Few contemporary figures have divided public opinion as strongly as Julian Assange, the Australian-born hacker-turned-free speech advocate. Some consider him a hero and martyr who, through his website WikiLeaks, helped uncover abuses of power, ranging from a devastating 2007 helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed 12 innocent people to the release of thousands of classified State Department foreign policy documents. Others, including several prominent pundits and politicians, view Assange as nothing less than a war criminal and have openly called for his assassination. In the wake of the revelations, Assange has been boxed into a corner. Public funding for WikiLeaks has been blocked and, suspiciously, two Swedish women have come forth to accuse him of sexual assault. Assange is currently sequestered in London's Ecuadoran Embassy fearing the possibility of extradition for the release of the documents and violation of Swedish sex laws. In We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) traces the roots of Assange's activism, creating a complex portrait of a canny, technologically sophisticated but sometimes self-important individual, both noble and insensitive, self-sacrificing and self-serving.
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Few contemporary figures have divided public opinion as strongly as Julian Assange, the Australian-born hacker-turned-free speech advocate. Some consider him a hero and martyr who, through his website WikiLeaks, helped uncover abuses of power, ranging from a devastating 2007 helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed 12 innocent people to the release of thousands of classified State Department foreign policy documents. Others, including several prominent pundits and politicians, view Assange as nothing less than a war criminal and have openly called for his assassination. In the wake of the revelations, Assange has been boxed into a corner. Public funding for WikiLeaks has been blocked and, suspiciously, two Swedish women have come forth to accuse him of sexual assault. Assange is currently sequestered in London's Ecuadoran Embassy fearing the possibility of extradition for the release of the documents and violation of Swedish sex laws. In We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) traces the roots of Assange's activism, creating a complex portrait of a canny, technologically sophisticated but sometimes self-important individual, both noble and insensitive, self-sacrificing and self-serving.
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