Assange Blasts Canada For Denying Asylum To Matt Dehart

[struggle4progress]

Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Blasts Canada For Denying Asylum To Alleged Anonymous Hacker Matt Dehart
By Esther Tanquintic-Misa
March 03 2015 5:55 PM
Canada might as “well not have a border,” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said, when it decided to deny the asylum petition of alleged Anonymous hacker Matt DeHart ... DeHart fled to Canada in 2014 ahead of a criminal trial on child pornography charges ... He had likewise been alleged as to have leaked a number of classified U.S. government documents ...

‘EVERY MINUTE IS PRECIOUS’
By Adrian Humphreys
... Paul handed over his and his wife Leann’s passports and identity cards showing they are retired members of the U.S. military; because Matt’s passport had been confiscated by the Tennessee court when releasing him on bail, they turned in Matt’s birth certificate with his expired military ID from his enlistment as a drone pilot. Paul then said they were U.S. citizens fleeing their country and making an asylum claim in accordance with the United Nations’ convention against torture ... The next morning, the DeHarts presented hundreds of pages of documents to CBSA officers to support their asylum claim and two encrypted computer thumb drives of Matt’s. These were the thumb drives Matt had kept hidden for years after the FBI searched his house in 2010, containing, he said, secrets on the hacktivist group Anonymous, his hidden server called The Shell, and his military unit ... The DeHarts told their story: about Matt’s involvement in Anonymous; his link to a classified government file found on a computer server he ran; his visit to the Russian embassy — where Matt tried to defect — that sparked fears he was a spy; his interrogations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation which he says constituted torture; and about child porn charges against him in Tennessee, where he is accused of tricking a teen boy into sending him nude pictures, charges the DeHarts claim were engineered by authorities as leverage in a national security probe ... CBSA gave back all the documents, but kept the thumb drives. Matt was then arrested and jailed. Agents cited the unresolved porn charge but also declared him a foreign national “engaging in an act of espionage that is against Canada or that is contrary to Canada’s interests” ...

[randome]

1. I don't recall every detail of my younger days but...

...it doesn't seem like I could ever have been 'tricked' into downloading child porn.

But Julian is our expert on how sex traps work, I suppose.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]“If you're not committed to anything, you're just taking up space.”
Gregory Peck, Mirage (1965)[/center][/font][hr]

[Tarheel_Dem]

2. +1. As they say, "birds of a feather......"

[struggle4progress]

3. The long National Post series is worth a read

Matt says he's a patriot, who voted for Bush. His father apparently has done NSA work. In 9th grade, Matt called in a prank bomb threat to his school. In 2008, he enlisted in the National Guard; the next year, he was discharged for depression.

He and his friends set up a server in his bedroom closet for secure file downloads then found a disconcerting download on it. When the FBI eventually approached a friend, Matt shutdown the server and damaged the harddrives. Later his house was searched by federal authorities with a child pornography warrant; the agents did not find two hidden thumbdrives. Matt left for Mexico with the thumbdrives and mailed them to acquaintances. He then returned to the US and visited the Russian Federation embassy, where he says he offered to defect. Finding the Russians not sufficiently interested, he next visited the Venezuelan embassy. He went to study in Canada for a while. On return to the US, he was arrested at the US border. He says he was forcibly drugged in US detention and questioned about national security matters before being arrested on child pornography charges. In custody, he was subsequently taken to the emergency room for "acute mental status change" and diagnosed as "paranoid and delusional."

Eventually he was transferred to Tennessee for trial on the child pornography charges. He was subsequently released with a monitoring bracelet, pending trial. Afterwards he cut off the bracelet and fled back to Canada, where he notified authorities he intended to submit an asylum claim. The next day, he was arrested in Canada. In Canadian custody, he made two suicide attempts and so was medicated and put in a suicide smock. He and his parents also call this torture.

[randome]

4. Wow. For his own safety, this guy needs to be under someone's care.

And still nothing to come from those thumb drives full of national security secrets, huh?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]“If you're not committed to anything, you're just taking up space.”
Gregory Peck, Mirage (1965)[/center][/font][hr]

[struggle4progress]

5. CBSA Arrest US Man For Child Porn Production

... On March 1, CBP officers arrested Matthew DeHart, a 30 year-old male and US citizen, in the custody of the Canadian Border Services Agency, after DeHart attempted to enter Canada. DeHart was wanted on a felony warrant, from April 2013, for failure to appear at a court hearing on his indictment for production and transportation of child pornography ...

http://www.windsorsquare.ca/archives/80774/cbsa-arrest-us-man-for-child-porn-production

[geek tragedy]

6. Sex offender solidarity. nt

[struggle4progress]

7. Why is it so hard to find an Ecuadorian embassy when you really need one?

[Rex]

8. Does Assange still have any credibility?

If so, defending someone up on child pornography charges should clear out any that was left.