New Orleans   First there was a note that the daily surge of WikiLeaks email dumps had suddenly stopped for two days prompting speculation that maybe Ecuador had cut the internet connects to Julian Assange in his hideout apartment in the Ecuadorian embassy in an upscale London district. Then there was confirmation, including commentary from Raphael Correa, Ecuadorian’s President, that, yes indeed, they had cutoff Assange’s internet access until after the United States Presidential election.

The explanation was short and sweet from Ecuador. Having had long experience with foreign intervention in Latin American elections, Ecuador didn’t want to be accused of having any role with interfering with another country’s election, and that included the current one in El Norte.

Clearly they were also bridling over the argument being made by US cyber-pros and politicians that WikiLeaks was essentially funneling emails in a silent partnership with whatever the Russian name for the KGB is now. Assange undoubtedly has also stepped on some toes with his blatant partisanship and disdain for the Clinton candidacy, while welcoming the sudden surprising embrace of the alt-right wing of the Republican Party and its banner man, Donald Trump. Correa had indicated earlier that he favored Clinton in the contest, though he felt, somewhat contradictorily, that Trump might be so bad that he would be good for the resurgence of left parties in Latin America, making an argument that was extremely hard to follow. At the same time Correa and the official Ecuadorean statements were clear that Assange would still be harbored in the embassy, and they had rescheduled the Swedish interviews on Assange’s remaining rape charge until after the election as well, presumably to allow Assange access to the internet to prepare with his lawyers.

What an interesting turn of events! Now, we’ll see if WikiLeaks is more or less than the sum of Assange’s parts these days.

WikiLeaks claims, likely truthfully, that it has no idea who is sending them these hacked emails, no more than we can name the individuals who are named in our daily spam messages. Computer pros can suss out some clues from the IP addresses in messages, but it would be surprising if these dumps weren’t encrypted and sent through VPN channels making them hard to trace as well. But, surely these dumps are not going directly into Assange’s personal account for goodness sakes. The WikiLeaks website has the ways and means to receive blind data transmissions for goodness sakes, so technically, if they had something, they could continue to merrily attempt to poke their emails in the eyes of US-voters and the candidates.

Maybe despite the internet anarchist reputation of WikiLeaks, we are going to find that it’s really top down, command-and-control. Now we’ll find out if there is anything or anybody really involved in WikiLeaks other than Assange and a close clutch of comrades. There was a time when WikiLeaks seemed to be an organization of sorts that had people who could flesh out their claims to being a journalistic enterprise of a sort. As Assange’s legal troubles increased along with his bizarre efforts to find safe houses and escape extradition to Sweden, WikiLeaks seemed to be imploding around him.

The internet certainly hasn’t been shut down, so we might find out if WikiLeaks is just a one-man band or has a life separate from Assange. Or, alternatively, was there a message to Assange from Ecuador that said not only, “dude, sorry about that internet,” but also, “stop this stuff until after the US election or you are so out of here!” We’ll seen soon!