The arrest in London of Julian Assange commented on and analyzed by Umberto Rapetto, general (res.) Of the Guardia di Finanza, former commander of the GAT Special Telematic Fraud Unit
Doctor Rapetto, the arrest in London of Julian Assange has aroused renewed interest in this figure who, since 2012, had remained in dim light. Several years after the explosion of cases involving WikiLeaks, how much weight still has the figure of him and the issues to which it was connected
“The story begins to be more or less consolidated, to the point that, despite what is usually said, other organizations such as OpenLeaks and others have joined WikiLeaks. The phenomenon of leaking, the fact of filtering certain information, is literally equivalent to making a hole inside a pipe to let the water escape. In fact, WikiLeaks does not exist, it is a spontaneous aggregation of which Julian Assange is only the spokesperson, the only ‘public’ face of a movement that is the son of the so-called cypherpunks, which were governed by an old architect now over eighty, such John Young, leading expert on Freedom of informaction act (Foia) and considered the ‘spiritual father’ of Julian Assange.What was Young’s ascendancy over Assange?
“For John Young, the philosophy was to make documents public that were otherwise not accessible. As soon as they were declassified, they were published on his site. This since 1996, with the publication of even uncomfortable documents, extracted according to the law or obtained in less clear ways. When he realized that it was possible to give a voice to subjects who did not, he contributed to the creation of this movement initially made up of few people who had interlocutors but which, little by little, materially attracted the attention of all those who were in possession of some information. The cornerstone was the total anonymity of the sources and the verification of their reliability, after which their publication according to criteria that were decided from time to time. This network has now exceeded the thousands of adherents and documents that are of a governmental nature or come from intelligence, from the military rather than industrial world, from all that can be administrative or informative activity have flown into it. Hence the international connotation: there are no geographical divisions. Many times we go to touch the illegality of the documentation that is acquired but it is clear that what is collected has a weight equivalent to the explosion of an atomic device, because the sources are embedded within the organizations “. there are no geographical divisions. Many times we go to touch the illegality of the documentation that is acquired but it is clear that what is collected has a weight equivalent to the explosion of an atomic device, because the sources are embedded within the organizations “. there are no geographical divisions. Many times we go to touch the illegality of the documentation that is acquired but it is clear that what is collected has a weight equivalent to the explosion of an atomic device, because the sources are embedded within the organizations “.In Italy we have had similar cases
“Over time all kinds of information began to arrive. As for Italy, we owe to WikiLeaks for example the discovery of the activity carried out by Hacking Team, the company producing a software used by prosecutors, behind which there was the so-called RCS (Remote control system). And the whole thing had been discovered by WikiLeaks because someone had turned the copy of the entire email archive of Hacking Team, allowing to find out how he had sold remote control software aimed at targeting PCs, mobile phones and tablets, and bought by governments. North Africans who had to fight the Arab Spring and find dissidents or journalists who made inquiries that could be uncomfortable “.In the last few days the case has re-exploded: what happened
“Yesterday, WikiLeaks released a series of documents showing how the Ecuadorian government, at whose embassy Assange had taken refuge, was the protagonist of a particularly significant global espionage activity. In less than 24 hours, the status of political refugee was revoked in Assange but the thing was already in the air. In March, the internet and other technologies were blocked and, at the same time, the ban on meeting people freely. As early as 2012 there was an arrest warrant signed by the Westminster magistracy. The British intelligence and police forces had armored the whole area, also guarding the underground cavities with respect to the headquarters of the Ecuadorian embassy. He was able to speak about him in public from the balconies, then he was banned ”.What is he accused of
? “He would have been deprived of the status granted because, according to the Ecuadorian president, he would have repeatedly contravened the rules of coexistence within the diplomatic headquarters. On Assange hangs a sort of catalog of crimes committed according to the Americans, which would demonstrate that he is guilty of conspiracy and ‘attack’ on national security. He is pending a proceeding for sexual violence, on which there is no certain evidence but which would have been the pick with which Sweden wanted to physically win what had now become a sort of coveted prey that could guarantee the position of bargaining power towards the Americans “.There is a sort of ambivalence around the figure of Assange, different interpretations and connotations that are attributed to him depending on the point of view, between those who consider him an important revealer of information and those who are an ambiguous man …
“Assange for some embodies the ‘Robin Hood’ of the third millennium, the one who steals from the bad guys. But in any case he steals and this is a decisive element, which lends itself to all the criticisms that are as legitimate as more than worthy of respect are the expressions of applause of those who say that, if it had not been for him, certain things would not have come. to the light. For some he is a kind of black avenger. In many cases, there was a risk that the published documents were not so authentic as to shift the balance. Both he and, perhaps in a greater way, John Young, have given a push to what was the granite condition for which those in power can dispose of it with both hands. It is an almost Copernican revolution, an overturning of the table for which to command and who has the information. This is a supremacy in quantitative, qualitative and temporal terms. What was collected by WikiLeaks, net of the more or less shareable modalities, marked a fundamental step in history “.
(extract from Interris; here the full version)
