WikiLeaks Founder, Julian Assange addressed a panel in Moscow via teleconference from the Ecuadorian embassy, with his opening statement that, “Humanity has lost its privacy and must now learn to live in a world where mass surveillance is becoming cheaper for governments to implement.” He noted that “The cost of engaging in mass surveillance is decreasing by about 50% every 18 months.”
Other intelligence heavyweights present at the Moscow event hosted by RT, moderated by Thom Hartmann included Philip Giraldi, former counterterrorism expert for the CIA, Ray McGovern, the CIA’s former Chief of the Soviet Policy Branch during the Cold War (who, in 2003, formed the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity group. The purpose of the group was to shed light light on the fraud used by by the George W Bush Administration, in taking the United States to war with Iraq), as well as Gregory Copley, head of the International Strategic Studies Association.
The latter gentlemen tried to paint a more sanguine picture for the future but Assange remained firm in his convictions, stating that, “The cost of engaging in mass surveillance is decreasing by 50% every 18 months.” Mass surveillance and computerization are “winning” the competition with human values, “and they’re going to continue at an ever-increasing rate. That’s the reality we have to deal with.”
“Privacy is not coming back,” according to Assange short of “a very regressive economic collapse, which reduces the technological capacity of civilization…That’s the reality we have to deal with.”
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