Part 11 (2/2)

It was because of this crucial difference that John Young didn't join Julian a.s.sange. Although he was a member of the original mailing list of WikiLeaks prior to launching the site in January 2007, John Young responded brutally (he's known for being totally unpredictable) to a message from Julian a.s.sange who wanted to raise a budget of five million US dollars to launch WikiLeaks into cybers.p.a.ce. He estimated that hosting his site didn't cost him more than a hundred dollars a month and just couldn't agree with this highly suspicious ambition. He left the organization on January 7, 2007 and deleted his JYA account from the members list.

However, John Young took care of creating another more anonymous account and continued to follow the e-mail circulating within the project. He regularly published messages about financial and ethical questions on actions and even on the divisions discussed among members. He made everyone who opposed WikiLeaks very happy.

In any case, his position was more complex. He often repeated that n.o.body should trust him and that you couldn't trust anybody, and even said, ”I'm a member of WikiLeaks... I am critic of WikiLeaks. My current shtick is to pretend that I am an opponent of WikiLeaks. It's called friendly opposition. Praising each other is so insipid. Your parents praise you. Your friends never do. They know it's a con job, so praise is manipulation. Criticism is more candid.” He added with some irony: ”a.s.sange hasn't returned the favor.”

According to John Young, the problem was what Julian had done with WikiLeaks: ”I have separated WikiLeaks from Julian. He has now taken off on his own path... He's on the verge of a career of being Julian a.s.sange. He's used WikiLeaks to leverage that. So now WikiLeaks is breaking away from him and other wikis are being set up by other people disaffected by his monomania.”

In fact, he was always a bit suspicious of this 'humorless' character, poking fun at pretentious people. He recognized his acting talent. He wasn't at all surprised to see WikiLeaks picked up by mainstream media: ”The mainstream media have used flattery, attention and bribery, all the usual ways that you bring people in the fold because it's irresistible if you have a narcissistic streak.”

John Young felt that WikiLeaks had lost some of its original simplicity and that the problem was on the inside. Members didn't know how to manage Julian's ambitions and their naive amateurism was confronted with a tough business world.

As for their continuous need for money, Young said: ”You should never do it for money. Only because that contaminates the credibility and it turns it into a business opportunity where there's great treachery and lying going on. And it will contaminate WikiLeaks. They're acting like a cult. They're acting like a religion. They're acting like a government. They're acting like a bunch of spies. They're hiding their ident.i.ty. They don't account for the money. They promise all sorts of good things. They seldom let you know what they're really up to. They have rituals and all sorts of wonderful stuff. So I admire them for their showmans.h.i.+p and their entertainment value. But I certainly would not trust them with information if it had any value, or if it put me at risk or anyone that I cared about.”

If John Young continued to broadcast all the information he received, found or discovered about WikiLeaks, it was always with the goal of sharing knowledge and letting the public form its own opinion. He didn't hesitate to publish very critical e-mails about a.s.sange that he received from a strange WikiLeaks insider without even checking their ident.i.ty.

Young also didn't hesitate to heavily criticize the attacks directed at Julian or WikiLeaks by press giants or politicians.

Even though John Young could be seen as Julian's rival, he was still a great defender of the truth and would never let anyone attack knights of transparency.

22.

DDOS: DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG OR SCHMITT.

December 29, 2007: 24C3, Twenty-Fourth Chaos Communication Congress This Berlin congress, organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), has become Europe's main hacker and hacktivist gathering. The CCC was founded on September 12, 1981 in the offices of independent newspaper Die Tageszeitung (aka Taz), and one of its founders was Herwart Holland-Moritz, known to people as Wau Holland, famous German hacker of the 1980s. The Wau Holland Foundation is a tribute to this national hero of hacktivism who died in 2001 at the age of forty-nine. It supports several projects that the CCC holds dear: the social aspect of technical evolution, and the history of technology and freedom of information. In October 2009, CCC became WikiLeaks's main lender.

The Chaos Computer Congress (C3) has been growing constantly since its launch. In a relaxed atmosphere, it welcomes expert speakers in front of an impa.s.sioned audience among which WikiLeaks members are regulars.

In 2006 at the 23C3, Jacob Appelbaum presented his method to circ.u.mvent FileVault, Apple's encrypted disk storage system. His co-speaker was Ralf-Philip Weinmann, former colleague of Julian a.s.sange on Rubberhose, freeware they created together in 1997.

In 2007 at the 24C3, Rop Gonggrijp gave a presentation on electronic voting systems in the Netherlands. Another pa.s.sionate presentation was given by Annie Machon, former MI5 agent (British FBI). She told her story of deceptions and life as a recluse whistleblower in France. She was also invited by Julian a.s.sange in 2008 to the Hacking At Random event in the Netherlands.

The twenty-fourth congress featured four days of conferences. The themes discussed ranged from electronic crime to freeware and from cryptography to anonymity, with the Tor program being featured four times.

Aside from these conferences, workshops were organized on various emerging themes. On December 23, at 9:30 p.m. a certain 'Julian a.s.sange,' member of the advisory board of an organization called WikiLeaks presented ”Wikileaks a place for journalists, truth tellers and everybody else.”

German IT professional Daniel Berg attended the presentation. He was a network engineer for the international company EDS, which deals in electronic data. On the social professional network LinkedIn his profile features the keywords: ”realitya.n.a.lyzer, dreamshaper, freedomdefender, interestdetester, whalesaver, bookeater, overflower, underminer, wardriver, packetizer, hacker, a.s.soffworker, motivator, creator.”

Julian a.s.sange presented WikiLeaks, its mission, technical challenges and the already realistic visibility of the project thanks to articles published in The Guardian, The New York Times, Was.h.i.+ngton Post, Die Welt and Der Spiegel. He finished his presentation by asking the audience to join the movement.

After Julian and Daniel Berg met, Berg decided to join.

Daniel was a technician, IT graduate from the University of Cooperative Education of Mannheim, a university that gave incompany training based on immersion practice. Daniel had been working at EDS since 2002. He liked running, mountain biking, David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and was a workaholic. He once endured a 428-hour work marathon in four weeks to save a project in danger in Moscow.

WikiLeaks was in full upswing, and so such a resource was more than welcome. Daniel worked as an a.n.a.lyst for the organization in his spare time.

His commitment was impa.s.sioned and his extraordinary ability to work quickly brought him close to Julian a.s.sange. The Number One of the organization asked him to come along to the 25C3 to present a conference called 'WikiLeaks vs. the World.' Julian a.s.sange, under his real name, presented himself as an Investigative Editor of the organization, while Daniel Domscheit-Berg was referred to as 'Berger.'

By December 30 2008, WikiLeaks had already experienced a lot of painful events linked to the increasing success of their actions.

At the beginning of 2008, they suffered through being sued by the Julius Baer Group following the publication of a list of 1,600 fortunate clients who benefited from the bank's expertise in matters of fiscal evasion. They attracted the ire of Sarah Palin, running mate of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, following the publication of her personal Yahoo e-mails during the presidential election campaign. They felt the aftershock of the earthquake they caused in Great Britain after the publication of a list of 10,000 members of the far-right British National Party, which included policemen, clergy members and teachers.

a.s.sange and Berger showed up quite tired in Berlin at 25C3 to relate these facts. The duo worked in harmony, each with their a.s.signed tasks. Julian explained matters, the impact and lessons to be learned, while Daniel presented some foundations and technical needs. The audience was sold. Julian got a standing ovation when he solemnly declared, making sure to let silence wrap every word, ”We have never had a source exposed. We have never had a source prosecuted.”

Daniel Berg's role started to crystallize. He quit his job and took on the role of Daniel Schmitt, movement spokesperson. At the end of December 2008, his name appeared in articles regarding threats made to the site, following the publication of secret doc.u.ments of the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst, German secret services). As of 2009, within a bit more than a year, Daniel would give about one hundred interviews throughout the world.

Daniel was the public face of WikiLeaks, while Julian continued to travel the world from conference to conference. He talked about having published the 500,000 text messages from mobile phones and pagers on September 11, 2001 during the collapse of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. He took the floor during the online release of 6,780 reports of the CRS (Congressional Research Service), a.n.a.lytical reports on different subjects of interest to the US Congress. It was with Julian that he covered the Icelandic affair linked to the bankruptcy of the Kaupthing bank.

Together they returned to the 26C3 on December 30, 2009, the twenty-sixth Chaos Communication Congress. Their conference first presented the WikiLeaks project in its original concept, in its heyday. It specifically showed a dynamic duo of speakers and brothers in arms.

In front of a few hundred people, the main stage of the Berliner Congress Center had a lectern on the right-hand side of a big screen. It was 5:15 p.m., Daniel Schmitt was at the lectern looking a bit glum and wearing black pants and a black s.h.i.+rt. On stage there was Julian a.s.sange standing casually in a white s.h.i.+rt with silver hair, his hands in the pockets of his brown pants.

The presentation was ent.i.tled ”WikiLeaks Release 1.0,” referring to a numbering system used in programming to confirm that the software was matured, was without bugs and was ready to be used before a new updated version was released with additional functionalities.

The conference started with a brief summary of WikiLeaks' foundations and then Daniel Schmitt announced: ”The National [English-language newspaper of the United Arab Emirates] wrote that we have probably produced more scoops in our short life than The Was.h.i.+ngton Post has in the past 30 years.” The room applauded. And Daniel added: ”Thanks, we're just getting warm.” While Daniel spoke, Julian contemplated this already convinced audience and smiled.

Daniel wasn't comfortable delivering speeches in front of large audiences, as press relations were more his thing. Conferences really intimidated him. He experienced shortness of breath and his sweaty palms made him drop his notes when handing over the floor to his partner. Julian, on the other hand, had world-cla.s.s experience: he didn't have notes and didn't look at the screen, and eased the mood, or rather his co-speaker, with lines like: ”When we were putting this together earlier today...”

Julian a.s.sange briefly introduced the events of 2009 by joking that people could look it up on Wikipedia. Daniel then very seriously summarized the description of the leaks published that year: the murdering of Afghan civilians in Kunduz led by the German armed forces supposedly engaged in a peace keeping mission. Very focused, he talked about the reports of the European Inst.i.tute for Security Studies (European think tank of security experts).

Imagine watching a very balanced duo, like yin and yang, the black solid on his positions, pragmatic and direct, with the white lyrical in his explications, strolling on stage, joking here and theorizing there.

Protected behind his lectern, his hands held close to his laptop, people listened to him carefully. He commented on his notes that envision a future police unit of Europe surrounded by a virtual wall to block immigration. He said, ”Do we give our silent consent? Is that the world we want to live in the future?”

The two men presented the improvements they wanted to make to the system: an opening to citizens and an access tunnel to 'good' journalists to create more legibility from this mountain of information they'd been publis.h.i.+ng, and increase its impact.

Then they got into a long presentation of a project initiated by Julian: a haven for information, based on the idea of offsh.o.r.e fiscal paradises. They started off with the Icelandic affair. Julian told of the misadventure of the public television station RUV. The station wasn't able to broadcast its report on the financial scandal exposed by WikiLeaks, as it had received a legal injunction a few minutes before the broadcast. Julian then said that instead it would broadcast WikiLeaks' homepage for several minutes, which allowed them to point to the story they wanted to break. The audience applauded enthusiastically. The reaction of the two representatives in front of this ovation was typical of them: Daniel hid behind the screen of his computer as to contain his excitement while Julian, head held high, soaked up this beneficial energy.

Julian explained his project, alone, arms crossed, like a preacher in front of his flock. He knew what he was talking about. It was his idea and he didn't need anybody. At one point he tried to include Daniel who mumbled while putting back the bottle of water he was drinking from. Julian took over. It was only after ten minutes of monologue that Daniel concluded on a humoristic note: ”To convince those people in Iceland that did not understand it yet they have conservative parties too that this is the way to go.” There was laughter in the room.

The conference ended with a tribute given by Julian to all the sources and their courage. He added, causing a slight uncomfortable silence in the room that he wanted to thank traditional media, as ”There are some very, very good people.”

As usual, Daniel closed the show with a ”Thanks for your patience.” After a standing ovation that lasted minutes, the questions were punctuated by a testimony from Jeremie Zimmermann, spokesperson from La Quadrature du Net, a French advocacy group that promotes the rights and freedoms of citizens on the Internet: ”First of all I want to tell you how much I admire you. You're my heroes.” One more time, Julian radiated while Daniel got to the point by saying: ”the project, please.”

At the beginning of 2010, aged thirty-two, Daniel had already spent the last two years working for the organization. He quit his job at the start of 2009 to fully commit himself: ”I have invested a considerable amount of time, money and energy into WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks grew totally exponentially, 'too quickly.'”

The leaks came in every day, and Daniel thought that some of them were very interesting at the local level. For him, the platform mustn't discriminate and truth is good, whether it had a regional, national or global impact. But one project monopolized most resources of this small organization.

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