Assange, a guest at a media freedom summit in London this weekend, was greeted with cheers, applause and whistles when he joined the Logan Symposium by video link. The 43-year-old journalist and founder of WikiLeaks appeared in good health and spirits, but the substance behind his manner was sombre.
The mass surveillance system and the ‘securitisation’ of society have been developing since the 1950s, he told the capacity audience. “What is the purpose of national security agencies? To maximise their own power – that’s it. They need resources and political support, so they tell the Establishment, ‘there’s a risk to your loved ones or assets’. They also appeal to greed, saying, ‘there are new allies or assets you can acquire’.”
He suggested society should just acknowledge this, adding that there’s also a danger in reporters ‘amplifying’ the fear factor being used to suppress the public. “Society is securitising because we’re saying these agencies [NSA, GCHQ] are a threat to society, they are fearful objects – in some ways, we are doing their work for them,” Assange said.
What’s needed, he argued, is for individuals to take more personal responsibility and action in order to counter all-pervasive state surveillance. “For me, there’s no positive,” he said of the developing situation. “We must all be part of trying to manage government because there is no place outside.”
GCHQ Ruling ‘No Surprise’
Asked for his response to Friday’s ruling by British judges that GCHQ is not in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights with its interception systems, Assange said he wasn’t surprised by it. The case had been brought by Amnesty International, Privacy International and others in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations of mass surveillance techniques.
“It’s no surprise,” Assange said. “I despair of the UK as a society. The system is well sewn up. If you were to take the cross from people’s backs, they’d grab it back and strap it on again because they couldn’t stand the cool air on their necks,” he told the multinational, multiethnic audience of investigative reporters, hackers and whistleblowers.
‘Open’ Class System
He pointed out that the Logan Symposium itself, which aims to ‘build an alliance against secrecy, surveillance, and censorship’ is being run largely by non-Britons.
Why is that?, he asked rhetorically, going on to posit that the UK offers a very flexible class system whose doors are open to money and power, while foreigners with talent but without those attributes are not so welcome.
He said that classes form as societies get older, and that though World War 2 “hit the reset button in many European countries, it didn’t in the UK.” It’s easy for incoming foreigners to “get sucked into a plastic – by which I mean flexible – class system,” Australian-born Assange said.
“Australia has its own class system, but it’s nothing compared to the UK. That’s why Britain is the preferred home of oligarchs.”
In his own case, he said the British Establishment came knocking on his door to say that what he’d done had importance and was well done, and that now he’d created a big fuss, ‘come and have a look at the dining-room. You can have a seat – at the end of the table’. He said he won’t forget “the look of dawning horror when they realised I actually believed in what I was doing."
All I Want For Christmas Is…
Assange has been under investigation in the US since WikiLeaks published US military documents leaked by Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning in 2010. In 2012, after charges of sexual assault were made against him in Sweden, Ecuador offered him political asylum and he took refuge at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, refusing to go to Sweden for questioning for fear that he would be extradited to the US. The Swedish prosecutor has refused to come to London to question him.
“I wish people understood the details,” he said. “I’m an innocent man.”
The British government has said it will arrest Assange and send him to Sweden if he steps outside the embassy. The policing cost to the British taxpayer is put at more than £13,000 a day – over £8 million to date.
Asked what he would like from Santa as he faces his third Christmas at the embassy, Assange thought carefully before replying: “Education. Education for everyone. That’s what it all comes down to. But I don’t think it’ll fit down the chimney.”
