The Hacker Who Saw Too Much

Julian Assange was born on July 3, 1971, in northern Australia. His childhood was anything but ordinary. His family moved constantly. According to some sources, he and his mother relocated more than thirty times. This perpetual state of movement shaped Julian into both an observer and an introspective thinker.

As a young teenager, he developed an interest in computers. But his curiosity was not limited to games and software. He wanted to see inside the system itself.

In 1987, at just sixteen years old, he stepped into the world of computer hacking. His chosen alias was Mendax, a Latin word meaning liar. The choice was ironic. Julian was there to expose lies.

Under the name Mendax, he infiltrated the Pentagon, NASA, and Citibank. His purpose was not destruction but observation. He was caught in 1991, but because he had caused no damage to the systems, he avoided prison.

Still, this experience deepened his suspicions about the nature of governments. States hoarded information. And this information was not just for security. It was used to govern and manipulate the public.

This realization changed Assange's life completely. He now had a single purpose. To liberate information.

By the late 1990s, Assange was no longer just a hacker. He was exploring cryptography. Developing software in digital security. Connecting with freedom of thought groups. The most important of these was the Cypherpunk movement.

Cypherpunks were a community that advocated using encryption technologies to defend individual privacy. In their view, governments surveilled, corporations harvested data, and individuals remained defenseless.

Assange aligned with these ideas completely. But his vision was more radical. Information should not merely be protected. It should be exposed.

In 2006, he transformed this vision into a platform. WikiLeaks.org.

At first, the site had a fairly simple interface. But behind it lay a complex encryption infrastructure. The identities of those who leaked documents remained completely hidden.

Assange assembled an international team of volunteers. Supporters from Sweden, Iceland, Germany, and Kenya took roles within this structure. The servers were specifically located in Sweden because the country had strong press freedom laws.

But building a website was one thing. Making it heard was another. The first documents received almost no attention.

WikiLeaks achieved its first major success in 2007 with a report on the Kenyan government. The report was titled The Cry of Blood. Its contents were shocking.

In Kenya, police and security forces were eliminating opponents and criminals through extrajudicial executions. The report revealed that more than five hundred people had disappeared and been killed by the state.

After the publication of this document, general elections in Kenya resulted in a change of government. The international media began seriously discussing the name WikiLeaks for the first time. The site was beginning to be seen as a tool capable of changing regimes through the power of information.

After the success in Kenya, WikiLeaks continued publishing numerous documents. Church of Scientology business records. Swiss bank money laundering operations. Guantanamo detainee handling guidelines. US blacklists created during the Iraq war.

But these documents were not powerful enough to shake the masses. Assange was now chasing something bigger. More global. More earth shattering. More resonant.