Julian Assange Statement Defending Ed Snowden - "By trying to crush these young whistleblowers with espionage charges, the U.S. government is taking on a generation, and that is a battle it is going to lose."

One day, the Snowdens of the world are going to run America. A generation raised on the internet, with freedom of speech and assembly and the right to privacy deep in their veins. That day can't come soon enough.

I hope all of those demanding Ed Snowden's arrest are still alive. So we can show them how terribly, historically, incredibly wrong they were. They were the traitors, not Snowden.  And they will be shamed.

 Here's Assange, laying it down.

The U.S. government is spying on each and every one of us, but it is Edward Snowden who is charged with espionage for tipping us off. Let’s be very careful about who we call "traitor." Edward Snowden is one of us. Bradley Manning is one of us. They are young, technically minded people from the generation that Barack Obama betrayed. They are the generation that grew up on the internet, and were shaped by it.

 The U.S. government is always going to need intelligence analysts and systems administrators, and they are going to have to hire them from this generation and the ones that follow it. One day, their generation will run the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI. This isn’t a phenomenon that is going away. This is inevitable. And by trying to crush these young whistleblowers with espionage charges, the U.S. government is taking on a generation, and that is a battle it is going to lose.