This past Jan. 21, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. She said then:

“In many respects, information has never been so free. There are more ways to spread more ideas to more people than at any moment in history. Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.

“During his visit to China, President Obama held a town hall meeting with an online component to highlight the importance of the Internet. In response to a question that was sent in over the Internet, he defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, to generate new ideas, and to encourage creativity. The United States’ belief in that truth is what brings me here today.”

Bady uses a close reading of an essay by Assange on State and Terrorist Conspiracies to argue that Assange sees modern governance as a conspiracy by those with power that goes against the interests and desires of the governed, and that Wikileaks exists in order to undermine the ability of governments to communicate secretly and diminish the power of authoritarian states.

In a statement dictated to his mother from his jail cell Assange said “we now know that Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and others are instruments of US foreign policy”, referring to the way in which these large companies had decided not to provide service to Wikileaks.