Thread by @jamesdoleman

Proceedings begin, first witness, computer scientist Professor Christian Grotthoff.
He is giving evidence on how unredacted material was placed on the internet
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The witness confirms that in August 2010 a Guardian journalist, David Leigh gained access to the files, which were strongly encrypyed, these, he said "were useless without the key."
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Grotthoff says that there were a number of attempts to interfere and hack the Wikileaks website and steal data.
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He is now going through a technical explanation of a denial of service attack works.
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Witness says led to people making copies of the website, "mirrors," so they could continue to access the data.
Court is shown a list of the ones Grothoff found, "there were lots of mirrors all over the world," he says
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Some of the, he says he said, contained the unredacted US diplomatic cables, but these would be useless without the encryption key.
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In Febuary 2011, David Leigh published the pass key in a book he wrote about WikiLeaks, they could change their own passwords but had no control over the "Mirror sites."
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In August 2011 a German newspaper published a story saying that there was a password going around the internet that could access the data, "people could now put two and two together, go over the wikileaks archive and decrypt the files.
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The unencryped files were then published online by various places, a well-known website, Cryptome, then published a searchable version of the cables
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The witness says the material is still available on Cryptome, which is based in the USA, but to his knowledge, they had never been prosecuted.
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Grothoff says that once the key was oiut there, "it would have been impossible to stop."
He ends his evidence, Joes Smith rises t cross-examine on behalf of the US Government.
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Smith is asking the witness what materials he was given by the defence, he says he was pointed to some documents to assist his research, but these were all in the public domain already.
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The prosecution lawyer is now challenging the witnesses "impartiality."
He says he sees Assange as a "sympathetic character," as he exposed war crimes.
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Smith reads out a "Free Assange," open letter from 2017, says his name appears on it.
He says he doesn't recall it, "but it was possible, I sometimes sign things I find reasonable."
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Witness says that in his opinion he thinks this case is a bad precedent.

Grothoff, "Of course I have a view that this case is unfair, Smith, "You are biased, your partial," He replies, "you are wrong, you didn't do your homework to find out who published the cables.

Smith suggesting the information must have been on the public wikileaks website, the witness gives various explanation of why that might not be true.
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Prosecutor asks if Wikileaks gave the password to too many people,
Her replies "Well if you put it in a book, like David Leigh did, you give it a lot of people."
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Grothoff says that David Leigh says in his book that Assange was reluctant to hand over the full cache of cables to him, and only did so after the attacks on the website began.
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Grothoff says the best was to hide Mirror websites which contained the files, if to build thousands of mirrors which didn't have it so making the first set impossible to find, "building a haystack."
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He adds he does not know if that was a deliberate Wikileaks strategy but would be a "very smart idea."
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The prosecutor is going through a timeline of an earlier release of the cables, witness says he has checked these are they are marked "unclassified."
Smith says, "Were they marked secret?"
Grothoff unclassified documents are not usually secret.
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Smith is asking about a tweet the witness mentioned, he says he does not have it to hand "but not very quickly."
Court adjours for 15 minutes while he tries to locate it.
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Smith ends his cross-examination, court breaks for 10 minuted so the defence can take instructions from Mr #Assange