Fact check: relation to Julian Assange, founded Wikileaks at University of Melbourne and Arjen Kamphuis

In a previous blog about my campaign for election to the European parliament, I tried to fact check the discussions about the possibility that I might be related to Senator David Pocock, the former rugby star.

Another popular theme with online mobs around the open source software community is the possibility of a connection with Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

The reason this has come up is that Julian and I were both in Melbourne at around the same time. Or were we?

Given the proximity, I've always been very conscious of what happened to Julian and the related themes about freedom of expression and privacy for government employees. Ireland was recently ranked in the top ten countries for press freedom. If people feel this freedom is important then we can't take it for granted. We need to be constantly vigilant about people who spread lies and censor the truth.

Various companies have spent over $120,000 trying to censor my blogs about the Debian suicide cluster. In exchange, they obtained an order to censor some web sites. The WIPO lawyers found "critical commentary" on my web sites and they developed a rash at the thought of somebody putting the truth into writing. The WIPO censorship order was dated 3 May, that is World Press Freedom day.

On 7 December 2010, Melbourne newspaper The Age published a report with the title World leaders would love the key to this Melbourne PO box... but WikiLeaks won't have it for much longer. They include a photo of post office box 4080 at the University of Melbourne. The article states:

Australia Post insists its sudden decision to close the University of Melbourne post office has nothing to do with the fact that box 4080 is the Australian address for submissions to the whistleblower website.

In other words, the university has averted the risk of a US drone stroke by agreeing to voluntarily demolish the post office. Oddly enough, I can neither confirm nor deny whether the US drones are controlled by software developed by researchers at the University of Melbourne.

The demolition was captured on video, a lot like the execution of the Reuters journalists.

Fact checking, we can see that my first business operated from PO Box 4313. That is about a meter away from the Wikileaks post office box. Here is the letterhead from an old invoice:

The Wikipedia page about University of Melbourne tells us there are over 50,000 students. This is a large institution and it is big enough that not everybody will meet everybody else.

University of Melbourne provides a service where people can verify if somebody really graduated. This is the link to the service. Putting in my name and the year 2002, anybody can confirm that I graduated in 2002.

The Wikipedia page for Julian Assange tells us he enrolled in 2003.

Where was I in 2003 when Julian arrived at Melbourne? I have the best alibi. I was in London.

In 2007, I was employed by Reuters in Paris, France at the same time that unarmed Reuters journalists in Iraq were shot by a US helicopter. These extrajudicial killings were captured on video. The leak of the video, dubbed Collateral murder, was the point when Wikileaks became a household name, especially in the White House.

Arjen Kamphuis collaboration with the open source communities

Arjen Kamphuis is notable for his collaboration with the UK Centre for Investigative Journalism and his work on the book Information Security for Journalists and for his subsequent disappearance. It is not clear if Arjen was very close to Wikileaks or just one of many people with a similar interest in the security of journalists.

Much later, in 2017, I traveled to Tirana, Albania for the OSCAL conference. I made substantial discoveries about poor behaviour by certain people that looks a lot like low-level people trafficking.

Coincidentally, Arjen Kamphuis was invited to the same conference. Arjen and I met for the first time when looking for the speakers dinner.

Arjen and I collaborated to provide workshops for people visiting the Tirana cryptoparty later in 2017.

Looking at the photos from these events, it is clear that there are representatives from a number of well known open source organizations and the companies behind them, including Red Hat, Mozilla and Wikipedia. We were all present at the same events with Arjen. It is not actually clear if Arjen was connected to Wikileaks or if that was just a rumor too.

Shortly before he disappeared, Arjen sent an email confirming that the source of the harassment in open source communities is Redon Skikuli, one of the founders of the Tirana hackerspace.

Subject: Re: Outreachy, Open Labs follow-up
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 23:28:21 +0200
From: Arjen Kamphuis <arjen@pgknowledge.eu>
Organization: Pretty Good Knowledge
To: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro>

Hi Daniel,

Signed up two mentors for Silva. Did not receive detailed info from
others to persue mentor-selection.

Been traveling like crazy (conference season) so did not have time to
look into other issues. Also don't want to get caught up in internal
politics but have noticed some strange events around the Dutch visit
I've organised and co-funded for next month. Will have discusson about
that with Openlabs and especially Rendon who seems to put himself in
positions of control in cases he should not.

Best,
Arjen

Many people have been spreading rumors about the scandals. The women sent multiple emails confirming that I was a witness and thanking me for my assistance.

Here is a group photo from the cryptoparty. Arjen Kamphuis is in the middle.