The Man Behind Wikileaks

I chose to dive a little deeper into the life and character of Julian Assange. I think that his persona is very interesting and that knowing more about him will show more about the Wikileaks Controversy, his reasoning behind his activism, and his protest against censorship.

Assange was born in Townsville Queensland, and spent much of his youth living on Magnetic Island Assange says he did not meet his biological father, John Shipton, until the age of 25. When he was one year old, his mother Christine married theatre director Brett Assange, who raised him from the age of one and gave him his surname. Assange moved 30 times before he turned 14, attending many schools, Assange stated that he had lived in 50 different towns and attended 37 different schools. In 1987, after turning 16, Assange began hacking under the name "Mendax". He and two other hackers joined to form a group they named the International Subversives. In this group Assange wrote a code of honor that in essence stated that they could not harm any systems that they hack, which included crashing them. The Australian Federal Police became aware of this group and set up "Operation Weather" to investigate their hacking. In September 1991 Mendax was discovered in the act of hacking into the Melbourne master terminal of Nortel, the Canadian telecommunications company. The Australian Federal Police tapped his phones, which lead to his arrest. It took a grand total of 3 years before his trail made it to court. He was charged with 31 accounts of hacking and was released on a bond for good conduct with a fine of $2,100. The judge had said that he would have received a more severe punishment if it weren’t for his ruff childhood. In 1989, Assange started living with his girlfriend and they had a son, Daniel Assange.  They split up during the period of Assange's arrest and conviction. They subsequently engaged in a lengthy custody struggle and did not agree on a custody arrangement until 1999. In 1993, Assange was involved in starting one of the first public Interent Service providers in Australia, Suburbia Public Access Network. Starting in 1994, he lived in Melbourne as a programmer and a developer of free software. During this period he worked in a number of different fields, as a security consultant, a researcher in journalism and started his own IT company. From 2003 to 2006, Assange attended the University of Melbourne mainly studying physics and mathematics and briefly studying philosophy and neuroscience. Then finally in 2006 WikiLeaks was founded and his controversy with that began.

"Julian Assange, WikiLeaks Editor - News, Articles, Biography, Photos - WSJ.com."Wall Street Journal Topics - Profiles and Biographies - Wsj.com. Web. 30 Nov. 2011. <http://topics.wsj.com/person/A/julian-assange/6198>.

"Julian Assange." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 30 Nov. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange>.