

WikiLeaks Founder Added To The Interpol Wanted List - aaronbrethorst
http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/30/wikileaks-julian-assange/

======
philk
Perhaps I should be joining the tin-foil hat brigade but these allegations
have always seemed conveniently timed.

There are few better ways to damage someone's credibility than alleging rape,
even if the allegations don't hold water.

~~~
mpk
I'll refrain from commenting on the allegations, but the timing is very
suspicious. I mean, really, right after this big leak? And anyway, how many
people make the Interpol Red Notice list for rape allegations?

As long as we're on the tin-foil hat path, being dragged to Sweden would place
him into custody there. (I know, he's wanted 'for questioning' - that's what
the Red Notice is based on). That would give the USA (which has an extradition
treaty with Sweden) plenty of time to build a legal case against him without
worrying about him disappearing or pulling more PR stunts.

As long as the USA doesn't charge him with something that is punishable with
the death penalty (most EU countries won't extradite suspects that would face
that), it's into the bureaucratic legal mill for him.

~~~
ceejayoz
The allegations are from back in August.

~~~
carpo
I took mpk to mean the timing of the Interpol Red Notice, not the allegations
themselves.

~~~
hugh3
Well, if an alleged rapist starts making a big noise about himself, then it's
not too surprising that he suddenly finds his rape case on the top of the
investigating officers' pile of cases.

I have no idea whether he's guilty, but he should certainly return to Sweden
to stand trial.

~~~
pigbucket
>he should certainly return to Sweden to stand trial.

He hasn't been charged with anything.

------
handelaar
In fact, what this says is that Sweden has issued a European Arrest Warrant
(EAW) because they want to bring him in for questioning.

His lawyers have pointed out that it's not a valid one since an EAW requires
criminal charges to be filed first (and thus no EU state is obliged to pay it
any attention and there's no chance whatsoever that it will result in an
extradition).

And the Swedes have refused his offer to meet them both in Sweden and in the
UK in the past eight weeks...

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/30/interpol-
wanted-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/30/interpol-wanted-
notice-julian-assange)

------
grantheaslip
I come to HN for the tech stories, not for completely ill-informed,
conspiracy-theory-laden political speculation. I get that it's not my place to
say what HN should or shouldn't be, but some of the nonsense I've been seeing
recently, especially about the domain name seizures and WikiLeaks, is really
making me lose respect for this community.

I'm a political science student and a web developer, and though I don't claim
to be an expert on either, I think a lot of you seem to think that the world
is a whole lot simpler than it actually is. I've said it before—I think a lot
of what makes geeks great at conceptualizing data and logic makes them
terrible at understanding nuance and subtlety, and without the ability to see
shades of grey, you're always going to have simplistic, naive understandings
of the world. How do you operate on a day-to-day basis when you think that the
government is out there to take away your freedoms and cover up conspiracies
at every turn?

~~~
tel
To explain a downvote.

I don't think anyone here (or very few at least) honestly believes that the
government is foundationally motivated to take away freedoms or cover up
conspiracies. I'll concede only that considering Assange's point of view as
one operational principle in the complex, subtle machinery of society is at
least not a bad intellectual exercise --- if not more.

Moreover, Assange's tactics are fundamentally technological. Wikileaks and its
operation both depend and reflect upon the capacity of the internet to share
information with very low transaction costs. This is another face of the same
arguments that Zuckerberg or Schmidt have made on the intersection of society,
internet, and privacy.

Finally, Wikileaks is one _gigantic hack_ with possibly global repercussions.
I'm fanatically interested to see how it plays out.

For HN to have a greater than passing interest in this seems rather
characteristic of the community. Moreover, meta-discussion of this nature has
been repeatedly discouraged, and _ad hominem_ rhetoric is pretty low on the
discourse hierarchy. Cut it out.

~~~
grantheaslip
Don't get me wrong, the stories themselves are perfectly appropriate for HN,
it's the comments (many of them very highly rated) that worry me. Comments
like:

\- "Anyone surprised he hasn't 'disappeared' yet?"

\- "I have a conspiracy theory that the day he does get rubbed out, he won't
publicly die, he'll just be "hiding" forever. Some nefarious organization will
privately fill his role and take over Wikileaks."

From <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1948734>:

\- "The value of Wikileaks is that it makes secrecy more difficult for
governments [...] Sadly, much of what has been leaked shows simply that the
government is putting on a show for the American people and that much of what
is kept secret is done so for propaganda reasons, not security reasons."

\- "If public release of this information is damaging to US interest, the
answer should not be to suppress this information, but rather to behave in an
agreeable way in the first place."

\- "So, yes. I do say that governments should have no secrets."

\- "Every time I hear someone criticize Wikileaks it just seems to me like
they simply don't want to know what's happening in the world."

From <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1945352>:

\- "...the only reason for political parties is to have places where various
special interests can line up against each other."

\- "The government is censoring our means of communications, end of story."

\- "While it no longer makes economic sense to manufacture buggy whips,
perhaps there is a Renaissance in the construction and sale of jack boots?"

I'm not 100% pro-government, and I'm not at all pro-American (though I think
America has not-completely-deserved bad reputation), but these issues are
complicated and nuanced, and I get the impression many of these commenters
think they know a whole lot more than they actually do. A lot of this stuff is
on the same level of discourse I expect from YouTube comments, not Hacker
News, and I find it kind of upsetting because this is one of the few public
communities where I'm pretty consistently impressed by the level of discourse.

So my apologies if it seems like I'm lashing out, but I really don't like
seeing this bizarre late-night-AM-radio underside of HN.

~~~
tel
Ah, well attacking the comments I agree with. Since you posted on the main
thread I assumed it was targeting the article itself. Ad hominem is still
pretty ineffective around here, though, even when it's patently deserved for
the quotes you picked.

------
gamble
Anyone who wants to take on the US government would be better off if they
didn't have a visible figurehead.

Americans need to personalize the enemy. It's one reason China is so
confounding - Americans simply have no idea who's in charge there, and hating
'the Chinese' as a nation has more than a whiff of bigotry... yet it's hard to
get worked up about nebulous concepts like 'the Communist party'. Americans
need their Hitler or Tojo, Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam, Ahmadinejad, or Bin
Laden.

~~~
iskander
s/Americans/people

~~~
gamble
I'm not sure I'd agree. It's a continuum, certainly, but even compared to
other western nations contemporary Americans are unusually individualistic and
disinclined to see people as primarily defined by group affiliations like
ethnicity, nationality, ideology, etc, since those elements are muted in
American society compared to many other countries.

------
Dramatize
Anyone surprised he hasn't "disappeared" yet?

~~~
gregpilling
I am surprised that he hasn't had a car accident or become depressed and
suicidal. Maybe they just can't find him.

~~~
AndrewMoffat
I have a conspiracy theory that the day he does get rubbed out, he won't
_publicly_ die, he'll just be "hiding" forever. Some nefarious organization
will privately fill his role and take over Wikileaks.

~~~
Alex3917
Kind of like Osama Bin Laden, who these days is more of a fictional character
than an actual person.

------
tptacek
Or, maybe there is actually a serious investigation happening in Sweden?
Maybe, just maybe, not everything in reality is governed by the Narrative.

~~~
FrankenTan
As a Swede, I'm going to have to disappoint you.

The police have been proven to be rather.. sub-par in politically-loaded
cases.

An example: Claiming Peter Sunde wrote the pirate bay search engine when the
name and phone-number of the programmer who did was in the sourcecode on one
of the seized harddrives.

The prosecutor in Assange's case has also been questioned by peers and media
alike for questionable behaviour and decisions from day 1 of Assange's case.

He offered to give statements and be questioned in Sweden, and his lawyer
asked the authorities for permission to leave Sweden. They declined his
offers, and gave Assange permission to leave the country.

It's not being handled very well at all.

~~~
hugh3
This doesn't really have anything to do with this case.

Look, there's a woman somewhere in Sweden who claims that Julian Assange raped
her. Either he did, or he didn't. If he did, he should be hung from the
tallest tree. If he didn't, she should be hung from the tallest tree. But it's
an extremely serious charge either way.

~~~
rhizome
as long as someone gets hung, right? i mean, let's be clear about our
priorities.

------
hugh3
One would think that one's opinions on:

a) Whether wikileaks's recent actions have been good or bad, and

b) Whether one individual forced sex upon another individual in a hotel room
in Enkoping last August

would be uncorrelated. And yet I can predict your opinion on one with quite
high accuracy based on your opinion on the other.

~~~
steveklabnik
I can't possibly imagine that an intelligent person who's basically got a huge
target on his head from every government in the world would act in any way
that could be considered questionable.

They're looking for some way to crucify him; do you really think he'd just
hand them something?

~~~
hugh3
If he _did_ do it, he was presumably drunk and horny and not really thinking
straight. If he did do it, it's not a jump-out-with-a-knife rape, but a "hey
stop that"/"naah c'mon" type rape.

The dude doesn't exactly seem to be one of life's alpha males. Suddenly
getting a lot of action at the age of 39 due to newfound fame could easily
have gone to his head. Who knows?

~~~
steveklabnik
Fair enough.

------
jluxenberg
_"When fugitives flee...crime victims are denied justice."_ (from Interpol's
blurb about fugitives)

I thought the criminal corrections system was about rehabilitation, not
Hammurabi-style eye-for-an-eye justice.

~~~
nano81
There are several reasons for having a criminal justice system; rehabilitation
is but one. Others include deterring crime, incapacitating dangerous violent
offenders to separate them from society, and yes, offering a sense of
retribution.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_law#Objectives_of_Crim...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_law#Objectives_of_Criminal_Law)

------
prawn
Anyone seen an article about the alleged rape with more up to date information
than this?

[http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101118/wl_afp/swedencrimeinter...](http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101118/wl_afp/swedencrimeinternetwikileaksrapelondon_20101118185047)

------
lionhearted
I dislike Julian Assanage, I think he's reckless, and I think he's in it for
celebrity and attention and power rather than his stated ideals. As an
American, I hope my government investigates any crimes he's committed and
prosecutes him to the full extent of the law.

 _However_ , tarring and feather his political/espionage/leaking work with
personal allegations seems wrong to me. His work at Wikileaks and drunken
party happenings don't bear any relation to each other. Pursue him for being
reckless with stolen diplomatic materials and prosecute him for it if there's
a case under the law. Don't tar and feather his reputation like this, I think
it's the wrong way of going about it.

~~~
megablast
> I think he's reckless, and I think he's in it for celebrity and attention
> and power rather than his stated ideals.

Then you are starting to believe all the misinformation that the government is
trying to spread about him. This is how the discredit people and this
information, since they can not actually deny it.

I really believe that this is one of the greatest actions to happen to
democracy in a long time, and everybody should be rejoicing in these leaks.

We need more transparency in government, and there are people out there
willing to do this, and get in all sorts of trouble for it. Fortunately he has
left Australia, the government here would be more than happy to send him over
to the USA on any trumped up charges.

~~~
akamaka
I feel the same way as the original poster, and I don't see how government
misinformation has anything to do with it.

Do you remember when wikileaks launched, it was described as an anonymous
organization "founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and
start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and
South Africa"? When their website had a raw archive of documents on the front
page?

The changes in wikileaks started happening before the government became very
interested in them. They became much more focused on fund-raising,
manipulating the media to their advantage, editorializing the leaked material,
and Assange became the figurehead associated with every release of
information.

~~~
prawn
And how much more attention have they received to their cause since then?

Apple has Jobs. Microsoft has Gates. It was Jordan and the Bulls. Wales is
calling for donations on Wikipedia.

~~~
akamaka
Yes, he has brought attention, and in a very reckless way, I believe. But I
didn't come here to debate that, I just wanted to point out that it isn't some
government campaign of misinformation that has shaped my view of Assange.

~~~
wvenable
I'm unclear on this: what has he done that is reckless?

~~~
akamaka
One point that has been made (and which I agree with) is that this leak will
reduce the influence of those in government who are in favour of more
openness, and strengthen the position of those who argue for more control of
information.

[http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20101027_wikileaks_and_cultur...](http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20101027_wikileaks_and_culture_classification)

~~~
wvenable
I'm still unclear what this has to do with Assanage personally? Wikileaks is
an organization of people who publish (given enough time) just about
everything given to them. It's one thing to call wikileaks reckless and
another to call Assanage reckless.

------
alanh
Anyone else notice the left-side nav in the INTERPOL website screenshot? Looks
like someone’s using an outdated box model ;)

------
adambyrtek
And the hunt has begun...

~~~
Vivtek
The "hunt" consists of him showing up in public whenever he wants and the
Americans stridently insisting that he's a shadowy, mysterious criminal, like
Osama bin Laden.

This has nothing at all to do with any actual investigation, and everything to
do with appearances in the American press. It's spin.

