Julian Assange has done a very thought provoking interview with RT, a 24-hour Russian satellite news channel,. The interview lasted not more than 15 Minutes but Juliane was revealing in his replies to various questions. Assange revealed that he has very damning information which will ruffle feathers further on very different matters. He touched on the North Africa and Middle East revolution, his philosophy and also pending extradition to Sweden.
In the interview, the Wikileaks boss talks about Facebook calling it the “most appalling spy machine that has ever been invented”. When prodded further he says
“Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations, their communications with each other, and their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US Intelligence.”
He didn’t stop there. He continued;
It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena, they have an interface they have developed for US Intelligence to use. Now, is the case that Facebook is run by US Intelligence? No, it’s not like that. It’s simply that US Intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure to them.
That same day, he released what form Law Enforcers use to get information from Facebook. These allegations are sure going to rub people the wrong way and Facebook will have to do much to convince sceptics otherwise. You can view the whole video of the interview below.
[youtube width=”580″ height=”420″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp8rJVWC2a0[/youtube]
Assange says that this is just a tip of the iceberg and more will be coming out soon. But in a response to the claims, a Facebook spokesperson told Forbes,
“We don’t respond to pressure, we respond to compulsory legal process, There has never been a time we have been pressured to turn over data — we fight every time we believe the legal process is insufficient. The legal standards for compelling a company to turn over data are determined by the laws of the country, and we respect that standard.”