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he US Department of Justice wants Assange extradited to the United States so he can face 18 charges of computer hacking and for publishing the names of informants.

Sloboda, who worked with Assange and the WikiLeaks team on the Iraq war logs in 2010, said the Australian was determined to scrub sources’ names from the documents before publishing.

“It was impressed upon us that the aim was a very, very stringent redaction of the logs before publication.

“That was the aim of Mr Assange and WikiLeaks,” he told Assange’s lawyer.

Sloboda said it would have taken an “army of people” “a very long time” to redact the files by hand and that it was his colleague who came up with the idea of developing software that would scrub non-English words from the documents.

He said redactions of occupations were also carried out to stop informants’ identities being guessed.

He said this laborious process created tensions between WikiLeaks and the media outlets they were partnering with at the time, as the news organisations wanted to begin publishing documents they had already redacted. ………..

Assange has spoken out in court to deny he put lives in harm’s way. He faces a combined sentence of up to 175 years if convicted of all counts in the US. His extradition hearing is expected to run until October.  https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/julian-assange-aimed-for-stringent-redactions-extradition-court-hears-20200917-p55ws5.html