Assange: Facebook ‘Most Appalling Spying Machine Ever’ (Update: Video)

Posted on May 2, 2011

Flickr / espenmoe

Julian Assange

In a recent interview with Russia Today, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had harsh words for Facebook, denouncing the company for enabling the U.S. government to keep close tabs on the behavior, relationships and personal details of its citizens. —ARK

“Facebook in particular is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented. Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people—their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations, their communications with each other, their relatives—all sitting within the United States, all accessible to U.S. intelligence,” Assange said. Furthermore, “Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them.”

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.