Julian Assange - WikiLeaks (25 page)

A
Newsweek
article dated August 26, 2010 got Julian extremely angry. This article quoted ‘Someone close to WikiLeaks' who declared that a certain number of collaborators were worried about the defense Julian used when speaking of defamation and conspiracy against him without justification. These same collaborators thought about how to persuade him to step away from the movement during the Swedish affair.

Julian contacted Daniel electronically.
Wired
magazine got a hold of the details of the discussion, and even if Daniel Domscheit-Berg denied giving this document to the magazine, he confirmed the content of the following discussion:

Daniel
: What are the agreements re Iraq? I need to understand what the plan is there, and what the constraints are.

Julian answered with a copy of the transcript in
Newsweek
:

The appeal was never heard, and Daniel resigned the following Saturday, sending shock waves through WikiLeaks.

Julian announced that he had agreed with the press to publish the
Iraq War Logs
at the end of October. They weren't ready and didn't want to have the same response as before.

Herbert Snorrason, a twenty-five-year-old Icelandic student who participated in the security of WikiLeak's chat room for the volunteers, reacted harshly: “The release date which was established was completely unrealistic. We found out that the level of editing done on the Afghanistan documents was not sufficient. I announced that if the next batch did not receive
full attention, I would not be willing to cooperate.” His request made it to Julian who answered: “I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier and all the rest. If you have a problem with me, piss off.”

Herbert Snorrason
pissed off
. He told wired.com: “I believe that Julian has in fact pushed the capable people away. His behavior is not of the sort that will keep independent-minded people interested.”

Daniel gave a very quick interview to
Der Spiegel
and commented:

“We grew insanely fast in recent months and we urgently need to become more professional and transparent in all areas. This development is being blocked internally. It is no longer clear even to me who is actually making decisions and who is answerable to them. I have tried again and again to push for that, but Julian Assange reacted to any criticism with the allegation that I was disobedient to him and disloyal to the project. He suspended me – acting as the prosecutor, judge and hangman in one person. Since then, for example, I have had no access to my WikiLeaks mail. So a lot of work is just sitting and other helpers are being blocked. I know that no one in our core team agreed with the move. But that doesn't seem to matter. WikiLeaks has a structural problem. I no longer want to take responsibility for it, and that's why I am leaving the project.”

What WikiLeaks was going through was typical of young start-up companies that grow quickly. The founder originally surrounded himself with skilled and committed lieutenants generally chosen from his inner circle. Then, when there were enough resources,
the young creator started expanding the business to meet new people, present his company's results and make promises, convinced of his success and already picturing himself at the head of a multinational in five years. At that moment, he had less time to talk to his team left behind to handle productive tasks and surrounded himself with people who would make him several proposals. It was at that point that there was a break, when the creator realized that he had moved to the next level, beyond his original collaborators. He couldn't explain everything to them, they wouldn't understand and he had to surround himself with new, more competent people to climb even higher. He was embarrassed, but that was what he wanted. He respected his lieutenants, he had shared so much with them, they were his friends, but he had to make some major decisions. It was for the good of the company he told himself. It was often for the good of his ego as well. And his friendships started to fray ever so slightly that he didn't even notice it. However, at the first sign of internal crisis, he responded very violently, the words and images of his advisors began to flood back, they were right, he couldn't continue on with these people, and it was without blinking that he ejected them to continue onward with people that fed his ambition.

For the lieutenant it was incomprehension, then trying to remain confident, but arriving at inevitable situations that pushed him into a crisis. And it was a major shock, he kind of expected it, but didn't want to believe it could happen. He couldn't be mad at his old friend because they shared so much together. If it were up to him, he would have probably done the same thing. He also had an entrepreneurial spirit, but never had the courage to start up a business. He kind of envied him. He realized that he was a
follower and that now it was time to muster up some courage and become a creator.

Julian declared in August: “I enjoy creating systems on a grand scale, and I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing bastards.”

That was Daniel's wake up call. It was time to move into the spotlight. He was now known as Daniel Domscheit-Berg, his real name, and he was also creating on a large scale.

In December, he was approached to write his book, just like Julian was. Two men led WikiLeaks, now two men would wage a war for transparence, both at the same level.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg's project was simple: creating a system in sync with his own convictions and ideas called
OpenLeaks
.

It had the same initial promise: allowing anonymous whistleblowers to submit sensitive information to the media by guaranteeing them total security from one end of the chain to the other.

As an ideal organization, he already had ten people helping him, including Herbert Snorrason and a few other WikiLeaks dissidents and CCC supporters. The tasks weren't segmented, everyone had their place: “We are a foundation, registered as such in Germany, not an underground organization. This means that we have no political agenda, we have no motives to hide, and we build our tools in order to be able to control it. We must maintain control while remaining neutral.”

The concept was an evolution of WikiLeaks. The engineer was able to think while Julian was mixing politics and communications. He kept saying he was a technician. His mission was to offer an efficient solution so that truth warriors could battle. He was an intermediary, a facilitator and a partner. It was a collective action for the collectivity: “We want to allow trade unions, NGOs and media to work together and allow them to embed their own
version of OpenLeaks, a kind of Privacybox [mail drop box] with advanced features. The use is free of charge, but we have different approaches and models. If you're a major newspaper, you can choose a dedicated system designed to meet your specific needs, in case you need a greater computing power for instance. In all cases, you have two accesses, one reserved for you and one that allows you to access the network of collaborators.”

When WikiLeaks' French technology partner questioned him, he said: “At OWNI [French media group], for example, you follow diligently HADOPI [French creation and Interne law] or ACTA [Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement]. From our side, we have interesting documents on this subject, submitted by an informant who believes you are best placed to investigate. The informant may choose to give you private access to documents for two weeks – for example – after which you decide whether to publish the documents in question.”

His approach was open-source because he wanted an open organization. He accepted all partners and WikiLeaks could even become one of them. There was no competition in his world. In fact, he was not mad at Julian: “Julian is a really brilliant person and he has a lot of very, very special talents. We've always [thrived by] a diversity of qualities that different people bring in… That works as long as you're working in a team. But whenever you lose that spirit, then one of the qualities just becomes too dominant in some ways—such as taking solitary decisions and thinking that you're in a position to do that. We have to stand together on the important issues that concerns everyone one of us on the planet and the quality of all our lives.”

Like his alter ego, Daniel Domscheit-Berg quoted Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his speech while accepting the Nobel Prize in 1970: “Rescue of humankind is possible if everything is everyone's business. That's what the real information society is.”

“Now, in many respects, information has never been so free. There are more ways to spread more ideas to more people than at any other moment in history. And even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.”

These words reflect the idea defended by Julian Assange: information for all and an improvement of governance. They are taken from a speech given by Hillary Clinton on January 21, 2010 at the Newseum, an interactive museum of news and journalism in Washington. With force and conviction, she expressed the importance of new technologies for the freedom of the people. As a representative of the homeland of freedom, she warned that, “Technologies, with the potential to open up access to government and promote transparency, can also be hijacked by governments to crush dissent and deny human rights.” She then quoted President Barack Obama during his trip to China. He said that the more freely information flows, the stronger a society becomes. He spoke about “how access to information could help citizens hold their own governments accountable, generate new ideas, encourage creativity and entrepreneurship. The United States believes in that fundamental truth.” America the great intends to promote freedom thanks to the Internet. What a marvelous speech.