Last night, Christmas Eve for many, the Twitterverse reeled while visions of nefarious censorship and possible seizure of Julian Assange danced in their heads. The entire Twitter account of the Wikileaks founder was deleted and Assange unaccounted for...until this morning.
Speculators swarmed Twitter theorizing on what actions might be occurring to threaten Wikileaks, especially after reports on December 19th of a strange event targeting the head of Wikileaks legal team in Madrid. Masked intruders reportedly invaded the office of Baltasar Garzon after covering security cameras with tape and left without taking any money.
An agent behind the U.S. Navy Twitter account went searching for an update on the status of Assange this morning, accidentally tweeting what appeared to be a search inquiry for "Julian Assange" as an official Tweet:
The Navy attempted to explain the embarrassing mistake, citing it as mistake during a "routine monitoring of trending topics":
The Navy's choice of wording for the explanation invited interesting commentary such as:
While Assange's account was down, fake accounts immediately surfaced claiming to be Assange backup accounts, including one using the name AltAssange boasting about the removal as a reaction to a pending document drop, taunting followers with a hopeful Tick, Tock...but this and other accounts were quickly removed, dismissed as fake.
Fortunately, the account is back and visible, without explanation on what prompted the deletion, whether it was intentional or accidental. Suspicious tweeters remain cautious on the account's current authenticity. Should there be cause for concern over recent odd events - a concern related to an attempt to thwart a controversial document release? On this point, anxious speculators still grasp for answers.
In the meantime, to maintain operations, Wikileaks encourages donations to their media organization in cryptocurrency. They currently accept donations in Bitcoin, Litecoin, ZCash, and Monero at on their donations page.