Excerpt: "The Internet itself had become 'the most significant surveillance machine that we have ever seen,' Assange said in reference to the amount of information people give about themselves online. 'It's not an age of transparency at all ... the amount of secret information is more than ever before,' he said, adding that information flows in but is not flowing out of governments and other powerful organizations."
The Internet itself had become 'the most significant surveillance machine that we have ever seen,' Assange said in reference to the amount of information people give about themselves online. (photo: Andrew Winning/Reuters)
Julian Assange: Internet Has Become 'Surveillance Machine'
28 November 11
ikiLeaks founder Julian Assange blasted the mainstream media, Washington, banks and the Internet itself as he addressed journalists in Hong Kong on Monday via videolink from house arrest in England.
Fresh from accepting a top award for journalism from the prestigious Walkley Foundation in his native Australia on Sunday, Assange spoke to the News World Summit in Hong Kong before keeping a regular appointment with the police.
He defended his right to call himself a journalist and said WikiLeaks' next "battle" would be to ensure that the Internet does not turn into a vast surveillance tool for governments and corporations.
"Of course I'm a goddamn journalist," he responded with affected frustration when a moderator of the conference asked if he was a member of the profession.
He said his written record spoke for itself and argued that the only reason people kept asking him if he was a journalist was because the United States' government wanted to silence him.
"The United States government does not want legal protection for us," he said, referring to a US Justice Department investigation into his whistle-blower website for releasing secret diplomatic and military documents.
The former hacker criticised journalists and the mainstream media for becoming too cosy with the powerful and secretive organisations they were supposed to be holding to account.
In a 40-minute address, he also accused credit card companies such as Visa and Mastercard of illegally cutting WikiLeaks off from funding under a secret deal with the White House.
"Issues that should be decided in open court are being decided in back rooms in Washington," he said.
The Internet itself had become "the most significant surveillance machine that we have ever seen," Assange said in reference to the amount of information people give about themselves online.
"It's not an age of transparency at all ... the amount of secret information is more than ever before," he said, adding that information flows in but is not flowing out of governments and other powerful organisations.
"I see that really is our big battle. The technology gives and the technology takes away," he added.
The anti-secrecy activist then help up a handwritten sign from an aide telling him to "stop" talking or he would be late for a mandatory appointment with police.
Assange, 40, is under house arrest in England pending the outcome of a Swedish extradition request over claims of rape and sexual assault made by two women. He says he is the victim of a smear campaign.
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Comments
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Is Assange a journalist? Well, I have been one for 45 years, and he sure looks like a brother to me! Furthermore, I approve, love and cherish what he has done to discomfort the wide world of tyrants in their evil hidey-holes of secrecy, deceit and privilege. I only wonder how he has been let live this
long. Same goes for others set on exposing the slime that would enslave us all.
As far as Assaange whistle blower web site - There are laws in USA government that prevents whistle blowing on USA government - which is ironic, isn't it?
There is corruption in D.C. in all branches of government and unlike in private business where whistle blowers often save many lives (etc) and often get protection - the USA government repelling whistle blowing on themselves is simple WRONG.
Look what we've learned from Assange: Secret meeting to make "law." A Congress with less approval rating that Castro. The Supremes passing law instead if ruling the constitutionali ty of laws as dictated by the USA Constitution. Their 2010 "person hood" decision was from a motion filed by the Koch Brothers. Jeeze I can hardly wait for the 5-4 ruling by the Supremes on the health care thing.
Private Manning (not charged yet) is coming to trial soon. Will it be behind closed doors?
GOP: the definition of DEBT is money spent: 2 wars + fraud in the "entitlement" programs + bridges to nowhere.
Register early + mail-in ballots. 2012: Vote Dem Vote Obama.
Don't vote "Democratic". Don't vote for the murderer Obummer, who has killed people and tortured people (Bradley Manning, for example) just on his presidential say so. He has defiled the constitution, while arrogating for himself the "right" to file bills of attainder and enact extrajudicial killings. Not to mention the mass murder he continues to perpetrate in Afghanistan and Iraq. Vote against the one party system. Stand up against the crime and criminals parasitizing our government and society.
Obama is just making a CYA maneuver, since so much could yet be revealed.
It's all so sordid, it just makes you want to puke.
Republicans gave us murders like Bush/Cheney so I would never ever vote republican!!
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Well, Pernsey, you are HALFWAY there....but I suggest you have more options than Republican or Democrat. We have to get over this acceptance of a "two"-party system, particularly when the "two" parties become more and more indistinguishab le. OBAMA does NOT deserve to be re-elected....H e is OWNED by many of the same Wall Street interests that have owned the Republicans for years.
"CHANGE"? I haven't noticed very much change. There are those who blame the Reps for stalling legislation; but I say Obama and most of the "Democrats" in Congress are just as blameworthy.
WE NEED A VIABLE 3rd PARTY!!!
If We The People will have the guts to vote our Hopes rather than the Fears generated by Democratic Party hacks who promise the direst of consequences if we don't all fall into line like sheep to vote for the DNC nominee, we can eventually reclaim OUR government.
As long as we continue to fall for the "Lesser-Of-Two- Evils" strategy, we will NEVER get out from under the plutocrats who own both major parties.
NO! NO! NO! We needed someone to challenge Obama in the Democratic Primary! The Tea Party Trick has been NOT to form a 3rd party, but to take over the Republican Party. McKibben, Gore, Kuzinich, where are you when we need y ou!
Is that what you're hoping???
NEVER VOTE PLUTOCRATIC is my slogan. Especially avoid politicians who seek to fool the public by pretending to be anti-plutocrats while covertly working for endless warfare, corporate dominance, and constant surveillance.
Quoting dquandle:
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The American people have been BRAINWASHED into thinking we have no alternative to these "two" parties. The "alternative" to voting for a Democrat is NOT limited to voting Republican or staying home. Go to the polls and vote your conscience....I f you stay home, you are part of the Problem...and if you vote Republican, you must be nuts.
Vote 'Green Party' or some other GENUINELY progressive party. Even though a 3rd-party is unlikely to win, a strong showing will give Obama and the Republican nominee a lot to think about. We, as a Democratic Republic, deserve better than what we've been getting for the past 30-40 years. The lesser-of-two-E vils strategy has no place in a democracy!
Yes,it is scary,add to that when the same or worst happen in our nation with journalists that prefer to look the other way in order to save their status and salaries. THANKS ,INDEPENDENT PRESS LIKE RSN FOR KEEPING US INFORMED FOR REAL AND THANKS TO WIKILEAKS FOR DENOUNCING CORRUPTED GOVERNMENTS (OUR INCLUDED)
However, my gut says that the charges against him are trumped up. As in I don't believe it's a coincidence that these charges came up when they did. If it's proven that the women were lying/being hyperbolic, it manifestly sets women's progress in this area way back. Sexual predation/abuse of any kind is a very serious charge and women lying about such things makes it that much harder for the next woman who really did suffer abuse.
What he says about the internet is true. I'm not on social media like FB or twitter. But just by dint of sending emails and ordering products online, your habits can be tracked by entitites
such as governments and corporations. That's offputting enough.
And don't you just love how our own citizen, Bradley Manning, has been treated when he's not even had a trial yet?
This is so Rovian; muddy the real issues with a smear tactic. Meanwhile, our rights are falling like a bad soufflee.
Our work is cut out for us, dear friends.
You are right,but don't forget something about his personal live: innocent until proven guilty. What if everything was a set up ,like "they" did to DSK?
WELL SAID! Thank you fo sharing with us this vivid example!
We must fight a real battle for change here or hello big-time internet censorship, even beyond WikiLeaks.
Most people think your a conspiracy theorist or way out there in your thinking if you tell them anything close to the truth, because the truth is so far fetched they just dont believe its really happening until its right in their face.
If the government is doing this to their own,what do you expect what it is capable to do to foreigners that criticize USA policy. In April 2011 in San Francisco,leavi ng an event,when questioned by Logan Price about Bradley Manning,,Obama declared " He broke the law...he dumped classified material.( you can read the transcript in http://tiny.cc/3bu2b )
So B? Manning was declared guilty before has gone to trial and been convicted. This assertion will damage a fair trial. Is this an example of justice and transparency?!
That's how much exposure you and I have to the 'security' forces that are now being lined up to suppress dissent and the freedom to speak. Did anyone miss the article on the bill that the Senate is voting on TODAY to consider U.S. citizens to be vulnerable to military action, anywhere in the world? Think the two are not connected?
That line about the 'tree of liberty needing to be watered periodically with the blood of patriots' does not refer to soldiers sent to foreign lands to hunt 'terrorists' but to citizens brave enough to stand up and demand accountability from our government. Given the reactions of the government, including Obama, to OWS and what it wants, the blood has already started to flow. What stand will you take? Are you in the 99%?
we, the citizens need to apply more accountability : Morris David,he sued the Library of Congress (the case in the Supreme Court ), Thomas Drake,Franz Gayl,Peter Van Buren. You can read more info in Nation of Change.
This is other example of why we need Independent Press and Wikileaks, the one that American Government wants to silence now, the same one that could silence all of us in the future,when we decide to speak out against the wrongdoing by any governmental institution.
I wouldn't say the "one option" is to go to another country; I'd say we have many options to fight these injustices, as we are doing in the Occupy movement throughout the WORLD, not just the states.
The option is REAL change. Shout out that we just won't take it anymore, and then, OUST THE BUMS!
Then there are the experts, people such as Noam Chomsky, who rarely find a voice in the mainstream media.
Spying and censorship are the order of the day.
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