Julian Assange: Surveillance Apparatus ‘a Threat to U.S. Democracy’ [View all]
Source: ABC News
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange today dismissed criticism from British and U.S. intelligence officials who called recent leaks about secret surveillance programs a “gift” to terrorists, saying in an interview on “This Week” that the programs are a “threat to U.S. democracy.”
Andrew Parker, the new head of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency MI5, said in a speech Tuesday that the leaking of classified information about surveillance programs such as those by Edward Snowden “hands the advantage to the terrorists.”
NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander said Thursday that terrorists “listen, they see what has come out in the press and they adjust. … I believe people will die because we won’t be able to stop some of those threats.”
Assange, the mastermind behind WikiLeaks’ release of tens of thousands of secret documents online in recent years, rejected that notion today. “Every time the press embarrasses the security establishment, shows they have been acting unlawfully, against what they have said to Congress or to the media, they trot out this old canard, that some speculative harm sometime in the future might happen, when we’re discussing harm that is happening right now, as a result of these abusive programs,” Assange told George Stephanopoulos...
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/10/julian-assange-surveillance-apparatus-a-threat-to-u-s-democracy/
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