A vagabond in his childhood, a hacker in his teens and always living on the edge, Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, is the controversial man who people love and governments hate. This Australian publisher, journalist and editor-in-chief of the whistle-blower website, has stuck to his belief, that publishing improves transparency and better scrutiny leads to reduced corruption and stronger democracies. Today, on July 3, this multi-talented-hacker-publisher is celebrating his 50th birthday, but it’s difficult to say where and how!
Name: Julian Paul Assange
Date Of Birth: 3 July 1971
Nationality: Australian
Having travelled across Australia, gone to 37 different schools, Julian Assange sought refuge at Ecuador’s Embassy in London on 19 June 2012, and holed up there for nearly 7 years before Ecuador ended his politician asylum on the grounds of unruly behaviour on April 12, 2019. Now under the custody of British Police, Assange is still wanted by the US authorities and efforts are being made to get him extradited to face charges in the US.
Interesting Facts about Julian Assange
After 6 years of protection in the west London embassy, Julian started apparently facing the heat due to the mounting pressure from British taxpayers who were lobbying to end the protection. Taxpayers claim that every day about $14,000 is being spent on Julian’s security installed outside his house. In the first three years of its asylum in the Ecuador Embassy, reportedly, $18 million dollars in taxpayers money was spent to provide security to Julian.
Finally, on 12th April 2019, British police hauled Jullian Assange from the Ecuador embassy after Lenin Moreno, President – Ecuador, decided to end his asylum after accusing him to use the embassy as a ‘centre of spying‘.
In January 2021, US Justice Department faced a setback in its efforts of getting Assange extradited to the US. A British judge ruled against the extradition, albeit denied his bail petition.
Since then Assange’s fiance, Stella Moris, has been making constant efforts to get bail for Assange who is now in high-security Belmarsh prison in London.
When we are talking about Julian Assange, we can not miss out some interesting facts about WikiLeaks, either. Here are three:
i) WikiLeaks is a project of the Sunshine Press and an independent global group of people with a long-standing dedication to the idea of a free press and the improved transparency in society and not a front for any intelligence agency or government despite a rumour to that effect.
ii) WikiLeaks has been victorious over every legal (and illegal) attack, including those from the Pentagon, the Chinese Public Security Bureau, the Former president of Kenya, the Premier of Bermuda, Scientology, the Catholic & Mormon Church, the largest Swiss private bank, and Russian companies.
iii) WikiLeaks has released more classified intelligence documents than the rest of the world press combined.
iv) Funded by donations, Wikileaks received an average of 20,000 euros a month from just PayPal alone in 2010 and had gone up to roughly 1,000 euros a day by mid-2013.
Proving every year could be new, Assange seems to be living up to his stepfather, Brett Assange’s description of him, as the “sharp kid who always fought for the underdog“. And as he gets to be 50, we wish he remains the revolutionary visionary he is, inspiring many more bold entrepreneurial ventures striving to make this world corruption-free.
The post is a part of a B’day Series where we celebrate the birthday of renowned personalities from the Tech Industry, very frequently. The series includes Entrepreneurs, C-level Executives, innovators or a renewed leaders who moved the industry with their exponential skill set and vision. The intent is to highlight the person’s achievements and touch base on the little known, but interesting, part of his life. You can see the list of all earlier celebrated tech personalities, including Mark Zuckerberg, Marissa Mayor, Sean Parker, Andy Rubin, Julian Assange, Sir Richard Branson, Sergey Brin by following this link or subscribe to your daily newsletter.
