(Zero Hedge) by Staff Writer, Sept 22nd, 2018 Prior to being cut off from the internet, phone and most visitors, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gave an interview on the future of surveillance and how technological advances are changing humankind.
Provided to RT by officials with the World Ethical Data Forum in Barcelona, Assange’s outlook on where humanity is headed is – to put it lightly, dystopian. He says that it will soon be impossible for any human being not to be included in global government databases collected by federal officials and state-like entities alike.
“This generation being born now … is the last free generation. You are born and either immediately, or within say a year, you are known globally. Your identity in one form or another – coming as a result of your idiotic parents plastering your name and photos all over Facebook or as a result of insurance applications or passport applications – is known to all major world powers.”
A small child now in some sense has to negotiate its relationship with all the major world powers… It puts us in a very different position. Very few technically capable people are able to live apart, to choose to live apart, to choose to go their own way,” he added. “It smells a bit like totalitarianism – in some way. -Julian Assange
Assange also predicts that AI will be able to automate hacking activities, dramatically increasing the scale of hostile activities through cyberspace.
There is no border [online]. It’s 220 milliseconds from New York to Nairobi. Why would there ever be peace in such a scenario?” he said. “[Entities online] are creating their own borders using cryptography. But the size of the attack surface for any decent-sized organization, the number of people, different types of software and hardware it has to pull inside itself means that it is very hard to establish.
I don’t think it’s really possible to come up with borders that are predictable enough and stable enough to eliminate conflict. Therefore, there will be more conflict.