Despite being 2 years holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, Julian Assange´s position and beliefs haven´t changed. So revealed he in an interview with EL TELEGRAFO.

How does the legal process develops? Is it stucked? How do you forsee your stay at the Embassy?

The United States says it is a matter for the UK; the UK says it is a matter for Sweden.

Sweden says it is a matter for the UK. Ecuador says (correctly) that it is a matter for UK and Sweden. Neither the UK nor Sweden will ever say "no" to the US and the US will never say no to its military industrial complex, and so the US will never drop the case. Nonetheless, my time will come.

In Sweden, there are increasinly more voices, even from important lawyers, questioning the legal action against you. Is it possible that in the short term for the swedish to rectify and take your declaration at the Embassy?

The US investigation against me and my organization proceeds and is the first priority.

My alleged source for the cables, the young US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, was sentenced to 35 years in prison; Her lawyer, David Coombs, said that he felt like he had "two defendants" in the military court room and I was one of them. So the threat is serious. However it is much easier to not have to fight on two fronts, so if Sweden drops the matter that would help. Alternatively, Sweden could recognize my asylum and commit to protecting me against the US investigation. On top of that, they could accept Ecuadors invitation to pick up the phone and talk me like every other case. But I predict that a lot more people will have to speak out before that happens.

Is Snowden´s temporary asylum about to finish? Is Wikileaks still providing him advice? Will he stay in Russia or will he try to go to Latin America?

Mr. Snowdens temporary asylum will expire in September. Last week I co-launched a new foundation Courage, (https://couragefound.org/) to fight for his asylum to be renewed. Russia did the right thing in granting Mr. Snowden asylum in the first place. Russia is very proud of its independence and would not tolerate Mr. Snowdens extradition to the United States under normal circumstances. I would expect the asylum to be renewed without difficulty, however US threats to Russian interests in Ukraine, Syria, Iran, Moldova and elsewhere make the situation harder to predict.

Snowden left from Hong Kong to Moscow, in his attempt to get to Ecuador, with an Ecuadorian safepass not authorized by Ecuador. Being you the first one to made public Snowdens travel with the document, some people saw it as an interference into ecuadorian foreign policy. What was your intention in that ocassion?

Ecuador can be proud of helping to save Mr. Snowden’s life and liberty. The subsequent revelations are an important contribution to the long term sovereignty of all latin American states, including Ecuador. They show not only that the United States was running a mass interception station in Ecuador, but that it is intercepting 98% of Latin Americas communications with the world, infiltrating many of its major companies and presidential communications and placing interception backdoors its computers, mobile phone chips, Gmail, Facebook and dozens of other US companies. The revelations also show that the NSA had me on a “man hunting” list as early as 2010, that Britain’s GCHQ was spying on WikiLeaks in 2012 and that Sweden is a secret mass interception and hacking partner of the United States for more than a decade.

Those Ecuadoreans who acted to secure Mr. Snowdens safety can be confident of their place in history and should be awarded the highest honours in Ecuador for helping to expose a serious threat to Ecuador’s safety and security.

As to the specific issues with Mr. Snowdens travel letter, the press in Hong King had sources at the airport and broke the story. Subsequently I explained how Snowden had left with an approved purpose of travel (to seek asylum) in order to prevent his flight path being closed down by skittish airlines and intermediate jurisdictions on his flight plan in complete ignorance of how the government whished to approach the matter. Opportunistic elements, seeking to undermine President Correa and Ricardo Patinos authority then disgracefully spun the issue of whether a Consul in London had used the right bureaucratic form in a situation of life and death occurring on the weekend. I dont know, but I do know that if he hadnt acted Edward Snowden would be now dead or in a US prison and not telling the world about how 98% of Latin Americas communiciations are being mass intercepted. Sovereignty in Ecuador and all of South America would be impoverished as a result. The then Ecuadorean consul here in London, Fidel Narvaez, a decent and cultivated man, is a hero and his children can be proud of him.

What is your position regarding the debate about the neutrality of the internet?

Net neutrality is a more complex issue for internet freedom than many believe. I am generally against governments regulating the internet, because once the government is given a foothold in regulating the internet, it provides a ground for all sorts of regulatory interventions that I dont necessarily approve of. However, I do think that where you have a few huge powerful players, like giant telcos and huge data giants like Google and others, whose power has grown to the point that they perform quasi-governmental roles online, then there is a strong case for regulatory intervention to prevent those giant players doing their own "regulation" by company policy and stealth: filtering some content, slowing other content, spying on their users and so on. These are common problems with monopolies across all sectors, such as the problem of the concentration of media ownership.
So net neutrality is important to ensure fairness and equality online for individuals and small organizations.

How to protect the internet from the interest of the big powers and the giants .com? Why is neutrality important?

It is a difficult question, because many states have an understandable worry: that the overwhelming influence that the big powers have over the internet translates into a geopolitical challenge, and could be use to undermine sovereignty at home. But they are trying to respond to this worry in a way that is not positive for the internet: they are trying to introduce laws that allow them to perform deep packet inspection and content filtering, and other technical measures which are starting to cut off their national internet from the global internet. This is the wrong path. Instead, these states should embrace the cause of internet freedom, and create hospitable jurisdictions for publishers and other forms of internet commerce and services provision. We need to create a competition between states over the embrace of internet freedom. This way we can pull the centre of gravity for the internet away from the United States, and ensure the geopolitical hazards are not as great.

How is Latin Americas internet vulnerable, given that all the optic fiber telecom cables go through USA?

The answer is in the question. Everyone understands that if all of the oil that drives your national industry and economy comes through oil pipelines that traverse the territory of another state, that other state has a strategic hold over you. The same principal applies with internet infrastructure. For one thing, in the event of a serious geopolitical confrontation, if Latin Americas entire connection to the global internet relies on infrastructure within US territory, the US could potentially cut Latin America off by severing fiber optic lines. Latin America would have other means of accessing the global network, but its bandwidth would be crippled. But thats a hypothetical. What do we know is happening now? We know, from Mr. Snowdens disclosures (although I wrote a preface to the Latin American edition of my book, Cypherpunks, in 2012 saying the same thing) that the NSA is mass intercepting the communications of Latin Americans as they flow over those fiber optic lines into the wider internet. Whole civilizations are having the most private communications of each of their citizens caught and stored by US spy agencies. US law says that, because they are not US citizens, they have no rights to privacy. If a foreign country is able to steal the private communications of a whole civilization like that, think of how much strategic influence that gives the US over Latin American countries: not just their governments, but their populations too.

What is your view about the idea of Brazil of launching its own satelite, enforcing the multinational tecnological companies to have a base in that country and for Barzil to have its own cables? Could be that a solution against the mass spionage from USA?

These measures constitute part of the solution in the short term. However, it is a delicate game. Brazil has an expanding military industrial telecommunications complex. It should not be allowed to become the regional "internet hegemon" in Latin America either.

What are the alternatives for small nations like Ecuador, so they can face the spionage not only coming from USA, but also from big corporations like Chevron?

I think the best model for small nations like Ecuador is the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative - which was a programme of law reform I introduced into a very small country (Iceland) in 2010, which aimed to make Iceland into a competitive jurisdiction among the market of jurisdictions for companies wishing to provide internet services. I think it comes - first and foremost - from the embrace of the values of the internet, and the embrace of the liberty of expression in the online space: giving a voice to individuals which, in aggregate, can overcome large concentrations of private media power and supplant entrenched interests. In the shorter term, Ecuador can pursue the cessation of US mass espionage against its citizens at a diplomatic level within international bodies to which it is a party, and can pass laws to mandate that companies providing services within Ecuador use audited, industrial standard encryption by default.

How has USA reached such a technological capacity, to be able of hearing all human comunications?

It may seem inconceivable, but if you are used to thinking in computer engineering terms, it is not surprising. If you are familiar with mathematical predictions of growth and scale which address technological advancement, such as Moores Law, you understand that we are in the middle of a period of exponential growth. I was a member of a group of thinkers - the cypherpunks - back in the 1990s, and we predicted most of what has happened would happen. You can read about it in my book, "Cypherpunks", which was published by Duesto in Spain, by Grupo Planeta in Mexico, by Ediciones Trilce in Uruguay, by Marea in Argentina, by Icono Editorial in Colombia, and by Lom Ediciones in Chile.

Do you think USA has already stopped tapping personal phones of ally liders as Dilna Roussef and Angela Merkel?

The White House says that they have instructed that Angela Merkels phone is not to bet explicitly targetted anymore. But the NSA and GCHQ bulk intercept the worlds telecommunications. In most cases there is no targetting. Their philosophy, detailed in their own documents is "collect it all, store it all, search it all, exploit it all.". At the time I said the NSA would just target all the people Merkel talks to anyway. Subsequently it was revealed in the German press that this is exactly what has happened -- increase surveillance on Merkels associates. She cant talk to herself.

What is actual Wikileaks situation? How do you face the economic bloqueade of donations by credit cards?

WikiLeaks is funded by donations from supporters. Since December 2010 we have blockaded like Cuba. Major banking and financial institutions, including VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, and Bank of America, bowed to unofficial US pressure and began to deny financial services to WikiLeaks. They blocked bank transfers and all donations made with major credit cards. While these are American institutions, their ubiquity in world finance meant that willing donors in both America and around the world were denied the option of sending money to WikiLeaks to support its publishing activities. The “banking blockade,” as it has become known, is being conducted outside of any judicial or administrative procedure. WikiLeaks has been pursuing major court cases in different jurisdictions across the world in order to break the blockade. The Supreme Court in Iceland found in favor of WikiLeaks in a case against the VISA and MasterCard subsidiary Valitor. A case has been brought to the European Commission, which launched an investigation into the abuse of market dominance by institutions involved in the blockade. The investigation is ongoing. The European Parliament initiated legislation aimed at regulating the financial services market in response to the blockade. A court case in Denmark is in progress. The blockade has been significantly eroded as a result of concerted effort by WikiLeaks and its allies. WikiLeaks has managed to arrange ways to donate money via proxy payment gateways, which have not yet been shut down. Some parties to the blockade have quietly executed a partial or wholesale withdrawal, opening a front for compensation. In short, we are surviving, and eventually we will win, but it is a slow process, and we have been nearly four years under an unjust attack by these banks.

Does the recent recent film about your life afect the image of Wikileaks and its cause?

It wasnt a film about my life. It was supposed to be about WikiLeaks, but most of it was fantasy. In general, huge Hollywood films with multi-million dollar budgets can affect public perception, and we were concerned about this film affecting our image and our cause. But we campaigned against the film, and, as the Hollywood Reporter has noted, we were successful in making sure this film was a catastrophic flop. Let that be a lesson to propagandists against WikiLeaks.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wikileaks-sabotages-fifth-estate-own-649685