MVDIT I.T. PERSON OF THE YEAR 2010
Vidit Bhargava
Julian Assange. That was the "Buzz" word all over the globe. From a low profile hacker, only shown in good quizzes as a tough question to a completely household name that was his transition throught the earth. Born on 3 July 1971 The Whistleblower is primarily the owner of WikiLeaks.
Assange was born in Queensland, Australia and served much of his life living on the magnetic island. In 1987, after turning 16, Julian Assange began hacking under the name "Mendax". He and two other hackers joined to form a group which they named the International Subversives.
In response to the hacking, the Australian Federal Police raided his Melbourne home in 1991. He was reported to have accessed computers belonging to an Australian university, the Canadian telecommunications company Nortel, the USAF 7th Command Group in the Pentagon and other organisations.In 1992, he pleaded guilty to 24 charges of hacking and was released on bond for good conduct after being fined a certain 2100 Australian Dollars. Here is what the prosecutor had to say about him:
"There is just no evidence that there was anything other than sort of intelligent inquisitiveness and the pleasure of being able to—what's the expression—surf through these various computers".
So you see Assange's Magic had already begun. Later in the 20th Century Assange was involved in various activities but none was too big as What would come in the future. Assange once commented that he was actually proud of the hacking phase of his life, and wasn't in the least embarrased.
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is easily the most important thing that has happened to Julian Assange. In 2006 Wikileaks.org was born. The site claims to have been "founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa". So you see it is a complete misconception that wikileaks is Assange's creation. There is no formal identification of the Wikileaks but is only represented by Julian Assange and others since January 2007. Assange describes himself as the member of the advisory board.
In March 2010, WikiLeaks released a secret 32-page U.S. Department of Defense Counterintelligence Analysis Report written in March 2008 discussing the leaking of material by WikiLeaks and how it could be deterred. In April, a classified video of the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike was released, showing two Reuters employees being fired at, after the pilots mistakenly thought the men were carrying weapons, which were in fact cameras. In July, WikiLeaks released 92,000 documents related to the war in Afghanistan between 2004 and the end of 2009 to The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel. The documents detail individual incidents including friendly fire and civilian casualties.
Following on from the leak of information from the Afghan War, in October 2010, around 400,000 documents relating to the Iraq War where released in October. The BBC quoted The Pentagon referring to the Iraq War Logs as "the largest leak of classified documents in its history." Media coverage of the leaked documents focused on claims that the U.S. government had ignored reports of torture by the Iraqi authorities during the period after the 2003 war.
In December 2010. The wikileaks.org domain was killed and just 4 hours later Wikileaks was up again with a completely new domain. Wikileaks.ch . Now thats what you call determination.
So er.. This is what Wikileaks has been doing throughout the year. The rapid growth in the visitor levels have been seen throughout 2010. From a mere hacker Julian Assange had turned into a public figure. Launching leaks one after the other. Ripping (or Opening, whichever you might love to call!) the US Government through the largest leaks the world has ever seen. And All this while sitting at home and sipping a coffee in front of his computer. (ER.. That's not actually true, but Hey it really does sound epic. Ain't it?).
For all that Assange did this year. The James Bond of Hacking. The Whistleblower, Julian Assange gets the MVDIT I.T. Person of the Year Award.