Julian Assange (born 3 July 1971) is an activist and the founder of Wikileaks from Australia. He is a wanted journalist in the US. Lethabo Ndlovu of Nerdville.co.za takes a look at the Assange’s life in this piece.
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Julian Assange Biography
Julian Paul Hawkins was born on the 3rd of July, 1971 in Townsville, Queensland, a state in Northeast Australia to Christine Ann Hawkins and John Shipton. Before the birth of Assange, his parents had already separated and his mum eventually married Brett Assange, an actor who raised Julian. Today, Julian prefers to identify with Brett Assange as his father.
Assange had already lived in over 30 Australian towns before the age of 16 and it was around that age he started hacking under the alias “Mendax” belonging to a syndicate known as “the International Subversives”. He was later arrested in 1991 but released on good behavior.
Assange attended Central Queensland University (1994) and the University of Melbourne from 200 3to 2006 but did not complete his degree.
Career
Assange utilized his computer talents to assist the Victoria Police Child Exploitation Unit in prosecuting people who published and distributed child pornography in 1993. In the same year, he helped establish the Suburbia Public Access Network, one of Australia’s earliest public Internet Service Providers (ISPs). He began programming in 1994, writing or co-authoring the TCP port scanner Strobe in 1995, patches for the open-source database PostgreSQL & Usenet caching software NNTPCache in 1996, and the Rubberhose Deniable Encryption System in 1997 which reflected his growing interest in cryptography, and Surfraw, a command-line interface for web-based search engines in 2000.
WikiLeaks
In 2006, he established WikiLeaks, and between that time to 2010, Assange exposed a lot of governments across Africa to North America including the United States and Israel. The US started investigating him in 2010 following the release of the Manning material.
Also in Sweden, he was accused of sexual assault allegations by two women and an international arrest warrant was issued but was later revoked years later Assange was seeking asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, United Kingdom.
His political asylum was granted on the 16th of August, 2012 and this was announced by the Ecuadorian foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño. The place became his home until 2019 after he had issues with staff members at the embassy.
On the 17th of June, 2022, the UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel approved the extradition request made by the US for Julian Assange with many human rights organizations against the approval.
Julian Assange Age
As of 2022, he is 51 years of age.
Julian Assange Wife
Between 1989 to 1999, he was married to Theresa Assange and he has a son, Daniel Assange who is believed to live in Melbourne. It is rumored that he has other children but as of now, that rumor is unconfirmed.
Julian Assange Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $300,000.
