Julian Assange is, without a doubt, the most controversial White Hat hacker in modern history. Early in his career as a programmer in Australia, Assange pleaded guilty to hacking into agencies such as the Pentagon, the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Navy.

He was born in 1971 in Townsville, Australia as Julian Paul Hawkins. His parents divorced early, and his mother remarried, so now he bears the surname of his stepfather Assange. However, in 1979, his mother divorced again. As a child, he often moved and practically lived as a nomad.

Already at the age of 16, Assange became a hacker. He was arrested in 1991 for breaking into computers. He pleaded guilty to all counts of the indictment, but was sentenced to a fine of 2,100 Australian dollars for good behavior.

In the meantime, he continued his education, studied programming, mathematics and physics, but did not graduate.

Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006 on his home server.

When he assembled the group with which he founded Wikileaks, he interpreted his intention as opposing regimes such as China, Russia and Central Asian countries, and then also any illegal and immoral behavior of governments or companies, "including the American government." As it turned out, most of the piquancy was related to the United States and its policy.

Since then, Wikileaks has published hundreds of thousands of documents on illegal killings in Kenya, on toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, the Church of Scientology, but that was just the beginning. Assange became globally known in 2010, after WikiLeaks disclosed more than 251,000 diplomatic dispatches on November 28, that is, correspondence between the State Department and US diplomatic missions around the world. That material contained as much as 40 percent of confidential material, and more than six percent of secret documents.

An Interpol warrant for Assange was issued on November 30, 2010, and on December 7, the British arrested him, at the request of Sweden. In that country, he is accused of alleged crimes of a sexual nature.

PostFinance, a Swiss bank, blocked his funds, in December 2011, on the grounds that the reported place of residence did not correspond to the truth, while MasterCard, Visa Inc., PayPal, as well as Bank of America prevented the inflow of funds to WikiLeaks.

According to Assange, in the best of times, "Wikileaks" received up to 85,000 British pounds a day. However, in 2012, the Reykjavik District Court of Iceland ruled that Visa Inc. violated the contract and thus caused damage of 20 million dollars.

Wikileaks Gathers $37M in BTC Since 2010 - Over $400K Sent After Julian Assange's Arrest

Assange fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London in June 2012, where he received political asylum and where he stayed until April 2019, when the new Ecuadorian authorities revoked his asylum and annulled the citizenship he had acquired in the meantime. He was arrested by the British police because he violated the bail set by the court by fleeing to the embassy. Sweden immediately renewed the investigation and the request for extradition, and Assange is in extradition detention. His friends claim that his health has been damaged so much due to his detention conditions that his life is in danger, and they demand his release. After all, Assange himself emphasized that he no longer believes in the positive outcome of his case and that he fears that the United States will not leave him alone because of what he did. As he put it: "It is possible that I was sentenced to death."

But ....

"WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the United States due to accusations of espionage and hacking of state computers, a British judge has decided," the Guardian reports.

The verdict was handed down to the Central Criminal Court by District Judge Vanessa Baraitser.

The judge blocked the request due to concerns about Assange's mental health and the risk of suicide in the United States.

She presented evidence of his self-harm and suicidal thoughts and said: "The overall impression is that he is a depressed and sometimes desperate man who is afraid for his future." She stated that extradition to the United States is a risk for him.

The American prosecutor's office announced that it would appeal the decision of the British judge, Assange's lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said today. He said he would file a bail application for Assange on Wednesday, pending an appeal.

If America's appeal against the British court's decision for conspiracy to possess and disclose national defense information, conspiracy to break into a computer, possession of national defense information (seven counts) and disclosure of national defense information (nine counts) is upheld, he faces 175 years in prison .

"When governments stop torturing and killing people, when corporations stop abusing the legal system, then, perhaps, the time will come to raise the issue of the responsibility of freedom of speech fighters." J.A