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Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems
oxide7 (1013325) writes "In June 2011, Julian Assange received an unusual visitor: the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt. They outlined radically opposing perspectives: for Assange, the liberating power of the Internet is based on its freedom and statelessness. For Schmidt, emancipation is at one with U.S. foreign policy objectives and is driven by connecting non-Western countries to Western companies and markets. These differences embodied a tug-of-war over the Internet's future that has only gathered force subsequently. Assange describes his encounter with Schmidt and how he came to conclude that it was far from an innocent exchange of views."
America used to be the one who fight for liberty.
Nah, that was just PR for the masses. You weren't around for the internment camps during WWII or the McCarthy witch trials, but you should've been around for the CIA's involvement in South America and Iran.
America stands as much for liberty and freedom as China stands for money. Liberty and freedom are convenient lines to trot out to the masses when the government wants to take some otherwise unpopular action (just like money is convenient to keep the masses quiet, but all over the world, not just China). The real motivation behind America is imperial power via trade. Unlike the first and second ages of imperialism, the people in power in the U.S. realize you don't have to own the land, you just have to control what the land produces.
Sorry to burst your bubble. Outside looking in can be as limiting as inside looking out. It's best to have both perspectives.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
No shit shirlock. But why do you think he's hiding there? Avoiding extradition to the US has nothing to do with it.
Avoiding extradition to the US has everything to do with Assange hiding in the Ecuador embassy. Swedish prisons aren't the hell holes in the US or Australia. Even if Assange had an irrational fear of being labelled a sex offender felon, it would not outweigh the price he is paying being holed up in the Ecuador embassy.
Its all about not going to a country that will extradite him to the US over a trumped up security issue. Assange does not have the legal rights an American citizen has. He can be put into Guantanamo, or any other black ops prison, because the US does not respect universal notions of due process. If the US did, Guantanamo couldn't exist.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
1) Your assurances are meaningless.
2) Look at what happened to Kevin Mitnick. Because the American public had such a poor understanding of hacking and the level of threat posed by hacking, people though Mitnick had to be placed behind bars to keep America (corporations) safe. Because the American legal system is much more complex and byzantine than the simplified mythology propagated to its citizens, Kevin had to spend many years in a medium security jail before even going to trial, to optimize his chances of either beating the conviction, or reducing the maximum penalty. What actually happened was that the technology moved so fast, and the public's miniscule understanding of hacking was modified ("Why worry about some jerk that went on a computer joyride, when hackers are stealing American intellectual property and money from the safety of Russia or China"), it eventually became cost effective for the US DOJ to deescalate the witchhunt they were making over Mitnick.
The point being that as long as organizations exist to reveal information the US government prefers to conceal, the security apparatus of the US will treat those organizations as national security threats. This even sort of includes legitimate news organizations like the NY Times, UK Guardian, etc. They are captive to the US government. As long as they operate within the laws defined by the judicial branch, and "play ball", they aren't going to get the Assange treatment. No one like Assange or Snowden can assume they are beyond the reach or interest of the US government.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon