wikileaks

What have you done for - or to - me lately? Anonymous is a long-time supporter of whistleblower site WikiLeaks, but a recent decision by the site to deploy a paywall on its website that blocks access to the site’s cache of leaked documents unless users donate or promote WikiLeaks via social media has drawn Anonymous' enmity.

On Thursday night, the loosely-knit hacker group, or rather, some of its membership, issued a post to the AnonPaste website on Thursday night in which they called the new campaign “filthy and rotten.”

A car passes through a foggy, forest. In the back seat, memories wash through a floppy-haired teenaged boy's mind. He recalls another night drive, one on which his mother spirited him away before a stepfather could despatch him to live on a creepy cult's hidden commune.

Years later the family emerges from the same car and unpacks its belongings in a house the mother proclaims “cannot be seen from the road”. The teenager opens his suitcase and removes his prize possession: a Commodore 64.

Julian Assange continues to insist that Australia's government has done him no favours, but his nation of birth has supported his cause in one, indirect, way.

Screen Australia, the Australian federal government’s national movie-funding-and-promotion agency, is one of the key production finance investors for the Australian-made biopic, Underground, that traces the WikiLeaks founder’s formative years as a teenage hacker.

Several Swedish official websites were knocked offline on Monday, although no one has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

"I can confirm that the government site had problems today, but for security reasons, I cannot say more," Anna Dahlen, a government spokeswoman, told AFP adding that she did not know when the site would be back online.

It was always to be expected that hacktivists would respond vigorously to the effective house arrest of Julian Assange within the Ecuador Embassy in London, and the UK’s apparent determination to extradite him to Sweden.

A fairly basic security slip has showed just how far the British police are preparing to go to make sure Julian Assange doesn't leaving the UK without getting his collar felt.

"Action required – Assange to be arrested under all circumstances," reads a handwritten briefing note photographed in the hands of one of the officers surrounding the Ecuadorian embassy. The note says Assange is to be arrested if he leaves the embassy in the company of another diplomat or if the Ecuadorians try and smuggle him out in the diplomatic bag.

Britain’s Ministry of Justice said Monday it was looking into disruptions on its website, after online activists claimed they hacked into the site as part of a campaign to back WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Speaking from a balcony at the Ecuadorian embassy where he has sought asylum, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange yesterday called on governments to stop persecution of political whistle blowers and gave no indication that the stalemate over his extradition from the UK to Sweden, where he faces allegations on sexual offenses, would end soon.

Ecuador has granted Julian Assange asylum, kicking off an epic diplomatic standoff. While he sits inside the Ecuadorian embassy, British police have to stand by outside and wait. If they go inside (or "storm" it, as one official claimed the police threatened to do), they'd be violating one of the most fundamental diplomatic rules between nations, and would endanger British embassies around the world by setting a needless precedent.

Britain has told the Ecuadorean authorities it believes officials can enter its embassy in London and arrest Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, according to Ecuador's minister for foreign affairs, Ricardo Patino.

The development came two months after Assange walked into the embassy in a bid to avoid being extradited to Sweden where he faces allegations of sexual assault. At a news conference on Wednesday, Patino said Ecuador would announce its decision regarding Assange's asylum request at 7am (noon GMT) on Thursday.