Julian Assange was arrested on Thursday in London to face a charge in the United States of conspiring to hack into a Pentagon computer network in 2010.

…The indictment …revealed that prosecutors in Northern Virginia had not charged Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act for publishing government secrets. Instead, they charged him with conspiring to commit unlawful computer intrusion based on his alleged agreement to try to help Ms. Manning break an encoded portion of passcode that would have permitted her to log on to a classified military network under another user’s identity.

…His organization began publishing Ms. Manning’s leaks in 2010, bringing to light many secrets — like revealing that more civilians had died in Iraq than official estimates showed, detailing the accusations against Guantánamo detainees and airing American diplomats’ unvarnished takes on what was happening around the world. 

…During the 2016 presidential campaign  [Wikileaks released] thousands of Democratic emails stolen by Russian hackers. (Russian intelligence officers apparently adopted the guise of a hacker calling itself Guccifer 2.0 when providing the files to WikiLeaks.) 

…The Ecuadorean government said last year that it had cut off Mr. Assange’s internet access, saying that he had violated an agreement to stop commenting on, or trying to influence, the politics of other countries. The government also imposed other restrictions, like limiting his visitors. 

…Ecuador’s president …[said] that his country had decided to stop sheltering Mr. Assange after “his repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols.”

Julian Assange Arrested in London as U.S. Unseals Hacking Conspiracy Indictment – The New York Times

hmmmm