Exclusive: Julian Assange on "When Google Met WikiLeaks …

In a holiday special, we feature an exclusive Democracy Now! interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In July, Amy Goodman spoke to Assange after he had just entered his third year inside Ecuadors embassy in London, where he has political asylum. He faces investigations in both Sweden and the United States. In the United States, a secret grand jury is investigating WikiLeaks for its role in publishing a trove of leaked documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as State Department cables. In Sweden, he is wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual misconduct, though no charges have been filed. During his interview, Assange talked about his new book, which at that time had not yet been released, titled, "When Google Met Wikileaks." The book was later published in September.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: In this holiday special, we begin with an exclusive Democracy Now! interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In July, I interviewed Julian Assange after he just entered his third year inside Ecuadors Embassy in London, where he has political asylum. He faces investigations in both Sweden and the United States. In the U.S., a secret grand jury is investigating WikiLeaks for its role in publishing a trove of leaked documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as State Department cables. In Sweden, hes wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual misconduct, though no charges have ever been filed.

During his interview, Julian Assange talked about his new book, which had not yet been released when I was in the embassy with him. Its called When Google Met WikiLeaks. The book was published in September. I began by asking Julian Assange to explain the books title.

JULIAN ASSANGE: The title of the book is When Google Met WikiLeaks. And so, thats the interesting thing: Did Google ever meet WikiLeaks? OK, bothlots of people have heard of both of these institutions, and in some ways they seem very different, in some ways they seem quite similar. Both are involved in, it seems, spreading information around the world, across borders, and also collecting information.

Eric Schmidt, the now chairman of Google, came to visit me under house arrest, secretly, in 2011. And the

AMY GOODMAN: When you were under house arrest in Britain?

JULIAN ASSANGE: When I was under house arrest in the U.K., in fact, rural U.K., quite isolated, our location. And he had a party of three other people that came with him. Now, the reason or pretext for that visit was that Eric Schmidt was working on a book, and the book was called The New Digital Age. In fact that book was eventually published last year. It wasntand is an interesting book to read to sort of understand where Google wants to position itself in terms of the Washington establishment. To sum it up, The New Digital Age, that book by Eric Schmidt, is Googles call to Washington to represent itself as Americas geopolitical visionary. So, as far as geopolitics is concerned and where its going and its integration with technology and the Internet as a global structure, Google has the answers, and Google can explain how to get there. Now, that was the outcome.

Who else came to the party back in 2011? It wasnt just Eric Schmidt who came to see me. He had a retinue of three people. And those were Jared Cohen, Lisa Shields and Scott Malcomson. Now, I didnt really think about that visit and the other people who came to see me for this interview until much later, until we were publishing State Department cables and, in fact, were going to publish a lot of State Department cables back in September 2011. And for various legal reasons, we needed to document that I had tried to make a telephone call to Hillary Clinton. And so, having been at this game for a while as a journalist, this is how you get to someone whos in an influential position of power. You say, "Theres a person-to-person call from Julian Assange to Hillary Clinton." You get one of your people to do it, say, "I am Julian Assanges PA," and gradually you rise up the levels of the bureaucracy. And so, we did that with Hillary, went in through the front door, and after, you know, some minutes, I got up to her senior legal adviser, who said that she was in a meeting and that they would call back.

And then we did get a call back, but it wasnt by Hillary Clinton. It wasnt by, at least initially, by anyone from the State Department. It was by Lisa Shields, the person who had come with Eric Schmidt, who was, in fact, at that time, Eric Schmidts girlfriend. So, Lisa Shields was used as a back channel by Hillary Clinton to check that it really was me that was trying to communicate with her. And that back channel turnaround happened in half an hour. So, at that moment, we came to understand that the chairman of Google was in fact very close to the State Department. In fact, he was literally sharing the bed, in some way, with the State Department.

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Exclusive: Julian Assange on "When Google Met WikiLeaks ...

What will be hot at RSA? NSA/tech industry battle; cyberwarfare issues dominate

Share This It's almost a shame that former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden won't be at the upcoming RSA Conference since the disclosures he's leaked about the NSA's mass surveillance practices involving the U.S. high-tech industry are directly influencing a preponderance of conference agenda this year.

It's almost a shame that former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden won't be at the upcoming RSA Conference since the disclosures he's leaked about the NSA's mass surveillance practices involving the U.S. high-tech industry are directly influencing a preponderance of conference agenda this year.

But Snowden, considered a whistleblower by some and traitor by others, still seems be holed up in snowy Russia, having fled there and given refuge by President Vladimir Putin. But the effect of the NSA documents Snowden leaked over the past eight months -- that the NSA works with Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook and others to collect information about non-US. citizens in particular, or otherwise vacuums up all data possible -- has emerged as a top privacy and security concern. In his keynote at the RSA Conference this year, Scott Charney, Microsoft's corporate vice president, trustworthy computing, is expected to take up the topic of government surveillance, because, according to the description of the Microsoft talk, "trust in technology has been badly undermined by public disclosures of widespread government surveillance programs."

(Check out all of the stories that come out of RSA on this page.)

"I think it's safe to say that the 95% of the world's population subject to espionage by the NSA is not happy about it," says Tatu Ylonen, CEO at SSH Communications, based in Helsinki, Finland, who will be at RSA. RSA Conference is global in scope and will be attended by many international visitors and companies, including Chinese networking giant Huawei which will have a pavilion there with other Chinese companies, and the exhibit floor will also have a section carved out for German IT security providers. Huawei has been essentially been shut out of the U.S. federal market, primarily due to allegations from the NSA that Huawei products represent a threat to the security of the U.S. and its allies because Huawei has close ties to the Chinese government and facilitates cyber-spying.

+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD NSA surveillance already hurting US vendors, trade group says | TrustyCon vs. RSA and NSA: New conference pushes trustworthy agenda +

Ylonen points out there's a backlash in Europe because of the NSA cyber-spying that's extending not just to U.S.-based IT service providers but security providers as well. It's leading to an erosion of U.S. competitiveness, Ylonen observes.

While this might be seen as an advantage to non-U.S. companies, the simple fact is that mass surveillance by other governments for cyber-espionage purposes also appears to be occurring in China, Russia, Great Britain and probably France and Israel, if not other places, Ylonen points out. He says the effect of the Snowden document leaks to the media about the NSA is resulting in a "call to action" to the high-tech industry to come up with new technologies to thwart mass surveillance, lest the world end up like the infamous surveillance state of East Germany in the Cold War era.

The RSA Conference is organized by RSA, the security division of EMC. There's a lot of anticipation about whether RSA's executive chairman Art Coviello, who kicks off the conference with his annual keynote, will take up the topic of the NSA since a Reuters investigative report last December asserted that RSA accepted a $10 million contract from the NSA in the past to include a crypto algorithm pushed by the NSA as the default algorithm in the BSAFE toolkit that RSA offers for building crypto capabilities into products.

That crypto algorithm, called Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator (Dual EC DRBG) which is also a NIST standard, was long suspected by crypto experts of possibly being an NSA backdoor. Documents leaked by Snowden assert it is. Most of the high-tech industry now believes that and NIST may say something to that conclusion as well, based on documents found on the NIST website. NIST is not publicly discussing its conclusions about Dual EC DRBG yet.

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What will be hot at RSA? NSA/tech industry battle; cyberwarfare issues dominate

The Criminally Insane Are Running The System: Stasi/Soviet Style NSA Spying on America – Video


The Criminally Insane Are Running The System: Stasi/Soviet Style NSA Spying on America
WeaponizedNEWS.Com -- The Criminally Insane Are Running The System: Stasi/Soviet Style NSA Spying on America Broadcasting at 6-8 PM Saturday Nights on 1680 A...

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The Criminally Insane Are Running The System: Stasi/Soviet Style NSA Spying on America - Video

‘Stop Watching Us!’ Hollywood Celebs Speak Out Against NSA Spying Program PRISM – Video


#39;Stop Watching Us! #39; Hollywood Celebs Speak Out Against NSA Spying Program PRISM
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'Stop Watching Us!' Hollywood Celebs Speak Out Against NSA Spying Program PRISM - Video

Edward Snowden Robot promises more NSA spying revelations

Edward Snowden appears by robot at a TED conference in Vancouver. Photo: AFP

Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden has emerged from his Russian exile in the form of a remotely-controlled robot to promise more sensational revelations about US spying programs.

The fugitive's face appeared on a screen as he manoeuvred the wheeled android around a stage at the TED gathering, addressing an audience in Vancouver without ever leaving his secret hideaway.

"There are absolutely more revelations to come," he said. "Some of the most important reporting to be done is yet to come."

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Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who has been charged in the United States with espionage, dismissed the public debate about whether he is a heroic whistleblower or traitor.

Instead, he used the conference organised by educational non-profit organisation TED, or Technology Entertainment Design, to call for people worldwide to fight for privacy and internet freedom.

Internet creator Tim Berners-Lee briefly joined Snowden's interview with TED curator Chris Anderson, and came down in the hero camp.

When Anderson posed the question to the TED audience known for famous, innovative, and influential attendees the idea that Snowden was a force for good met with applause.

Hero or traitor?

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Edward Snowden Robot promises more NSA spying revelations