Assange, radicalism and democracy

Here's a question that plagues me from time to time: what good are our 'democratic rights' if nobody uses them?  Is free speech actually worth anything if everyone is too afraid to speak up?  Here's an interesting response from Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, in a Rolling Stone interview:

When people talk about your childhood, the two main words used to describe you are "nomadic" and "hacker." You first got into trouble when you were 17 for hacking into Pentagon networks, as well as several Australian sites. It seems in some ways that you've been engaged in a lifelong campaign against authority.

Julian Assange: I haven't had a lifelong campaign against authority.  Legitimate authority is important.  All human systems require authority, but authority must be granted as a result of the informed consent of the governed.  Presently, the consent, if there is any, is not informed, and therefore it's not legitimate.  To communicate knowledge, we must protect people's privacy - and so I have been, for 20 years, developing systems and policy and ideals to protect people's rights to communicate privately without government interference, without government surveillance.  The right to communicate without government surveillance is important, because surveillance is another form of censorship.  When people are frightened that what they are saying may be overheard by a power that has the ability to lock people up, then they adjust what they're saying.  They start to self-censor.

------------------------------------------ It's amazing to me that a concept like "consent of the governed" now seems so quaint as to be utterly ignorable, should a government choose to ignore it.  I think Assange is right when he says self-censorship is a form of control.