The interview was anticipated. CNN host Erin Burnett was to have WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange, author of the new book, Cypherpunks, come on her show. Another pundit, Brooke Baldwin, promoted it on CNN just after 3:30 pm EST and said, “You have quite the big interview scoop, so we’ll talk about that in a minute,” just before getting to a segment on Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Burnett set out to do a hit job on Assange. From the beginning, Assange tried to discuss what he found to be important and not trivial or plain disingenuous and ignorant. As the clip shows, he got into how companies are working in countries to engage in widespread surveillance showing documents. Burnett reacted, “I’m curious though about this — A lot of people share this fear about being under surveillance, right? Some people might say you go way too far on it, but people do share your fear. But you are someone trying to champion and like I said benefiting by the Internet by putting out information governments don’t want people to have.”

Read the full article on Firedoglake