Julian Assange rails against surveillance in Thought for the Day

[malaise]

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/02/julian-assange-surveillance-thought-for-the-day-wkileaks-pj-harvey
<snip>
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has used the unlikely platform of the religious slot on the BBC's Today programme to condemn attempts by US and UK governments to acquire a "god-like" knowledge of citizens through mass surveillance.

He said disclosures by the security contractor Edward Snowden about the scale of mass surveillance by the US and UK security services had exposed how governments and corporations seek to "know more and more about us" while "we know less and less about them".

Assange likened contemporary mass surveillance to the way the Catholic church operated during the reformation. He said: "Through the confessional system the Catholic church spied upon the lives of its congregants. While Latin mass excluded most people who could not speak Latin from an understanding of the very system of thought that bound them.

"Knowledge has always flowed upwards, to bishops and kings not down to serfs and slaves. The principle remains the same in the present era. Documents disclosed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden show that governments dare to aspire, through their intelligence agencies, to a god-like knowledge of each and every one of us."

[treestar]

1. As Lawrence O'Donnell said of Eddie

Wild exaggeration. Probably untrue.