HOPE: scheduled keynote by Julian Assange of Wikileaks

Announcers at The Next HOPE are introducing Julian Assange as the keynote speaker, as I type this blog post. Despite earlier reports of federal agents at the hacker con hoping to detain and question the Wikileaks founder, he is rumored to be present in NYC—though I wouldn't bet my PGP key on it. False rumors and disinfo flow at hacker gatherings as freely as do the caffeinated beverages.

Keynote to be streamed here, whoever delivers it, and from wherever they happen to be speaking.

IMAGE: a packed crowd in the room where the presentation will take place (photo: PDP7).

UPDATE: Jake Appelbaum will apparently be delivering the keynote in Assange's place.

UPDATE 2: Here's Jake's talk in MP3. Announced during the session, blog.wikileaks.org has been launched, and several APIs will soon be released. The first blog entry details some architectural and security updates.

UPDATE 3: Here's Quinn Norton's report at Gizmodo. (thanks, Quinn)

• [invictus]

  Links to Jake’s slides would be appreciated, since some of the information the talk alludes to is purely visual.

• [Malgwyn]

  Emmanuel and the “Off the Wall/Hook have been announcing that Julian Assange would be at HOPE for months. I’m sure Julian could easily discourse from an undisclosed location, possibly within NYC, or even just over the Canadian border and not appear in person. if it is required.

  “Spot the Fed” should be extra fun this year.

• [Anonymous]

  I was lucky enough to be watching live streaming of this year’s TED Global conference this week, where Julian was a surprise guest speaker on Friday. Great stuff! Can’t wait for that video to be up on TED.com!

• [Anonymous]

  per wikileaks twitter, homeland security was there looking for him.

• [Anonymous]

  @Malgwyn, If Adriam Lamo or anyone from Wired is there, then you’ve found the Fed.

• [Anonymous]

  Go Jake Appelbaum. SRHS class of ’01 represent!

• [Anonymous]

  You don’t really need to find out what’s going on
  You don’t really want to know just how far it’s gone
  Just leave well enough alone
  Eat your dirty laundry

  Dirty little secrets
  Dirty little lies
  We got our dirty little fingers in everybody’s pie
  We love to cut you down to size
  We love dirty laundry

• [seyo]

  did the FBI arrest the entire boingboing staff too? It’s been awful quiet around here…

  *crickets*

• [postjosh]

  there’s no need to dramatize the situation. i feel like boingboing is just falling for the hype. julian assage is no saint.

  • [bersl2]

    Few are. Certainly no one in decision-making positions in government is.

• [Anonymous]

  He very probably never planned to speak there. This looks like a rumor that was spread as a cover for his actual appearance at TEDGlobal in Oxford on Friday.

• [Anonymous]

  I drove past him on Hythe Bridge street in Oxford this afternoon at 1 PM UK time, i.e 8 hours ago, so he was either on his way to get a train to Heathrow, or he’s in the UK rather than NYC.