t's tempting to think of Julian Assange as an enigmatic international criminal mastermind. Romantic, even. And he certainly cultivates that image himself, with the wild hair and the comedy sunglasses. But Assange is no mastermind: his vanity, his hubris and his insatiable desire to see the world burn have led him to make a fatal, final error. As a result, the Wikileaks project is doomed.Read the rest here.
At the tail-end of last month, Assange indicated to a journalist that he had information about a major US bank that would cause a scandal to rival Enron. That was a catastrophic misjudgment. Because now, one by one, every financial institution connected to Assange is severing his ability to finance Wikileaks. Each is giving very slightly different reasons - usually connected to terms of service and "illegal activity" - but all of their motivations are the same: in the middle of a recession, it would be disastrous to their own businesses should Assange attempt to take out a major bank.
For all the mirrors around the internet replicating Wikileaks's content, the organisation will fall without the financial resources to continue sifting through its vast repository of documents.
This is an excellent piece.
On a side note; am I the only one who perceives some truly delicious irony in a man who espouses absolute transparency but who wants to bank in Switzerland?
The Swiss bank site that froze his defence fund is also down.
ReplyDeleteThe Swedish Prosecutors site was down earlier but is apparently back up.
I think things are just getting started. These all seem to be simpler DDoS attacks. So far no one has actually hacked into the sites themselves, but I would imagine that will happen at some point.