Julian Assange Quotes

Let me first frame this. I looked at something that I had seen going on in the world, which is that I thought there were too many unjust acts. And I wanted there to be more just acts, and fewer unjust acts. (pp. 66-67)

[Mr Assange's application did not raise] an arguable point of law

I have been pushing this idea of scientific journalism--that things must be precisely cited with the original source, and as much of the information as possible should be put in the public domain so that people can look at it, just like in science so that you can test to see whether the conclusion follows from the experimental data. Otherwise the journalist probably just made it up. In fact, that is what happens all the time: people just make it up. They make it up to such a degree that we are led to war. Most wars in the twentieth century started as a result of lies amplified and spread by the mainstream press. And you may say, "Well that is a horrible circumstance; it is terrible that all these wars start with lies." And I say no, this is a tremendous opportunity, because it means that populations basically don't like wars and they have to be lied into it. That means we can be "truthed" into peace. That is cause for great hope. (pp. 126-127)

[I]t's a very suggestive signal that the people who know the information best--i.e., the people who wrote it--are expending economic work in preventing it going into the historical record, preventing it getting to the public. Why spend so much work doing that? It's more efficient to just let everyone have it--you don't have to spend time guarding it, but also you are more efficient in terms of your organization because of all the positive unintended consequences of the information going around. So we selectively go after that information, and that information is selectively suppressed inside organizations, and very frequently, if it is a powerful group, as soon as someone tries to publish it, we see attempts at post-publication suppression. (p. 84)

I've never said that secrecy doesn't have its place, in fact it's a cornerstone of WikiLeaks, is secrecy. It is protecting the identity of our sources, so it's a cornerstone of our operations. Privacy or secrecy gives organisations an edge over actors who are hostile to them, so it is important for small organisations that are acting in the public's-, public interest to have secrecy. Equally it is important that large and powerful organisations never believe that they have absolute secrecy. It's not important that everything be revealed instantly from them, but it is important that they never feel secure that any particular piece of information will never be revealed. Because it is that fear that some plan will be revealed that keeps them accountable to the degree that they are accountable at all.

What we know is everything, it is our limit, of what we can be.

I often say that censorship is always a cause for celebration. It is always an opportunity because it reveals fear of reform. It means that the power position is so weak that you have got to care what people think. (p. 121)

By all appearances, Google's bosses genuinely believe in the civilizing power of enlightened multinational corporations, and they see this mission as continuous with the shaping of the world according to the better judgement of the "benevolent superpower," They will tell you that open-mindedness is a virtue, but all perspectives that challenge the exceptionalist drive at the heart of American foreign policy will remain invisible to them. This is the impenetrable banality of "don't be evil," They believe that they are doing good. And that is a problem. (p. 35)

Nuestra tarea consiste en ponerle freno al poder que utiliza la conspiración de forma sistémica e impedir que piense y actúe de forma eficiente.

The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. It has been hidden by secrecy, complexity and scale. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.

These transformations have come about silently, because those who know what is going on work in the global surveillance industry and have no incentives to speak out. Left to its own trajectory, within a few years, global civilization will be a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible. In fact, we may already be there.

While many writers have considered what the internet means for global civilization, they are wrong. They are wrong because they do not have the sense of perspective that direct experience brings. They are wrong because they have never met the enemy.

The only way to keep a secret is to never have one.

The Department of Homeland Security defines the Defense Industrial Base as "the worldwide industrial complex that enables research and development, as well as design, production, delivery and maintenance of military weapons systems, subsystems, and components or parts, <to meet U.S. military requirements> [emphasis added]. The Defense Industrial Base provides "products and services that are essential to mobilize, deploy, and sustain military operations." Does it include regular commercial services purchased by the US military? No. The definition specifically excludes the purchase of regular commercial services. Whatever makes Google a "key member of the Defense Industrial Base," it is not recruitment campaigns pushed out through Google AdWords or soldiers checking their Gmail. (p. 41)

Capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture them.

The received wisdom in advanced capitalist societies is that there still exists an organic “civil society sector” in which institutions form autonomously and come together to manifest the interests and will of citizens. The fable has it that the boundaries of this sector are respected by actors from government and the “private sector,” leaving a safe space for NGOs and nonprofits to advocate for things like human rights, free speech, and accountable government.

This sounds like a great idea. But if it was ever true, it has not been for decades. Since at least the 1970s, authentic actors like unions and churches have folded under a sustained assault by free-market statism, transforming “civil society” into a buyer’s market for political factions and corporate interests looking to exert influence at arm’s length. The last forty years have seen a huge proliferation of think tanks and political NGOs whose purpose, beneath all the verbiage, is to execute political agendas by proxy.

[Y]ou can affect a lot of people with a small amount of information. Therefore, you can change the behavior of many people with a small amount of information. The question then arises as to what kinds of information will produce behavior which is just and disincentivize behavior which is unjust. (p. 67)