the usual ways that you bring people in the fold because it's irresistible if you have a narcissistic streak.”

John Young felt that WikiLeaks had lost some of its original simplicity and that the problem was on the inside. Members
didn't know how to manage Julian's ambitions and their naive amateurism was confronted with a tough business world.

As for their continuous need for money, Young said: “You should never do it for money. Only because that contaminates the credibility and it turns it into a business opportunity where there's great treachery and lying going on. And it will contaminate WikiLeaks. They're acting like a cult. They're acting like a religion. They're acting like a government. They're acting like a bunch of spies. They're hiding their identity. They don't account for the money. They promise all sorts of good things. They seldom let you know what they're really up to. They have rituals and all sorts of wonderful stuff. So I admire them for their showmanship and their entertainment value. But I certainly would not trust them with information if it had any value, or if it put me at risk or anyone that I cared about.”

If John Young continued to broadcast all the information he received, found or discovered about WikiLeaks, it was always with the goal of sharing knowledge and letting the public form its own opinion. He didn't hesitate to publish very critical e-mails about Assange that he received from a strange WikiLeaks insider without even checking their identity.

Young also didn't hesitate to heavily criticize the attacks directed at Julian or WikiLeaks by press giants or politicians.

Even though John Young could be seen as Julian's rival, he was still a great defender of the truth and would never let anyone attack knights of transparency.

December 29, 2007: 24C3, Twenty-Fourth Chaos Communication Congress

This Berlin congress, organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), has become Europe's main hacker and hacktivist gathering. The CCC was founded on September 12, 1981 in the offices of independent newspaper
Die Tageszeitung
(aka
Taz
), and one of its founders was Herwart Holland-Moritz, known to people as Wau Holland, famous German hacker of the 1980s. The Wau Holland Foundation is a tribute to this national hero of hacktivism who died in 2001 at the age of forty-nine. It supports several projects that the CCC holds dear: the social aspect of technical evolution, and the history of technology and freedom of information. In October 2009, CCC became WikiLeaks's main lender.

The Chaos Computer Congress (C3) has been growing constantly since its launch. In a relaxed atmosphere, it welcomes expert speakers in front of an impassioned audience among which WikiLeaks members are regulars.

In 2006 at the 23C3, Jacob Appelbaum presented his method to circumvent FileVault, Apple's encrypted disk storage system.
His co-speaker was Ralf-Philip Weinmann, former colleague of Julian Assange on Rubberhose, freeware they created together in 1997.

In 2007 at the 24C3, Rop Gonggrijp gave a presentation on electronic voting systems in the Netherlands. Another passionate presentation was given by Annie Machon, former MI5 agent (British FBI). She told her story of deceptions and life as a recluse whistleblower in France. She was also invited by Julian Assange in 2008 to the Hacking At Random event in the Netherlands.

The twenty-fourth congress featured four days of conferences. The themes discussed ranged from electronic crime to freeware and from cryptography to anonymity, with the Tor program being featured four times.

Aside from these conferences, workshops were organized on various emerging themes. On December 23, at 9:30 p.m. a certain ‘Julian Assange,' member of the advisory board of an organization called WikiLeaks presented “Wikileaks – a place for journalists, truth tellers and everybody else.”

German IT professional Daniel Berg attended the presentation. He was a network engineer for the international company EDS, which deals in electronic data. On the social professional network
LinkedIn
his profile features the keywords: “realityanalyzer, dreamshaper, freedomdefender, interestdetester, whalesaver, bookeater, overflower, underminer, wardriver, packetizer, hacker, assoffworker, motivator, creator.”

Julian Assange presented WikiLeaks, its mission, technical challenges and the already realistic visibility of the project thanks to articles published in
The Guardian, The New York Times, Washington Post, Die Welt
and
Der Spiegel
. He finished his presentation by asking the audience to join the movement.

After Julian and Daniel Berg met, Berg decided to join.

Daniel was a technician, IT graduate from the University of Cooperative Education of Mannheim, a university that gave incompany training based on immersion practice. Daniel had been working at EDS since 2002. He liked running, mountain biking, David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and was a workaholic. He once endured a 428-hour work marathon in four weeks to save a project in danger in Moscow.

WikiLeaks was in full upswing, and so such a resource was more than welcome. Daniel worked as an analyst for the organization in his spare time.

His commitment was impassioned and his extraordinary ability to work quickly brought him close to Julian Assange. The Number One of the organization asked him to come along to the 25C3 to present a conference called ‘WikiLeaks vs. the World.' Julian Assange, under his real name, presented himself as an
Investigative Editor
of the organization, while Daniel Domscheit-Berg was referred to as ‘Berger.'

By December 30 2008, WikiLeaks had already experienced a lot of painful events linked to the increasing success of their actions.

At the beginning of 2008, they suffered through being sued by the Julius Baer Group following the publication of a list of 1,600 fortunate clients who benefited from the bank's expertise in matters of fiscal evasion. They attracted the ire of Sarah Palin, running mate of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, following the publication of her personal Yahoo e-mails during the presidential election campaign. They felt the aftershock of the earthquake they caused in Great Britain after the publication of a list of 10,000 members of the far-right British National Party, which included policemen, clergy members and teachers.

Assange and Berger showed up quite tired in Berlin at 25C3 to relate these facts. The duo worked in harmony, each with their
assigned tasks. Julian explained matters, the impact and lessons to be learned, while Daniel presented some foundations and technical needs. The audience was sold. Julian got a standing ovation when he solemnly declared, making sure to let silence wrap every word, “We have never had a source exposed. We have never had a source prosecuted.”

Daniel Berg's role started to crystallize. He quit his job and took on the role of Daniel Schmitt, movement spokesperson. At the end of December 2008, his name appeared in articles regarding threats made to the site, following the publication of secret documents of the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst, German secret services). As of 2009, within a bit more than a year, Daniel would give about one hundred interviews throughout the world.