UK police arrest WikiLeaks backers for Web attacks

Newspaper fronts reporting on the documents released by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks are seen in New York, November 29, 2010.


British police arrested five young men yesterday as they and US authorities conducted searches as part of a probe into Internet activists who carried out cyber attacks against groups they viewed as enemies of the WikiLeaks website.

“The arrests were related to recent ‘distributed denial of service’ (DDoS) attacks by an online group calling themselves Anonymous,” London police said in a statement.

In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that agents executed more than 40 search warrants as part of its investigation and that the attacks were facilitated by software the group made available for free on the Internet.

WikiLeaks founder says enjoys making banks squirm

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds up CD’s containing data on offshore bank account holders, which he received from former Swiss private banker Rudolf Elmer at the Frontline club in London on January 17, 2011.


WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he enjoys making banks squirm thinking they might be the next targets of his website which has published US diplomatic and military secrets.

“I think it’s great. We have all these banks squirming, thinking maybe it’s them,” Assange told the CBS television programme “60 Minutes” in an interview.

CBS released a partial transcript yesterday ahead of Sunday’s broadcast of the full segment.

Bank of America Corp shares fell more than 3 per cent on November 30 on investor fears that the largest US bank by assets would be the subject of a document release.

Interviewer Steve Kroft asked Assange whether he had acquired a five-gigabyte hard drive belonging to one of the bank’s executives, as Assange had previously asserted.

Julian Assanger founder of Wikileaks alleged leads wild promiscuous lifestyle

The two women who say they were sexually assaulted by the WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange would never have complained to police if he had agreed to take an HIV test, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

WikiLeaks’s Swedish co-ordinator, who worked closely with Mr Assange for months, said in an exclusive interview that he repeatedly begged his boss to have the test, both to head off the possible police investigation and for Mr Assange’s own peace of mind, given his promiscuous sex life.

Allegations: Julian Assange is accused of rape by two women in Sweden

WikiLeaks' Assange complains he's victim of leaks

It has come to this: Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is complaining that someone leaked a Swedish police report on his alleged sexual offenses.

In an interview with the British newspaper The Times, Assange complained about reporting in the rival newspaper The Guardian, which is one of several publications that has been helping WikiLeaks edit its trove of secret U.S. diplomatic files in exchange for an early look at them.

The Guardian published details Saturday of the Swedish police report in which two women accuse Assange of rape, based on what it described as "unauthorized access" to prosecutors' files. Assange claimed the newspaper was "selectively publishing" parts of it, and questioned the timing of the leak, saying it was given to the paper a day before his bail hearing last week.

Sweden reopens WikiLeaks founder rape probe

Sweden’s Chief Prosecutor said on Wednesday she was reopening a preliminary investigation into rape charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (picture).

Chief Prosecutor Marianne Ny said in a statement the decision to reopen the probe was taken after further review of the case. Prosecutors last month dropped a probe into alleged rape, but carried on investigating charges of molestation.

Swedish police to question WikiLeaks founder

Swedish police are to question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange over alleged molestation, Sweden’s chief prosecutor said yesterday, but a second case against him has been dropped, she said.

“The investigation is still going on. I find there is a suspicion of molestation,” Eva Finne told Reuters Television.

“I’m going to tell the investigator to contact the suspect’s lawyer and they decide when it’s possible to hold an interrogation,” she said.

Assange, an Australian behind the whistle-blowing website, had been accused by two women of sexual molestation in Sweden, where he has spent the past couple of weeks.

Finne said there were no grounds to continue an investigation into a case which initially led a duty prosecutor to issue an arrest warrant for Assange for suspected rape.

That warrant was dropped on Saturday.