Tech

Hologram Julian Assange: Google Is Like A Government

Patrick Howley Political Reporter
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Wikileaks founder Julian Assange appeared in hologram form at the Nantucket Project Summit in Massachusetts Sunday to discuss his new sharply critical book about Google’s information-collecting programs.

Assange said in his remarks that Google is not a publisher but “more something like a government.”

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Google aims to “collect as much information about the world as is possible, store it, index it, make predictive models about people’s interests, and use that to sell advertising,” Assange said, which is “basically what the National Security Agency is doing.”

Assange appeared in hologram form, courtesy of technology produced by the company Hologram USA, from his residence at Ecuador’s embassy in London, where he gained political asylum in 2012. The government of Sweden seeks to question Assange over rape and sexual molestation accusations. Assange denies the charges. British police stand guard outside the embassy, ready to arrest him if he leaves.

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt recently called Assange “paranoid.”

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