from Hacker News

Julian Assange Status – Time since last proof of life: 46 days

by level09 on 11/19/16, 8:41 PM with 37 comments

  • by jlmorton on 11/19/16, 10:10 PM

    Isn't the simple answer that the embassy of Ecuador in London cut off his access to the Internet? The embassy announced they had restricted his access to the Internet beginning October 17th.

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/19/wikileaks-ecua...

  • by wbhart on 11/19/16, 10:35 PM

    The first minute of this interview should clear this up quite quickly. Julian Assange has certainly been seen alive recently, and certainly much more recently than 46 days ago!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sbT3_9dJY4

  • by toyg on 11/19/16, 10:09 PM

    For the record, it looks like things are actually moving, with the Swedish prosecutor finally meeting him at the embassy (and without his lawyer): https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/nov/14/julian-assange...
  • by gotofritz on 11/20/16, 1:47 PM

    Counter-conspiracy: after the Reddit AMA in which most redditors were pissed off and accused WikiLeakas to act in Putin's interests, Assange engineered this drama as a way to regain his previous cult status among the digerati.
  • by corey_moncure on 11/19/16, 10:13 PM

    The poll is missing an option: GPG-signed message with an un-knowable current event.
  • by Jamesbeam on 11/20/16, 2:29 AM

    This would all be super easy to end, for so many smart people in here you guys are acting pretty dumb. Guess making up conspiracy theories is better than actually finding a solution to get PoL.

    According to the previous photos from Assange and the data that I could find publicly, he's most likely in this part of the embassy.

    https://www.google.de/maps/@51.4991122,-0.1612139,3a,53.6y,2...

    A Vanity Fair article says:

    "Assange’s living space, a former embassy office, is located on a ground-floor corner overlooking a small dead-end street.His window sits above one of the hundreds of thousands of security cameras."

    That is also the part of the building where he talked to the press, and his cat is sitting most of the time.

    Now that we have established where he is most likely to find we look at how far the office he is staying in is from the building on the other side of the street ( what would be our observation point, I'll come to that later again.)

    According to Google, that is surprisingly accurate for measurements the distance is:

    Total distance: 19.67 m (64.52 ft)

    So let's say about 65 ft or 20m. Now how does that help us to find out if Assange is still alive?

    There is a technique mostly used by the military called "TTWS" (Through-the-Wall Sensors). The portable devices in the price range up to $80k have a range up to 65ft.

    While this does not deliver a clear image of Assange if you had this running from a window in the observation point across the street, there is a pretty high chance you will see if someone stays / lives in that room.

    The better devices also can give you a "signature" and work up to 230ft (70m), so setting this up for a few days you will be able to track pretty precisely who stays in that part of the embassy and if he left and came back to that room.

    So if you really care if he lives or not, if you start a crowdfunding or find someone with such a device / willing to spend about $150k for a new device, a ticket to London, and a few grand to bribe someone in the building across the embassy to let you stay for a few days you could make a pretty good guess if Assange is still in the embassy / alive.

    P.S.: Just letting you know that this is a gray area and you'd most likely get arrested if the Ecuadorian embassy finds out you do surveillance on them.

    Also, I think Assange is well and alive, it plays into his cards greatly to have people believe he got kidnapped / killed / exfiltrated.

    At least I had a good laugh reading all these bullshit theories. Thanks for the entertainment.

  • by nxc18 on 11/19/16, 10:04 PM

    Why do we care?