Quotessence
Home / Authors / Julian Assange Books
Julian Assange

Julian Assange Books

Journalist

Related Quotes

“Well it's not possible to win this kind of thing. This is a continuous striving that people have done for a long time. Of course, there is many individual battles that we win, but it is the nature of human beings that human beings lie and cheat and deceive and organized groups of people who do not lie and cheat and deceive find each other and get together... and because they have that temperament, are more efficient. Because they are not lying and cheating and deceiving each other. And that is an old, a very old struggle between opportunists and collaborators. And so I don't see that going away. I think we can make some significant advances and it is perhaps, it is the making of these advances and being involved in that struggle that is good for people. So the process is in part the end game. It's not just to get somewhere in the end, rather this process of people feeling that it is worthwhile to be involved in that sort of struggle, is in fact worthwhile for people.”

GoogleCollaboratorsWikileaksEric Schmidt
Book:When Google Met Wikileaks
Create image

“JA: We wouldn’t mind a leak from Google, which would be, I think, probably all the Patriot Act requests.275 ES: Which would be [whispers] illegal. [Nervous chuckles] JA: It depends on the jurisdiction . . . ! [Chuckles] ES: We are a US— JA: There are higher laws. First Amendment, you know. ES: No, I’ve actually spent quite a bit of time on this question because I am in great trouble because I have given a series of criticisms about Patriot I and Patriot II, because they’re nontransparent, because the judge’s orders are hidden and so forth and so on. The answer is that the laws are quite clear about Google in the US. We couldn’t do it. It would be illegal.”

Freedom Of Speech Dissent
Author:Julian Assange
Create image

“If instituted, the TPP's IP regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons. If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you're ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs.”

IfsThinkingWritingWellsMightIndividualCreativeRightsExpressionOne DayIntellectualIllFarmsRegimesPublishIndividual RightsFree Expression
Author:Julian Assange
Create image

“The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free.”

PoliticalEasyEnvironmentEffectsSpeechBirdInstrumentsWestWesternContractsFree SpeechLoanPolitical WillBadgersPower Relationships
Author:Julian Assange
Create image

“In my role as Wikileaks editor, I've been involved in fighting off many legal attacks. To do that, and keep our sources safe, we have had to spread assets, encrypt everything, and move telecommunications and people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions.”

PeopleWorldDifferentMovingLawFightingRolesRiskSourceInvolvedSafeSpreadAround The WorldAssetsEditorsProtectiveActivateWikileaksJurisdictionTelecommunications
Author:Julian Assange
Create image

“We get information in the mail, the regular postal mail, encrypted or not, vet it like a regular news organization, format it - which is sometimes something that's quite hard to do, when you're talking about giant databases of information - release it to the public and then defend ourselves against the inevitable legal and political attacks.”

SometimesHardPoliticalTalkingInformationNewsOrganizationReleaseInevitableGiantsMailFormatVetsDatabases
Author:Julian Assange
Create image

“As we have seen, WikiLeaks is a robust organization. During my time in solitary confinement in the basement of a Victorian prison, we continue to release, our media partners continued to write stories. The important revelations from this material continue to come out. We have approximately 2,000 cables into 250,000.”

WritingImportantStoriesMediaMaterialsOrganizationPrisonPartnersReleaseMy TimeRevelationsSolitaryCablesBasementsRobustVictorianConfinementWikileaksSolitary Confinement
Author:Julian Assange
Create image

“That's a problem. I mean, like any sort of growing startup organization, we are sort of overwhelmed by our growth, and that means we're getting enormous quantity of whistleblower disclosures of a very high caliber but don't have enough people to actually process and vet this information.”

PeopleMeanEnoughProblemProcessGrowthGrowingInformationOrganizationEnormousQuantityOverwhelmedGetting HighDisclosureVetsCaliberWhistleblowersEnormous Quantities
Author:Julian Assange
Create image

“Well, there's a question as to what sort of information is important in the world, what sort of information can achieve reform. And there's a lot of information. So information that organizations are spending economic effort into concealing, that's a really good signal that when the information gets out, there's a hope of it doing some good...”

WorldWellsImportantEffortEconomicAchieveInformationOrganizationSpendingReformSignalsConcealing
Author:Julian Assange
Create image

“In the United Kingdom at various stages, journalism has been the profession of gentlemen amateurs. And some of them even pride themselves on being amateurs. Their quality is not comparable with the quality of intelligence services even if most of them harbor a remarkable degree of corruption and incompetence.”

IfsHas BeensUnitedQualityStagePrideDegreesVariousCorruptionProfessionKingdomsJournalismGentlemanRemarkableHarborsIncompetenceUnited KingdomIntelligence Services
Author:Julian Assange
Create image

“I saw that publishing all over the world was deeply constrained by self-censorship, economics and political censorship, while the military-industrial complex was growing at a tremendous rate, and the amount of information that it was collecting about all of us vastly exceeded the public imagination.”

WorldSelfPoliticalImaginationSawsGrowingMilitaryInformationAmountEconomicsComplexesRateCensorshipPublishingCollectingMilitary Industrial ComplexSelf Censorship
Author:Julian Assange
Create image