WikiLeaks founder on Interpol's most wanted list... for rape?

Funkenpants wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:
AOL wrote:

Russia is a "virtual mafia state" where government officials, oligarchs and organized crime are bound together by corruption, bribery and protection rackets, according to U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

So in other words, it's like a really big Chicago or Atlantic City.

Yeah, but Chicago and Atlantic City don't have nuclear weapons yet.

They're saving that for the season finale of Boardwalk Empire..

Funkenpants wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:
AOL wrote:

Russia is a "virtual mafia state" where government officials, oligarchs and organized crime are bound together by corruption, bribery and protection rackets, according to U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

So in other words, it's like a really big Chicago or Atlantic City.

Yeah, but Chicago and Atlantic City don't have nuclear weapons yet.

Daley was working on that for us, but decided to retire before his weapons program was finished.

Funkenpants wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:
AOL wrote:

Russia is a "virtual mafia state" where government officials, oligarchs and organized crime are bound together by corruption, bribery and protection rackets, according to U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

So in other words, it's like a really big Chicago or Atlantic City.

Yeah, but Chicago and Atlantic City don't have nuclear weapons yet.

AC has something worse: Snooki.

Minarchist wrote:

So Assange and Wikileaks have begun to release documents from Russia. R.I.P., you crazy bastard.

I love it when people writing about Russia are so clueless. My favorite part-
"John Beyrle, the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, provided an in-depth examination of the workings of the country's biggest protection scam -- the running of the capital itself -- in a February cable included in the WikiLeaks documents. At the top of the Moscow "krysha" (a Russian mafia term meaning "roof" or "protection") sat former Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. "

Krysha actually means roof. It may have a Mafia connotation, but yah that thing on the top of your house - that is a krysha.

Russia is going to get all huffy about this, but it is common knowledge.

Rat Boy wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

This is a really difficult situation for our government. Letting Assange and WikiLeaks continue to operate really isn't an option as this is a major security breach no matter how you feel about it. Even so, if they shut WikiLeaks down and create a vacuum someone will step up to fill that void. There is absolutely no guarantee they'll even try to protect the people named in those documents, as has WikiLeaks.

I wonder where this will lead.

The only option anybody has is to plug up the leaks. Exposing a conspiracy usually just makes the conspirators better at keeping secrets.

Well making it harder for a conspiracy to keep secrets is pretty much the stated aim of Wikileaks. He even wrote a book about it. The point is to impede the efficiency of communication channels by requiring them to add layers of security. Anyone who works in computing or communications knows that Security = 1/Convenience. He's not trying to cause a scandal, he's trying to make it harder to be secret.

Also there was a great point raised on Salon that the simple fact that these diplomatic cables were secret in the first place is a massive misuse of government security machinery. This is the stuff that should be routinely transparent in a representative democracy.

Final thought - why smear Assange and not Wikileaks? Because it's easier to focus hate on a man than an organization, cf Hussein and Bin Laden.

Maq wrote:

Final thought - why smear Assange and not Wikileaks? Because it's easier to focus hate on a man than an organization, cf Hussein and Bin Laden.

Well b/c in Mr. Assange's own words (supposedly):

Mr. Assange cast himself as indispensable. “I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier, and all the rest,” he said. “If you have a problem with me,” he told Mr. Snorrason, using an expletive, he should quit.

Wired wrote that the phrase he used was "piss off".

If it is indeed a smear campaign, then whoever is behind it apparently agrees with Mr. Assange.

The fact those articles both focus on "the man alone" does little to invalidate my point.

Maq wrote:

The fact those articles both focus on "the man alone" does little to invalidate my point.

Agreed. No one is disputing that Assange seems to be kind of a jerk. Even discussing the content of the leak in terms of Assange borders on obfuscation. So far we have no solid reason to believe he added anything in. We do know that he cut some stuff out. If we aren't discussing his editing style or the overall situation from a historical perspective, he's irrelevant.

A jerk? No no no! I'm saying he's a freakin' badass!

The Master Architect if you will.

Lord Cuze wrote:

A jerk? No no no! I'm saying he's a freakin' badass!

The difference between the two is on whose side you stand. I'm grateful for the leaks and still hope something good will come of them but Assange sounds like he invented the act of leaking. I still think he's nothing but a vector and a facilitator. If he hadn't done it, someone else would have. Maybe not at the exact same time or in the exact same way but he is not a unique genius.

LobsterMobster wrote:
Lord Cuze wrote:

A jerk? No no no! I'm saying he's a freakin' badass!

The difference between the two is on whose side you stand. I'm grateful for the leaks and still hope something good will come of them but Assange sounds like he invented the act of leaking. I still think he's nothing but a vector and a facilitator. If he hadn't done it, someone else would have. Maybe not at the exact same time or in the exact same way but he is not a unique genius.

Assange didn't invent leaking any more than Sam Walton created the warehouse store, but they are both important for the scale to which they took things. That scale could not have been possible without fundamental innovation. Once you increase the scale of anything by that much, it is fundamentally not the same thing anymore.

He may not have invented the act of leaking, but he sure perfected the art of it.

Well the point is you can't discredit Wikileaks ad-hominem without having the man to target your criticism at. A was learning my sysadmin chops in the community that spawned a lot of the Australian crackers in that era and, frankly, most of them were douchebags, insane, or both. Whether Assange is an insane douchebag or not is irrelevant to the content he's leaking but you can't fight back in the media against the website on which your secrets are being revealed without making someone the bugbear for it. His weakness is, or appears to be, his ego and sense of importance so that's what's being targetted.

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

He may not have invented the act of leaking, but he sure perfected the art of it.

Did he, or did his source? It's not like he generated any of that information. He got it all from somewhere.

Are the rumors I'm hearing about Wikileaks having a "nuke option" in case something happens to Assange true? That they've distributed multiple copies of encrypted files and when the sh*t goes down, they'll send out a key to unlock it?

Rat Boy wrote:

Are the rumors I'm hearing about Wikileaks having a "nuke option" in case something happens to Assange true? That they've distributed multiple copies of encrypted files and when the sh*t goes down, they'll send out a key to unlock it?

I can almost see him being whisked onto on a CIA plane with a black hood over his head, en route to Poland or Morocco, for a round of some "enhanced interrogation" on how to disable that dead-hand system.

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

Are the rumors I'm hearing about Wikileaks having a "nuke option" in case something happens to Assange true? That they've distributed multiple copies of encrypted files and when the sh*t goes down, they'll send out a key to unlock it?

I can almost see him being whisked onto on a CIA plane with a black hood over his head, en route to Poland or Morocco, for a round of some "enhanced interrogation" on how to disable that dead-hand system.

Or it's a bluff. Maybe he didn't get anything quite that good but the government doesn't know that for a fact (which makes it a good bluff ).

I thought the whole point behind a dead man switch is that you can't undo it once it's done. That is sort of the whole deterrent value in it after all.

Paleocon wrote:

I thought the whole point behind a dead man switch is that you can't undo it once it's done. That is sort of the whole deterrent value in it after all.

No deterrent would be all that effective if it could be undone. The point of a dead man switch is - assuming the deterrent is sufficient - it will go off if anything happens to the "man" in question. It will not go off if nothing happens to him. Therefore, it is in the government's best interests to leave him alone. That's the theory, anyway.

Like the thermo-nuclear warhead in the cab of Raven's motorcycle.

Wait, so the women had unprotected (but consensual?) sex with him and then called the police over it? Sweden is a weird place.

Interpol's warrant is out. For rape? No. What then? Well....

Jeez, it's like no one even remembers how to plant a dead hooker in a hotel room anymore.

Also, "sex by surprise" may well be the funniest damn legal term ever.

EDIT: some people are saying that if this is confirmed, Interpol's warrant is illegal by their own laws, as this is a crime merely punishable by fine in Sweden. Interpol requires a potential jail time of at least 12 months to secure a warrant. This just gets crazier by the minute; it's like a soap opera.

EDIT 2: it should be noted that the above link is a blog and is culling and commenting on various news sources. I wouldn't take it as gospel...but it does make for interesting reading.

There's a "surprise buttsex" joke in here somewhere.

Seth wrote:

There's a "surprise buttsex" joke in here somewhere.

This one?
IMAGE(http://allencomputerclinic.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/SurpriseButtsecks.jpg)

Interesting. Reading other stories about what happened seems more and more like a case of 'hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' and politics than a case of sexual assault.

It appears that Assange was staying at the flat of a woman who was away on vacation. She returned from her trip early on a Friday and she had dinner with Assange. They later have consensual sex and find out afterwards that the condom had broken.

The next day they go to a conference together where Assange meets a second women. Some reports present her as a bit of a groupie, someone who was purposefully trying to catch Assange's attention. It apparently worked. They had lunch with a small group of people after the conference and he hung out with her for a chunk of the day.

On Monday Assange and the second women meet up, go back to her apartment, and have consensual sex (this time the condom doesn't break). The following morning they have sex again, this time without a condom. The second women then gets up, goes shopping, and then makes Assange breakfast.

On Wednesday, the second woman calls the office of the first woman, they chat, and find out that over the course of a few days Assange has slept with both of them. The first woman is pissed, tells a friend of Assange to tell him to get his sh*t out of her flat.

He does on Friday and then both women go to the police together. The second women tells her story and, apparently, unprotected sex is enough to trigger the rape charge. The first woman then tells her story and that's where the charges of molestation come from.

Adding another twist to things the first women has apparently gone back and deleted several Tweets she posted after the supposed molestation happened, both of which were about Assange and her hanging out, which seems a bit suspicious.

Assange might be a skeevey player, but it seems a bit far from the "sexual attack" the BBC talks about. I think this is where politics kicks in and Assange ends up on Interpol's most wanted list.

He's sure a playa.

Minarchist wrote:

Jeez, it's like no one even remembers how to plant a dead hooker in a hotel room anymore.

Seriously. If they want to trump up charges they really should try harder.

Minarchist wrote:
Seth wrote:

There's a "surprise buttsex" joke in here somewhere.

This one?
IMAGE(http://allencomputerclinic.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/SurpriseButtsecks.jpg)

That will do.

OG_slinger wrote:

Assange might be a skeevey player, but it seems a bit far from the "sexual attack" the BBC talks about. I think this is where politics kicks in and Assange ends up on Interpol's most wanted list.

Fortunately for him, it's not an international crime to be a douchebag. If it were, every sports figure in the world would have a warrant out for their arrest.

Probably the only alleged rapist wanted by Interpol