{"id":83964,"date":"2024-06-29T12:07:06","date_gmt":"2024-06-29T12:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/29\/the-digital-world-is-a-powder-keg-julian-assange-lit-the-fuse\/"},"modified":"2024-06-29T12:07:06","modified_gmt":"2024-06-29T12:07:06","slug":"the-digital-world-is-a-powder-keg-julian-assange-lit-the-fuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/29\/the-digital-world-is-a-powder-keg-julian-assange-lit-the-fuse\/","title":{"rendered":"The Digital World Is a Powder Keg. Julian Assange Lit the Fuse."},"content":{"rendered":"
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On the morning of April 5, 2010, a tall, thin man with a shock of silver hair walked up to a lectern at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. He\u2019d been operating an obscure news website out of Iceland for four years, trying and failing to find a scoop that would set the world on fire. Many of the 40 or so journalists (myself included) who showed up had barely heard of him.<\/p>\n

Still, it was hard to ignore his pitch. Three days earlier, we had received an email promising a \u201cpreviously unseen classified video\u201d with \u201cdramatic proof and new facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even this bit of hype might have undersold what happened after the man, Julian Assange, pressed play. The nature of proof \u2014 the volume and granularity of digital evidence, along with the pathways through which it comes to light \u2014 was about to change.<\/p>\n

Before, information that leaked from insiders to the public was largely circumscribed by the limitations of paper. In 1969, it had taken Daniel Ellsberg an entire night to surreptitiously photocopy a secret study of the Vietnam War that would become known as the Pentagon Papers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n