Monday, August 20, 2012

Timeline: Julian Assange & Wikileaks




Below is a timeline of events focused on Julian Assange and Wikileaks. The timeline begins with the release of the Afghanistan war files in 2010.

All stories highlighted in red are posts that have appeared right here on EconomicPolicyJournal.com.




2010
  • July 25 - WikiLeaks Drops 90,000 War Docs; Fingers Pakistan as Insurgent Ally [Source]
  • July 29 - Karzai calls WikiLeaks disclosures 'shocking' and dangerous to Afghan informants. [Source]
  • July 29 - Gates Asks FBI To Help In Probe Of Leaked DocumentsDefense Secretary Robert Gates said he asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to help the Pentagon investigate the leak of secret U.S. documents on the war in Afghanistan..“It is important that we have all the resources we need to investigate and assess this breach of national security,” Gates said. “We will aggressively investigate and wherever possible prosecute.” [Source]

  • August 2 - WikiLeaks will fund itself via Flattr, Pirate Bay founder's startup [Source]
  • August 21 - Swedish Prosecutor Withdraws Arrest Warrant For WikiLeaks Founder Assange - Chief Prosecutor Eva Finne “has come to the decision that Julian Assange is not suspected of rape,” a three-sentence English-language statement on her Stockholm office’s website said today. “Considering that, Assange is no longer arrested in his absence.” [Source]
  • September 1 - Sweden Resumes Rape Probe Against WikiLeaks Founder [Source]
  • October - WikiLeaks publishes the Iraq War logs, 400,000 classified US documents on the Iraq war from 2004 to 2009. [Source]
  • November 11 - WikiLeaks Twitter Account Details Handed Over to US Authorities - The ruling doesn't cover the actual messages posted from, through or to the WikiLeaks Twitter account, though — only the IP addresses and email addresses of those associated with the account are to be handed over. [Source]
  • November 28 - A self-proclaimed "hacktivist" calling himself "The Jester" carries out a DDOS attack on Wikileaks' servers. [Source]
  • November 30 - WikiLeaks Founder Assange Plans Release Of U.S. Bank's Documents Next Year [Source]
  • December 1 - Amazon quits hosting Wikileaks. [Source]
  • December 1 - Assange on most-wanted list - Interpol has placed the Australian-born founder of WikiLeaks on its most-wanted list after Sweden issued an arrest warrant against him as part of a rape investigation. [Source]
  • December 2 - Sweden’s Supreme Court won’t consider WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s appeal of his arrest warrant on rape charges. [Source]
  • December 2 - Lieberman Introduces Anti-WikiLeaks Legislation [Source]
  • December 3 - WikiLeaks Moves Website To Switzerland After U.S. Domain Service Cut Off - WikiLeaks, which is releasing about 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables, began directing readers to the Swiss domain WikiLeaks.ch rather than WikiLeaks.org, it said on a Twitter feed...The Swiss Pirate Party, a political group that supports copyright and patent law changes, owns the domain name WikiLeaks.ch, which reroutes to WikiLeaks.org content, Denis Simonet, a spokesman, said. [Source]
  • December 4 - PayPal Freezes WikiLeaks Account [Source]
  • December 6 - Assange in talks with British officials to come out of hiding [Source]
  • December 6 - Julian Assange Defense Fund Frozen by Swiss Bank Post
  • December 7 - Julian Assange Is Arrested By U.K. Police On Behalf Of Swedish Authorities [Source]
  • December 7 - Julian Assange Speaks: Don't Shoot the Messenger
  • December 8 - WikiLeaks avoids shutdown as supporters worldwide go on the offensive - Blocked from using one Internet host, WikiLeaks simply jumped to another. Meanwhile, the number of "mirror" Web sites - effectively clones of WikiLeaks' main contents pages - grew from a few dozen last week to 200 by Sunday. By early Wednesday, the number of such sites surpassed 1,000. At the same time, WikiLeaks' supporters have apparently gone on the offensive, staging retaliatory attacks against Internet companies that have cut ties to the group amid fears they could be associated with it. On Wednesday, hackers briefly shut down access to the Web sites for MasterCard and Visa, both of which had announced they had stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks. [Source]
  • December 9 - One Assange Accuser May Have Stopped Co-Operating
  • December 10 -Assange Lawyer Says He May Face Espionage Act Charges [Source]
  • December 10 - U.S. Talking to Swedes about Assange Being Delivered into U.S. Custody
  • December 14 - Prison Conditions fo Assange According to Julian Assange's attorney, Mark Stephens, Assange is in solitary confinement for 23 1/2 hours a day, where he is unable to talk to any other prisoners. He is subjected to infared photography 24 hours per day and is not allowed to read any newspapers.
  • December 14 - Assange Granted Bail
  • December 16 - Assange is Out
  • December 20 - Apple Removes WikiLeaks App From App Store [Source]
  • December 21 -  Assange Says It's Bank of America - Speculation all along has been that WikiLeaks has emails from a top executive of Bank of America. Now, Julian Assange has confirmed this to a reporter for U.K.'s The Times.
  • December 22 - Assange on Supposed Manipulation by Soros and Mossad
  • December 24 - WikiLeaks To Publish Israeli Documents, Al Jazeera TV Reported - WikiLeaks plans to publish thousands of secret documents related to Israel over the next six months, Julian Assange, founder of the Wikileaks website, said in an interview with Al Jazeera television. WikiLeaks has 3,700 documents, 2,700 of which originated in Israel and discuss Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon, the assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai and subsequent diplomatic cables on fake passports used by the assassins, Assange told the TV channel... [Source]
  • December 27 - Assange signs books deals worth $1.5 million [Source]
2011
  • January 17 - Former Swiss banker hands over offshore banking details to WikiLeaks - A former Swiss banker on Monday publicly turned over to WikiLeaks confidential offshore banking details of about 2,000 account holders, setting the stage for new revelations by the whistleblower group. "I am against the system, and I know how the system works, I know that from a day-to-day business," said Rudolf Elmer, a former senior banker who worked in the Cayman Islands office of the Swiss bank Julius Baer. [Source]
  • February 1 - Julian Assange on '60 Minutes'
  • February 16 - Dershowitz Becomes Part of Julian Assange's Legal Team
  • February 24 - Judge Rules Assange Should Be Extradited to Sweden Assange, founder of the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, should be extradited from Britain to Sweden to face questioning over sexual-assault allegations by two women, a U.K. judge ruled. [Source]
  • March 3 - Calderon: WikiLeaks caused severe damage to U.S.-Mexico relations - Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Thursday that the release of State Department cables criticizing Mexico’s anti-drug fight had caused “severe damage” to its relationship with the United States and suggested that tensions had risen so dramatically that he could no longer work with the American ambassador in his country. [Source]
  • March 29 - Is Julian Assange an 'Electronic Libertarian'?
  • April 25 - WikiLeaks Releases Guantánamo Bay Prisoner Reports [Source]
  • April 26 - WikiLeaks Donations Topped $1.9 Million in 2010 [Source]
  • May 30 - Hacktivists Scorch PBS in Retaliation for WikiLeaks Documentary [Source]
  • June 16 - Julian Assange auctions himself on eBay [Source]
  • June 30 - WikiLeaks video parodies MasterCard [Source]
  • July 5 - EBay’s PayPal U.K. Twitter Account Suspended After Hacker AttackA tweet sent from the hacked account read, “PayPal can freeze your funds for no reason, do not use PayPal!!” The account’s photo and description was changed before being taken down by Twitter. [Source]
  • July 8 - Visa Europe Blocks WikiLeaks Donations Through Payment Site [Source] 
  • July 19 - U.S. Charges 16 With Cyber Attack On Paypal Over WikiLeaks [Source]
  • August 23 - Wikileaks Releases Thousands More Cables Covering China, Taiwan and Libya [Source]
  • August 30 - Will Assange be "Suicided" in Prison?
  • October 11 - The U.S. Government Demands that Google Hand Over Email Data from a Wikileaks Volunteer [Source]
  • October 24 - WikiLeaks stops publishing, cites low funds [Source]
  • November 2 - Assange Loses U.K. Extradition AppealThe U.K. Court of Appeal today said the 40-year-old Australian must return to Sweden, where he’s sought in an investigation of two sexual assault cases. [Source]
2012
  • January 25 - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will host a talk show on a Russian TV network - [Source]
  • January 30 - Julian Assange to Appear on The Simpsons [Source]
  • February 27 - WikiLeaks publishes e-mails from Stratfor intelligence firm - The group claims the e-mails reveal information about what it called the U.S. government’s “attacks” on Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange. The documents are also said to reveal a great deal about how Stratfor, an analysis firm based in Austin, Tex., runs its business. The firm provides geopolitical analysis to corporate and government clients. [Source]
  • June 20 - Assange Seeks Asylum in Ecuador's London Embassy
  • July 5 - Wikileaks To Publish Millions Of Emails From Syrian Officials [Source]
  • July 29 - The Fake NY Times WikiLeaks Op-Ed That Fooled Pretty Much Everybody [Source]
  • August 12 - Wikileaks gets pummeled by unknown attackers - The DDoS traffic, which has reportedly been coming in at a rate of 10 gigabits per second, has effectively crippled the site, and raised all sorts of questions as to who might be behind it. [Source]
  • August 15 - Britain Threatens to Storm the Ecuadorian Embassy
  • August 16 - Hague Says U.K. Won’t Allow Assange Safe Passage Out Of Britain [Source]
  • August 16 - How Ecuador Reached It's Decision to Grant Assange Asylum
  • August 17 - Correa Says Assange May Stay In Ecuador Embassy Indefinitely [Source]
  • August 18 - INTERPOL has Assange on its homepage as a Red Notice super fugitive
  • August 19 - Assange Calls On U.S. To End Its ‘Witch Hunt’ Of WikiLeaks “I ask President Obama to do the right thing,” Assange said. “The United States must renounce its witch hunt against WikiLeaks. The United States must vow it will not seek to prosecute our staff or our supporters. The U.S. administration’s war on whistle-blowers must end.” [Source]
  • August 20 - 'Operation Free Assange': Anonymous take down UK's Justice Ministry's website [Source]

A wealth of libertarian commentary about Wikileaks can be found here.

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