Ghostnuts Podcast

Ghostnuts Podcast


#60 – Julian Assange & Wikileaks

July 10, 2021


Episode 60

Julian Assange & Wikileaks

Julian Assange is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks. In 1987, aged 16, Assange began hacking under the name Mendax. He and two others, known as “Trax” and “Prime Suspect”, formed a hacking group they called “the International Subversives”. In September 1991, Assange was discovered hacking into the Melbourne master terminal of Nortel, a Canadian multinational telecommunications corporation. The Australian Federal Police tapped Assange’s phone line (he was using a modem), raided his home at the end of October and eventually charged him in 1994 with 31 counts of hacking and related crimes. In December 1996, he pleaded guilty to 24 charges (the others were dropped) and was ordered to pay reparations of A$2,100 and released on a good behaviour bond. In 1993, Assange gave technical advice to the Victoria Police Child Exploitation Unit that assisted in prosecutions.[55][56] In the same year, he was involved in starting one of the first public Internet service providers in Australia, Suburbia Public Access Network; And in 1994 he commenced his career in programming and became author and co-author on numerous programs. He did publicise a patent granted to the National Security Agency in August 1999, for voice-data harvesting technology: “This patent should worry people. Everyone’s overseas phone calls are or may soon be tapped, transcribed and archived in the bowels of an unaccountable foreign spy agency.”

WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organisation that publishes news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Its website, initiated in 2006 in Iceland by the organisation Sunshine Press, stated in 2015 that it had released online 10 million documents in its first 10 years. Some of the most notable leaks they have ‘split’ are:

US Army manual for Guantanamo prison camp 

Date: November 2007

The Leak: One of Assange and WikiLeaks first big releases was of a 238-page Army manual from 2003 on “standard operating procedures” for the Camp Delta prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Revelations: The manual showed the Army had a policy of keeping some prisoners from Red Cross inspectors and holding new prisoners in isolation for two weeks to make them more compliant for interrogators. 

Assange arrested:Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder, faces US hacking conspiracy charge

Read the indictment:Grand jury indicts WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

570,000 messages sent on 9/11

Date: November 2009

The Leak: WikiLeaks published more than half a million pager messages sent within a 24-hour period around the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The Revelations: The messages included exchanges from “Pentagon, FBI, FEMA and New York Police Department” officials. “We hope that its entrance into the historical record will lead to a nuanced understanding of how this event led to death, opportunism and war,” WikiLeaks said of the release. 

Video of US helicopter fire killing civilians in Iraq

Date: April 2010

The Leak: WikiLeaks published video footage from a 2007 U.S. Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad, Iraq, that killed at least nine men, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver. 

The Revelations: Army soldier Bradley Manning, a transgender woman who later became known as C...