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An Ethical Synthesis Of Wikileaks: Julian Assange

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WikiLeaks: An Ethical Synthesis Since November of2010, WikiLeaks has held the controversial position of being the world's foremost digital whistleblower haven. The site, founded and orchestrated by Julian Assange, has made a mission of exposing the underbelly of international political, military, and social operations. In pursuit of this mission, the site routinely publishes sensitive government materials, earning it a reputation of ruthless dedication to transparency. In doing so, however, it has endangered a number of individuals and the relationships between the international actors that are vital to the stability of global politics. Because of this, many argue that the mission of WikiLeaks, while just in its intention, is unjustifiably …show more content…

Assange was Australian by birth, and spent the entirety of his childhood on the move, having lived in more than thirty different Australian towns by the time he was a teenager. His mother, half-brother, and he eventually settled in Melbourne while he was still a teenager. Though he never completed a degree, he studied programming, mathematics, and physics and the Central Queensland University and the University of Melbourne. One of the most fascinating facets of Assange's life is his interactions with the Australian New Age group, "The Family." Called a cult by some, The Family entered into Julian Assange's life when his mother, Christine, became romantically involved with member LeifMeynell. Since the separation of Meynell and Christine Assange, The Family reportedly followed the Assange family around Australia until abruptly stopping their pursuit when the Assange's settled …show more content…

Having a nomadic childhood, Assange did not have the opportunity to form lasting relationships with people of his own age group. Because of this, Assange turned to a more consistent form of companionship- his personal computer. Julian Assange began hacking in 1987 under the name Mendax, an allusion to a phrase of Horace, "splendide mendax" or "noble liar." Along with two other hackers, using the names Trax and Prime Suspect, he forme an ethical hacking group called International Subversives. Over the course of several years, International Subversives hacked into the Pentagon, the U.S. Navy, NASA, Citibank, Lockheed Martin, Motorola, Panasonic, Xerox, and Stanford University, among others. This wide and impressive range of experience allowed Julian Assange to found WikiLeaks in 2006, his greatest and most impactful project

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