WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange was on Monday reported as saying that he had been in “indirect communication” with Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee who exposed the U.S.-U.K. surveillance scandal.
But he declined to elaborate saying, “I don't think it’s appropriate we go into more details”.
The whistleblower stood for the same aims as WikiLeaks, he said.
Speaking to an Australian current affairs TV show, Lateline, from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London , Mr. Assange said: “What he [Mr. Snowden] has revealed, is what I’ve been speaking about for years, that the National Security Agency and its allies have been involved in a mass interception programme.”
Mr. Assange, who plans to stand for elections to the Australian Senate, said that Mr. Snowden’s efforts complemented those of WikiLeaks’ political party. Its position was that there should be no interception of people’s communications without proper judicial oversight.
“If I am elected [to the Australian Senate], the Australian WikiLeaks party position is there should be no interception, none at all of Australians without proper judicial oversight... We run the danger here of the west more broadly drifting into a state where there are two systems. There is one law for the average person and there is another law if you are inside the American intelligence complex... That is not acceptable, I don’t believe Australians find that acceptable, I don’t believe Americans find that acceptable, Snowden clearly didn’t find it acceptable, and he was even someone in the system,” he said.
Mr. Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian mission in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to answer allegations of sexual assault brought by two women.
