So, you will have heard a lot in the last two days about Julian Assange, the somewhat mysterious spokesperson/apparent co-founder of WikiLeaks. You might have heard that he lives a nomadic lifestyle and is fearful of being trailed by spies. That he was once, reportedly, an investigative journalist here in Australia and in Britain, and that he is a self-confessed “reformed ethical hacker” who was arrested as a juvenile in Melbourne for breaching Government websites’ security holes. 

Or not. It seems a great deal about his life is difficult to verify.

Scouring the web for traces of his by-line proved fruitless, save for his research work on a 500 page tome called UNDERGROUND: Hacking, Madness and Obsession on The Electronic Frontier, published in 1997, and this article for CounterPunch about an early hack known as the WANK worm (“You’ve been WANKed!” Ah, LOL, nerds) which some believe Assange to have been involved with.

The CounterPunch article listed iq.org as the domain through which Assange could be reached, which is now dead. However, the internet is like an elephant in that it never forgets. Yes, thanks to the Way Back Machine, the most excruciating parts of your inter-past are there, forever.

What was found on iq.org may provide the clearest insight yet into the mind of the man who makes the final decision about what is published by WikiLeaks, and who works to ensure the anonymity of those who leak some of the world’s most highly classified documents.

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