Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told an RT interviewer that social media like Facebook aids domestic intelligence gathering by creating a searchable database of personal information about users and their on-line friends. The database is accessed by intelligence agencies without legal formality and largely without civilian oversight. Assange characterized social networking as a free, "huge spying machine". It is a technique of intelligence gathering that has its precursor in the techniques of the Gestapo of Nazi Germany where citizens, and even children, were encouraged to inform on other citizens to fulfill their patriotic duty. Similarly, a person hooked up to Facebook or Twitter encourages his or her friends, relatives, and acquaintances to sign up as a way to have 'fun' and make social contacts. The personal information voluntarily provided thereby becomes accessible to electronic spies. Assange also comments on the developments in the Middle East, the Guantanamo gulag, and redaction of Wikileaks cables: