As Ecuador funded a multi-million dollar effort to protect Wikileaks founder Julian Assange during his stay in the country’s London embassy, Assange returned the favor by hacking into the embassy’s communications system, the Guardian reported Tuesday.
According to a new Guardian report outlining the details of the spy operation designed to protect Assange, the Wikileaks founder’s hack allowed him to intercept professional and personal communications of the embassy staff and set up his own satellite internet. The Ecuadorian embassy was warned of Assange’s behavior in 2014 by a surveillance company that was hired to film Assange’s interaction with visitors.
Assange has been living at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012 to avoid extradition by the Swedish government, where he was wanted for sexual assault. Those charges were dropped in May 2017, according to the Guardian. Assange is still living at the embassy because he is wanted for jumping bail in the United Kingdom, but longtime loyalist Rafael Correa, who was Ecuadorian president from 2007 to 2017, recently said Assange’s days of protection are “numbered.”
Assange is also hiding out to avoid the U.S. government extraditing and charging him with crimes related to his 2010 Wikileaks case, when he published a series of leaks of classified military information provided by Chelsea Manning.
Read the Guardian’s full report here.
