More Wikileaks info for you. It’s pretty hard to think of a bigger tech story in 2010 than the site’s rise to prominence. Obviously it’s been around for a while now, but it didn’t really ruffle any feathers—always a good thing—until this year. Today’s developments: it would certainly appear that Public Enemy Number One (in the eyes of certain talking heads here in the U.S.), Julian Assange, is currently somewhere in the south-west of the UK. Authorities there know full well that he’s there, but they’re working out some of the logistical details, not least of which include talking to Assange’s legal team, before making any moves. From this we can infer that it’s a matter of when, not if, Assange will end up in custody.
There’s also been an alteration in the Swedish arrest warrant stemming from an alleged incident. It basically makes it easier for the UK police to act on the Swedish warrant as per EU regulations.
Assange, as you would expect, has said that this is nothing more than a smear campaign being waged against him.
It’s not too hard to see his point here. How many “normal” people wanted for what appears to be a routine arrest warrant end up with an Interpol Red Notice?
The authorities couldn’t have done a worse job making all of this seem less connected.
Oh, and Sweden has now refused Assange’s appeal. The only thing leaking out here is the notion you may have had that Assange is being treated like anyone else.
Another development worth mentioning: the Amazon connection. You’ll recall that some “hacktivist” had managed to knock Wikipedia offline by initiating a denial of service attack. I mean, I put bread in the toaster this morning and made toast, but you don’t see me boasting about it, do you?
Wikileaks had then switched over hosting duties to Amazon’s S3 services, which prompted some people to call for a boycott of the site. Then Amazon kicked Wikileaks off its servers, which then prompted some to threaten to boycott Amazon for not supporting free speech.
It’s all a bit silly, really, all this back-and-forth.