“Where before there was a difference between assassination and warfare, now the two are conjoined, where many, perhaps the majority, of targets in Gaza are bombed as a result of artificial intelligence targeting.”
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has said that artificial intelligence is being used “to create mass assassinations” in Gaza.
“As I emerge from prison, I see that artificial intelligence is being used to create mass assassinations,” he told the Council of Europe (PACE) this week in his first public statement since his release in June after 14 years of incarceration.
“Where before there was a difference between assassination and warfare, now the two are conjoined, where many, perhaps the majority, of targets in Gaza are bombed as a result of artificial intelligence targeting,” Assange added.
🚨JULIAN ASSANGE: ‘Artificial intelligence is being used for mass assassinations in Gaza’
“The majority of targets in Gaza are bombed as a result of artificial intelligence targeting.”
US-UK-EU-armed Israel has made the concept of an AI dystopia into a reality, where human… pic.twitter.com/SFZlxm0Rf9
— Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) October 3, 2024
The connection between artificial intelligence and surveillance is important, he continued.
“Artificial intelligence needs information to come up with targets, or ideas, or propaganda. When we are talking about the use of artificial intelligence to conduct mass assassinations, surveillance data from telephones, internet, is key to training those algorithms,” Assange explained.
Israel has carried out several massacres in its ongoing genocidal assault on the besieged Gaza Strip over the past year. This week, close to 100 Palestinians were killed in 24 hours as the Israeli military targeted homes, a school sheltering displaced families as well as an orphanage.
‘I Pled Guilty to Journalism’
Released after a plea deal with US authorities, Assange said “I eventually chose freedom over unrealisable justice, after being detained for years and facing a 175-year sentence with no effective remedy.”
“I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism,” he added, in his address to PACE’s committee on legal affairs and human rights.
‘Julian’s Freedom is Our Freedom’ – WikiLeaks Says Assange Paid for People’s ‘Right to Know’
Assange stressed that the “rights of journalists and publishers within the European space are seriously threatened.”
He said “The criminalisation of news-gathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere. I was formally convicted by a foreign power for asking for, receiving and publishing truthful information about that power while I was in Europe.”
Library of Persecuted Documents
Assange rose to prominence with the establishment of WikiLeaks in 2006, an online whistleblower platform which, according to its website, “specializes in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption.”
“If you look at the definition of a political prisoner, Julian Assange and his case fulfills this definition… He was convicted for engaging in acts of journalism. This is a clear instance of a politically motivated incarceration.”https://t.co/s4qgIWFvRB
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 3, 2024
“WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents. We give asylum to these documents, we analyze them, we promote them and we obtain more,” Assange said in a 2015 Der Spiegel interview.
Amongst the leaks were nearly 400,000 classified US military documents and footage from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The 2010 leaks revealed field reports and war logs, detailing torture, and summary executions.
Palestine Cables
In this report by the Palestine Chronicle, Robert Inlakesh writes that one of the various contributions of Wikileaks to Palestine were cables that worked to confirm an element of Israel’s agenda in the Gaza Strip, aiding in shaping our overall understanding of the reality on the ground today during the genocidal assault launched by the Israeli government.
‘Revealer of Inconvenient Truths’ – Julian Assange’s Impact on Palestine
Secret classified cables, from March 2008, revealed that US diplomats had learned that Tel Aviv’s intentions with its comprehensive siege imposed upon the Gaza Strip, were “to keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis”.
What we came to learn from the leaked documents was a confirmation that Israel was pursuing the strategy outlined in 2006 by Dov Weisglass, a senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister at the time Ehud Olmert, who talked of putting the “Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”
Close to 100 Killed in 24 Hours – Israel Carries Out Massacres across Gaza
In 2011, Wikileaks cables also corroborated the Al-Jazeera leaked ‘Palestine Papers’ which exposed the depth of the collusion between corrupt officials belonging to the Palestinian Authority and their Israeli counterparts.
In 2019, the US administration charged Assange with 17 counts of breaching the Espionage Act.
The last 14 years of incarceration included being holed up in an Ecuadorian embassy in central London, and five years in Britain’s Belmarsh prison.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
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