Julian Assange: Hero or traitor? Luminary? Criminal? Take a secretive dive into how and why Julian Assange has stolen hundreds of thousands of documents, and learn the secrets about the secret-stealers. Welcome to Part 1 of Heroes or Traitors, Luminaries or Criminals? - Part 2 will be coming out shortly.

Please note: in this article, we will briefly be covering the charges that one figure and his team have faced as a result of crimes. The content within this article may be mildly offensive - there will be instances where you will find in-depth detail, and should you feel any hesitation please do not proceed.

PART 1: Julian Assange and WikiLeaks

Julian Assange, born July 3, 1971, is an advanced Australian computer programmer, editor and director. Calling himself a “science journalist,” Assange has breached national security multiple times and revealed this information to the common man through WikiLeaks, a company he founded with a partner, John Young. He released many highly classified CIA (the American intelligence service) and governmental documents before fleeing to the UK.

Julian Assange’s history

In adolescence, Assange had already cultivated a strong connection with computers and technology, breaching the strong security of systems including NASA and the Pentagon. In Australia, authorities and other figures charged him with over thirty crimes committed on a computer (cybercrimes). Instead of going to jail, however, his sentencing was a mere fine as the judge decided his actions were out of “youthful inquisitiveness.” After his release, Assange studied at the University of Melbourne and later worked as a computer security consultant.

In 2006, Assange and John Young together founded WikiLeaks, later to become a worldwide network oozing with classified documents and illegally published information. Throughout the next few years, information about U.S. military facilities, internal intelligence regarding various movements and email threads were posted on the site.

In 2010, WikiLeaks started to majorly amp up their game. The amount of documents they published was nearing half a million, and wasn’t stopping. Luckily for the U.S., the classified Army intelligence was mostly already public, but governmental officials - including President Barack Obama - quickly started denouncing WikiLeaks as a threat to U.S. security.

A majority of these illegally published documents were from a few years back, but there were a few files that revealed information to what was going on in the present. This included the USA’s plans for Iran and their plans for “isolating” it, money-wise and politics-wise, as they were growing uneasy at Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.

After these national security breaches, many were calling for Assange to be classified as a terrorist and “chased” by the U.S. government.

Sweden also showed no mercy towards Assange, and he faced prosecution there as well. Previously, he had been accused of multiple crimes in Sweden but let off due to the severe lack of evidence, but this time they scoured up enough evidence to have a chance at jailing him. In 2010, Assange was retained in a jail in London with the possibility that he would be extradited (taken to a different country when arrested) to Sweden to face his charges. A year later, a judge in Britain ruled for the extradition to proceed. A few months later, however, powerful British courts decided that it would be better for Assange to go to the Supreme Court as it may have “significance to the public.”

These alleged crimes that Assange committed weren’t just looked down upon. The reason he committed these many crimes were to protect and expand human rights - he believed that the common man knows very little about governmental plans and that they should have the rights to this kind of information. The Sydney Peace Foundation awarded Assange a gold medal as his actions were seen as brave, and an honorable quest to extend human rights.

Whilst Assange awaited the court’s final verdict, he remained under strict house arrest on an estate in Norfolk.

This is when it gets interesting: after the Supreme Court decided that the extradition would not take place, the Ecuadorian embassy in London got involved. Technically speaking, a country’s embassy in another country is considered their own ground - this means that for the Ecuadorian embassy, you’re walking on Ecuadorian territory.

Not a very big deal. In most cases. Assange thought where he could find a safe and protected haven, and an embassy was the perfect option. Assange applied for asylum - a process which, if successful, would allow an individual to seek refuge in a country away from another country where that person may face prosecution and sentencing. Assange claimed that certain trials he may face if he was extradited to Sweden would have the potential that he would be subjected to a death penalty, and that they would be “politically motivated.”

Assange’s offer was accepted, but he was strictly prohibited to leave the embassy’s grounds until officials from England and Ecuador solved the issue. He also secured another year in the embassy by running for a place in the Australian Senate, even though he did not succeed - in fact, Assange only captured the attention of less than 1% of the country’s votes.

The asylum application not only let him have more time outside of court but also caused some of his charges to be dropped. Authorities dropped three of the allegations against Assange as the 5-year expiration had passed. However, they continued with other investigations and proceeded with other prosecutions with Assange whilst he stay put at the embassy.

A few years later, Assange got himself involved with one of America’s largest races: the presidential election. Assange was clearly opposing one of the strongest presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton, and published classified files from the Democratic Party’s internal conversations, and they were seemingly released at times where they would do the most damage to Clinton. Cybersecurity experts and document protection managers have come to the conclusion that these highly-protective and secretive files were gained through Russian spying agencies. Assange quickly turned down this evidence, saying that the information never came from Russia.

In 2017, a U.S. report stated that WikiLeaks was a huge scheme controlled by Russia, and that it was their attempt to gain access to the most protected information, allowing them to have an upper hand on the U.S. A few months later in the same year, Sweden announced that the charges against Assange had been dropped and discontinued.

Two years later, Ecuador finally declared Assange’s asylum to be withdrawn, claiming that his actions violated international law and also disobeyed the terms that he was given in order to stay at the embassy. Lenín Moreno, the Ecuadorian president, allowed British police to enter the embassy and finally arrest Assange. Even though he was out of Sweden’s reach, the British court had ruled him as a “wanted” figure as he had not appeared in court. The U.S. was also trying to extradite him to America so he could face allegations charging him with various cybercrimes.

Assange was dragged out of the embassy and into a court hearing. Unsurprisingly, Assange pleaded not guilty, but through piles of evidence and witnesses, the court finally convicted him.

Assange seemed to be not as worried with the British ruling as he was with extradition to the U.S. As we mentioned earlier, Assange believed that he may be sentenced to a death penalty - he tried to avoid this fate at all costs.

The U.S. Department of Justice said that Assange’s arrest was completely fair as he was conspiring to violate national U.S. security once again. The court documents state that Assange was “compromising” an extremely large amount of classified information from the United States.

They have also alleged that in March 2010 Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. army intelligence analyst to “crack” a password on the U.S. Department of Defense computers which are connected with a governmental network used for private conversations and classified files. In the end, Manning was sentenced to seven years in jail, charged with leaking classified information to WikiLeaks.

Evidence that supported this allegation were discussions held between Manning and Assange. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the conversations revealed how Manning’s stolen information reached WikiLeaks. Additionally, some of them also showed that Assange was encouraging and pushing Manning to steal more classified documents and transfer them to WikiLeaks.

To summarize Assange’s many crimes, they’re pretty much all leaks. WikiLeaks was a crime. The thousands of documents published on WikiLeaks were a crime. The many instances of hacking through national and corporate security were crimes.

As we mentioned earlier, these crimes weren’t random - Assange believed in human rights to be wider, larger and greater. WikiLeaks was set up to try and resolve this “issue” of how humans don’t know enough, so this naturally raised a large amount of controversy. Is it fair for Assange to be chased like a criminal by the government? Is arresting Assange proving that there isn’t freedom of speech? Many have protested for the release of Assange and have also strongly opposed the mere thought of extraditing him to the U.S. At the end of this article, you can vote for what suits you best!

As for our opinion, after hours of research we’ve concluded that it would be best to hold Assange in jail in Britain but not to extradite him to the U.S. The reasons behind this are because it’s unacceptable to breach security hundreds of times, but as long as he’s securely in jail without a computer, it would be a good decision. Since the crime was strictly white-collared, we personally think that extradition to the U.S. could result in the death penalty which is not justifiable for this situation as he has not physically hurt anybody.

Thank you for reading this article! You’ve completed part 1 of Heroes or Traitors, Luminaries or Criminals? We’ll be back with part 2, featuring another secret leaker: Edward Snowden.

Research Sources: BRITANNICA, BBC, AL JAZEERA & CNN

Image Sources: ALL IMAGES WITHIN THIS ARTICLE WERE CREATED BY NTS STUDIOS