It's one year since Julian Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden. But the controversial WikiLeaks founder says he has a bigger battle to fight—his bid for the Australian Senate is building momentum, and he hopes recent leaks about government surveillance will bolster his party's message.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says the recent NSA leaks by Edward Snowden, including revelations about mass surveillance of internet and phone communications, will boost his chances of being elected to the Australian Senate in this September’s federal election.

Mr Assange’s WikiLeaks Party is running on a platform to end government secrecy, and he said Mr Snowden’s leaks reinforced the view that the global community is entering an ‘extraordinary new world’ of government surveillance and control.

‘Bulk mass interception of people’s private information ... communication between husbands and wives, between sons and daughters, between business partners... that’s an extraordinary new world we are entering into, a world where the rule of law has effectively been corrupted.’

He [Edward Snowden] is in a position that I personally went through... it’s an important continuation of the work that we have fought for for over six years, and that reflects probably the most important political shift that’s happening in the world, which is the creation of a new body politic as a result of the internet.

‘The US Fourth Amendment for example is meant to prevent unreasonable searching procedure, [but] that has been completely swept aside. We now have a regime of secret deals between a national security agency and major organisations like Google and Microsoft and Apple.’

Speaking with Fran Kelly on RN Breakfast, Assange said that America’s surveillance policies ‘affect all Australians’—and he believes Canberra has a lot to answer for.

‘How are they involved in this? Does the Australian Government swap that information? Is the Australian Government using that information from the US government?’

‘All of that is being kept secret, and it’s completely unacceptable. What kind of world are we drifting into where we have a transnational surveillance apparatus, [with] different rules for people in that apparatus compared to the rest of society. It’s very dangerous.’

Mr Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor, leaked to The Guardian newspaper top secret information about mass surveillance activities carried out by the secretive US National Security Agency, including information that the NSA conducted clandestine surveillance of e-mail, web searches, and metadata for phone calls.

Mr Assange said the public response to the actions and subsequent treatment of Mr Snowden, as well as the public's disgust at the treatment of another leaker Bradley Manning who is currently on trial for releasing top secret US military logs, shows the emergence of ‘a new international body politic, where new values are being developed about transparency, the accountability of government, and the importance of freedom of speech'.

Mr Assange said that public sympathy for Snowden will help to focus voters on his party's message ahead of September's federal election.

‘He [Snowden] is in a position that I personally went through... it’s an important continuation of the work that we have fought for for over six years, and that reflects probably the most important political shift that’s happening in the world, which is the creation of a new body politic as a result of the internet.’

‘We can see it in Australia, where the WikiLeaks Party across four opinion polls ... shows that I have 26% of the voting intention. That’s coming about not just because of support for my personal circumstance, but ... because we represent or symbolise the values that people have found to be important.’

Mr Assange said Snowden’s leaks showed that the Bradley Manning incident was not just a one off. ‘[The cases are] a collision between an expanding new unaccountable transnational security centre,’ he said.

This week also marks one year since Mr Assange entered the Ecuador Embassy in London in order to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sexual assault.

Mr Assange said that Mr Manning’s trial, commenced 3 June, has convinced him his prospects for leaving the Ecuadorian Embassy soon are grim.

‘A legal pivot in the Bradley Manning proceedings means that my US lawyers have now advised me that there is almost certainly a sealed indictment based upon the responses they are getting from the Department of Justice in the United States. That means that when the Swedes drop their preliminary investigations, I still can’t leave the Embassy because of the threat of a sealed indictment.’

Mr Assange has been labelled a co-conspirator in the Manning trial. He says it's alleged that he encouraged Manning to leak classified documents including sensitive logs of the Iraq and Afghanistan War, US military cables and other materials.

Former Coalition prime minister, John Howard, recently stated he was ‘struggling to see what crime [Assange] had committed.’ However, Mr Assange said he has no plans to open up communications with the Coalition’s shadow foreign ministry, and that he has no hopes a potential Coalition government could lead to an offer of further Australian diplomatic support.

Find out more at RN Breakfast.