[Reader-list] Fwd: Der Spiegel interview with Julian Assange (Part II)

[patrice]

Read part I first!


Original to: 
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-interview-with-wikileaks-head-julian-assange-a-1044399.html


SPIEGEL Interview with Julian Assange: 'We Are Drowning in Material'
Interview Conducted By Michael Sontheimer

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange speaks via video link during an event
on the sidelines of the United Nations Human Rights Council session in
Geneva in July.

(part II)



SPIEGEL: When you started WikiLeaks in 2006, did you ever expect to end
up in the kind of situation you are in now?

Assange: Not this precise situation. But I did expect significant
difficulties, of this type. Of course I did.

SPIEGEL : On the other hand, WikiLeaks has become a global brand within
less than nine years, a household name even. Does this compensate for
the substantial problems you are having?

Assange: No. But other things do. The conflict has made us much tougher,
producing the WikiLeaks you see today. This great library built from the
courage and sweat of many has had a five-year confrontation with a
superpower without losing a single "book." At the same time, these
"books" have educated many, and in some cases, in a literal sense, let
the innocent go free.

SPIEGEL : That's not a bad conclusion. Especially given that you chose
to go up against the most powerful enemies available on Earth. Or what
is more powerful than the US government and its military and secret
services?

Assange: Physics. Mathematics. The underpinnings of physical reality are
harsh and could do with adjustment but it is not clear how.

SPIEGEL: You mentioned the US investigations. A Swedish state prosecutor
is also investigating you for the alleged lesser-degree rape and sexual
molestation of two Swedish women. And the British would like to lock you
up because they say you breached your bail conditions by applying for
asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy. Are there any other investigations
against you and WikiLeaks?

Assange: The US is still proceeding against me and WikiLeaks more
broadly according to a court filing by the US government this year. A
"WikiLeaks War Room" was erected by the Pentagon and staffed with an
admitted 120 US Intelligence and FBI officers. The center of it has
moved from the Pentagon to the Justice Department, with the FBI
continuing to provide "boots on the ground." In their communications
with Australian diplomats, US officials have said that it was an
investigation of "unprecedented scale and nature" -- over a dozen
different US agencies ranging from the US State Department to the NSA
have been involved.

SPIEGEL: What do you regard as the most threatening case of all?

Assange: We have a dozen different legal proceedings. From a
journalistic point of view, as the largest international espionage case
against a publisher in history, it is a very sexy case, which the media
has reasons to protest every day. But there is one thing that is still
sexier than an espionage case and that's a sex case no matter how bogus.
There is another investigation, which has to do with the role of
WikiLeaks in Edward Snowden's asylum. And there is the Anti-Terror Act
in Great Britain, which is the reason that Sarah Harrison, our
investigations editor, has to be based in Berlin. Australia, my home
country, has also announced a criminal investigation against us this
week for revealing a gag order used to cover up a major international
bribery case involving heads of state.

SPIEGEL: In March, the Swedish prosecutor announced that she would
finally come to London to interview you in the embassy, but this
ultimately didn't happen.

Assange: The Swedish "preliminary investigation," which arose during the
heat of the US conflict, has been dormant for almost five years now.
There are no charges. In 40 other cases, Swedish prosecutors have
interviewed people in Britain during those five years. They have not
done that in my case and they placed me under a grueling bail situation.

SPIEGEL: You had to pay £200,000 (€290,000) and report to the police
every day.

Assange: Yes, for almost 600 days. And I had to wear a monitoring unit
around my ankle. Alleged war criminals from the former Yugoslavia being
held on bail here in Britain don't have such conditions.

SPIEGEL: How many lawyers do you employ?

Assange: WikiLeaks has received legal advice from about 150 lawyers
across all these cases.

SPIEGEL: Are you experiencing greater support or solidarity as a result
of the continuing persecution against you?

Assange: 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.

SPIEGEL: What is your impression of the reputation of WikiLeaks in
Germany?

Assange: 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.

SPIEGEL: Does that have something to do with the fact that Sarah
Harrison, your investigations editor, is working in Berlin and sometimes
makes public appearances there?

Assange: Sarah has had an impact, but it is more the other way around.
Sarah is staying in Berlin because it's a friendly environment. And a
number of other people connected with WikLeaks are there for the same
reason.

SPIEGEL: You yourself visited Berlin in 2009. You visited the annual
hacker congress of the Chaos Computer Club.

Assange: The CCC is a unique phenomenon. There are some big American
conferences, but they are almost entirely depoliticized.

SPIEGEL: Already back in the 1980s, Dr. Wau, the founder of the Chaos
Computer Club, came up with the slogan: Protect private data, use public
data. That has been quite farsighted. Back then Wau and CCC members were
consultants to the parliamentary group of the Greens in the German
parliament, the Bundestag. Today, Green Party member of parliament
Christian Ströbele and other MPs with the Greens and the Left Party are
working hard in a committee of inquiry to reveal the truth about the
nature and scope of the US surveillance in Germany. What do you think
about this committee?

Assange: As an analyst, I tend to be cynical about such committees
because they are normally set up to bury rather than open debate.
However, the Bundestag's committee of inquiry is foraging out some
interesting facts and there are members like Hans-Christian Ströbele and
other members of the Green and Left parties who definitely want to find
out the truth about US surveillance in Germany.

SPIEGEL: Would you be willing to support them?

Assange: Yes. If they need a witness I would be happy if they would come
here and ask me their questions.

SPIEGEL: What issues could you talk about with members of the of inquiry
committee?

Assange: We have documents about US surveillance of top German
politicians including the chancellor and the foreign minister. We can't
reveal our sources but we can state the reasons we believe the documents
are authentic and assist with interpretation.

SPIEGEL: You only published the list with the last four digits on the
numbers redacted. Would you provide the German MPs with the full
numbers?

Assange: Yes. Legally, that table we have published with the 125 phone
numbers of politicians and officials is great. The German federal
prosecutor dropped his investigation because he claimed not to have
found evidence of actual surveillance that would stand up in court. We
also published memos written on the basis of intercepts of Merkel and a
number of others, precisely to provide this evidence.

SPIEGEL: Who put the German politicians on the list?

Assange: James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, formally
approved the policy to target the German government. There were three
areas that were targeted in the material we have published so far:
German political affairs, Eurpoean policies and economic affairs. That
is explicitly listed in the table. None of the 125 number we released is
listed as being targeted for "terrorism" or military affairs. 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.

SPIEGEL : Erich Mielke, the infamous head of East Germany's Stasi secret
police, liked to say, "We have to know everything." The US spies, for
their part, appeared to focus on specific areas.

Assange: The intercepts that we published were from the Global Signals
Intelligence Highlights (Executive Edition). That's the executive
version; it's not the lower-level boring stuff. It's the Academy Awards.
When something is said that is in some way "interesting," it starts
passing up through the intelligence food chain. If it is very
"interesting," it gets into the Global SIGINT Highlights. When it is so
"interesting" that it helps a Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, the head of
the DNI, the head of the Department of Commerce or Trade make a
decision, then it gets into the executive version.

SPIEGEL: So you think you can learn something about the political
priorities of the US government?

Assange: Yes, you can observe real policies -- that 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.

SPIEGEL: Well, we've talked about politicians. And about secret
services. We didn't talk about the big private corporations. You met
Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google. Do you think he is a dangerous man?

Assange: 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.

SPIEGEL : Secret services are perceived as potential criminals but the
big IT corporations are perceived at least in an ambiguous way. Apple
produces beautiful computers. Google is a useful search engine.

Assange: Until the 1980s, computers were big machines designed for the
military or scientists, but then the personal computers were developed
and companies had to start rebranding them as machines that were helpful
for individual human beings. 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.

SPIEGEL : And they shape the thinking of billions of users?

Assange: 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.

SPIEGEL: What does this "colonization" look like?

Assange: 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.

SPIEGEL: So in the long run, cultural diversity is endangered?

Assange: 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.

SPIEGEL: Cultural politics is not the core business of WikiLeaks. Which
issues will you focus on in the future?

Assange: 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.

SPIEGEL: If you look at yourself, you have paid a high price for what
you did. And you're still paying; you have been sitting here in this
embassy for more than three years now and you have lost your freedom of
movement. Did these experiences change your attitude, your political
points of view or your readiness to act politically?

Assange: It is said that you get less radical as you get older. I just
have turned 44 now, but I feel I have not become less radical.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Assange, we thank you for this interview.