Cryptocurrency: WikiLeaks Afghan War Logs Inscribed, Project Spartacus, Free Julian Assange !!!

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Thu Oct 12 04:40:44 PDT 2023


Expect an insurance dump before long...



Someone Is Inscribing All Of WikiLeaks' Infamous Afghan War Logs On Bitcoin

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/someone-is-inscribing-all-of-wikileaks-infamous-afghan-war-logs-on-bitcoin
https://ordinals.com/inscription/911bffcff4608ab49e639ac55c314d1d8c2b97b51b5573454a5143350f175258i0
https://projectspartacus.org/
https://twitter.com/Stella_Assange/status/1709524946479685791
https://theintercept.com/2020/09/30/assange-extradition-cfaa-hacking/
https://shadowproof.com/2020/09/26/password-cracking-conspiracy-theory-assange-extradition-tria/

Authored by NAMCIOS via BitcoinMagazine.com

What's started with a mysterious inscription on October 7 may end up
turning into the latest global protest in support of journalist and
activist Julian Assange.

As revealed by Bitcoin Magazine, an unknown "Project Spartacus" has
formed in an attempt to immortalize on bitcoin the classified
information that the U.S. government has long alleged Julian Assange
illegally provided to journalists in the infamous Afghan War Diary.

Following the inscription, an anonymous individual has contacted
Bitcoin Magazine claiming responsibility for the project, which aims
to inscribe the tens of thousands of logs from the Afghan War
published by Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks in July 2010 into the bitcoin
blockchain.

These logs created a big upheaval in U.S. media at time they were
published, and elicited strong reactions from the country's
government. Notably, the content of the logs not only differed from
what had been presented in mainstream media but also offered troubling
insights into what actually happened in Afghanistan. At times, the
logs raised questions about the conduct of some U.S. military
operations.

    On this day in 2006 Julian #Assange created @wikileaks.

    Julian is 52 now. He was 38 when WikiLeaks published Collateral
Murder and was last free. The video shows the US army killing a dozen
civilians, including two Reuters employees on assignment and the
rescuers who stopped to… pic.twitter.com/IfISuj83W7
    — Stella Assange #FreeAssangeNOW (@Stella_Assange) October 4, 2023

The publication of the war logs, which was coordinated with The
Guardian, The New York Times, and others, caused a spur inside the
government. The first indictment brought against Assange focused on an
alleged conspiracy between him and Chelsea Manning to crack an account
on a computer in her military base. Per the charges, the “primary
purpose of the conspiracy was to facilitate Manning’s acquisition and
transmission of classified information.”

However, as reported by The Intercept, it later became clear that the
alleged hacking not only didn’t happen, but it also couldn’t have
happened. New testimony, reported by investigative news site
Shadowproof, also showed that Manning already had authorized access
to, and the ability to exfiltrate, all of the documents that she was
accused of leaking — without receiving any technical help from
WikiLeaks.

In truth, the indictment describes the kinds of activities conducted
by many news organizations and journalists every day, including
obtaining and publishing true information of public interest,
communication between a publisher and a source, and using encryption
tools.

In addition to the Afghan War logs, WikiLeaks also published those of
the Iraq War. This picture depicts a wounded Iraqi being loaded onto a
van during an attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people
in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff on July 12, 2007.

Ho New / Reuters file

It seems this backdrop is the context through which Project Spartacus
attempts to take a foothold in the bitcoin ecosystem. The project
leverages the Ordinals protocol, a metaprotocol for bitcoin that lets
anyone add arbitrary data to the original cryptocurrency's blokchain.
Given the properties of bitcoin and its decentralized network of
nodes, once data is added to its blockchain it can never be removed or
altered.

Such properties are seemingly great for the use case of combating
censorship of information. Under this light, it seems Project
Spartacus aims to take a stand towards freedom of information and
knowledge, making it impossible for anyone to mess with the data that
Assange risked his life to make public. The journalist currently faces
potential extradition to the U.S., despite being an Australian citizen
and not having committed alleged offenses on U.S. soil. The outcome of
the extradition process remains uncertain, and concerns continue to
grow regarding his future and whether he will ever regain his freedom.

Project Spartacus's website provides a public interface through which
any person can “inscribe” –– Ordinals jargon for adding data to
bitcoin –– a war log. There seem to be no fees associated with this
action apart from network fees, a necessary component to any
transaction submitted to the bitcoin network. The page also features a
"donate" button, which opens up a panel through which users can
optionally send bitcoin to Assange's cause. Donations are said to go
towards supporting the following organizations: Freedom of the Press
Foundation, The Information Rights Project and Reporters Without
Borders.

A huge rectangular button appears on the main page, reading "Publish
War Log." Upon clicking, the process of inscribing a war log is
triggered. The user is given the option to choose how many logs to
inscribe, with a maximum of 300 war logs per transaction. The user can
then select the transaction fee, based on which a total amount for
payment is calculated. Upon hitting "continue," the user then is
presumably redirected for payment.
BITCOIN: MORE THAN MONEY?

Commonly seen as a monetary network, bitcoin can also serve as a
decentralized and unstoppable publishing technology thanks to the
Ordinals protocol. Created last year by bitcoin developer Casey
Rodarmor, Ordinals aims to make it easy for anyone to add data to
bitcoin –– be it text, image, video, HTML or Markdown.

The development saw a parabolic surge in activity within a short few
months. The amount of inscriptions added to bitcoin in the first 200
days following the launch of Ordinals was greater than the number of
Ethereum NFTs created in the same 200-day period after nonfungible
tokens went live on ETH.

This rise in popularity caused a big fee spike on the bitcoin
blockchain, leading some users to complain about the perceived
“uselessness” of adding arbitrary data to what should arguably be a
monetary network. Since bitcoin is ruled by rules, not rulers, and
Ordinals transactions abide by the protocol’s rules, the activity was
able to continue and thrive for months, leading to a plethora of
applications and new developments being built on the original
cryptocurrency.

Project Spartacus takes a spin on Ordinals’ popular use case of doing
NFTs on the mother chain to seemingly focus on complete data finality
on a decentralized chain of information, which is run by tens of
thousands of nodes in hundreds of different jurisdictions around the
world.

In this sense, Ordinals may very well be the ultimate publishing tool
that many in the world have been looking for to fight information
censorship and tampering.


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