Assange release: Unfortunately failed on the merits
Julian Assange will probably be released. That is good news. However, the Australian is not fit to be a saint – others paid the price for his popularity.
(Image: Katherine Da Silva/Shutterstock.com)
The news of the agreement between Assange and the US judicial authorities comes just in time for the US election campaign. It marks the temporary end of a long dispute about how much wrong must be possible on the way to right. The Wikileaks founder, whose actual work was brief and who slowly faded into oblivion, will be free. But little remains of his work.
Wikileaks brought to light things that belonged in the public domain - and things that did not belong there. At times, Wikileaks had a radical claim to freedom of information: power had to be curtailed by enforced transparency if necessary. People like to remember the big cases, such as the Collateral Murder video from 2010, the leaks about Guantánamo or other misconduct, especially by the USA, which Wikileaks denounced. Yes, journalism is not a crime. Nor can it be. But Wikileaks has made massive mistakes. Because the famous leaks were only part of what Wikileaks published. At times, the platform relied on mass publication without paying sufficient attention to collateral damage, checking the truth or at least checking for plausibility. And there were many documents among them that were primarily dangerous for third parties - not for the powerful, not for Assange or the Wikileaks supporters.
Whistleblowers were not protected
Julian Assange has, it must be said harshly, failed in the matter. Personally, but above all with the mission that made him famous. Wikileaks was supposed to be able to spread the world's most secret secrets. And yet one, perhaps the decisive component, was missing: Being able to protect at least those on whom Wikileaks depends – the whistleblowers. Ex-CIA software specialist Joshua Schulte, for example, or Chelsea Manning. Manning is now free, but Schulte, who provided Wikileaks with information on the CIA's hacking capabilities, aka Vault 7, will probably have to remain in prison for the next 35 years. And Edward Snowden, who was obviously inspired by Assange, is stuck in Russia for as long as Vladimir Putin likes.
The fact that Assange has now been able to negotiate a solution for himself with the Biden administration after more than a decade is good for him. Julian Assange has spent so long in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and in high-security prisons in the United Kingdom, and has obviously suffered as a result. Despite the best efforts of activists, the extradition process continued to be pursued by the US after the original detention was dropped due to a Swedish arrest warrant, which Assange's friends considered arbitrary for some reason.
Assange sought a trial of strength
The USA also did itself no favors in its dealings with Assange by pulling out almost all the stops in the fight against the Australian. And played anything but clean in the process. However, Assange himself had elevated the dispute to a trial of strength from the outset, a "freedom of information vs. the USA" battle. He, who was almost a pop star at the time, overestimated himself and his power. Not least his own charisma and that of Wikileaks. And yet the ongoing persecution ended up being one thing above all for the USA: a nuisance. US President Joe Biden had to get this issue off the agenda somehow, shortly before his first televised duel with Donald Trump on CNN on Thursday, and it seems to have worked.
Getting free is good for Julian Assange personally - and essentially irrelevant for the rest of the world. The Wikileaks platform plays virtually no role anymore. For the younger generation of Internet users, it is just an anecdote from the relative Internet Stone Age. If some are now hoping that Wikileaks could return to its (brief) former importance, this is premature. None of the problems that disrupted operations have been solved. Neither whistleblower protection, nor collateral damage prevention nor the human factor. The teams surrounding the platform have repeatedly fallen out, with Assange's personal vanity playing a major role in the early days. There is no indication that this could improve after his release.
The idea of a central body for publishing the truth was always problematic, and even more so with Julian Assange at the head of the organization. Time has passed Wikileaks and its imitators by. Today, information is disseminated via anonymous social media channels or leaked directly to media that have at least upgraded their technology somewhat. Assange has set something in motion here, for which we can be grateful to him and his comrades-in-arms.
For Julian Assange personally, we can be happy that he has finally found a way to spend the rest of his life in freedom, even if it took a deal with the US government. It was the last exit before oblivion for the now almost 53-year-old family man.
(mma)