
Ecuador cuts off Julian Assange's internet access at London embassy - supercanuck
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/28/julian-assange-internet-connection-ecuador-embassy-cut-off-wikileaks
======
FireBeyond
> I have already fully served any theoretical (I haven’t been charged) ‘bail
> violation’ whilst in prison and under house arrest. So why is there a
> warrant for my arrest?”

Not in the least bit arrogant. "Well, I hid out here because I feared
extradition. That should basically count as my sentence for violating bail,
right?"

~~~
zzzcpan
State initiated smear campaign is more arrogant.

~~~
FireBeyond
Pretty poor is the state that when faced with "smear/assassinate this person's
character" comes up with "may have had consensual sex with questionable
consent about the use of a condom with a female".

That's the best the forces of the US/ UK/ Swedish intelligence communities
could come up with?

------
enriquto
Assange's communications have been cut down due to the overwhelming pressure
of the Spanish government into Ecuador. This is clearly explained in the
official communication of the Ecuador government :
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZY7pY1WkAALgkz.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZY7pY1WkAALgkz.jpg)
(could not find a better link)

The reason is that he was tweeting again in favour of Catalan Republicans,
more precisely against the current wave of political prisoners that Spain is
taking, including probably the last Catalan elected president, now under
custody in Germany.

This is confirmed by Assange himself in his last tweet "I have no right to
twit about political prisoners."

The guy is now a hero to many catalans. He will be an honorary citizen of the
forthcoming Catalan Republic, and there are already talks of erecting a statue
of him in the center of Barcelona!

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Did you read the article? It includes your image, and says that is not the
reason this time. The example you quote was when he was given his first/last
warning. This time he was cut because he commented on the UK/Russia poisoning
thing.

~~~
carlesfe
Wikileaks confirmed that the infringing tweet was about Spain:
[https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/979107967768330240](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/979107967768330240)

> Wikileaks editor @julianassange has been gagged and isolated by order of
> Ecuador's new president @Lenin Moreno. He cannot tweet, speak to the press,
> recieve visitors or make telephone calls. Ecuador demanded that he remove
> the following Tweet:

> [Assange's tweet] "In 1940 the elected president of Catalonia, Lluís
> Companys, was captured by the Gestapo, at the request of Spain, delivered to
> them and executed. Today, German police have arrested the elected president
> of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, at the request of Spain, to be extradited."

> This is the only tweet the government of Ecuador asked to be removed. In an
> email to his London lawyers on 27 March at 14:54 BST the Ecuadorian foreign
> ministry referenced no other matter.

~~~
rainieri
Hopefully your downvote is some due to automated mechanism.

Complete shot in the dark-time.

Since many say that Russia is behind Wikileaks and Russia said they would
respond to the diplomat expulsion.. Russia somehow pressured Ecuador into
cutting his internet to trigger Assange's dead mans switch?

------
gwicks56
A pringles can, and somebody sympathetic within a mile, and no problem.

Unless they threaten to throw him out for accessing the internet.

~~~
throwaway84742
I would be surprised if a Pringles can can do it. This stuff is symmetrical.
If signal can get in and out from one end, it can also get in/out from the
other, meaning MI6 would be able to listen in on their diplomatic
correspondence. So there’s probably a serious Faraday cage around the place.

~~~
dingaling
A Faraday cage at building-scale is just that, a cage to attenuate
omnidirectional signals.

The Pringles antenna for wifi, or a Yagi or parabolic dish, is strongly
directional and can pass through the voids in a cage when aligned. It just
needs 12.5cm between the cage elements, like a window.

~~~
throwaway84742
Window can too be a part of the cage, if special glass is used. I guess he
could open a window, but I don’t think I’d test fate quite so brazenly if I
was in his position.

------
ceejayoz
The key bit:

> The Ecuadorian government said in statement that it had acted because
> Assange had breached “a written commitment made to the government at the end
> of 2017 not to issue messages that might interfere with other states”.

~~~
alacombe
At this point, they can give any plausible reason, it wouldn't make a
difference. They're just bending over to the US... It's surprising they lasted
that long already :-/

~~~
olefoo
That is a deeply condescending statement that does nothing but display your
own ignorance of the norms and constraints of international diplomacy.

Ecuador would at this point in time be fully justified in declaring that
Assange was no longer welcome on their territory and expelling him from his
hidey-hole. That they are merely cutting off his internet is extremely
generous of them given the trouble and expense he has caused them.

~~~
acct1771
Why would they do that after somewhat recently making him a citizen?

What changed their mind? His behavior certainly hasn't changed.

------
burger_moon
Doesn't Assange have a 'dead mans switch' which will trigger when he doesn't
have internet access after a given amount of time? There were articles about a
false alarm last year maybe along these lines. Curious if this will result in
a dump of more content or something else.

~~~
ucaetano
> Curious if this will result in a dump of more content or something else.

Given how many times he has promised leaks and not delivered, most likely it
won't.

~~~
Digital-Citizen
Exactly when were each of these promises made and what was promised each time?
Please give us the details.

So far WikiLeaks' publications are what they claim the publications are, and
WikiLeaks has released a number of "insurance" files such as:

[https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/8823724/WikiLeaks_insurance...](https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/8823724/WikiLeaks_insurance_20130815_-_A)

[https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/8823728/WikiLeaks_insurance...](https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/8823728/WikiLeaks_insurance_20130815_-_B)

[https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/8823733/WikiLeaks_insurance...](https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/8823733/WikiLeaks_insurance_20130815_-_C)

[https://archive.org/details/WikiLeaks_Insurance_File](https://archive.org/details/WikiLeaks_Insurance_File)

which I understand we're all encouraged to share widely in the event the key
to decrypt one or more of them is released. I don't know what's in any of the
insurance files.

~~~
fit2rule
At this point, the insurance files must contain something absolutely vile and
heinous. I really can't imagine what is in them unless of course its the
infamous "Hillary killing and eating a baby" video that is rumored to be among
the stash of the cognescenti ..

------
CNJ7654
Here's the plan. We form a large enough mob of people who are dressed to look
exactly like Assange (wigs and all), then he can just run into the mob and
disperse, make contact with sympathizers, and flee to a less oppressive
country.

~~~
jacquesm
I think you'll find it much harder to find enough Assange sympathizers to pull
this off than it was a few years ago. He's been working pretty hard to reduce
his - and WikiLeaks - image over the last couple of years.

Personally I think that by now he should get it over with and walk out, be
arrested, do the time for skipping bail and then he can put his extradition
theory to the test. The current political leadership in the USA is about as
pro Assange as it is ever going to get.

~~~
zzzcpan
If your enemy is a state actor, playing by its rules can only guarantee the
worst possible outcome. You would be lucky if you end up in prison for life.
Because "suicide" is also a very real possibility.

------
2close4comfort
Took them long enough to change the WiFi password.

------
phillipseamore
But can Pamela still visit?

------
chx
How ... convenient all of Wikileaks were damaging to the government of the USA
and somehow never to the government of Russia. And, of course, Mr Assange had
his show on RT (Russia Today). No way he is a Russian agent. No way.

~~~
tway923423
> _convenient all of Wikileaks were damaging to the government of the USA and
> somehow never to the government of Russia_

How about judging the information on its merits, not its source? Why does it
matter one wink if you don't like the leakers?

~~~
atonse
Intent matters.

There's a difference between a whistleblower wanting to expose things that
violate the constitution because they want those things to stop, and a foreign
agent exposing the same actions, but with the intent to destabilize people's
trust in their government.

The end result might be the same. But to say it doesn't matter where a leak
came from, is to also say that whistleblowers are no different from foreign
spies.

Update to add my bias here: This is why I can respect the actions of Edward
Snowden, but find Julian Assange completely untrustworthy.

~~~
tway923423
> _But to say it doesn 't matter where a leak came from, is to also say that
> whistleblowers are no different from foreign spies._

Well I guess we have to agree to disagree then. If a "foreign spy" reports
that Dow Checmial is dumping pollution in the river, I'm gonna question Dow
first, not the spy.

~~~
Sangermaine
You're being either extremely naive or intentionally obtuse.

No one is saying the information is false or should be ignored. To use your
example, if there were reason to believe that this spy was revealing this
information on behalf of Dow's competitors to influence the market and
shield/draw attention away from their own malfeasance, that's a concern. The
source and the intent of the source does actually matter.

~~~
crdoconnor
>No one is saying the information is false or should be ignored.

That was precisely the intention behind characterizing Assange as a Russian
spy during the election.

~~~
Sangermaine
No, it wasn't at all. The allegation was that Assange was selectively
releasing info on Clinton and the DNC that was obtained by Russian hackers for
the purpose of swaying the election in favor of Trump, or at least severely
damaging Clinton. The issue was never that the information was false. Even the
DNC itself confirmed that the emails were theirs.

More broadly, it's that Assange uses the guise of a seemingly-neutral Teller
of Truths to dole out information for the purpose of manipulation, either for
his own or other people's agendas.

~~~
crdoconnor
>The allegation was that Assange was selectively releasing info on Clinton and
the DNC that was obtained by Russian hackers

Exactly. This accusation was intended to be equal parts distraction from the
contents and ad hominem.

They also mooted the idea that he was a pedophile for a while, but it didn't
really take.

>either for his own or other people's agendas.

But of course. She literally expressed a desire to see him murdered because of
him doling out secrets. Who would take kindly to that?

------
youdontknowtho
Ouch. He will be out of there in no time. Hopefully someone can get the guy a
4G modem or something.

~~~
culot
That was something suggested during the blackout of his internet access in
2016-2017, but that would certainly be grounds to rescind the Ecuadorian
Welcome Mat.

------
neo4sure
Maybe UKIP leader Nigel Farage could make one more visit and give him a 4g
Modem and then forget why he went there in the first place.

------
drinchev
> The move came after Assange tweeted on Monday challenging Britain’s
> accusation that Russia was responsible for the nerve agent poisoning of a
> Russian former double agent and his daughter in the English city of
> Salisbury earlier this month.

So it's actually not so wrong to think that Russia is not >proven< guilty
after all.

I doubt that here, on HN, most of us would go so deep with conspiracy, but
rational thinking did not lead me to the conclusion that Putin is responsible
this time.

Of course we don't know the whole story, but shouldn't people like Assange
reveal it?

Also, why would the UK-Ecuador relations be in danger of a tweet of a
fugitive?

~~~
pnathan
> I doubt that here, on HN, most of us would go so deep with conspiracy, but
> rational thinking did not lead me to the conclusion that Putin is
> responsible this time.

Putin is given far too much credit. But the Russian wetworks division, under
Putin's authority, has its fingerprints all over the Salisbury attack.

> shouldn't people like Assange reveal it?

Largely Assange has been an anti-liberal democracy apologist for the last 5+
years. A sad turn for someone starting at a radical anarchist position, but
it's been pretty obvious. He's also largely destroyed any of Wikileaks rep as
a honest broker and reduced it to the reputation of "anti-US intelligence".
AFAICT, he's operating as a (probably unwitting) Russian front these days.

~~~
roenxi
> But the Russian wetworks division, under Putin's authority, has its
> fingerprints all over the Salisbury attack.

There is strong circumstantial evidence, but proof is a slightly different
game. It would be nice, for example, to have a clear motive for why Russia
might have poisoned the man. According to the wiki article the Russian justice
system had sentenced him to 13 years in a penal colony in 2006, and then
handed him over in a prisoners exchange in 2010. What happened to upgrade that
to a death sentence in 2018 that the GRU didn't know about in 2006-2010?

Evidence should be a high bar. We might suspect the Russians, but lets not
pretend there is any clear public evidence beyond government say-so. The
government can be wrong, just like the rest of us.

~~~
XorNot
An assassination attempt is made with a nerve gas only Russia is known to have
been developing and suddenly we should give them the benefit of the doubt?
Seriously? After they did the exact same thing already, in the same country,
with polonium?

~~~
dleslie
It's sort of a weird story, on the one hand it's apparently not hard to make
and it's been known about for some time[0], and it has a clearly Russian name
with a clearly Russian pedigree. It makes for a poor assassination agent if
you care about being traced.

On the other hand, having a clearly Russian pedigree may be precisely the
reason it was used; either to send a strong message to would-be dissenters in
the Russian intelligence sphere or to make it look like a Russian hit.

Spooks doing what spooks do, it seems.

0:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/556148/](https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/556148/)

~~~
jacquesm
The same thing happened with the radioactive tea. The perpetrators must have
known it would be traced back to the source, and that is exactly why you use a
substance like that, the murder is a byproduct of sending a message that will
be heard loud-and-clear by the people you are targeting.

