Assange: Google Works Like NSA

Local Editor

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange equated Google with the National Security Agency and GCHQ, saying the tech giant has become "a privatized version of the NSA," as it collects, stores, and indexes people's data. He made his remarks to BBC and Sky News.

"Google's business model is the spy. It makes more than 80 percent of its money by collecting information about people, pooling it together, storing it, indexing it, building profiles of people to predict their interests and behavior, and then selling those profiles principally to advertisers, but also others," Assange told BBC.

The whistleblower argued further argued that "the result is that Google, in terms of how it works, its actual practice, is almost identical to the National Security Agency or GCHQ."

Google has been working with the NSA "in terms of contracts since at least 2002," Assange told Sky News.

"They are formally listed as part of the defense industrial base since 2009. They have been engaged with the Prism system, where nearly all information collected by Google is available to the NSA," Assange said. "At the institutional level, Google is deeply involved in US foreign policy."

Google has tricked people into believing that it is "a playful, humane organization" and not a "big, bad US corporation," Assange told BBC. "But in fact it has become just that...it is now arguably the most influential commercial organization."

During his interviews, Assange also touched on his own situation at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been trapped since June 2012, after being offered asylum.
The embassy is watched around the clock by British police who are ready to place Assange under arrest should he attempt to leave.

Assange said that his stay there has impacted his work, as surveillance makes certain tasks very difficult.

"The 7.3 million pounds  of police surveillance admitted outside this embassy. It is a difficult situation. It is not a situation that is easy for [a] national security reporter. You can't read sources. It is difficult to meet some of my staff because of that surveillance," he said.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team