Julian Assange On The Iraq and Afghan War Logs, Google Being 'In Bed' With The State Department

Afshin Rattansi goes underground on when WikiLeaks met Google. Julian Assange discusses the meeting he had in 2011 with Eric Schmidt, then a top executive and now chairman of Google, and 3 others. He says the meeting was nominally over a book that was being written, which was published and had pre-publication endorsements from the likes of Tony Blair and Henry Kissinger, but the question he wanted to know was why was this book being written? He examines the networks behind Google, and their 'in-house state department' Google ideas, and reveals that they are pushing the position that the State should control what is and is not published, to the extent of a state body overseeing whistleblowers that they have to go through before they can release any material. He says that Google is in bed with the state department, citing as an example that the girlfriend of Eric Schmidt contacted him regarding arranging a meeting with Hilary Clinton. He also points out that the argument the US military use against WikiLeaks, that the publication of cables could theoretically cause harm, was undermined when the general charged with investigating any harm caused by WikiLeaks testified under oath at the trial of Chelsea Manning that they couldn't find a single person that had been harmed. He also talks about the mistakes he believe the Guardian made, and how HBGary tendered $2 million a month to attack WikiLeaks and Glen Greenwald. He talks about some of the more recent publications he has made, such as FinFisher, a cyberweapon which can hijack mobile phones and turn on the microphone, and can infect massive amounts of computers by putting itself in the major gateway of a country or ISP. He warns whilst people may be suspicious of the intentions of the NSA and the like regarding the internet, associations you may perceive to be working the other way are funded by the same players. He also points out that the amount of people with security clearances in the US has more than doubled since 2010, with 6 million people now part of this 'state within a state' who are subject to extra laws and requirements that are classified – 'an extremely alarming phenomenon'.