AUSTIN, Texas (AP) Speaking over Skype from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said his living situation is a bit like prison with a more lenient visitor policy.

He also hinted that new leaks are coming from WikiLeaks, though he gave no specifics on what these might be.

Assange, who has been confined to the embassy since June 2012, discussed government surveillance, journalism and the situation in Ukraine on Saturday in a streaming-video interview beamed to an audience of 3,500 attendees of the South By Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas.

Assanges hourlong remote appearance was spiked with technical glitches. As the audio cut out, he sometimes asked audience members to raise their hands if they could hear him. Benjamin Palmer, the co-founder of marketing firm The Barbarian Group who interviewed Assange, at one point resorted to texting his questions.

Looking well-groomed in a white shirt, scarf and a black blazer, Assange blasted President Barack Obamas administration, saying it was not taking fellow secret leaker Edward Snowdens revelations about the NSAs surveillance activities seriously.

We know what happens when the government is serious, he said. Someone is fired, someone is forced to resign, someone is prosecuted, an investigation (is launched), a budget is cut. None of that has happened in the last eight months since the Edward Snowden revelations.

Assanges appearance at this five-day conference which will host Snowden in a similar remote interview Monday signal the growing concern in the tech community around issues of online privacy, surveillance and security, even as Internet giants like Google and Facebook reap billions in advertising revenue from collecting information about their users.

Now that the Internet has merged with human society and human society has merged with the Internet, the laws of the Internet become the laws of society, he said, adding that through the NSAs penetration of the Internet has led to a military occupation of civilian space.

Assange has taken asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault charge, which he has said would be merely a first step in efforts to move him to the U.S. to face charges over publishing hundreds of thousands of secret documents.

Asked if he was afraid, Assange said he is, like any normal person.

Visit link:
Julian Assange hints at fresh WikiLeaks during SXSW talk

The Dalai Lama files from Wikileaks
Thanks to Wikileaks we know the extent of the Dalai Lama #39;s violent, non-violent political activities.

By: Talking Tibet

Read more from the original source:
The Dalai Lama files from Wikileaks - Video

Afghan journalist Enayat Najafizada on the burden of releasing WikiLeaks documents
Watch the Full Documentary: http://www.linktv.org/mediastan In the days leading up to the 2010 release of U.S. government cables by WikiLeaks, Julian Assange...

By: Link TV

Continue reading here:
Afghan journalist Enayat Najafizada on the burden of releasing WikiLeaks documents - Video

WikiLeaks founder and secret spiller Julian Assange spoke on Saturday at the South By Southwest Interactive Festival. Assange was not in Austin, but appeared on live video. Assange is living as a fugitive at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. (March 8)

11:20 p.m. CST, March 8, 2014

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks who has disclosed scores of classified data about U.S. military and diplomatic efforts, said the group would be releasing a new batch of secret information.

Assange, speaking through a video feed Saturday to a crowd of more than 3,000 people at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, said he wouldn't share details about the timing or contents of the data because he doesn't want to give the subjects a chance to prepare a response.

"I don't think it's right to give the perpetrator the heads up," said Assange.

Assange is one of several speakers at the conference who is focused on Internet privacy and online security. After years of being an event for celebrating startups with new social- networking tools for posting personal information, South by Southwest this year is taking a more critical look at the privacy consequences of sharing that data. Edward Snowden, the government contractor who leaked documents disclosing spying by the National Security Agency, speaks on Monday through a video link.

Assange, 42, said the disclosures about NSA spying are causing people to reassess the role of government in a world where an increasing amount of personal information is stored online. He said the U.S. agency is losing the public-relations battle since the revelations from Snowden about gathering data from companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple. The disclosures show a "military occupation" in the Internet's "public space," he said.

He said the release of classified information is critical to better understanding of the practices the government is doing in secret. He also said the NSA doesn't face enough oversight from President Barack Obama's administration.

"Who really wears the pants in the administration?" Assange said.

Wikileaks, which started in 2006, leaks classified documents under a philosophy of increasing government transparency. With help from people who have access to secret information, the nonprofit group has released materials including State Department communications about foreign governments and military efforts during wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One U.S. soldier, private Bradley Manning, is serving as long as 35 years in prison for leaking classified information to Wikileaks.

See more here:
Wikileaks' Assange says group will release new secret data

Though the WikiLeaks founder and critics like Edward Snowden were forced into exile, they took advantage of the previously silent NSA's lack of experience at spinning public opinion, Assange told SXSW.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, speaking by Skype at SXSW today.

AUSTIN, Texas -- National security reporters are a new kind of political refugee, but for the first time they've had an extremely powerful opponent without an effective public relations strategy.

Those were two of the main points delivered by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during a teleconference interview at South by Southwest today.

Assange, speaking over Skype from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, said that while the Internet had, over the last few years, been co-opted by the US National Security Agency, the Pentagon, and other government organizations in what could amount to the "most aggressive form of state surveillance" ever created, critics had in some ways gotten lucky.

In the past, Assange said, the NSA had run a public relations strategy that relied on radio silence, to essentially not exist. But, he said, it appears the intelligence agency was not prepared for the worldwide outcry that resulted from the release by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden of documents revealing the organization's massive surveillance efforts. "The Pentagon has [always had] that strategy of trotting out soldiers wrapped in flags trying to demonstrate bravery, but the NSA didn't have that strategy," Assange said. "We got lucky, because we ended up with an opponent that didn't have a PR strategy."

What that's meant, he suggested, is that while the NSA has almost certainly not curtailed its surveillance actions, it has come under much brighter scrutiny than ever before, with substantial coverage of what it does, and intense criticism both at home and abroad. And that, though change may be slow, can only be a good thing.

To be sure, many of the leading voices in the community of critics of national-security surveillance have had to run from prosecution. Assange, for example, has been forced to hole up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for nearly two years to avoid prosecution. Similarly, Snowden is in exile in Russia, and four other vocal critics, Glenn Greenwald, Jacob Applebaum, Sarah Harrison, and Laura Poitras are all living outside the United States and Britain. Greenwald is in Brazil, while Applebaum, Harrison, and Poitras are all living in Berlin.

Those critics have lost much of their personal freedom, at least insofar as where they live and work, and as such have become what Assange called "a new type of [political] refugee."

In addition to Assange, both Snowden and Greenwald will be speaking to SXSW by teleconference.

Originally posted here:
WikiLeaks' Julian Assange: NSA critics got lucky because agency had no PR strategy

AUSTIN, Texas Speaking over Skype from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said his living situation is a bit like prison -- with a more lenient visitor policy.

He also hinted that new leaks are coming from WikiLeaks, though he gave no specifics on what these might be.

Assange, who has been confined to the embassy since June 2012, discussed government surveillance, journalism and the situation in Ukraine on Saturday in a streaming-video interview beamed to an audience of 3,500 attendees of the South By Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas.

Assange's hourlong remote appearance was spiked with technical glitches. As the audio cut out, he sometimes asked audience members to raise their hands if they could hear him. Benjamin Palmer, the co-founder of marketing firm The Barbarian Group who interviewed Assange, at one point resorted to texting his questions.

Looking well-groomed in a white shirt, scarf and a black blazer, Assange blasted President Barack Obama's administration, saying it was not taking fellow secret leaker Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA's surveillance activities seriously.

"We know what happens when the government is serious," he said. "Someone is fired, someone is forced to resign, someone is prosecuted, an investigation (is launched), a budget is cut. None of that has happened in the last eight months since the Edward Snowden revelations."

Assange's appearance at this five-day conference -- which will host Snowden in a similar remote interview Monday -- signal the growing concern in the tech community around issues of online privacy, surveillance and security, even as Internet giants like Google and Facebook reap billions in advertising revenue from collecting information about their users.

"Now that the Internet has merged with human society and human society has merged with the Internet, the laws of the Internet become the laws of society," he said, adding that through the NSA's "penetration of the Internet" has led to a "military occupation" of civilian space.

Assange has taken asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault charge, which he has said would be merely a first step in efforts to move him to the U.S. to face charges over publishing hundreds of thousands of secret documents.

Asked if he was afraid, Assange said he is, like any normal person.

Read more:
WikiLeaks' Julian Assange talks NSA, hints at more leaks

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange AP Photo/Max Nash

Speaking over Skype from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said his living situation is a bit like prison -- with a more lenient visitor policy.

He also hinted that new leaks are coming from WikiLeaks, though he gave no specifics on what these might be.

Assange, who has been confined to the embassy since June 2012, discussed government surveillance, journalism and the situation in Ukraine on Saturday in a streaming-video interview beamed to an audience of 3,500 attendees of the South By Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas.

Assange's hourlong remote appearance was spiked with technical glitches. As the audio cut out, he sometimes asked audience members to raise their hands if they could hear him. Benjamin Palmer, the co-founder of marketing firm The Barbarian Group who interviewed Assange, at one point resorted to texting his questions.

Looking well-groomed in a white shirt, scarf and a black blazer, Assange blasted President Barack Obama's administration, saying it was not taking fellow secret leaker Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA's surveillance activities seriously.

"We know what happens when the government is serious," he said. "Someone is fired, someone is forced to resign, someone is prosecuted, an investigation (is launched), a budget is cut. None of that has happened in the last eight months since the Edward Snowden revelations."

Assange's appearance at this five-day conference -- which will host Snowden in a similar remote interview Monday -- signal the growing concern in the tech community around issues of online privacy, surveillance and security, even as Internet giants like Google and Facebook reap billions in advertising revenue from collecting information about their users.

"Now that the Internet has merged with human society and human society has merged with the Internet, the laws of the Internet become the laws of society," he said, adding that through the NSA's "penetration of the Internet" has led to a "military occupation" of civilian space.

Assange has taken asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault charge, which he has said would be merely a first step in efforts to move him to the U.S. to face charges over publishing hundreds of thousands of secret documents.

See more here:
'WikiLeaks' Assange hints at more leaks

AUSTIN, Texas (CNN) -

From his sanctuary in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, with roughly a dozen police officers outside, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Saturday that everyone in the world will be just as effectively monitored soon -- at least digitally.

"The ability to surveil everyone on the planet is almost there and, arguably, will be there in the next couple of years," said Assange, speaking via Skype to a large audience at the South by Southwest Interactive festival here.

Assange rocketed to international fame, and infamy, in 2010 after WikiLeaks began helping publish secret government documents online.

Ecuador granted Assange asylum in June 2012 and he fled to the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations that he raped one woman and sexually molested another.

He calls those charges false and politically motivated, but has said he fears Sweden will transfer him to the United States, where he could face the death penalty for the work of WikiLeaks if he were charged and convicted of a crime.

On Saturday, he called life in the embassy "like a prison," adding that actual inmates "arguably" have it worse.

Saturday's talk was billed as a question-and-answer session, but because of technological glitches it ended up being mostly an hourlong speech by Assange, punctuated occasionally with questions from Twitter.

The one-sided conversation seemed to turn off some members of the 2,000 people in the audience, many of whom streamed out before Assange was finished speaking.

With little to guide him other than his own thoughts (moderator Benjamin Palmer's audio connection appeared to go down after about 15 minutes), Assange was largely left to expound upon his views that world powers like the United States and England have overstepped their bounds in terms of online surveillance.

Read the original post:
WikiLeaks founder has harsh words for Google, Facebook

What is it like to live inside an embassy?

Julian Assange addressed the topic during a Skype conversation with Benjamin Palmer of The Barbarian Group at SXSW in Austin. Assange, who has been a political refugee inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since June 2012, said it's "a bit like prison" because he's confined inside and is surrounded by police surveillance, though he acknowledged that prisoners have it much worse.

The WikiLeaks founderalso spoke at length about national security and Internet privacy during the occasionally buggy Skype conversation. At one point the conversation turned to fellow whistleblower Edward Snowden and his leak of thousands of classified documents about surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency. Assange said that it worked to the media's benefit that the NSA did not have a public relations plan following the leak.

STORY: Jon Favreau's 'Chef' Served With A Heaping Side of Twitter

"The response to press reports was to not respond," he said. "The White House's actions in trying to crush Edward Snowden grew to such volumethat it couldnt be ignored... To some degree these people whove been trying for years to call attention to this phenomenon of state overreach, we got lucky because we ended up with an opponent that didnt really have a PR strategy except to not exist at all."

He went on to say the politicization of the Internet over the last five years is the most important development in the last 10 years. Assange also touched on the conflict in Ukraine, saying that "Ukraine is very dear to my heart. Ive spent time in the Ukraine and Ive got extremely good friends there."

When asked about WikiLeaks he said that the platform has some important leaks coming up but declined to specify on the grounds that "Idont like to give time frames because it tends to give the opponents of that material more time to prepare their spin lines."

STORY: YouTube's Grace Helbig, Tyler Oakley Talk Building Audiences, Give Advice

Assange also addressed the 2010 leak of U.S. military documents that put WikiLeakson the map. "Adegree of pressure and perceived pressure rained down on our organization and me personally that caused a change in peoples behavior and it meant for example that individuals that normally you could trust couldnt be trusted."

When asked if he was afraid, Assange responded, "perhaps I feel the fear more keenly."

The rest is here:
SXSW: Julian Assange Says Living in Ecuadorian Embassy Is 'Like Prison'

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange Friday questioned whether President Barack Obama is in control of the nations intelligence operation, saying based on the response to the leaks from Edward Snowden, it doesnt look that way.

There is a real question about who is wearing the pants, Assange said on MSNBCs Now With Alex Wagner when asked about reforms to the National Security Agency announced by Obama in response to revelations brought forward by Snowden.

Speaking via satellite presumably from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he has been staying in asylum from an extradition order for more than year, Assange said the government has not addressed the concerns raised by Snowden.

It has been six months now since the Edward Snowden revelations started to occur, Assange said. In that time, have we seen the commencement of a criminal investigation against [Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper for lying to Congress, or anyone in the National Security Agency for violating the law, the U.S. Constitution? No. Have we seen the firing of a single person associated with those breaches of the rights of American citizens and arguably others as well? The answer is no.

Assange said the lack of response raises questions about who is in control.

So who really calls the shots in the executive? Is it Barack Obama? Is it Clapper? Is it [NSA Director Gen. Keith] Alexander? Is it the intelligence complex as a whole? Assange said. We know when the government takes something seriously. It starts a formal investigation, it fires people, it reduces its budgets. We havent seen that. So the question is, does the civilian leadership have effective control of the 16 agency intelligence group under Clapper, under the DNI?

WikiLeaks has been supporting Snowden, who was granted asylum in Russia after fleeing the U.S.

Assanges extradition order is due to an arrest warrant in Sweden over sexual assault allegations against him, though he claims his group is being persecuted for publishing leaked documents.

See original here:
Assange: Is Obama wearing pants?