杏吧原创

How do you think people鈥檚 view of powerful tech companies like Google has changed since Edward Snowden leaked the National Security Agency documents?
People seeing Google鈥檚 colourful, playful, childish logo billions of times per day creates a sense that the company is harmless and just a service like turning on the tap and getting some water. It is as if it doesn鈥檛 exist as a political or corporate entity.

When it was revealed that Google was extensively cooperating with the NSA through the PRISM system a bit of the gloss came off. But Google and other Silicon Valley companies like Facebook pivoted after a lot of outrage from their users and tried to separate themselves from the NSA. They made it seem like it was something they were coerced into.

What about Google鈥檚 motto of 鈥淒on鈥檛 be Evil鈥�?
It鈥檚 not that I want people to see Google as an evil company run by evil people. It鈥檚 simply the nature of Google鈥檚 business to collect as much information about as many people as possible, to store that information, index it, create a profile of each person, predict their interests and sell those profiles to advertisers and others. And that is exactly the same industry, at an engineering level, that the NSA is involved in. Collecting information about people, storing it, indexing it, making predictive profiles about people and then 鈥渟elling鈥� it to other US government agencies. Given that Google and the NSA are in fundamentally the same business, the NSA has of course piggybacked on Google and extracted information from it. It鈥檚 so attractive to the NSA that it will continue forever, one way or another.

What frightens you about the future?
There are clear dystopian trends underway. If you read a book like 1984 now, it seems quaint. Its form of surveillance seems tame. But the internet does two things: it centralises power because it connects everywhere in the world to what are already the centres of power, but it also permits the greatest worldwide political education that has ever occurred. It鈥檚 not at all clear which one of these will dominate. It鈥檚 important to try and shift things in the right direction. The dystopian scenario which we鈥檙e at least in part heading towards is very severe indeed.

Is the internet broken?
It needs to be re-engineered. Most of the technology used on the internet now is about 15 to 30 years old. It鈥檚 been around for long enough for major power factions to adapt to it and to work out how to exploit and control it. Bitcoin鈥檚 block chain 鈥� the publicly distributed digital ledger that records all transactions on the Bitcoin network 鈥� is the most intellectually interesting development in the last five years, though not for the reasons most people think.

At its core the block chain provides global proof of publishing at a certain time. That means that once something is in the block chain it identifies precisely what moment in history it occurred and can鈥檛 be undone. This breaks Orwell鈥檚 dictum that he who controls the past controls the future and who controls the present controls the past.

Looking back, is there anything that you would have done differently with WikiLeaks?
Many little things. Of course, if you can鈥檛 say that after a big project, you鈥檙e not learning. But not many major ones, given the resource constraints. If you鈥檙e under banking blockades or house arrest, worldwide manhunts and people defining members of staff as enemy combatants that can be kidnapped or assassinated at will, it does limit some of the things that you might otherwise have been able to do.

Do you feel the main work has been accomplished?
I hope there鈥檚 much still to come. But we have some important accomplishments under our belt. Contributing to the shift in the internet from quite a barren, uneducated and apolitical space five years ago to a political space where young people feel they can take part in history is possibly the most significant development.