US annexed whole world through spying: Assange

The founder of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, says the United States and its spying allies have annexed the whole world through their spying activities across the globe.

In a keynote speech at the WHD.global conference on Wednesday, Assange spoke via teleconference about the issue of data privacy and the threats posed to people’s freedom in the use of Internet.

The WHD.global 2014 conference took place at Europa-Park in Rust, Germany, and Assange connected live from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he has been living under asylum since 2012.

He said that while the Western media has been overwhelmingly talking about Crimea’s reintegration into Russia, they are all ignoring the fact that the five English-speaking countries known as the ‘Five Eyes’ club have annexed the whole world through their spying.

“To a degree this is a matter of national sovereignty. The news is all flush with talk about how Russia has annexed the Crimea, but the reality is, the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, principally the United States, have annexed the whole world as a result of annexing the computer systems and communications technology that is used to run the modern world,” Assange said.

“So it’s a matter of national sovereignty. If there is not at least some national network that can be maintained in a moment of economic or political conflict with the United States, then there is simply too much leverage on nation states to be able to effectively defend the interests of their peoples,” he added.

The ‘Five Eyes’ club is an intelligence sharing alliance including the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.

In November last year, documents leaked by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden showed that the US National Security Agency spied on the G8 and G20 summits held in the Canadian city of Toronto in 2010, with the help of the host country’s government.

Other NSA documents have also revealed that Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) helped the NSA monitor phone calls and email communications of foreign leaders and diplomats at the 2009 G20 summit in London.

It was also made public in October that Washington has been secretly using Australian embassies throughout Asia to intercept phone calls and collect data across the continent.

“These revelations about the United States and GCHQ annexing our new world of the internet has produced market forces to do something about it,” said Assange