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A week ago Wiki Leaks appeared on the backfoot as the US pulled its punches and the red corner notice of Interpol was issued for the arrest of then hiding Julian Assange the Wiki Leaks founder for sexual offences at Sweden. After initially creating high interest the 600 odd published documents of total 250,000 leaked manuscripts showed the documents were not classified nor anything special. It was more about loose off the cuff remarks by big mouths rather than any strategic policy matter of lasting interest. But just as the interest had started waning the London police arrested Assange after he was denied bail after a voluntary surrender. Overnight public sympathy shifted towards Assange and the Wiki Leaks batttle became a world wide fight for internet freedom and Julian Assange the posterboy icon, unfairly witch hunted by big brother authorities.
An US online opinion poll held by Zogby Interactive on the 2nd of December showed that nearly 63% of the 2,000 people surveyed were opposed to any US News organization publishing the leaked documents despite the fact that a reputed daily such as New York Times was actually responsible to vet and clear the Wiki Leak documents to the media in US. Besides nearly 77 % of those polled felt that the leaked documents compromised US security interest , the official line of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama adminstration. After many months President Obama both found rightwing and left wing support for his stand and politicians like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee even called for Assange's head.
Then in a strategic move Julian Assange hired one of London's best lawyers for human rights Mark Stephens. They decided that following an European arrest warrant issued at the behest of Swedish authorities, Assange would surrender formally before a London court and appeal for bail. The 39 year old Australian whistle blower accompanied by consular officials and 5 prominent people including Journalist John Pilger, Film Director KenLoach, and celebrity Ms Jemima Khan who had agreed to be sureties, surrendered before the Police at 9.30 a.m. GMT . As expected Judge Howard Riddle refused to give bail and he was remanded to judicial custody till 14th December the time needed to get ready extradition papers.
Assange had some support amongst activist groups even before his arrest as he was percieved tobe fighting a war against the big brother the US Adminstration . Following his arrest his popularity spiralled and activist groups hacked anti Assange websites in the cyber space and created total chaos with credit card and payment service providers like Paypal, Master Card , Visa and atleast one Swiss Bank who had frozen Assange's account.
Operation Payback was launched on the internet with thousands of teenage debaters flooding the chatrooms in support of Assange and planning the most vicious of cyber attacks that flooded payment gateways with frivolous requests slowing down their servers and causing them to close or crash . They attacked unision in one case 30,000 computers from the shadows without any fear of retaliation knowing that it was impossible to do mass arrests of the youth and old who were together in this battle.
One 16 year old student hacker was arrested in Netherlands causing the movement to grow stronger. There were no rules of engagement in this kind of emerging warfare because any computer could join forces in seconds following a chatroom discussion for a single attack and new ones could partcipate for other attacks. The attackers were numerous and varying from attack to attack. They were spread out from across the globe and importantly with no previous criminal record.
Activist organisations like Avaaz picked up Assange's cause sensing a popular movement and reportedly got 400,000signatures of support from the cyber world within 24 hours. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard who had shown no interest in his arrest initially confirmed that full diplomatic support shallbe provided to Assange like any other citizen which makes his possible extradition to the US even more difficult. Overnight Julian Assange became the poster boy of internet freedom as hackers declared that more attacks will be made against those percieved as enemies to Assange. Clearly Governments had lost the first battle against Jullian Assange who had turned as the icon of internet freedom fighting against the original champions of democracy the US and West European nations.
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