Picture | boiled wine
preface
Wiki, a website that American spy agencies hate so much, is dedicated to revealing to the public the secrets of the world.
For example, in 2010, the site published a lot of classified U.S. action plans, including the U.S. presidential election and the truth about 911, and even mentioned that a European foreign minister was actually an American spy.
Therefore, the founder of the website, Assange, has naturally become a thorn in the side of the US government, and now he is in danger of being extradited from the United Kingdom to the United States.
In this regard, many people said that if he could seek the asylum of a big country like Snowden, he might not fall into the current situation.
So how powerful is Assange? And what is the final outcome?
The growth history of top hackers
Assange's childhood can be said to have been spent in displacement.
Born in Australia in 1971, his parents divorced when he was just over a year old, and he has lived with his unruly mother, Christina.
It is said that when she was very young, Christina fell in love with the extremists of a cult organization, because the organization wanted her to sacrifice her child to the leader, and realized that something was wrong, so she fled with the child.
Later, in order to avoid the people of the organization, she took her young children and lived a life of wandering and uncertainty.
By the time Assange was fourteen, he had moved with his mother more than thirty times.
Such a frequent move will naturally adversely affect Assange's studies, because he needs to constantly change schools and adapt to the new learning environment, and he simply cannot go to school normally like his peers.
Although he could not receive a systematic formal education for a long time, he was gifted and relied on what he learned in class and read a lot of books to make up for the gap with other children of the same age by self-study, and later his classmates said in interviews that he remembered Assange's math well at school.
Perhaps due to his nature or growing up, he does not like to make friends and hang out with other children, but prefers to be with books and machines.
When he was fourteen, he used to go to an electronics store across the street and write programs on a computer in the store.
Seeing her son's interest in this, Christina bought him a computer and bought him a modem when he was sixteen.
Thanks to the combination of talent, interest and hard work, having possessed these devices made him a master hacker who could hack into any secure network.
In the highly secure Australian and Canadian telecommunications company systems, there are traces of his intrusion.
Like other young boys and girls, during his immersion in hacking, he met a girl with the same interests as himself, and eventually fell in love with her, and the two had a child.
In 1991, at the age of twenty, his hacking skills were already top-notch, and as his strength increased, he began to no longer be satisfied with those targets that could be easily hacked, so he decided to challenge the world's most rigorous network center, the network information center of the US Department of Defense.
At that time, he and two other hackers formed a three-person group, and through competitive cooperation, after a period of effort, successfully invaded the government's network system, successfully completing the most difficult challenge for hackers in the world.
Although he and two other accomplices were secretive from beginning to end, they were discovered by Australian police and eventually arrested by the three men.
Because it took the authorities more than three years to hand over the proposal to the judge, Assange's lawsuit took four years.
In the end, because the judge had a good heart, considering his young age, outstanding talent, special upbringing, and behavior was only an intrusion into the Internet, and did not cause substantial damage to others, he was not sentenced to prison, but only made him pay a fine of five thousand dollars.
Although the four-year hacking lawsuit here has ended, there is something on the other side that makes him more painful, that is, the lawsuit with his girlfriend.
After he was arrested in 1991, his girlfriend left him with the child, so he will continue to fight for custody of the child after the hacker lawsuit is over.
In 1999, after several years of long tugging, he and his girlfriend finally agreed on a custody agreement, and due to physical and mental exhaustion, he was full of silver hair.
According to British media reports, it was after this lawsuit with his girlfriend that he suspected that the authorities were deliberately making things difficult for him, causing him to no longer trust the authorities and the idea of decryption.
Got into trouble because of starting a website
Assange has said he believes government rule can be more just if information is transparent and open, so in 2006, his WikiLeaks website went live.
As a non-profit-making decryption website, although WikiLeaks has the word "wiki", it has nothing to do with another well-known website, but a website founded by Assange in order to achieve public freedom of information and uncover the truth of some things.
The core personnel of the website, in addition to the identity of the founder Assange, are also five hacker members who are still obsessed, and the website is jointly managed and operated by them, which is why even if Assange is later troubled, the website can still operate normally.
And in the later period, this website also indirectly helped China find a lot of crooks from the United States, although it may be unintentional, but it did help China.
Then, within a few years of its establishment, the site became a thorn in the side of many politicians around the world for its frequent disclosure of classified content from many countries.
They believed that this decryption website, if it continued to operate, would pose a great threat to their identity and national image, so they began to join forces to suppress the website.
For example, hiring many hackers, frequently invading the website, affecting the operation of the website, and by making mainstream banks refuse to provide services to Assange, so that the website will fall into a financial crisis, etc., hoping to use these means to make the website operator retreat.
On the other hand, Assange, the founder of the website, has also become the target of many people because he is the only person known on the website, and because he is always at risk of being assassinated, he has to dye his hair and grow his beard, constantly changing his residence and contact information, just to survive.
Despite the fact that the founders of this site are tired of hiding and the operation of the site is blocked at every turn, the site still strives to insist on publishing the confidential content.
It can be imagined that it is difficult to say that behind this is not the US government, or other politicians who are not used to the website, who are secretly doing things and want to take advantage of the opportunity to retaliate against him.
Eventually, desperate, he turned himself in to the United Kingdom, and after paying bail, sought asylum at the British embassy in Ecuador for seven years.
Arrested and imprisoned, extradition pending
At first, he was well treated and protected at the embassy, but in 2018, the relationship took a sharp turn.
As asylum ended, he had to be taken out of the embassy by several strong men and then put in a British prison.
In 2022, the UK's decision to extradite him to the United States came as a thunderbolt for him and his supporters.
Because everyone knew that once Assange arrived in the United States, he would most likely face imprisonment to death on espionage charges, his legal team quickly appealed, but the appeal was ultimately rejected.
In June 2023, because of strong opposition, the United Kingdom once again held a hearing on whether to extradite.
At present, Assange's supporters are still working for his freedom, and there are many international voices wishing to shelter him, and the extradition is still inconclusive.
Looking back on his experience, from his childhood without a fixed place to live in hiding, to hiding in hiding in the embassy and not being able to take a step out of the embassy for seven years, and now he has been arrested and imprisoned, starting a prison life, it can be said that this hacker master has been in turmoil and ups and downs for nearly half of his life.
Some people say that he is a clown who attracts attention and undermines social stability, but some people say that he is Robin Hood in the hacker world and an idealist full of justice, so what do you think of him, if he did not choose Eritrea's asylum, would the outcome be different?
Please click "Follow", which is convenient for you to discuss and share, and can bring you a different sense of participation, thank you for your support.
Disclaimer: If the content of the article involves the content of the work, copyright pictures or other issues, please contact to delete. Finally, if you have any different ideas about this event, welcome to leave a message in the comment area to discuss!