Working directly with Ecuador's corrupt government, the U.S. government abandoned all sense of legality and moral decency by spying on Assange twenty-four hours a day via an illegal livestream surveillance operation set up by a private security firm and approved by Ecuador's president.

Earlier this year MintPress News published an article about how Australian journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Chelsea Manning had "brought the U.S. government to its knees," by revealing the U.S. torture program, war crimes, and "Cablegate". At the time it appeared that the Trump administration was "more than ever willing to exact full revenge upon those who exposed the truth," and now we know just how far they've been willing to go to make that happen.

Working directly with Ecuador's corrupt government, the U.S. government abandoned all sense of legality and moral decency by spying on Assange twenty-four hours a day via an illegal livestream surveillance operation set up by a private security firm and approved by Ecuador's president, Lenin Moreno. The revelation was made by Spanish news outlet El Pais, and it's as stunning as the corporate media's complicity.

Ecuador granted Assange asylum under former President Rafael Correa but after the 2017 election — and despite Moreno's running as a left-wing PAIS Alliance candidate — the country's political landscape shifted dramatically to the right. When Moreno wasn't busy renegotiating Chinese loans, he was making backroom deals with the U.S., and Julian Assange was the bargaining chip. Moreno's cooperation with the Trump administration was bought and paid for by massive IMF loans and in April 2019 Moreno illegally revoked Assange's political asylum and allowed British authorities to enter the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Assange had sought protection for over seven years, and seize him. 

After Assange's arrest, Moreno refused to return Assange's belongings from the embassy, instead turning over his documents, equipment, cellphones, personal effects, and more to the United States. The Canary's John McEvoy recently published an interview with the former foreign minister of Ecuador, Guillaume Long, who described Moreno as "a Shakespearean traitor" who he says "betrayed Correa, he betrayed his party, he betrayed his electorate…he betrayed Ecuadorians, and he betrayed democracy, and he certainly betrayed Assange."

Surveillance at the embassy

According to El Pais, Judge Jose de la Mota of Spain's High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, is currently investigating UC Global S.L., a security company headquartered in Spain, and the activities of its founder, David Morales, for what has been exposed as a mind-blowing, complex, and invasive surveillance operation set up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London by UC Global in order to monitor Assange's every move. They're also being investigated for misappropriation, bribery, and money laundering.

According to sources and court documents examined by El Pais, meetings that Assange took with his attorneys, family, friends, and colleagues were all monitored. Fire extinguishers, "decorative elements" in the embassy, and even the women's bathroom were all bugged. The scandal seems to have reached peak insanity when the Ecuadorian government took it upon itself to steal a used diaper from a baby who was seen occasionally at the embassy and have it tested for DNA, which begs the question of what exactly the government planned on doing if the test showed Assange to be the father. Blackmail? Threaten the wellbeing of the child? What exactly?

In Edward Snowden's words:

Not a joke: the CIA allegedly ran an operation to livestream surveillance of women in the toilet, hoping to overhear them planning the legal defense for an asylum seeker. This is skulls-on-hats level villainy; simply indefensible for people claiming to be 'the good guys.'"