Julian Assange on Civil Courage, Ethics, Ukraine, Internet, NSA. Quotes from his direct sending at SXSW

Click on image below to watch the video with the full interview

Transcripts below based in the direct sending, synthesized in twits by @wikileaks (and @treisoroon,  @avilarenata, @professorsblogg)

This was said by Julian Assange:

I

(@wikileaks)

At any one point in the United States there’s some 60,000 prisoners in some sort of solitary confinement.

The NSA and GCHQ have been sucking up all our personal communication, and their capabilities have been doubling every 18 months.

The ability to surveil everyone on the planet is almost there, and will arguably be there in a few years. And to store that data.

Historically the NSA has run its PR campaign based on not existing. When a lot of info came out, NSA gave an aggressive response.

Totalitarian dystopia in the sense that the surveillance is total, so that no one can exist outside the state….

The Internet about 4 years ago was a politically apathetic space. There were gradually developments, e.g. Anonymous vs Scientology.

Harrison (UK), Poitras (US), Appelbaum (US) are now all in effective exile in Berlin. NatSec reporters are a new type of refugee.

[Answering a question about how he started] We saw that cryptography would liberate people in a very important way. It would help those trying to hold the state accountable.
 
It became clear to me that one of the best ways to achieve justice is to expose injustice.

When we published the manuals from GITMO, there in those manuals in black in white is ‘hide things from the Red Cross’.

Just this week, Gen. Alexander making comments at GW University that soon there’d be a media leaks bill to try & stop publication.

Now that the Internet has merged with human society, the laws that apply to the internet apply to human society

We know what happens when a government gets serious: someone gets fired, prosecuted, etc. These have not happened to the NSA.

The reform doesn’t appear like it’s going to come out of the govt. Indicatitive of the deep state, the power of the intelligence agencies.

You’ve got no choice. You can no longer hide from the state or keep your head down. Arbitrary justice is arbitrary.

We are now all involved in it. We are all part of the state. We have no choice but to attempt to manage it.

We are educating each other at an unprecedented speed. 20 year olds today are much more educated than 20 year olds 10 years ago.

Yes, we have upcoming leaks, but we don’t like to give the opponent too much of a heads up.
The Crimea region is so geopolitically important to Russia that they’re willing to pour immense resources into retaining it.

Unless you’re involved in the system of coercive force, with money alone you don’t get power.
The big lessons are not geo-strategic lessons. We were ready for that fight. It’s more how people you trust behave under pressure.

The big lessons are not geostrategic lessons. We were ready for that fight. It’s more how people you trust behave under pressure.

We’re all living in a world that we don’t actually understand. Before all these disclosures, we were living in some illusion.

We are walking around constantly in this fog where we can’t see the ground. These disclosures are a break in the fog.

In some ways I feel the fear more keenly, so I can perceive the way things are going in different ways.

Courage is not the absence of fear; only a fool has no fear. Courage is seeing the fear and continuing to proceed.

Power is a thing of perception. They don’t need to be able to kill you. They just need you to think they are able to kill you.

The Pentagon in 2010 demanded we destroy all previous and upcoming publications. And we said ‘no’.

We’re a small publisher. We try and test. We do not accept the perception of fear, we push to see what is the reality.

II

(@tresiroon)

Google & other big companies are in the business of collecting as much info as possible. You are the product.

Q. What would you tell kids about sharing their personal info online? Assange “It’s part of your permanent record… quite unpredictable”

III

(@professorsblogg)

Swedish govt is having a lot of intervention in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’ betrayed the people”.

IV

(@avilarenata)

“Militarization of our civilian space”, that is how Assange describes the invasion of  NSA.