The free speech and information activist breaks recent silence by calling out Facebook for its superb collection of information, likening it to a spy agency.
Julian Assange recently sat down for an interview with Russia Today’s Laura Emmett and spoke on first of all on the North African and Middle East revolutions, then, when prompted by a question by Emmett regarding Facebook, Assange called the social media giant “the most appalling spy machine that has ever been created.”
Now, there are certain individuals in conspiracy theory quarters who believe that Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook was financed by the CIA. Assange has a different view, however. He notes that all the major corporations like Facebook, Google and Yahoo have interfaces with US intelligence services, allowing them to access information from users. This isn’t exactly news. Last year we learned that Google and the investment arm of the CIA were investing in Minority Report-style pre-crime technology.
With the government and these tech firms, it’s a case of ask and ye shall receive.
“It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena, they have an interface that they have developed for U.S. intelligence to use… U.S. intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure to them. And it’s costly to hand out records one by one, so they have automated the process. Everyone should understand that… When they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building a database for them.”
Watch the video below.
