Assange: Facebook a ‘spying machine’

And media starts wars, says WikiLeaks founder

Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder, media tart and controversialist, has leveled his hyperbole gun at Facebook, calling it “the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented.”

In an interview with Russia Today that’s bound to provide aid and comfort to tinfoil-hatters around the world, he complained that the Facebook databases, hosted in America, within reach of American intelligence agencies.

“Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people,” he said in the interview – a database that includes relationships, names, addresses, locations and communications with each other – “all accessible to US intelligence”.

He also said Facebook, along with Google and Yahoo!, have “built-in interfaces” for US intelligence. He said that by storing their information on a site like Facebook, users are essentially doing free work for intelligence agencies.

The interview also illustrates Assange’s deteriorating relationship with media. As well as reiterating his disputes with The Guardian and the New York Times over document redaction, the Wikileaks founder attributes “nearly every war” in the last half-century to “media lies”. ®