Julian Assange: "Online Totalitarianism Is Near, Entire Nations Are Intercepted"

dryriver writes "Russia Today's correspondents have visited Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Assange has been holed up for nearly 6 months now. In the 12 minute long interview with RT, Assange has many interesting things to say about privacy, and government data interception in particular. A small excerpt: '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. ... 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.'"

I don't see the issue here

[Waffle Iron]

So what if they're snooping on entire nations.

After all, if nobody in a nation is doing anything wrong, then that nation has got nothing to worry about.

Protest

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

Let's send a message to those state spies. Maybe if we all download the filthiest pornography we can find and....

Oh. I see.

Never mind.