http://rt.com/news/assange-internet-control-totalitarian-943/
Assange to RT: Entire nations intercepted online, key turned to
totalitarian rule
Published: 30 November, 2012
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says all the necessary physical
infrastructure for absolute totalitarianism through the internet is
ready. He told RT that the question now is whether the turnkey
process that already started will go all the way.
RT: So you've written this book 'Cypherpunks. Freedom and the Future
of the Internet' based on one of the programs that you've made for
RT. In it, you say that the internet can enslave us. I don't really
get that, because the internet it's a thing, it's a soulless thing.
Who are the actual enslavers behind it?
Julian Assange: The people who control the interception of the
internet and, to some degree also, physically control the big data
warehouses and the international fiber-optic lines. We all think of
the internet as some kind of Platonic Realm where we can throw out
ideas and communications and web pages and books and they exist
somewhere out there. Actually, they exist on web servers in New York
or Nairobi or Beijing, and information comes to us through satellite
connections or through fiber-optic cables.
So whoever physically controls this controls the realm of our ideas
and communications. And whoever is able to sit on those
communications channels, can intercept entire nations, and that's the
new game in town, as far as state spying is concerned - intercepting
entire nations, not individuals.
'intercepting entire nations, not individuals'
RT: This sounds like a futuristic scenario, but you are saying that
the future is already here.
JA: The US National Security Agency has been doing this for some
20-30 years. But it has now spread to mid-size nations, even
Gaddafi's Libya was employing the EAGLE system, which is produced by
French company AMESYS, pushed there in 2009, advertised in its
international documentation as a nationwide interception system.
So what's happened over the last 10 years is the ever-decreasing cost
of intercepting each individual now to the degree where it is cheaper
to intercept every individual rather that it is to pick particular
people to spy upon.
'It is cheaper to intercept every individual rather that it is to
pick particular people to spy upon'
RT: And what's the alternative, the sort of utopian alternative that
you would put forward?
JA: The utopian alternative is to try and gain independence for the
internet, for it to sort of declare independence versus the rest of
the world. And that's really quite important because if you think
what is human civilization, what is it that makes it quintessentially
human and civilized, it is our shared knowledge about how the world
works, how we deal with each other, how we deal with the environment,
which institutions are corrupt, which ones are good, what are the
least dumb ways of doing things. And that intellectual knowledge is
something that we are all putting on to the internet - and so if we
can try and decouple that from the brute nature of states and their
cronies, then I think we really have hope for a global civilization.
If, on the other hand, the mere security guards, you know, the people
who control the guns, are able to take control of our intellectual
life, take control of all the ways in which we communicate to each
other, then of course you can see how dreadful the outcome will be.
Because it won't happen to just one nation, it will happen to every
nation at once. It is happening to every nation at once as far as
spying is concerned, because now every nation is merging its society
with internet infrastructure.
RT: And in what way are we, as sort of naïve internet users, if you
like (and I exclude you from that, obviously), kind of willingly
collaborating with these collectors of personal data? You know, we
all have a Facebook account, we all have telephones which can be
tracked.
JA: Right. People think, well, yeah, I use Facebook, and maybe the
FBI if they made a request, could come and get it, and everyone is
much more aware of that because of Petraeus. But that's not the
problem. The problem is that all the time nearly everything people do
on the internet is permanently recorded, every web search.
Do you know what you were thinking one year, two days, three months
ago? No, you don't know, but Google knows, it remembers.
'Google knows, it remembers'
The National Security Agency who intercepts the request if it flowed
over the US border, it knows.
So by just communicating to our friends, by emailing each other, by
updating Facebook profiles, we are informing on our friends.
'by updating Facebook profiles, we are informing on our friends'
And friends don't inform on friends. You know, the Stasi had a 10 per
cent penetration of East German society, with up to 1 in 10 people
being informants at some time in their life.
Now in countries that have the highest internet penetration, like
Iceland, more than 80 per cent of people are on Facebook, informing
about their friends. That information doesn't [simply] go nowhere.
It's not kept in Iceland, it's sent back into the US where it IS
accessed by US intelligence and where it is given out to any friends
or cronies of US intelligence - hundreds of national security letters
every day publicly declared and being issued by the US government.
RT: So do we risk kind of entering a scenario where there are almost
two castes of people: a safe minority who are very savvy about the
workings of the internet and the things that you described, and just
people who go online for kicks?
JA: We have this position where as we know knowledge is power, and
there's a mass transfer as a result of literally billions of
interceptions per day going from everyone, the average person, into
the data vaults of state spying agencies for the big countries, and
their cronies - the corporations that help build them that
infrastructure. Those groups are already powerful, that's why they
are able to build this infrastructure to intercept on everyone. So
they are growing more powerful, concentrating the power in the hands
of smaller and smaller groups of people at once, which isn't
necessarily bad, but it's extremely dangerous once there is any sort
of corruption occurring in the power. Because absolute power
corrupts, and when it becomes corrupt, it can affect a lot of people
very quickly.
Bill Binney, National Security Agency whistleblower, who was the
research head of the National Security Agency's Signals Intelligence
Division, describes this as a 'turnkey totalitarianism', that all the
infrastructure has been built for absolute totalitarianism
'all the infrastructure has been built for absolute totalitarianism'
It's just the matter of turning the key. And actually the key has
already been turned a little bit, and it is now affecting people who
are targeted for US drone strikes, organizations like WikiLeaks,
national security reporters who are having their sources
investigated. It is already partly turned, and the question is, will
it go all the way?
RT: But has it been built really by corporations and kind of
unwittingly subscribed to by people, in order to advertise products
to make money, or has it been built deliberately by governments for
the sole purpose of surveillance?
JA: It's both. I mean the surveillance infrastructure, the bulk
surveillance infrastructure - there are hundreds of companies
involved in that business. They have secret international
conferences, they have prospectuses that they give to intelligence
agencies that we have obtained and published this year together with
Privacy International and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Also, The Wall Street Journal has done some good work on this. They
are building devices that they advertise to intercept entire nations,
to install the data from those intercepts permanently - strategic
interception, because it's cheaper.
So it's a combined corporate/government amalgam. That's one of the
problems, one of the reasons it's so unaccountable is that it crosses
boundaries. Companies don't just sell to their home country, they
sell to companies overseas. There are shareholdings held in BVI, and
the company might be British-registered, like BIA, but actually a lot
of research and development is done in Sweden, etc.
And then you also have Google and Facebook, who started up
predominantly serving the public, but also have developed side
projects to service the US intelligence complex. And individuals are
constantly pushing their thoughts into Google as each thing that they
want to research; it is pushed via emails, and on Facebook, through
their social relationships. That's an undreamt of spy database.
'That's an undreamt of spy database'
Facebook is completely undreamt of even by the worst spying nation,
given the richness and sophistication of relationships expressed.
RT: And willingly contributed to.
JA: Well, no. But not with informed consent. People don't actually
know. When on Facebook it says "share this to your friends," that's
what it says. It doesn't say "share this to state agencies," it
doesn't say "share this to friends and cronies of state agencies."
RT: Who do you think has the organized power to stop these things
that you are talking about?
JA: If there is political will, everything is possible. So if we get
the political will, then of course those agencies can be dismantled.
Very aggressive legislation, policing can be pushed upon them. In
some regions of the world, such as Latin America, perhaps that's a
possibility. There is a certain democratic tendency, which Ecuador is
part of that might do that. But in general I think the prognosis is
very grim. And we really are at this moment where it can go one way
or the other way.
To a degree, perhaps the best we can be sure, if we work, of
achieving is that some of us are protected. It may only be a
high-tech elite, hopefully expanded a bit more - people who can
produce tools and information for others that they can use to protect
themselves. It is not necessary that all of society is covered, all
of society is protected. What's necessary is that the critical
accountability components of society that stop it from going down the
tubes entirely, that those people are protected. Those include
corruption investigators, journalists, activists, and political
parties. These have got to be protected. If they are not protected,
then it's all lost.
RT: Is there a way that I can protect myself without knowing all
about computers?
JA: Well, a little bit. But the first thing to be aware of is how
much you are giving away. The first way to protect yourself is to go,
"OK, I'll discuss that in person, and not over Facebook chat," or,
"OK, I will discuss this using some forms of encrypted chat, like
OTR, and not on a Facebook chat." You can go to torproject.org and
download encrypted anonymizing software. It is slower than normal,
but for things like internet chat it's fine, because you are not
downloading very much at once. So there are ways of doing this.
What is really necessary, however, for those to be properly
developed, there needs to be enough market demand. It's the same
situation as soap and washing your hands. Once upon a time, before
the bacterial theory of disease, before we understood that out there
invisibly was all this bacteria that was trying to cause us harm -
just like mass state surveillance is out there invisible and trying
to cause society a large harm.
'mass state surveillance is out there invisible and trying to cause
society a large harm'
- no one bothered to wash their hands. First process was discovery;
second process, education; third process, a market demand is created
as a result of education, which means that experts can start to
manufacture soap, and then people can buy and use it.
So this is where we are at now, which is we've got to create
education amongst people, so there can be a market demand, so that
others can be encouraged to produce easy-to-use cryptographic
technology that is capable of protecting not everyone, but a
significant number of people from mass state spying. And if we are
not able to protect a significant number of people from mass state
spying, then the basic democratic and civilian institutions that we
are used to - not in the West, I am no glorifier of the West, but in
all societies - are going to crumble away. They will crumble away,
and they will do so all at once. And that's an extremely dangerous
phenomenon.
It's not often where all the world goes down the tube all at once.
Usually you have a few countries that are OK, and you can bootstrap
civilization again from there.
RT: We just passed the second anniversary of Cablegate, and since
then this war on whistleblowers and this state surveillance seems to
have got worse. Do you think something as large as Cablegate could
ever happen again and it would have a similar impact?
JA: Yes, yes. Hopefully next year.
RT: What sort of time next year?
JA: I won't go into it, but hopefully earlier rather than later.
RT: Do you feel that when WikiLeaks is making these releases you're
having as large an impact as you've had before?
JA: Well, Cablegate was extraordinary. It was published over a period
of 12 months. It's the most significant leak. Our previous leak, on
the Iraq war, was also 400,000 documents, showing precisely how over
100,000 people were killed. That was also very significant. But yes,
no one has done anything as significant as that since, but yes,
hopefully, that will continue.
The successes of WikiLeaks shouldn't be viewed merely as a
demonstration of our organization's virility or the virility of the
activist community on the internet. They are also a function of this
hoarding of information by these national security [agencies]. The
reason there was so much information to leak, the reason it could be
leaked all at once is because they had hoarded so much. Why had they
hoarded so much? Well, to gain extra power through knowledge. They
wanted their own knowledge internally to be easily accessible to
their people, to be searchable, so as much power could be extracted
from it as possible. WikiLeaks attempts to redress the imbalance of
power.
'WikiLeaks attempts to redress the imbalance of power'
by taking what's inside these very powerful institutions and giving
them to the commons, people in general, so we can understand how the
world works and stop the takeover by these powerful institutions. But
it's a function of how much knowledge these powerful institutions
have accumulated.
RT: You've obviously written this book while you've been here in the
embassy. But is it affecting your ability to work, this being cooped
up constantly?
JA: It's affecting my ability to meet with other people in different
countries and to proselytize and things like this. But we should keep
it in perspective. There are others who have been in prison also in
the past few years. I know that it is a much more serious condition
than the one I'm in, and I am fortunately able to give interviews and
so on. So at least I have a voice. Prisoners rarely even have a
voice. Why is that? Well, because the prison system doesn't want to
permit them to complain about their conditions.
RT: And what are you going to do, Julian? You said that you won't
leave the Ecuadorian embassy until the US drops any charges and any
investigation against you. Are you just going to stay here forever?
JA: Well, I hope that there is enough political pressure and that the
US government sees that it is destroying any goodwill that remains
towards it as a result of its persecution and investigation of
WikiLeaks and its associates. I think it really does have to drop the
investigation. And you know, over the past six months in particular
you can see a sort of the arrow of history - and the US DoJ and Eric
Holder are going to end up on the wrong side of history. I don't know
that they want that on their record.
RT: I think there've been reports on the media that over the last day
or so about your lung condition, but you've released a statement that
it's actually not the case at all. But has it shown you what would
potentially happen if you did have a health scare? Do you think you
would be able to get treatment?
JA: You know, my particular personal condition is not very
interesting. Obviously, this circumstance in the embassy is
difficult. And over a longer term, I suppose, it could be very
difficult. But, you know, I've had worse problems.
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