Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said Silicon Valley companies Google and Facebook now compiled more information than the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA).
Speaking via a videoconference Tuesday at the Embassy of Equador in London, where he was granted asylum since 2012, Assange said the new global economic template was what he called Surveillance Capitalism.
The Australian ciber-activist spoke during a Freedom of Expression seminar organized in Santiago by the Chilean College of Journalists that was celebrating its 60th anniversary.
The Australian ciber-activist said that although the information was channeled through the two companies, the NSA still monitored the content and finally ended up “knowing everything.”
The former University of Melbourne mathematician and journalist said society was living through an age of massive data where more than 80 percent of the internet’s advertising revenue flowed through Google and Facebook.
Assange said, as an example, that Google was asserting its dominance in the transport sector thanks to its maps and street level satellite imagery, and also because people made searches using Google from their mobile phones.
Chilean journalists that attended the event, such as the Foreign Affairs analyst, Raul Sohr, said it was everyone’s duty to get Assange free.