Skip to main content

Assange: A few Silicon Valley companies impose a 'digital colonization'

Interview at Spiegel

Key points:

With a banking blockade, WikiLeaks had been cut off from more than 90 percent of its finances. The blockade happened in a completely extrajudicial manner. We took legal measures against the blockade and we have been victorious in the courts, so people can send us donations again.”

I have been publishing about the NSA for almost 20 years now, so I was aware of the NSA and GCHQ mass surveillance. We required a next-generation submission system in order to protect our sources. [...] a few months back we launched a next-generation submission system and also integrated it with our publications.”

WikiLeaks is still a taboo object for some parts of the government. Firewalls were set up. Every federal government employee and every contractor received an e-mail stating that if they read something from WikiLeaks including through the New York Times website, they have to remove this from their computer immediately and self-report. They had to cleanse and confess. That's a new McCarthy hysteria.

... we do know is that most of our readers come from India, closely followed by the United States.”

All that US intelligence information is very valuable for the German foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst. Please imagine for a moment the German government complains about being spied on and the Americans just say: Okay, we will give you more stuff, which they have stolen from France. When the French complain, they get more stuff, which was stolen from Germany. The NSA spends a lot of resources obtaining information, but throwing a few crumbs to France and Germany when they start whining about being victims costs nothing, digital copies cost nothing.”
If you knew as a German politician that American intelligence agencies have been collecting intensively on 125 top-level politicians and officials over decades, you would recall some of the conversations you had in all these years and you would then understand that the United States has all those conversations, and that it could take down the Merkel cabinet any time it feels like it, by simply leaking portions of those conversations to journalists.”

They wouldn't leak transcripts of tapped phone calls as that would draw focus to the spying itself. The way intelligence services launder intercepts is to extract the facts expressed during conversations; for example to say to their contacts in the media, 'I think you should look into this connection between this politician and that person, what they did on that particular day.'”

... there are examples of prominent Muslims in different countries about whom it was leaked that they had been browsing porn. Blackmail or representational destruction from intercepts is part of the repertoire used. [...] The British GCHQ has its own department for such methods called JTRIG. They include blackmail, fabricating videos, fabricating SMS texts in bulk, even creating fake businesses with the same names as real businesses the United Kingdom wants to marginalize in some region of the world, and encouraging people to order from the fake business and selling them inferior products, so that the business gets a bad reputation. That sounds like a lunatic conspiracy theory, but it is concretely documented in the GCHQ material allegedly provided by Edward Snowden.”

The US government is pursuing five different types of charges against me. I don't know how many charges altogether, but five types of charges: espionage, conspiracy to commit espionage, computer fraud and abuse, theft of secrets and general conspiracy. Even if there were only one charge of each type, which there wouldn't be, that would be 45 years, and the Espionage Act has life imprisonment and death penalty provisions as well. So it would be absurd for me to worry about the consequences of our next publication. Saudi officials came out after we started publishing the Saudi cables and said that spreading and publishing government information carries a penalty of 20 years in prison. Only 20 years! So if it's a choice between being extradited to Saudi Arabia or the US, then I should go to Saudi Arabia, a land famous for its judicial moderation.”

The persecution was used to create desolidarization. Partly it had the opposite effect but partly in the Western countries it made the rhetorical attacks on us easier. But the climate has shifted positively. It never affected the majority of the Spanish-, French- or Italian-speaking worlds and obviously not the Russian-speaking world. Even in the United States we have support from the majority of people under 35 now.

The transition of the German public opinion is interesting. A study in 2010 found that 88 percent of Germans appreciate the US government; after the disclosure about the NSA, the rate dropped to 43 percent. That is a healthy shift in the German view of the United States, which has been starry-eyed. Japan suffered the same problem. At the same time, German public support for WikiLeaks is significant and even quite mainstream.”

The US is in the business of managing an extended empire. The ability to prevent Merkel from constructing a BRICS bailout fund for the euro zone by intercepting the idea at an early stage is an example. [...] ... the United States government was very interested in the idea that Germany would propose a greater role for China in the International Monetary Fund, for example. An executive decision can be taken: Kill that idea of Merkel's before it learns to crawl, because the US sees China helping Europe as a threat to its dominance.

If you ask 'Does Google collect more information than the National Security Agency?' the answer is 'no,' because NSA also collects information from Google. The same applies to Facebook and other Silicon Valley-based companies. They still collect a lot of information and they are using a new economic model which academics call 'surveillance capitalism.' General information about individuals is worth little, but when you group together a billion individuals, it becomes strategic like an oil or gas pipeline. [...] Organizations like Google, whose business model is 'voluntary' mass surveillance, appear to be giving it away for free. Free e-mail, free search, etc. Therefore it seems that they're not a corporation, because corporations don't do things for free. It falsely seems like they are part of civil society. [...] They are also exporting a specific mindset of culture. You can use the old term of 'cultural imperialism' or call it the 'Disneylandization' of the Internet. Maybe 'digital colonization' is the best terminology.

These corporations establish new societal rules about what activities are permitted and what information can be transmitted. Right down to how much nipple you can show. Down to really basic matters, which are normally a function of public debate and parliaments making laws. Once something becomes sufficiently controversial, it's banned by these organizations. Or, even if it is not so controversial, but it affects the interests that they're close to, then it's banned or partially banned or just not promoted.”

The long-term effect is a tendency towards conformity, because controversy is eliminated. An American mindset is being fostered and spread to the rest of the world because they find this mindset to be uncontroversial among themselves. That is literally a type of digital colonialism; non-US cultures are being colonized by a mindset of what is tolerable to the staff and investors of a few Silicon Valley companies. The cultural standard of what is a taboo and what is not becomes a US standard, where US exceptionalism is uncontroversial.”

Over the last two years, we already have become specialists for the three extremely important trade agreements, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TP). WikiLeaks has become the place to go to leak parts of these agreements that are now under negotiation. These agreements are a package that the US is using to reposition itself in the world against China by constructing a new grand enclosure. We are seeing something that would result in a tighter economic and legal integration with the United States, which draws Western Europe's center of gravity away from Eurasia and towards the United States, when the greatest chance for long-term peace in Eurasia is its economic intergration.

Full interview:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Oct. 7 Reports Implode: Beheaded Babies, NY Times Scandal, & More

Glenn Greenwald    

Israel’s Descent Into Madness & the Holocaust Comparison

BreakThrough News   Rania Khalek was joined by Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany and associate professor at Koc University in Istanbul, to discuss Israel’s descent into genocidal fascism. Prof. Amar addresses whether it’s useful to make Holocaust and Nazi comparisons and the real reason behind the West’s unshakeable loyalty attitude when it comes to Israel’s barbarism.   

Zionist and US imperialist criminals are about to grab the natural gas off shore Gaza

globinfo freexchange   As the genocide against Palestinians of Gaza is about to be completed with an act of unprecedented brutality by the Zionists and butcher Netanyahu through the bombardment of about 1.4 million civilians in Rafah, it seems that they have already set their next primary goal. Which, in short, is to grab the natural gas resources off shore Gaza, together with their US imperialist buddies whose contribution to the genocide has been undoubtedly critical.     As already reported , in 2007, Hamas came to power and Israel launched an offensive on Gaza Strip, leaving behind 1,400 dead Palestinians, but taking with it the gas fields. Within a year, Israel announced the discovery of the Leviathan natural gas field, which did include Gaza's riches, valued at 453 billion dollars. But Gazans have been denied around 47 billion dollars in revenue. As for Tel Aviv, it's gunning to become a new hub. At that moment in time, that is 2022, Russian oil and gas were sanctioned.

Neocon Queen Victoria Nuland Ends Her Reign: Exposing a Catastrophic Career

Glenn Greenwald    

Τυχαία γεγονότα στην τριτοκοσμική μπανανία των Βαλκανίων

failed evolution   1) Συμβαίνει το μεγαλύτερο σιδηροδρομικό δυστύχημα στην ιστορία της χώρας. 2) Γίνεται αστραπιαία επιχείρηση μοντάζ των συνομιλιών του σταθμάρχη από μηχανισμό του καθεστώτος, πριν ακόμα φτάσει στα χέρια των αρχών, προκειμένου να αποδοθεί η τραγωδία αποκλειστικά σε ανθρώπινο λάθος και να βγουν από το κάδρο οι πολιτικές ευθύνες ανώτατων κυβερνητικών αξιωματούχων. 3) Αναπαράγεται το παραποιημένο υλικό αστραπιαία από ναυαρχίδα της καθεστωτικής προπαγάνδας. 4) Τοποθετείται επικεφαλής στην επιτροπή-παρωδία πρωτοπαλίκαρο του καθεστώτος Μητσοτάκη που εργάζονταν παλιά στην ίδια αυτή ναυαρχίδα. 5) Η επιτροπή κλείνει άρον-άρον την υπόθεση αποκλείοντας ουσιώδεις μάρτυρες που είχαν προειδοποιήσει επανειλημμένα τον αρμόδιο υπουργό για τον κίνδυνο μεγάλου δυστυχήματος. Σταματάει έτσι και η όποια σε βάθος διερεύνηση για την τσιμεντοποίηση του χώρου και την απόπειρα συγκάλυψης της τραγωδίας.  

Το σκάσιμο της φούσκας Μητσοτάκη με νέα επίσημη χρεοκοπία και οριστικό τέλος της μεταπολίτευσης

του system failure   Τα αποτελέσματα των εκλογών της 25ης Ιουνίου ήταν λίγο-πολύ αναμενόμενα όσον αφορά τις πρώτες θέσεις με βάση και τα αποτελέσματα της πρώτης κάλπης του Μαίου. Αν συμπεριλάβουμε και το ποσοστό της αναμενόμενης αποχής, δεν μας έδωσαν κάποια ιδιαίτερη έκπληξη. Αυτό όμως που φαίνεται να αιφνιδίασε ακόμα και το συστημικό κατεστημένο, είναι η είσοδος των δύο υπερσυντηρητικών, ακροδεξιών κομμάτων Νίκη και Σπαρτιάτες, με το τελευταίο να έχει ξεκάθαρες διασυνδέσεις με τον πρώην Χρυσαυγίτη, Ηλία Κασιδιάρη. Παρά τη μεγάλη νίκη Μητσοτάκη, οι μιντιακοί ινστρούχτορες της καθεστωτικής προπαγάνδας εμφανίστηκαν σε γενικές γραμμές "μουδιασμένοι" και αυτό οφείλεται στο γεγονός ότι το συστημικό κατεστημένο (δηλαδή τα μεγάλα οικονομικά συμφέροντα που ελέγχουν και το σύνολο των μεγάλων ΜΜΕ πανελλαδικής εμβέλειας), πέτυχε μόνο έναν από τους τέσσερις μεγάλους στόχους που είχε θέσει εξ'αρχής. Μιλώντας με ποδοσφαιρικούς όρους, ουσιαστικά έχασε με σκορ 3-1.   Ο μεγάλος στόχος πο

The Shadowy, Intelligence-Linked Group Driving the US Towards War With Iran

"United Against Nuclear Iran does not miss an opportunity to try to bring the United States closer to a military conflict with Iran. And on the other side of the equation, they also have worked very hard to oppose efforts to de-escalate the U.S.-Iran relationship."   by Alan Macleod   Part 7 - A Lesson From History   The history of Iran has been intimately intertwined with the United States since at least 1953 when Washington orchestrated a successful coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh had refused U.S. demands to stamp out Communist influences in his country and had nationalized the nation’s oil. The U.S. installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a puppet ruler. An unpopular and authoritarian ruler, the Shah was overthrown in the Revolution of 1979. Since then, it has become a target for regime change, and its nuclear program is something of an obsession in the West. Often orchestrated by UANI officials while they were in government, the U.S. has carried

How the CIA oversees the Ukraine proxy war on Russia

Geopolitical Economy Report   Several reports in mainstream US media outlets show how the CIA has helped to direct the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, and played a role in causing the conflict in the first place. Ben Norton examines the evidence.   Related: Confirmed: US imperialists wanted to drag Russia into a war with Ukraine since at least 2019

Israel Carries Out Most Sadistic Massacre, Opens Fire On Gaza Aid Convoy

Richard Medhurst  

The real reason behind TikTok ban

Glenn Greenwald /  Richard Medhurst