Is there an innocent reason why his bail would be £100k-£200k for an alleged offence like this? It seems incredibly high and serves only to reinforce the suggestion that this is merely an excuse to detain him.

Source: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Julian-Assange-Wiki...

I'm not sure what's common there, but note that he has quite a bit of mobility, money and power and the charges are (while quite possibly complete nonsense) for serious crimes. Also, the number is reported as hearsay by Sky, which means it isn't exactly solid information.

This article doesn't seem to mention anything about an actual arrest, it just says he agreed to meet with / surrender to police.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-us...

That article seems to have a bit more info, but it's still doesn't seem like he's actually in custody yet.

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11937110 . When Assange arrived at the appointment as scheduled, the arrest warrant was executed.

BBC says he has been arrested: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11937110

Interesting news, but totally irrelevant to the WikiLeaks operation.

They have absolutely thought this through, with all the necessary "insurance" they have been spreading around.

Regardless of the fate of one man - Assange - classified information will continue to leak.

The wheels are in motion.

I'm not sure I agree with you.

Yes, classified information will continue to leak, as it always has.

But WikiLeaks, at least to my knowledge, is deeply wrapped up with Assange, and it is not clear (to me, at least) how it would function in his absence. In the words of this article (http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/geert/2010/08/30/ten-theses-...), WikiLeaks is essentially a "Single Person Organization".

Actually, I think Assange did a pretty god job of making it look like a one-man-operation when it is positively clear there are many more skillful people involved in WikiLeaks.

Assange might take the fall, but the means nothing of the rest of the operation.

What evidence is there of skillful people helping out? All I see is total technical incompetence: https://p10.secure.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/ssl/wikil...

Wikileaks: It's not a wiki, and you can't leak anything through it

With all this hoopla, Assange and Wikileaks will serve as an inspiration and martyr to others who will create sites for similar purposes. I'd even consider creating one myself if I had the resources.

As for the content hosted by Wikileaks itself, thousands of mirrors and torrents of that have been going up since the fervor over the cables. I wouldn't worry too much about that. I think the real worry should be that Assange is about to get black-bagged.

Similar sites exist already e.g. Cryptome. It's just a matter of getting information to a source that will publicise it, and whether others have the chops to go as far as Wikileaks, even risking events like this.

I expect that this was carefully planned.

Ideal would be the leak of documents describing the conspiracy to trump up charges against Assange after the relevant governments realized that he cannot be prosecuted under any existing speech or espionage laws.

I'm also curious to see at what point the key for Assange's insurance.aes is leaked.

It is more about the continuity of the site. If the financial source is dried up as suggested in the article, Wikileaks as a website will eventually die, and it is not about this particular cablegate. Of course, Wikileaks probably already prepared for all these. I am just still surprised that so many companies act together to stop Wikileaks as an organization without any illegal charges yet.

Take your pick:

Guardian http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978645

MSNBC http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978690

BBC http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978651

TheNextWeb http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978656

Sky http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978613

CNN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978636

NY Times http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978692

I posted this in the BBC thread linked:

Despite my low level of contribution to this site, I must say I'm tired of seeing WikiLeaks/Assange on the Hacker News front page. Granted, all this may be newsworthy, but going by the Hacker News Guidelines, it feels more "Off-Topic" than on, in that it's about politics and would be covered on TV news, like the TSA submissions a while ago.

Edit: I'll take the opportunity to at least explain my point of view to people.

I come to Hacker News to see people talk about technology, innovation, trends, start-ups and tiny projects that pop up that do things that seem so obvious in hind-sight, but are in fact really clever. This recent news about WikiLeaks and Assange I feel don't really fit in any of these categories.

The Hacker News Guidelines [1] may be open to interpretation, but it does explicitly state:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics

and

> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

There is a bit after the first quote that states "unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon," which I suppose is where I disagree with others. Nonetheless, if people feel it fits here, I'll respect your opinions.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I find this to be a huge technology story. In the past, leaks have generally gone through journalists in newspapers. This had 2 qualities about it. The public didn't have access to the raw leaked information and the journalists, in most democracies, are protected from prosecution.

By making the leaks downloadable on the internet, so much more information has been made available and this is having repercussions that I haven't seen before. The organisation that released the leaks is being attacked from many directions - denial of service, refusal of corporations to handle web services or money and an Interpol alert for questioning about a condom breaking.

I don't know how this will turn out but this is history in the making. It will surely have repercussions on the way we will be allowed to use the internet in future.

A fairly detailed article around the circumstances that have lead to the charges filed against him.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1307137/Su...

Certainly not the definitive source but seeing the number of allegations thrown around in this thread I figured it could be a good time to start linking to reference material.

Can somebody with some legal background explain to be the benefits of him giving himself in to justice in the UK?

I am apparently naive and cannot fathom why he would choose to do this when he knows that there is a strong chance of him being extradited to the US. While I understand that being a fugitive with your assets systematically frozen is not fun, I am still puzzled by this move.

If you have not actually done anything unlawful, it is best to just give yourself to justice and let the courts sort it out. Otherwise, they can use it against you that you obstructed justice...

You're assuming there will be "justice." You know what they say about assumptions...

I'm at a loss as to why he would be worried about extradition to the US when the only charges against him are from Sweden.

If he is (perhaps secretly) deemed an enemy combatant, he can be held indefinitely in custody without having any charges against him.

But surely that does not stop the US from charging him and issuing their own warrant - something much easier to do if he's already in custody.

My guess is that he is confident he can get out on bail. Maybe he got a deal from the UK - who knows at this point. It will be very interesting to see what happens next.

Is this correct: in Sweden it is considered "rape" (by the male) if there is no condom involved?

No. It is considered "rape" because the woman reportedly asked Assange to stop when the condom broke, and he didn't.

uhm.. at least one of them was bragging on twitter after she'd bagged Assange.

It was only a few days later they both decided that they'd been raped. Go figure..

I would love to see a link to that claim.

There were some other tweets, but as the parent link says they were all deleted. Anna Ardins blog was always taken offline for a few days after they first pressed charges.

I didn't save backups myself I'm afraid, but this forum thread probably have them saved -- https://www.flashback.org/t1275257 -- I'm afraid it's a very long thread, in Swedish..

They decided it was a problem when they figured out he'd pulled the same bullshit with both of them!

err, she was also reported to have thrown a party for him after the event...

yes its crazy, he is charged with starting to have sex with a condom and apparently she claims when they finished there was no condom. thats it folks.

From the video: "... and than we have got the common sense test about the gross irresponsibility of this conduct."

So when all else fails, there's still good old fashioned "common sense" huh?

Does anybody believe this isn't engineered by the CIA and has no connection whatsoever to cablegate?

Presumably that's a rhetorical question and you're actually trying to say 'I believe this is engineered by the CIA and is directly connected with cablegate'.

To which I'd answer, I'm not assuming anything since there is currently an absence of factual information on the subject. Certainly not enough to make such a specific claim.

Here is information on the CIA link of his accuser, and background info, included deleted tweets and articles that expose the intent of her allegations. http://www.disinfo.com/2010/12/non-surprise-assanges-accuser...