Gregory Joseph Barns SC (born 9 April 1962) is an Australian barrister, author, political commentator, mining company director and former political candidate based in Hobart, Tasmania. [1] [2] He is an advisor to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and was the national campaign director for the WikiLeaks Party. [3] [4]
Barns was educated at De La Salle College, Malvern and Monash University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1984 and a Bachelor of Laws in 1985.
Barns was admitted to practice and called to the Victorian Bar in 1986, and to the Tasmanian Bar in 2003. He is also admitted to practice in New South Wales and Western Australia. He worked full-time as a barrister from 1986 to 1989, and from 2003. He took silk in Tasmania in May 2020. [1]
Barns represented Ezzit Raad in the 2008 trial of twelve men around Abdul Nacer Benbrika charged with terrorism-related offenses. [5] SBS Television produced a one-hour documentary, The Trial, about the case, focussing on Barns' involvement. [6] In 2013, he started working pro bono on the Julian Assange legal case for the Assange Campaign. [7]
Barns was an adviser to New South Wales premier Nick Greiner (1989–90); Victorian opposition leader Alan Brown (1990–91); and Tasmanian premier Ray Groom (1993–96). He then served as Chief of Staff to Federal Finance Minister John Fahey from 1996 to 1999.
Barns was the political campaign director of the Australian Republican Movement's 1999 referendum campaign and he succeeded Malcolm Turnbull as ARM chair in 2000.
In 2002, Barns was disendorsed as the Liberal candidate for the Tasmanian seat of Denison, due to his criticism of the Howard government's asylum-seeker policies. Blaming John Howard, Barns said, "Dissent within the party is just not tolerated." [8]
Criticising the Liberal Party, Barns commented on, "The weakness of the liberal wing of the party and in particular supposedly liberal ministers like Robert Hill, for example, or (former attorney-general) Daryl Williams, a range of them who thought of themselves as being liberals who have been prepared to go along for the ride". [8]
He later joined the Australian Democrats for around two years.[ citation needed ]
In 2013, Barns was the Wikileaks Party campaign adviser for the Australian federal election when claims were made about party lack of transparency and accountability by Leslie Cannold, [9] resulting in her resignation from the party along with a number of National Council members and volunteers. [10]
Barns is the author of What's Wrong with the Liberal Party? (2003) and Selling the Australian Government: Politics and Propaganda from Whitlam to Howard (2005). More frequent contributions appear in On Line Opinion, Crikey and the Hobart Mercury on issues pertaining to sport, law and politics (including the Australian federal election in 2007).
In 2019, Barns told Australians to put aside their opinions of Julian Assange and consider his actions. He told the press: “At the end of the day we need to remember what is it he exposed, for which he’s been prosecuted. He revealed war crimes and he’s being punished for it.” [11] In 2020, he called for Australians to support Assange during his extradition hearing in the UK. Barns said Assange was "facing an effective death penalty" for revealing "the war crimes of the US". [12]
Barns has made calls for Australia to adopt a Bill of Rights for the protection of its citizens and journalists. [13] In a 2020 opinion piece published in the Mercury, he warned of the potential human rights violations that could follow public acceptance of the Australian government's COVIDSafe app. The app is intended to facilitate the contact-tracing of people who become infected with the disease, but he warns that data could be used for other purposes by other parties including police, immigration and intelligence agencies in Australia and the USA.
In a 2012 article called "Australia's pointless and deadly drugs crackdown" he said "We are killing, injuring and hurting young Australians who use illicit drugs because of our irrational obsession with prohibition. It is time to stop and produce policies that actually work." [14]
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Cryptome was an online library and 501(c)(3) private foundation created in 1996 by John Young and Deborah Natsios and closed in 2023. The site collected information about freedom of expression, privacy, cryptography, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and government secrecy.
David Leigh is a British journalist and writer who was the investigations editor of The Guardian and is the author of Investigative Journalism: a survival guide. He officially retired in April 2013, although Leigh continued his association with the newspaper.
WikiLeaks is a publisher and media organisation founded in 2006. It operates as a non-profit and is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources. It was founded by Julian Assange, an Australian editor, publisher, and activist, who is currently challenging extradition to the United States over his work with WikiLeaks. Since September 2018, Kristinn Hrafnsson has served as its editor-in-chief. Its website states that it has released more than ten million documents and associated analyses. WikiLeaks' most recent publication was in 2021 and its most recent publication of original documents was in 2019. Beginning in November 2022, many of the documents could not be accessed.
The Granai airstrike, sometimes called the Granai massacre, refers to the killing of approximately 86 to 147 Afghan civilians by an airstrike by a US Air Force B-1 Bomber on May 4, 2009, in the village of Granai in Farah Province, south of Herat, Afghanistan.
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. He came to wide international attention in 2010 when WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning: footage of an airstrike in Baghdad, military logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and US diplomatic cables.
The Afghan War documents leak, also called the Afghan War Diary, is the disclosure of a collection of internal U.S. military logs of the War in Afghanistan, which were published by WikiLeaks on 25 July 2010. The logs consist of over 91,000 Afghan War documents, covering the period between January 2004 and December 2009. Most of the documents are classified secret. As of 28 July 2010, only 75,000 of the documents have been released to the public, a move which WikiLeaks says is "part of a harm minimization process demanded by [the] source". Prior to releasing the initial 75,000 documents, WikiLeaks made the logs available to The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel in its German and English online edition, which published reports in line with an agreement made earlier the same day, 25 July 2010.
WikiLeaks began publishing the United States diplomatic cables leak on 28 November 2010. The documents included classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by its consulates, embassies, and diplomatic missions around the world. The cables were dated between December 1966 and February 2010, and contained assessments of host countries and their officials. The publication of the cables produced varying responses around the world.
Kristinn Hrafnsson is an Icelandic investigative journalist who has been the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks since 2018. He was the spokesperson for WikiLeaks between 2010 and 2017.
Daniel Domscheit-Berg, previously known under the pseudonym Daniel Schmitt, is a German technology activist. He is best known as the former spokesperson for WikiLeaks and the author of Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website (2011).
WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy is a 2011 book by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding. It is an account of Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, and the leak by Chelsea Manning of classified material to the website in 2010. It was published by Guardian Books in February 2011.
The WikiLeaks whistleblowing website founded by Julian Assange has received praise as well as criticism from the public, hacktivists, journalist organisations and government officials. The organisation has revealed human rights abuses and was the target of an alleged "cyber war". Allegations have been made that Wikileaks worked with or was exploited by the Russian government and acted in a partisan manner during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Assange v Swedish Prosecution Authority were the set of legal proceedings in the United Kingdom concerning the requested extradition of Julian Assange to Sweden for a "preliminary investigation" into accusations of sexual offences allegedly made in August 2010. Assange left Sweden in September 2010 and was arrested in his absence the same day. He was suspected of rape of a lesser degree, unlawful coercion and multiple cases of sexual molestation. In June 2012, Assange breached bail and sought refuge at Ecuador's Embassy in London and was granted asylum.
The Fifth Estate is a 2013 biographical thriller film directed by Bill Condon about the news-leaking website WikiLeaks. The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as its editor-in-chief and founder Julian Assange and Daniel Brühl as its former spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg. Anthony Mackie, David Thewlis, Alicia Vikander, Stanley Tucci, and Laura Linney are featured in supporting roles. The film's screenplay was written by Josh Singer based in-part on Domscheit-Berg's book Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website (2011), as well as WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy (2011) by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding. The film's name is a reference to people who operate in the manner of journalists outside the normal constraints imposed on the mainstream media.
We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks is a 2013 American independent documentary film about the organization established by Julian Assange, and people involved in the collection and distribution of secret information and media by whistleblowers. Directed by Alex Gibney, it covers a period of several decades, and includes background material. Gibney received his fifth nomination for Best Documentary Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America Awards for this film.
The WikiLeaks Party was a minor political party in Australia between 2013 and 2015. The party was created in part to support Julian Assange's failed bid for a Senate seat in Australia in the 2013 election, where they won 0.66% of the national vote. At the time Assange was seeking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The WikiLeaks Party national council included of Assange, Matt Watt, Gail Malone, Assange’s biological father John Shipton, Omar Todd and Gerry Georgatos.
Sarah Harrison is a British former WikiLeaks section editor. She worked with the WikiLeaks' legal defence and has been described as Julian Assange's closest adviser. Harrison accompanied National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden on a high-profile flight from Hong Kong to Moscow while he was sought by the United States government.
In 2012, while on bail Julian Assange was granted political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he sought to avoid extradition to Sweden, and what his supporters said was the possibility of subsequent extradition to the US. On 11 April 2019, Ecuador revoked his asylum, he was arrested for failing to appear in court, and carried out of the Embassy by members of the London Metropolitan Police. Following his arrest, the US revealed a previously sealed 2018 US indictment in which Assange was charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion related to his involvement with Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks.
Andrew John Fowler is an Australian TV reporter, author, and journalist. Born in the United Kingdom, he worked as a journalist in London before migrating to Australia. He specialises in human rights and national security issues.
John Shipton is an anti-war activist and architect, and the father of Julian Assange. He founded the WikiLeaks Party and was involved in the creation of WikiLeaks. He was featured in the documentary Ithaka, produced by Assange's half-brother Gabriel Shipton.
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