Julian Assange

Julian Paul Assange ( Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006.

Assange was born Julian Paul Hawkins on 3 July 1971 in Townsville, Queensland, to Christine Ann Hawkins (b. 1951), a visual artist, and John Shipton, an anti-war activist and builder.

The couple separated before their son was born.

When Julian was a year old, his mother married Brett Assange, an actor with whom she ran a small theatre company and whom Julian Assange regards as his father (choosing Assange as his surname).

Christine and Brett Assange divorced around 1979.

Christine then became involved with Leif Meynell, also known as Leif Hamilton, whom Julian Assange later described as "a member of an Australian cult" called The Family.

He attended many schools, including Goolmangar Primary School in New South Wales (1979–1983) and Townsville State High School in Queensland as well as being schooled at home.

In his mid-teens, he settled with his mother and half-brother in Melbourne and moved in with his girlfriend at age 17.

Meynell and Christine Assange separated in 1982.

Julian Assange had a nomadic childhood, living in more than 30 Australian towns and cities.

By 1987, aged 16, Assange had become a skilled hacker under the name Mendax, taken from Horace's splendide mendax (from Latin, "nobly untruthful").

Around this time, the police raided his mother's home and confiscated his equipment.

According to Assange, "it involved some dodgy character who was alleging that we had stolen five hundred thousand dollars from Citibank".

Ultimately, no charges were raised and his equipment was returned, but Assange "decided that it might be wise to be a bit more discreet".

In 1988, Assange used social engineering to get the password to Australia's Overseas Telecommunications Commission's mainframes.

Assange had a self-imposed set of ethics: he did not damage or crash systems or data he hacked, and he shared information.

According to NPR, David Leigh, and Luke Harding, Assange may have been involved in the WANK hack at NASA in 1989, but this has never been proven.

Assange called it "the origin of hacktivism", and the Swedish television documentary WikiRebels, which was made with Assange's cooperation, also hinted he was involved.

The Sydney Morning Herald later opined that he had become one of Australia's "most notorious hackers", and The Guardian said that by 1991 he was "probably Australia's most accomplished hacker".

Assange's official biography on WikiLeaks called him Australia's "most famous ethical computer hacker", and the earliest version said he "hacked thousands of systems, including the Pentagon" when he was younger.

He and two others, known as "Trax" and "Prime Suspect", formed a hacking group called "the International Subversives".

Assange studied programming, mathematics, and physics at Central Queensland University (1994) and the University of Melbourne (2003–2006), but did not complete a degree.

Assange started the Puzzle Hunt tradition at the University of Melbourne modeled after the MIT Mystery Hunt.

Assange was involved in the Melbourne rave scene, assisting in installing an internet kiosk at Ollie Olsen's club night Psychic Harmony where he was nicknamed "Prof".

He became involved in the hacker community and was convicted for hacking in 1996.

Following the establishment of WikiLeaks, Assange was its editor when it published the Bank Julius Baer documents, footage of the 2008 Tibetan unrest, and a report on political killings in Kenya with The Sunday Times.

He came to wide international attention in 2010 when WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning: footage of a US airstrike in Baghdad, US military logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and US diplomatic cables.

Assange has won multiple awards for publishing and journalism.

Assange was raised in several towns in Australia until his family settled in Melbourne in his mid-teens.

In November 2010, Sweden issued a European arrest warrant for Assange, for questioning in a Swedish investigation.

After losing his appeal against the warrant, he breached bail and took refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London in June 2012.

He was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012 on the grounds of political persecution and fears he might be extradited to the United States.

He stood for the Australian Senate in 2013 and launched the WikiLeaks Party but failed to win a seat.

Swedish prosecutors dropped the investigation in 2019.

On 11 April 2019, Assange's asylum was withdrawn following a series of disputes with Ecuadorian authorities.

The police were invited into the embassy and he was arrested.

He was found guilty of breaching the Bail Act and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison.

The U.S. government unsealed an indictment charging Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion related to the leaks provided by Manning.

In May 2019 and June 2020, the U.S. government unsealed new indictments against Assange, charging him with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and alleging he had conspired with hackers.

Assange has been confined in HM Prison Belmarsh in London since April 2019, as the United States government's extradition effort is contested in the British courts.