PC WORLD: Julian Assange doesn’t use the blustering rhetoric you might expect from the founder of the activist publishing group WikiLeaks. Assange is responsible for leaking documents that have changed America’s political landscape— State Department cables and Iraq War logs—yet to a South by Southwest audience on Saturday, he spoke quietly and matter-of-factly even when uttering the most inflammatory statements. “Who really wears the pants in the [Obama] administration?” Assange asked during a Skype call with the SXSW audience. “Is it the intelligence agencies or is it the civilian part of that administration?” The obvious answer from Assange’s perspective: The National Security Agency runs the show and would dig up any and all of President Obama’s buried skeletons to force him out of office if he tried to disband the surveillance agency. “When an agency or individual goes against the grain, there are typically consequences handed down by the government. In the case of the NSA, however, this has yet to take place.” Assange, speaking from his home at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, said the NSA shouldn’t be considered a rogue agency that will be reined in. When an agency or individual goes against the grain, there are typically consequences handed down by the government. In the case of the NSA, however, this has yet to take place. “Somebody is fired, somebody is forced to resign, somebody is prosecuted, an investigation is launched, or the budget is cut—none of those things has happened since the Edward Snowden revelations,” Assange said. MORE
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