AUDIO: Julian Assange speaks about whistleblower Edward Snowden
AUDIO http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/assange-wikileaks/4770642 Assange says Snowden leaks will boost Senate election chances 21 June 2013 Matt O’Neil It’s one year since Julian Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden. But the controversial WikiLeaks founder says he has a bigger battle to fight—his bid for the Australian Senate is building momentum, and he hopes recent leaks about government surveillance will bolster his party’s message…..
‘We now have a regime of secret deals between a national security agency and major organisations like Google and Microsoft and Apple.’
Speaking with Fran Kelly on RNBreakfast, Assange said that America’s surveillance policies ‘affect all Australians’—and he believes Canberra has a lot to answer for. ‘How are they involved in this? Does the Australian Government swap that information? Is the Australian Government using that information from the US government?’
‘All of that is being kept secret, and it’s completely unacceptable. What kind of world are we drifting into where we have a transnational surveillance apparatus, [with] different rules for people in that apparatus compared to the rest of society. It’s very dangerous.’
Mr Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor, leaked to The Guardian newspaper top secret information about mass surveillance activities carried out by the secretive US National Security Agency, including information that the NSA conducted clandestine surveillance of e-mail, web searches, and metadata for phone calls.
Mr Assange said the public response to the actions and subsequent treatment of Mr Snowden, as well as the public’s disgust at the treatment of another leaker Bradley Manning who is currently on trial for releasing top secret US military logs, shows the emergence of ‘a new international body politic, where new values are being developed about transparency, the accountability of government, and the importance of freedom of speech’.
Mr Assange said that public sympathy for Snowden will help to focus voters on his party’s message ahead of September’s federal election.
‘He [Snowden] is in a position that I personally went through… it’s an important continuation of the work that we have fought for for over six years, and that reflects probably the most important political shift that’s happening in the world, which is the creation of a new body politic as a result of the internet.’…….
Former Coalition prime minister, John Howard, recently stated he was ‘struggling to see what crime [Assange] had committed.’
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