WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Has Been Arrested in London

Apparently from TPM, they mention that in case of death or arrest, Julian Assange had something called the "poison pill" which apparently contains even more damaging secrets against the U.S government. Here is the article-

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/julian-assange-vows-poison-pill...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11935539

Wikileaks defended by hacktivists
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Internet hacktivists have fired the latest salvo in the Wikileaks infowar.

A group called Anonymous has hit sites that have refused to do business with the controversial whistle-blowing site with a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks.

It mirrors similar attacks aimed at the Wikileaks site.

Targets include the Swiss bank that froze founder Julian Assange's assets and PayPal which has stopped processing donations to Wikileaks.

Anonymous is a loose-knit group of hacktivists, with links to the notorious message board 4chan.

Increased traffic
A member of Anonymous who calls himself Coldblood told the BBC that "multiple things are being done".

"Websites that are bowing down to government pressure have become targets," he said.

"As an organisation we have always taken a strong stance on censorship and freedom of expression on the internet and come out against those who seek to destroy it by any means."

"We feel that Wikileaks has become more than just about leaking of documents, it has become a war ground, the people vs. the government," he said.

So far the denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), which swamp a site with so many requests that it becomes overwhelmed, have failed to take any sites offline although that is not the point of the attack, according to Coldblood.

"The idea is not to wipe them off but to give the companies a wake-up call," he said. "Companies will notice the increase in traffic and an increase in traffic means increase in costs associated with running a website."

DDoS attacks are illegal in many countries, including the UK.

Coldblood admitted that such attacks "may hurt people trying to get to these sites" but said it was "the only effective way to tell these companies that us, the people, are displeased".

Anonymous is also helping to create hundreds of mirror sites for Wikileaks, after its US domain name provider withdrew its services.

"At the last count there were 507 mirrors of Wikileaks," said Coldblood.

what irony and this is the same day Eric Cantona called on the public to withdraw all their money from the banks. It may not be directly related to wikileaks but then again all forms of dissent are welcome:

http://current.com/news/92847363_france-braces-itself-for-eric-cantona-cashpoint...

if you have time to make some noise today this could be interesting.

http://www.fsilaw.com/Profiles/Mark%20Stephens.aspx

Assange's lawyer Mark Stephens is a very dapper man.

http://www.justiceforassange.com/
there is already a protest group, planning to gather outside the court at 13:30. The hearing starts at 2pm.

It says something when the Daily Mail suggests the claims against Assange are very questionable...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1336291/Wikileaks-Julian-Assanges-2-nigh...

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/11/30/wikileaks.timeline/index.html?hpt=T1

WikiLeaks Timeline

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/europe/08assange.html?_r=1&hp

The New York Times...

December 7, 2010

Britain Arrests WikiLeaks Founder on Sex Charges
By ALAN COWELL and SCOTT SHANE

LONDON — British police said on Tuesday they had arrested Julian Assange, the beleaguered founder of the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group, on a warrant issued in Sweden in connection with alleged sex offenses.

Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, was arrested by officers from Scotland Yard’s extradition unit when he went to a central London police station by prior agreement with the authorities, the police said. A court hearing was expected later.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman, quoted by Britain’s Press Association news agency, said: “Officers from the Metropolitan Police extradition unit have this morning arrested Julian Assange on behalf of the Swedish authorities on suspicion of rape.”

The widely anticipated arrest came after Mr. Assange, who denies the charges of sexual misconduct said to have been committed while he was in Sweden in August, threatened to release many more diplomatic cables if legal action is taken against him or his organization.

Mr. Assange’s threat of further disclosures poses a problem for the Obama administration as it explores ways to prosecute Mr. Assange or the group in relation to the archive of some 250,000 diplomatic cables it has obtained, reportedly from a low-ranking Army intelligence analyst.

A police spokesman said Mr. Assange was “accused by the Swedish authorities of one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape, all alleged to have been committed in August 2010.”

Mark Stephens, Mr. Assange’s British lawyer, confirmed late Monday in a video statement to the BBC that the authorities in London had “received an extradition request from Sweden,” and he said that he and Mr. Assange were “in the process of making arrangements to meet with the police by consent.”

The charges involve sexual encounters that two women say began as consensual but became nonconsensual after Mr. Assange was no longer using a condom. Mr. Assange has denied any wrongdoing and suggested that the charges were trumped up in retaliation for his WikiLeaks work, though there is no public evidence to suggest a connection.

Mr. Assange’s arrest came amid growing challenges to his operations, as computer server companies, Amazon.com and PayPal.com, have cut off commercial cooperation with WikiLeaks.

On Monday, a Swiss bank froze an account held by Mr. Assange that had been used to collect donations for WikiLeaks. Marc Andrey, a spokesman for the bank, PostFinance, an arm of the Swiss postal service, said the account was closed because Mr. Assange “gave us false information when he opened the account,” asserting inaccurately that he lived in Switzerland.

In the United States on Monday, moreover, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the Justice Department had “a very serious, active, ongoing investigation that is criminal in nature” into the WikiLeaks matter.

“I authorized just last week a number of things to be done so that we can hopefully get to the bottom of this and hold people accountable,” he said at a news conference, declining to elaborate.

Mr. Holder’s statement followed Mr. Assange’s assertion that “over 100,000 people” had been given the entire archive of 251,287 cables “in encrypted form.”

“If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically,” Mr. Assange said Friday in a question-and-answer session on the Web site of the British newspaper The Guardian.

His threat is not idle, because as of Monday night the group had released fewer than 1,000 of the quarter-million State Department cables it had obtained, reportedly from a low-ranking Army intelligence analyst.

So far, the group has moved cautiously. The whole archive was made available to five news organizations, including The New York Times. But WikiLeaks has posted only a few dozen cables on its own in addition to matching those made public by the news publications. According to the State Department’s count, 1,325 cables, or fewer than 1 percent of the total, have been made public by all parties to date.

There appears to be no way for American authorities to retrieve all copies of the cables archive. And legal experts say there are serious obstacles to any prosecution of Mr. Assange or his group.

But the disclosure of the confidential communications between the State Department and 270 American embassies and consulates has infuriated administration officials and prompted calls from Congress to pursue charges.

Mr. Holder repeated assertions by several Obama administration officials about the damage done by the cable disclosures, which began late last month.

“The national security of the United States has been put at risk; the lives of people who work for the American people have been put at risk; the American people themselves have been put at risk by these actions that are, I believe, arrogant, misguided and ultimately not helpful in any way,” Mr. Holder said.

Justice Department prosecutors have been struggling to find a way to indict Mr. Assange since July, when WikiLeaks made public documents on the war in Afghanistan. But while it is clearly illegal for a government official with a security clearance to give a classified document to WikiLeaks, it is far from clear that it is illegal for the organization to make it public.

The Justice Department has considered trying to indict Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act, which has never been successfully used to prosecute a third-party recipient of a leak. Some lawmakers have suggested accusing WikiLeaks of receiving stolen government property, but experts said Monday that would also pose difficulties.

Perhaps in a warning shot of sorts, WikiLeaks on Monday released a cable from early last year listing sites around the world — from hydroelectric dams in Canada to vaccine factories in Denmark — that are considered crucial to American national security.

Nearly all the facilities listed in the document, including undersea cables, oil pipelines and power plants, could be identified by Internet searches. But the disclosure prompted headlines in Europe and a new denunciation from the State Department, which said in a statement that “releasing such information amounts to giving a targeting list to groups like Al Qaeda.”

Asked later about the cable, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the continuing disclosures posed “real concerns, and even potential damage to our friends and partners around the world.”

“I won’t comment on any specific alleged cable, but I will underscore that this theft of U.S. government information and its publication without regard to the consequences is deeply distressing,” she said.

In recent months, WikiLeaks gave the entire collection of cables to four European publications — Der Spiegel in Germany, El País in Spain, Le Monde in France and The Guardian. The Guardian shared the cable collection with The New York Times.

Since Nov. 28, each publication has been publishing a series of articles about revelations in the cables, accompanied online by the texts of some of the documents. The publications have removed the names of some confidential sources of American diplomats, and WikiLeaks has generally posted the cables with the same redactions.

But with the initial series of articles and cable postings nearing an end, the fate of the roughly 250,000 cables that have not been placed online is uncertain. The five publications have announced no plans to make public all the documents. WikiLeaks’s intentions remain unclear.

Alan Cowell reported from London, and Scott Shane from Washington. Charlie Savage and Brian Knowlton contributed reporting from Washington, and Ravi Somaiya from London.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/12/07/uk.wikileaks.investigation/index.html...

CNN...

Assange arrested in London on Swedish warrant
By the CNN Wire Staff
December 7, 2010 6:06 a.m. EST

View of the Interpol "wanted" page for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange taken in Washington on December 3

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

* NEW: Court has about 21 days to decide on extradition
* Assange was arrested at a London police station
* He is scheduled to appear in court later Tuesday
* Assange was wanted on a Swedish arrest warrant

London (CNN) -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested Tuesday in London on a Swedish warrant, London's Metropolitan Police said.

Assange was arrested at a London police station at 9:30 a.m. (4:30 a.m. ET) and will appear at the City of Westminster Magistrate's Court later in the day, police said.

Swedish authorities had issued the warrant for Assange so they can talk to him about sex-crime allegations unrelated to WikiLeaks' recent disclosure of secret U.S. documents.

Assange's British lawyer, Mark Stephens, said his client would fight extradition to Sweden, according to Britain's Press Association.

At court, Assange will respond to the arrest warrant, and the court will then have roughly 21 days to decide whether to extradite him, said Mark Ellis, executive director of the International Bar Association.

Assange will be allowed to appeal and will probably be allowed to go free on bail while the court decides, Ellis said.

Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, has said he has long feared retribution for his website's disclosures and has called the rape allegations against him a smear campaign.

Sweden first issued the arrest warrant for Assange in November, saying he is suspected of one count of rape, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of unlawful coercion -- or illegal use of force -- allegedly committed in August.

Last week, at the request of Sweden's Stockholm Criminal Court, Interpol issued a "red notice" placing Assange on a list of wanted suspects.

British police then asked Swedish authorities for additional details not specified in the initial arrest warrant, a possible indication that the location of the elusive Assange is known. CNN has not confirmed that Assange is in the United Kingdom.

Swedish prosecutors said Monday that they had sent additional information the British requested and that the case was being handled in accordance with European laws.

WikiLeaks, which facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information, has been under intense pressure from the United States and its allies since it began posting the first of more than 250,000 U.S. State Department documents on November 28.

Since then, the site has been hit with denial-of-service attacks, been kicked off servers in the United States and France, and found itself cut off from funds in the United States and Switzerland.

In response, the site has rallied supporters to mirror its content "in order to make it impossible to ever fully remove WikiLeaks from the internet," with more than 500 sites responding to the appeal by Monday evening, it said.

CNN's Claudia Rebaza contributed to this report.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/12/07/2010-12-07_julian_assange_arres...

New York Daily News...

Julian Assange arrested in England; faces charges of rape, sexual molestation in Sweden

By Michael Sheridan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, December 7th 2010, 5:58 AM

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, has turned himself in to authorities in England to answer charges of rape and sexual molestation in Sweden.

Police arrested WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange on Tuesday in London.

The hacker-turned-activist was picked up by British police off a warrant issued by Sweden on charges of "rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion."

Assange, who reportedly turned himself in, has repeatedly insisted he is innocent of the crimes. The charges involve two women who said in past interviews that the 39-year-old refused to wear protection during sex or get tested for STDs.

The WikiLeaks boss was taken into custody at 9:30 a.m. and is expected to appear at Westminster Magistrate's Court later today.

Although his whistle-blower website has become infamous for spilling secrets, the privacy-obsessed Australian has kept himself hidden away for months, claiming to fear for his life due to his involvement with WikiLeaks.

"The threats against our lives are a matter of public record," Assange said recently in a Q&A session via London's The Guardian.

Assange has also claimed the sex charges against him are actually a carefully orchestrated plot to discredit him and his website.

"It is clearly a smear campaign," the former computer hacker told Al Jazeera in August. "The only question is who was involved."

Assange's attorney has indicated the WikiLeaks chief will likely fight extradition to Sweden.

With News Wire Services

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/12/07/2010-12-07_julian_assange_arres...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-wikileaks-assange-arrested-2...

Los Angeles Times...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrested in sex case

Swedish authorities are investigating allegations of coercion, which he denies, in his encounters with two women. His website's release of U.S. diplomatic cables has embarrassed governments worldwide.

By Henry Chu Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

December 7, 2010, 3:04 a.m.

Reporting from London —

Julian Assange, founder of the controversial WikiLeaks website, was arrested here Tuesday morning at the request of Swedish authorities who want to question him about allegations of sexual assault, Scotland Yard said.

Assange, 39, voluntarily surrendered to police and was put under arrest, police said. He is expected to appear in a London court later Tuesday.

Sweden has asked that Assange be extradited so that it can investigate allegations by two women who had sexual encounters with him in that country earlier this year. Swedish prosecutors say the encounters may have involved "unlawful coercion" and even rape, but Assange has insisted that the liaisons were consensual.

The accusations have stalked Assange since the summer, before his website began publishing portions of the huge cache of U.S. State Department diplomatic cables that have dismayed American officials and other governments around the world in recent days.

But Assange, who is Australian, and his lawyers and supporters believe that the U.S. has pushed the sexual assault case behind the scenes as a way of embarrassing, harassing and silencing him.

Assange is believed to have been in southern England for much of the past few weeks as the State Department cables have been released. Swedish prosecutors last month issued an international warrant for his arrest, but British authorities did not move to arrest him until this week, apparently because of a technical mistake on the warrant.

At his court hearing, Assange's lawyers are expected to ask for him to be released on bail while he fights the attempt to extradite him.

That legal battle could take weeks or even months. Assange's attorneys fear that a successful extradition to Sweden on the sexual assault allegations could also make it easier for him to be extradited to the United States if prosecutors there charge him with various offenses relating to the WikiLeaks disclosures.

In the past few days, the net has been closing around Assange and his organization. Amazon.com booted WikiLeaks from its Internet server, and on Monday, a Swiss bank froze an account Assange had opened to raise funds.

Here's a couple articles.....

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/06

http://mashable.com/2010/12/07/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-arrested/

Mashable...

December 7, 2010 Stan Schroeder 10

WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Arrested in London

The British police arrested WikiLeaks founder and owner Julian Assange on an arrest warrant from Sweden, where Assange is accused of sexual crimes.

“Julian Assange (…) was arrested on a European arrest warrant by appointment at a London police station at 9:30 [a.m.] today. He is accused by the Swedish authorities of one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape, all alleged to have been committed in August 2010,” the Metropolitan Police Service said in a statement.

Assange was recently placed on the Interpol’s wanted list. The warrant for his arrest stems from accusations of sexual assault by two women Assange had met in Sweden during a business trip to the country. The charges of rape were initially dropped, but the case was reopened and an appeals court has upheld the original accusations.

Assange surrendered to the police himself, stating earlier he has agreed to meet with the UK police with regards to the outstanding warrant and the rape accusations in Sweden. He is due to appear at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court later.

Assange’s arrest is just one in a long line of troubles for WikiLeaks and its founder. The site itself has been the victim of DDoS attacks ever since it started leaking secret embassy cables, and several U.S.-based web companies, including Amazon, PayPal, and its DNS service provider, EveryDNS.net, have denied WikiLeaks service. The site is now functioning mostly as series of mirrors, set up by sympathizers around the globe, but it’s still leaking new secret cables on a daily basis.

Developing story…