Julian Assange: Surveillance Corporations Work With 'Every Tin-Pot Dictator'

Wikileaks has released a video on its website featuring Julian Assange talking about surveillance of civilians, a topic which features in the recently released 'Spy Files' documents.

The whistle-blowing website last week released 287 documents which is claims prove that surveillance companies are actively surveying civilians by recording telephone calls and intercepting messages.

Assange explains Spy Files as: "a proper investigative project where the data is informative but it isn't going to make the story, it's going to guide the story. It concerns the international surveillance industry.

"This industry is something that I was following in detail about 10 years ago, but looking at this [Spy Files] data and some other things that have come my way, it is clear that it has now metasised into something that is really quite extraordinary."

The Wikileaks founder announced the release of Spy Files at a press conference held at City University, London last week in front of a gathering of journalists and students. Assange said that the files prove that companies are manufacturing hardware that can record and store phone calls of every mobile phone user, and share their data with various governments.

"There are right now around a hundred companies, perhaps thirty major companies, involved in the provision of bulk surveillance equipment to intercept all telephone calls coming out of the country - all of them - and record them permanently," Assange said in the newly released video.

Assange added that the surveillance companies "do automatic gender identification, speaker identification, stress identification, age group identification based on vocal qualities, and that is marketed all over, so every tin-pot dictator has one."

Last week, Julian Assange announced that Wikileaks would be releasing new documents on its Spy Files web page every day, but one week later there are still just the original 287 documents available to be downloaded.

The former journalists made headlines earlier this week after he won the right to have his appeal against extradition to Sweden taken to the Supreme Court; Assange is wanted by Swedish authorities after two former Wikileaks volunteers made accusations of rape and sexual assault against him.

On Wednesday the Wikileaks Twitter account announced that Assange's Supreme Court hearing had been "rushed forward" and will be heard on December 19.

Wikileaks claims that at least 160 companies are involved in manufacturing and supplying mass surveillance equipment to governments in 30 countries; companies named by Wikileaks include Nokia Siemens Network, NICE Systems and Siemens.