The WikiLeaks co-founder would need time to recover, she told reporters after they were reunited in his native Australia, after a deal with US authorities that allowed him to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified defence documents.
What comes after that is an intriguing question for anyone familiar with how the site he founded in 2006 utterly changed the nature of whistleblowing. Will it return to its original mission?
While it remains online - and would be whistleblowers can theoretically use it to pass on secrets - the organisation around it has been repurposed in recent years to campaign for Assange's freedom.
Assange himself told the Nation magazine in an interview inside Belmarsh prison, London, that it had not been possible to publish leaks due to his imprisonment, US government surveillance and funding restrictions.
Other issues are also starkly unavoidable, not least the fact that the type of encryption technology and other processes that WikiLeaks in many ways pioneered now exist in every good news organisation.
Esta historia es de la edición July 05, 2024 de The Guardian Weekly.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición July 05, 2024 de The Guardian Weekly.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
The Saudi football World Cup is an act of violence and disdain
Well, that's that then. In the event there were only two notes of jeopardy around Fifa's extraordinary virtual congress last week to announce the winning mono-bids, the vote without a vote, for the right to host the 2030 and 2034 football World Cups.
AI has made the move into video and it's worryingly plausible
I recently had the opportunity to see a demo of Sora, OpenAI's video generation tool, which was released in the US last Monday, and it was so impressive it made me worried for the future.
With tyrant Assad ousted, Syrians deserve support and hope
Last week, time collapsed. Bashar al-Assad's fall recalled scenes across the region from the start of the Arab spring almost 14 years ago. Suddenly history felt vivid, its memories sharpened. In fact it no longer felt like history.
TV
The Guardian Weekly team reveals our small-screen picks of the year, from the underground vaults of post-apocalyptic Fallout to the mile-high escapism of Rivals
Albums
Murky love stories, nostalgic pop and an in-your-face masterpiece captured our critics' ears in 2024
Film
Visual language, sound, light and rhythm are to the fore in the best movies of the year
Hidden delights Our 24 travel finds of 2024
Guardian travel writers share their discoveries of the year, from Læsø to Lazio
'It's really a disaster' The fight to save lives as gang war consumes capital
Dr James Gana stepped out on to the balcony of his hospital overlooking a city under siege. \"There's a sensation of 'What's next?'. Desperation is definitely present,\" the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medic said, as he stared down at one of scores of camps for displaced Haitians in their country's violence-plagued capital.
Trailblazers The inspiring people we met around the world this year
From an exuberant mountaineer to a woman defiantly facing the guns of war, here are some of the brave individuals who gave us hope in a tumultuous 2024
Votes of confidence
From India to Venezuela and Senegal to the US, more people voted this year than ever before, with over 80 elections across the world. With rising authoritarianism and citizen-led resistance revealing its vulnerabilities and resilience in the face of unprecedented challenges, has democracy reached its breaking or turning point?
