Those were the words of Julian Assange of Wikilinks.
"It is not a technology that favours freedom of speech," he said. "It is not a technology that favours human rights. Rather it is a technology that can be used to set up a totalitarian spying regime, the likes of which we have never seen."
What do you think?
Wikileaks exercised it's freedom of speech.
ReplyDeleteTheir website was shut down by their web host - Amazon.com.
Payments to their organisation were blocked by the payment providers - paypal, visa.
Their bank account was revoked - some swiss bank.
You are free to speak but the consequences will cost you.
And the internet ? World governments are spending a lot in the way of cyber-espionage against other governments, so you can guarantee that invading an individuals privacy is supremely easy for them, and probably so routine that they have it on auto.
That was his point, your last paragraph. But the thing is the internet also allows us to say far more than we otherwise would have been able to say. It's a tool, and like any tool it can be used as a means towards more than one end. It allows us to debate these matters here, and say anything we want. But it also allows those with a lot of resources at their fingertips to check up on what we're saying and potentially close us down.
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