One of the earliest documented interviews with Julian Assange is this spontaneous one from April 26, 2010, at the Oslo Freedom Forum (conducted over coffee by journalist Hans Lysglimt). By then, WikiLeaks had been active for over three years and had already published high-impact material. Here is the full available transcript:
Hans Lysglimt: It is April 26, 2010. We are here at the Oslo Freedom Forum and I am with Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist. You are in WikiLeaks, tell us about WikiLeaks.
Julian Assange: WikiLeaks is an international public service. It helps people who have suppressed information to get it out to the public where it can do some good.
The way we help people is to advance cryptographic techniques, through the legal system, and through political defence.
Then once that important information has [been made] public, we keep it public. That is also a quite difficult thing because of legal attacks and illegal attacks that are made by governments and corporations when you try to get something out that may achieve reform.
HL: You have chosen to locate in Sweden?
JA: We have stuff everywhere. But we deliberately port our inceptions of material [to] take in through Sweden [and] pass [it] on to Belgium and then to another country. And the reason is that Sweden under the Swedish press freedom act has grants the rights of anonymity. Similarly Belgium as of 2005 has introduced communications laws that protect the communication between the journalist and their source. So we deliberately pick up those two protections that can really protect sources by pushing information through Sweden and Belgium. We have used this not just to stop seizure of our servers or records in Sweden or Belgium but to also prevent investigations occurring in other countries. We did this successfully early in 2009 with a case in South Africa with our documents being public relating to cartels developing in South Africa.
HL: These threats to WikiLeaks and towards people that are working in WikiLeaks, they are very much real aren’t they?
JA: Yes, they are real. There has been more than 100 attempts, legal attempts, to attack us. Some of them quite serious, all of which we have succeeded successfully with help from our friends. There have been some illegal attacks, some attacks on our [servers] that we have successfully dealt with. There have been surveillance efforts. In Kenya there has been quite serious attacks on people who were related to us.
HL: Viewers of farmanntv will know we support Wikileaks very much and what you do, please update us.
JA: The work that we have done [has] lead to the removal of the Kenyan government, its replacement. It has lead to the resignations of the chief of Defence of Denmark. It has lead to the resignation of the prime minister of Tanzania. These are concrete outcomes.
To some degree WikiLeaks is a force for a free press. A force for a true and free press. We publish the material which is in the greatest need of a free press. Material which other people can not publish. We are a sort of publisher of last resort for journalist as well as for society. That is something that is new. We have never really seen a free press before that has managed to stay up for more than a small period. We have seen a lot of benefits of reforms that have coming about by having a free press. There is no place in the world that is suffering presently from too much of a free press. There is debate about how free the press should be. There is nowhere in the world that is suffering from having too free a press.
HL: The ideology behind WikiLeaks is to enable transparency, or is there more of a thought behind it than that?
JA: There is. Our goal is justice. Our goal is to have a just civilization. That is sort of a personal motivating goal. And the message is transparency.
It is important not to confuse the message with the goal. Nonetheless we believe that it is an excellent message. Gaining justice with transparency. It is a good way of doing that, it is also a good way of not making too many mistakes.
We have a trans-political ideology, it is not right it is not left it is about understanding. Before you can give any advice, any program about how to deal with the world, how to put the civil into civilization. How to gain influence on people. Before you can have that program, first you have to understand what is actually going on. How does the world actually work. How do human civilisation and institutions actually work. What are they doing? Because, any remedy must be based on what is actually happening in practice. Because, if it is not based on what is actually happening it is based on some kind of fantasy. And therefore any program or recommendation, any political ideology that comes out of that misunderstanding will itself be a misunderstanding.
So, we say, to some degree all political ideologies are currently bankrupt. Because they do not have the raw ingredient they need to address the world. The raw ingredient to understand what is actually happening.
HL: Are you then an anarchic sort of organization? Do you subscribe to the modern democratic progressive nation state?
JA: Really, you know, our belief is more fundamental. It does not matter what your ideology is. It can not go anywhere good unless you know what is actually going on. If you are trying to sail to a destination and you do not have a map you can not get there. You will be adrift in the political landscape. The drifting hypocrite. The first thing for any political ideology is to understand what is actually going on. And then maybe you have a hope of getting there, of charting the course. But you got to have the map first. We want to draw the map.
We do have some good information, in our intellectual sphere we do have some good information about science. How the weather is, how to construct, the woods, how to grow a forest. We do have some good information. But that part of the intellectual sphere is already well maintained. There are economic forces behind maintaining it, it is easy to maintain.
There is another part of economic history that has [never] really been in the historical record.
Because there are economic forces trying to get rid of it. Trying to not get it in the historical record in the first place. And that is all the information about how organizations work, that is not in the historical record because there is a economic interest concealing it. We see that this concealing works. That effort that goes into concealing some types of information is a economic signal. Giving off the signal, saying this information is important. It will do something if it leaks, that’s why people work to restrain it. Because those individuals who know it best, the people who have authored it, they perceive that its going to change something, so we preferentially go after this sort of information, because we can see this signal it gives off and because other sorts of information already have economic incentives to keep them around and get them into the historical record, this sort of information doesn’t and it can achieve reform. So both in terms of our long term ideological view, that civilisation needs good information for good decisions to happen, and in our short term view that you can achieve quick fast cheap just reforms by going after that type particular type of information over other types. This is a good way to behave. It is a good safe project. So even if our long term views does not pan out, that individuals and civilisations needs accurate information to manage their lives, even if that is distracted or that never eventuates. We know that in the short term, every week, we are achieving important domain reforms.
HL: In a sense you are manifesting the possibility of the Internet in its truest form. A lot of what has been going on since the Internet was released has been experimentation in free speech, but you are sort of boiling it down to the essence.
JA: We have drawn a line in the sand.
HL: Right.
JA: And, no other group yet has drawn that line. And we have done it consistently.
When we publish something we will never un-publish it. We will fight with all the tools at our disposal, technical, political, legal to make sure the material remains up and published forever.
Hans Lysglimt: It is April 26, 2010. We are here at the Oslo Freedom Forum and I am with Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist. You are in WikiLeaks, tell us about WikiLeaks.
Julian Assange: WikiLeaks is an international public service. It helps people who have suppressed information to get it out to the public where it can do some good.
The way we help people is to advance cryptographic techniques, through the legal system, and through political defence.
Then once that important information has [been made] public, we keep it public. That is also a quite difficult thing because of legal attacks and illegal attacks that are made by governments and corporations when you try to get something out that may achieve reform.
HL: You have chosen to locate in Sweden?
JA: We have stuff everywhere. But we deliberately port our inceptions of material [to] take in through Sweden [and] pass [it] on to Belgium and then to another country. And the reason is that Sweden under the Swedish press freedom act has grants the rights of anonymity. Similarly Belgium as of 2005 has introduced communications laws that protect the communication between the journalist and their source. So we deliberately pick up those two protections that can really protect sources by pushing information through Sweden and Belgium. We have used this not just to stop seizure of our servers or records in Sweden or Belgium but to also prevent investigations occurring in other countries. We did this successfully early in 2009 with a case in South Africa with our documents being public relating to cartels developing in South Africa.
HL: These threats to WikiLeaks and towards people that are working in WikiLeaks, they are very much real aren’t they?
JA: Yes, they are real. There has been more than 100 attempts, legal attempts, to attack us. Some of them quite serious, all of which we have succeeded successfully with help from our friends. There have been some illegal attacks, some attacks on our [servers] that we have successfully dealt with. There have been surveillance efforts. In Kenya there has been quite serious attacks on people who were related to us.
HL: Viewers of farmanntv will know we support Wikileaks very much and what you do, please update us.
JA: The work that we have done [has] lead to the removal of the Kenyan government, its replacement. It has lead to the resignations of the chief of Defence of Denmark. It has lead to the resignation of the prime minister of Tanzania. These are concrete outcomes.
To some degree WikiLeaks is a force for a free press. A force for a true and free press. We publish the material which is in the greatest need of a free press. Material which other people can not publish. We are a sort of publisher of last resort for journalist as well as for society. That is something that is new. We have never really seen a free press before that has managed to stay up for more than a small period. We have seen a lot of benefits of reforms that have coming about by having a free press. There is no place in the world that is suffering presently from too much of a free press. There is debate about how free the press should be. There is nowhere in the world that is suffering from having too free a press.
HL: The ideology behind WikiLeaks is to enable transparency, or is there more of a thought behind it than that?
JA: There is. Our goal is justice. Our goal is to have a just civilization. That is sort of a personal motivating goal. And the message is transparency.
It is important not to confuse the message with the goal. Nonetheless we believe that it is an excellent message. Gaining justice with transparency. It is a good way of doing that, it is also a good way of not making too many mistakes.
We have a trans-political ideology, it is not right it is not left it is about understanding. Before you can give any advice, any program about how to deal with the world, how to put the civil into civilization. How to gain influence on people. Before you can have that program, first you have to understand what is actually going on. How does the world actually work. How do human civilisation and institutions actually work. What are they doing? Because, any remedy must be based on what is actually happening in practice. Because, if it is not based on what is actually happening it is based on some kind of fantasy. And therefore any program or recommendation, any political ideology that comes out of that misunderstanding will itself be a misunderstanding.
So, we say, to some degree all political ideologies are currently bankrupt. Because they do not have the raw ingredient they need to address the world. The raw ingredient to understand what is actually happening.
HL: Are you then an anarchic sort of organization? Do you subscribe to the modern democratic progressive nation state?
JA: Really, you know, our belief is more fundamental. It does not matter what your ideology is. It can not go anywhere good unless you know what is actually going on. If you are trying to sail to a destination and you do not have a map you can not get there. You will be adrift in the political landscape. The drifting hypocrite. The first thing for any political ideology is to understand what is actually going on. And then maybe you have a hope of getting there, of charting the course. But you got to have the map first. We want to draw the map.
We do have some good information, in our intellectual sphere we do have some good information about science. How the weather is, how to construct, the woods, how to grow a forest. We do have some good information. But that part of the intellectual sphere is already well maintained. There are economic forces behind maintaining it, it is easy to maintain.
There is another part of economic history that has [never] really been in the historical record.
Because there are economic forces trying to get rid of it. Trying to not get it in the historical record in the first place. And that is all the information about how organizations work, that is not in the historical record because there is a economic interest concealing it. We see that this concealing works. That effort that goes into concealing some types of information is a economic signal. Giving off the signal, saying this information is important. It will do something if it leaks, that’s why people work to restrain it. Because those individuals who know it best, the people who have authored it, they perceive that its going to change something, so we preferentially go after this sort of information, because we can see this signal it gives off and because other sorts of information already have economic incentives to keep them around and get them into the historical record, this sort of information doesn’t and it can achieve reform. So both in terms of our long term ideological view, that civilisation needs good information for good decisions to happen, and in our short term view that you can achieve quick fast cheap just reforms by going after that type particular type of information over other types. This is a good way to behave. It is a good safe project. So even if our long term views does not pan out, that individuals and civilisations needs accurate information to manage their lives, even if that is distracted or that never eventuates. We know that in the short term, every week, we are achieving important domain reforms.
HL: In a sense you are manifesting the possibility of the Internet in its truest form. A lot of what has been going on since the Internet was released has been experimentation in free speech, but you are sort of boiling it down to the essence.
JA: We have drawn a line in the sand.
HL: Right.
JA: And, no other group yet has drawn that line. And we have done it consistently.
When we publish something we will never un-publish it. We will fight with all the tools at our disposal, technical, political, legal to make sure the material remains up and published forever.