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Yesterday a judge in Virginia decided that Twitter must hand over all data it has on me, Jacob Appelbaum and Birgitta Jónsdottir. The consequences of this decision for me are extremely limited: there’s not a whole lot you can learn from records that Twitter has on me that you can’t learn from reading my blog. There are bigger principles at stake though, and this is not a good ruling for online privacy. The EFF – they represent Birgitta in this case – has a statement on their website that says it all and links to further documents if you want to read up.
Dear media people: going on past experience there may well be 30 to 50 of you trying to reach me today. Please accept my apologies if I won’t pick up the phone or if I just point you to this statement if you do manage to reach me.
Wow. Now there’s a powerful image to show where we are. Click on the image above and you’ll see the percentage of people worried about climate change in various countries. The Netherlands is on the list, all the way down with the climate deniers, right next to the wonderful US of A. Now you try to explain how a supposedly well-educated and liberal northern european country that is partly BELOW SEA-LEVEL ends up there.
(Image taken from a Guardian article.)
Our foreign affairs minister Uri Rosenthal made headlines today as he responded to some questions from two members of the Dutch Parliament.
Do you agree [...] that the Netherlands will not cooperate with criminal procedures of the American authorities, such as in the case of potential suspects connected to Wikileaks. If not, why not?
Answer: In case the US indicts mr Gonggrijp at any point in the future and requests his extradition, the request will be studied to see if the Netherlands can cooperate. Such a request would need to specify, among other things, the criminal offenses under investigation, such that the American interests of prosecution can be weighed against the interests of the accused. This process has adequate checks and balances. I therefore do not exclude the possibility that The Netherlands will cooperate.
This has caused yet another media storm and a lot of people getting upset to the point of even petitioning the queen. I am truly grateful to all the MPs, journalists and netizens that have shown they are right on top of this as well as to the many people who have mailed to support me in what must seem very difficult times. As we speak the international media seem to be picking up the story . I think it’s time to calm down a bit. I’m really OK and I think this is a becoming a bit overblown.
About the answers our foreign minister gave: I think there is not much else he could have said. Was anyone really expecting him to say: “We have an extradition treaty with the US, and we have laws in place that deal with extradition requests. But if there is ever an extradition request for Gonggrijp we’ll ignore all that and we’ll tell you now that we’ll never extradite him, no matter what.” ?
I may disagree with the people that signed a treaty which allows the extradition of nationals. I may disagree with the Dutch take on the US legal system as being equivalent to ours when it comes to protecting the rights of those presumed innocent and I may disagree with a lot of other things. I may disagree with there being adequate checks and balances. I also think a blanket provision for not extraditing in clearly political matters would have been very nice. But the minister is not asked for his opinion on standing laws and treaties. He is mostly stating facts and I think it’s perfectly OK for a foreign affairs minister to take a slightly legalistic stand and just clarify the current state of affairs. So give his excellency a break. (For now, anyway.)
It may be good if we all take a deep breath and get grounded a bit here. There are no new events other than a minister in The Netherlands providing rather obvious answers to questions from MPs. I really don’t think the minister giving perfectly predictable answers should be news. There is, as of yet, no indictment. Let alone an extradition request. I helped publish a video documenting war crimes. My lawyers and me have absolutely no idea what crime they could even charge me with. If they indeed want something from me, the prosecutors are likely facing the same problem.
So there may very well never be an extradition request, just a very long period of nothing much happening. Which doesn’t mean this isn’t something to worry about or keep a close eye on. But it’s probably not worthy of getting in a nationwide or even global frenzy over just yet.
I’ll try to write some more about how I’ve been and what’s going on over the next days and weeks.
XS4ALL, the Amsterdam-based Internet Service Provider I co-founded in 1993, is offering a dialin service for people that want to get online from Libya, or any other country where despotic assholes are trying to turn off the internet.
Use your modem to dial +31205350535, username xs4all password xs4all. Please use the comments if this number gets blocked and I’ll update with new numbers.
For a very short time earlier this evening (Tuesday evening, sometime before 22:00 CET that is), our newspaper De Telegraaf reported that Sweden has dropped charges against Julian Assange. The article was on the site for at least a few minutes minutes before disappearing again, and all someone mailed me was a screenshot of the link from the front page to the article. So what we have is the headline “Sweden drops charges Assange”, the sentence “The house-arrest of wikileaks-boss Julian Assange has been terminated, now that Sweden is no longer requesting his extradition.” and the fact that it was on there for a few minutes so it could get 5 reactions. By the time someone made this screenshot, the article itself was already 404 not found.
Now it’s going to be interesting to see if this is an accurate description of events that have, at least apparently, not yet taken place. And if so, the interesting question is how and why, of all the world, exactly the Dutch newspaper that has been exaggerating my relationship with Wikileaks seems to have this direct line to the future.
Update: Never mind. Probably nothing. De Telegraaf just not checking the facts: this was apparently a short hoax on twitter this afternoon, a media-echo of earlier events. See the comments…
Sorry to bother you all with something so mundane after all these big events. But life goes on after all. There’s this article in the dutch press today which covers a provincial candidate for the PVV (the party of Geert Wilders). He’s a cop (or maybe ex-cop, the article doesn’t say) that in 2003 got a fine for beating a suspect that was already in handcuffs. But it’s not that fact that bothers me enough to blog about it. It’s the explanation by the PVV member of national parliament, himself a long-time ex-cop, charged with helping to select the candidates:
MP André Elissen, who helped select the candidates, calls it “a small incident“. “In the current day and age, this would be handled with a stern talking to. In that time, a police officer wasn’t allowed to do anything.“
Never mind these people’s opinions. They might be fine upstanding citizens (although I’m guessing we probably disagree on some pretty fundamental issues). I just mostly wonder if it’s true what’s said here. Are we really at the point where dutch cops can beat suspects in handcuffs and risk nothing but maybe a stern talking to? So it’s like what? Getting donuts for yourself only? Coming to work late? Not properly filling out some form? Leaving the headlights on again?
I have received e-mails and comments from what must be almost everybody that knows me, pledging worry and support. Thank you all, even if I haven’t gotten to answering every mail. People also ask how I am doing. I am OK. This is a bit stressful, yes. I especially hope the media side of things gets a little quieter. But I’m really holding up, so please don’t worry too much, OK?
Some rather bizarre developments here in The Netherlands. Monday there was an extensive article (PDF, dutch) about me in De Telegraaf. De Telegraaf is the newspaper with the largest circulation and it leans to the right politically. In it, they describe all the developments with the court order to Twitter.
More interestingly, the article features me as “Julian Assange’s adjudant” as well as ”a left-wing terror activist” with “close ties to the Chaos Computer Club who in
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Dear journalists,
Yet again I am being inundated with your e-mails, text messages, phone calls and unannounced house visits. (The latter is new, unwelcome and the fastest way to get a non-expiring entry on my media blacklist.)
I could easily spend all my time answering the same questions with the same answers instead of taking some time to think for myself. This is not your fault. I can see there’s a story here and you need to
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It’s a warm and fuzzy feeling to know that somewhere, far away, people are thinking about you. Last night I received this rather interesting e-mail from twitter:
Kessel, Jan-07 11:20 am (PST):
Dear Twitter User:
We are writing to inform you that Twitter has received legal process requesting information regarding your Twitter account, @rop_g. A copy of the legal process is attached. The legal process requires Twitter to produce documents related to your account.
Please be advised that Twitter
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Right here exactly five years ago Frank Rieger and myself held a lecture that was called “We lost the war”. It was about how we felt the fight over privacy and wider civil rights was going. For those of you who weren’t there: it wasn’t a very happy story. It was at the height of the post 9/11 paranoia. It was a done deal that the whole EU was going to have data retention
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In an interesting twist, they are now claiming that Alex Halderman and myself were apparently “issued visas by mistake”.
GVV Sarma, joint secretary (foreigners) at the ministry of home affairs, said the duo was initially denied entry because of violations of visa terms they had committed on an earlier occasion. “They had come earlier on a tourist visa, but were involved in activities that could not be considered tourism,” Sarma said.
The home ministry had asked the
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