Wikileaks' Julian Assange claims complete worldwide surveillance only 'a few years' away
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has claimed that the ability for the whole human race to be monitored online is only a few years away, while railing against the National Security Authority (NSA).
Speaking via a tenuous Skype connection, Assange, who currently has asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, spoke of the continued battle to release Government information and described the increasing number of laws allowing online surveillance as 'the penetration of human society'.
Of his asylum, he compared it to being in a prison and claimed that the cost of police surveillance on his activity by the UK government had reached $8m.
Of the NSA's ability to store all of the information it was mining, Assange claimed that its speed of collection was constantly growing.
"As a result the amount that it is spending is also doubling every 18 months, and its growing ability to surveil all people on the planet is almost there and arguably will be there in a few years," he hypothesised.
Assange also claimed that 'the communications evolution' was leading to political involvement, highlighting those who have had to leave the US including Wikipedia staff and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, as well ad mainstream journalists, fleeing to Brazil and Germany in order to continue to report in safety.
"That wave has spread out and is able to continue work in a way that is even more powerful. They are not in a situation where they have to be terrified any more unless they travel."
He also highlighted the lack of a ready plan in place by the NSA, never suspecting that its data mining strategy would be revealed, and questioned why there had been no formal change in its strategy despite the revelations.
He also revealed that further 'important revelations' were 'coming up' from Wikileaks but refused to be drawn on what those might be explaining; " I don't think it's right to give heads up to alleged perpetrator."
Yesterday, Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, claimed at SXSW that within the next decade, the ability of a governments to censor the Internet would become impossible.