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Julian Assange [1971-0] Australian

Rank: 102
Activist, Computer programmer

Julian Paul Assange is an Australian computer programmer, publisher and journalist. He is editor-in-chief of the organisation WikiLeaks, which he founded in 2006.

Knowledge, Legal, Freedom, History, Imagination, Independence, Intelligence, War

Quote	Tags	Rank
I mean there's enormous pressures to harmonize freedom of speech legislation and transparency legislation around the world - within the E.U., between China and the United States. Which way is it going to go? It's hard to see.	Freedom	101
In the history of Wikileaks, nobody has claimed that the material being put out is not authentic.	History	102
It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abusers, and when powerful abusers are taken on, there's always a bad reaction. So we see that controversy, and we believe that is a good thing to engage in.		103
You can either be informed and your own rulers, or you can be ignorant and have someone else, who is not ignorant, rule over you.		104
To keep a person ignorant is to place them in a cage.		105
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.		106
Wikileaks is a mechanism to maximize the flow of information to maximize the amount of action leading to just reform.		107
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.	Imagination	108
The Iraq War was the biggest issue for people of my generation in the West. It was also the clearest case, in my living memory, of media manipulation and the creation of a war through ignorance.	War	109
Cryptography is the essential building block of independence for organisations on the Internet, just like armies are the essential building blocks of states, because otherwise one state just takes over another.	Independence	110
The greater the power, the more need there is for transparency, because if the power is abused, the result can be so enormous. On the other hand, those people who do not have power, we mustn't reduce their power even more by making them yet more transparent.		111
We always expect tremendous criticism. It is my role to be the lightning rod ... to attract the attacks against the organization for our work, and that is a difficult role. On the other hand, I get undue credit.		112
I always believed that WikiLeaks as a concept would perform a global role, and to some degree it was clear that it was doing that as far back as 2007 when it changed the result of the Kenyan general election.		113
All over the world, the barriers between what is inside an organisation and outside an organisation are being smoothed out. In the military, the use of contractors means that what is the military and what is not the military is smoothed out.		114
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.	Legal	115
We have some material on spying by a major government on the tech industry. Industrial espionage.		116
True information does good.		117
When it comes to the point where you occasionally look forward to being in prison on the basis that you might be able to spend a day reading a book, the realization dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would like.		118
If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature.		119
I had had a lot of experience in bringing the Internet to Australia, and I saw that knowledge in the hands of people achieves reform.	Knowledge	120
Journalists always like an excuse for why are they talking about something now when they didn't talk about something a week ago. They always like to say something is new.		121
You can't do anything sensible until you know what the situation is that you're in.		122
Knowledge has always flowed upwards to bishops and kings, not down to serfs and slaves.	Knowledge	123
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.	Legal	124
WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical.		125
The supply of leaks is very large. It's helpful for us to have more people in this industry. It's protective to us.		126
The corruption in reporting starts very early. It's like the police reporting on the police.		201
We released 400,000 classified documents, the most extraordinary history of a war to ever have been released in our civilization. Those documents cover 109,000 deaths. That is serious matter.		202
We have to be careful about applying criminal labels to people until we're very sure.		203
Intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior.	Intelligence	204
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.		205
When Enron collapsed, through court processes, thousands and thousands of emails came out that were internal, and it provided a window into how the whole company was managed. It was all the little decisions that supported the flagrant violations.		206
I'm not a big fan of regulation: anyone who likes freedom of the press can't be.		207
Stopping leaks is a new form of censorship.		208
What is the possible benefit? Can this material save lives? Can it improve the quality of life in Iraq? Can it tend to shape our perceptions of how war should and should not be conducted? Can it shape our perceptions of who should be conducting war and in what manner? And the answer to that is a clear yes.		209
I found in investigative journalism it is always best, if you have any language skills, not to admit them.		210
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.		211
We have a way of dealing with information that has sort of personal - personally identifying information in it. But there are legitimate secrets - you know, your records with your doctor; that's a legitimate secret. But we deal with whistleblowers that are coming forward that are really sort of well motivated.		212
These big-package releases. There should be a cute name for them.		213
As we've gotten more successful, there's a gap between the speed of our publishing pipeline and the speed of our receiving submissions pipeline. Our pipeline of leaks has been increasing exponentially as our profile rises, and our ability to publish is increasing linearly.		214
Cablegate is 3,000 volumes of material. It is the greatest intellectual treasure to have entered into the public record in modern times.		215
It's interesting that Swiss banks also hide their assets from the Swiss by using offshore bank structuring.		216
During the period of house arrest, I had an electronic manacle around my leg for 24 hours a day, and for someone who has tried to give others liberty all their adult life, that is absolutely intolerable.		217
I am an Australian citizen, and I miss my country a great deal.		218
To be alive as a human being is to know, in the same way as it is to have a heart that beats.		219
The penetration of society by the Internet and the penetration of the Internet by society is the best thing that has ever happened to global human civilisation.		220
We don't have sources who are dissidents on other sources. Should they come forward, that would be a tricky situation for us. But we're presumably acting in such a way that people feel morally compelled to continue our mission, not to screw it up.		221
These megaleaks... They're an important phenomenon, and they're only going to increase.		222
Well, I mean, the real attack on truth is tabloid journalism in the United States.		223
We like to engage in a normal publishing effort, which is to act in a responsible manner and make sure the material is not likely to harm anyone, that it is properly investigated by quality news organizations, and by lawyers and human rights groups and so on.		224
Every law, every constitution, every regulative decision is based upon what people are discussing in their community. It's based upon our sum knowledge of history and the present.		225
My family has had to move and change their name and have been subject to threats from right wing blogs calling for my son, for example, to be killed to get at me.		226
I coauthored my first nonfiction book by the time I was 25. I have been involved in nonfiction documentaries, newspapers, TV and internet since that time.		301
Although I still write, research and investigate, my role is primarily that of a publisher and editor-in-chief who organises and directs other journalists.		302
Journalism should be more like science. As far as possible, facts should be verifiable. If journalists want long-term credibility for their profession, they have to go in that direction. Have more respect for readers.		303
Through the confessional system, the Catholic church spied upon the lives of its congregants. While Latin mass excluded most people who could not speak Latin from an understanding of the very system of thought that bound them.		304
Being editor of WikiLeaks was always a pretty difficult job.		305
Democratic societies need a strong media, and WikiLeaks is part of that media.		306
The media helps keep government honest.		307
WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars and broken stories about corporate corruption.		308
I believe that the way to justice is education.		309
By bringing out into the public domain how human institutions actually behave, we can understand frankly, to a degree, for the first time the civilization that we actually have.		310
So far, we have a perfect record of WikiLeaks having never revealed information that exposed a source over 10 years.		311
It raises questions about the natural instincts of Clinton that, when confronted with a serious domestic political scandal, she tries to blame the Russians, blame the Chinese, et cetera.		312
Often it's the case that we have to do a lot of exploration and marketing of the material we publish ourselves to get a big political impact for it.		313
Whistleblowers often take very significant efforts to bring us material and often at very significant risks.		314

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