AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Speaking over Skype from the
Ecuadorian embassy in London, fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
said his living situation is a bit like prison — with a more lenient
visitor policy.
He also hinted that new leaks are coming from WikiLeaks, though he gave no specifics on what these might
be.
Assange,
who has been confined to the embassy since June 2012, discussed
government surveillance, journalism and the situation in Ukraine on
Saturday in a streaming-video interview beamed to an audience of 3,500
attendees of the South By Southwest Interactive festival in Austin,
Texas.
Assange’s hourlong remote appearance was spiked with
technical glitches. As the audio cut out, he sometimes asked audience
members to raise their hands if they could hear him. Benjamin Palmer,
the co-founder of marketing firm The Barbarian Group who interviewed
Assange, at one point resorted to texting his questions.
Looking
well-groomed in a white shirt, scarf and a black blazer, Assange blasted
President Barack Obama’s administration, saying it was not taking
fellow secret leaker Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA’s
surveillance activities seriously.
"We know what happens when the
government is serious," he said. "Someone is fired, someone is forced to
resign, someone is prosecuted, an investigation (is launched), a budget
is cut. None of that has happened in the last eight months since the
Edward Snowden revelations."
Assange’s appearance at this five-day
conference — which will host Snowden in a similar remote interview
Monday — signal the growing concern in the tech community around issues
of online privacy, surveillance and security, even as Internet giants
like Google and Facebook reap billions in advertising revenue from
collecting information about their users.
"Now that the Internet
has merged with human society and human society has merged with the
Internet, the laws of the Internet become the laws of society," he said,
adding that through the NSA’s "penetration of the Internet" has led to a
"military occupation" of civilian space.
Assange has taken asylum
at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden over
a sexual assault charge, which he has said would be merely a first step
in efforts to move him to the U.S. to face charges over publishing
hundreds of thousands of secret documents.
Asked if he was afraid, Assange said he is, like any normal person.
"Only a fool has no fear. Courage is seeing fear," he said, and proceeding anyway.
Journalist
Glenn Greenwald, who has reported extensively about Snowden and the
NSA’s surveillance efforts, also will appear at the festival Monday.
Unlike Assange and Snowden, though, he’ll be there in person.
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