He came to international attention in 2010 after WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from Chelsea Manning, a United States Army intelligence analyst:[4] footage of a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, U.S. military logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and U.S. diplomatic cables.

[5][6][7] Following the establishment of WikiLeaks, Assange was its editor when it published the Bank Julius Baer documents, footage of the 2008 Tibetan unrest, and a report on political killings in Kenya with The Sunday Times.

Assange agreed to a plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defence documents in return for a sentence of time served.

[54] Assange's official biography on WikiLeaks called him Australia's "most famous ethical computer hacker",[58] and the earliest version said he "hacked thousands of systems, including the Pentagon" when he was younger.

In December 1996, facing a theoretical sentence of 290 years in prison,[35] he struck a plea deal[7] and pleaded guilty to 24 hacking charges including breaches of the Crimes Act, and fraudulent use of a telecommunications network.

[54][73][58] The judge called the charges "quite serious" and initially thought a jail term would be necessary[54][69] but ultimately sentenced Assange to a fine of A$2,100 and released him on a A$5,000 good behaviour bond[5][35][76] because of his disrupted childhood and the absence of malicious or mercenary intent.

[35][84][73] Assange wrote other programs to make the Internet more accessible[83] and developed cyber warfare systems like the Strobe port scanner which could look for weaknesses in hundreds of thousands of computers at any one time.

[73] During this period of time he also moderated the AUCRYPTO forum,[85] ran a website that gave advice on computer security to 5,000 subscribers in 1996,[33]: 45  and contributed research to Suelette Dreyfus's Underground (1997), a book about Australian hackers including the International Subversives.

The publications include revelations about drone strikes in Yemen, corruption across the Arab world,[98] extrajudicial executions by Kenyan police,[99] 2008 Tibetan unrest in China,[100] and the "Petrogate" oil scandal in Peru.

[163] The head of the IRTF, Brigadier General Robert Carr, testified under questioning at Chelsea Manning's sentencing hearing that the task force had found no examples of anyone who had lost their life due to WikiLeaks' publication of the documents.

[217] In 2012 diplomatic cables between Australia and the United States were released that showed the US government was investigating Assange and that "a broad range of possible charges are under consideration, including espionage and conspiracy".

[255][256][257] Documents released that month showed that Australia had no objection to a potential extradition to the US, and a spokesman for Foreign Minister Bob Carr said that Assange refused an offer for consular assistance.

[261][262] Assange said the grounding "reveals the true nature of the relationship between Western Europe and the United States" as "a phone call from U.S. intelligence was enough to close the airspace to a booked presidential flight, which has immunity".

[12][13] Assange said that Prime Minister Julia Gillard's attacks on WikiLeaks contributed to his decision to run for the Senate, and that if he won the seat the US would end the grand jury investigation against him and the British government would follow suit because of "the political costs".

[269] According to leaked emails,[270][271] Assange was behind the preference deal, and attempted to give himself veto rights and to turn the party's internal National Council into a rubber stamp for decisions taken by individual candidates.

[354] On 16 August 2017, US Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher visited Assange and told him that Trump would pardon him on condition that he would agree to say that Russia was not involved in the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leaks.

[387][388][389][390] On 16 October 2018, members of Congress from the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs wrote an open letter to President Moreno, which described Assange as a dangerous criminal.

[397] In March 2019, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights rejected a complaint submitted by Assange asking the Ecuadorian government to "ease the conditions that it had imposed on his residence" at the embassy and to protect him from extradition to the US.

Without the knowledge of the Ecuadorian security service, employees of UC Global made detailed recordings of Assange's daily activities, interactions with embassy staff, and visits from his legal team and others.

On 7 August 2019, Spain's High Court opened proceedings inquiring about the surveillance of Assange after he filed a complaint that accused UC Global of violating his privacy and client-attorney privileges as well as committing misappropriation, bribery and money laundering.

According to court papers seen by the Associated Press, it was alleged that Morales had passed the recordings to Zohar Lahav, described by Assange's lawyers as a security officer at Las Vegas Sands.

[441] Towards the end of 2019, Judge Emma Arbuthnot, who had presided at several of the extradition hearings,[442][443] withdrew from the case for what she described as a "perception of bias" after reports about her family's connections to the intelligence services and defence industries.

Moreover, Eller stated that password cracking was a common topic of discussion among other soldiers stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, suggesting that Manning's message was unrelated to the classified documents which were already in her possession.

A former UC Global employee, who spoke anonymously, fearing reprisals, stated that the firm undertook "an increasingly sophisticated operation" after it was put into contact with the Trump administration by Sheldon Adelson.

[465] In June 2021 Icelandic newspaper Stundin published details of an interview with Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, the key witness identified as "Teenager" in the U.S. Justice Department's case against Assange.

"[506] On 20 May, the two High Court judges, Dame Victoria Sharp and Sir Jeremy Johnson, found that the assurances regarding the First Amendment and the nationality question were not sufficient and gave Assange leave to appeal against extradition.

[511] On 14 February 2024, the Australian House of Representatives passed a motion put forward by independent MP Andrew Wilkie calling for Assange's immediate release and return to Australia, by a vote of 86 to 42.

[516] After release from HM Prison Belmarsh on 24 June 2024, Assange immediately flew via charter flight – with the accompaniment of his legal representatives and Australia's high commissioner to the United Kingdom, Stephen Smith – to Saipan to attend the federal courthouse of the District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.

Assange described himself as a "passionate, and often pig headed activist intellectual" who was "directing a consuming, dangerous human rights project" and looking for a "siren for [a] love affair, children and occasional criminal conspiracy".

[568][569][570][571] On 7 November 2021, the couple said they were preparing legal action against Deputy UK Prime Minister Dominic Raab and Jenny Louis, governor of Belmarsh Prison, for denying them and their children's human rights by blocking and delaying their marriage.