US monitors South American comms: Assange
The US government is well-placed to blackmail "nearly every significant person in Latin America" because most of the region's electronic communications are routed through the United States, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says. ● "Ninety-eight per cent of Latin American telecommunications to the rest of the world - that means SMS, phone, email etc. - passes through the US," Assange said in an interview with Russia's RT television on Friday. US intelligence agencies "can easily intercept these communications ... and therefore gain understanding of how Latin America is behaving, where it is moving, its economic transfers, the activities of its leaders and major players," he said.