In a new book the WikiLeaks founder says Google and Facebook are as dangerous as governments.
A Julian Assange supporter with a poster of the WikiLeaks founder Photo: JOHN PRYKE
The internet has become the “most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen”, according to the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
In Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, a series of interview transcripts originally broadcast on Russian state-controlled TV channel RT, Assange discusses government and corporate surveillance, anti-file sharing legislation and the social media phenomenon that has seen users willingly collaborate with sites such as Google, Facebook and Twitter who wish to collect their personal data.
Using the internet is like “having a tank in your bedroom”, says Assange, and a mobile phone is simply a “tracking device that also makes calls”.
He continues by saying “the universality of the internet will merge global humanity into one giant grid of mass surveillance and mass control”. Only through encrypting your online activity, he claims, will it be possible to create an information network that the state will not be able to decipher.
Written in a stirring style that will delight his fans but seem a touch over the top to the sceptical, Assange writes in his introduction that “it is time to take up the arms of our new world, to fight for ourselves and for those we love”.
Full story at The Telegraph
Full story at The Telegraph