36C3 - Server Infrastructure for Global Rebellion

36c3 preroll music

Herald: Our next speaker: Basically, he
eats up script kiddies for breakfast, I've heard.

He drives the open source train and
his currency is uptime. Please welcome

with a very warm applause Julian Oliver
and his "Server Infrastructure for the

Global Rebellion" talk.

Julian: So, yep. Great. Very pleased to be
here. Amazing environment, indeed, as

usual with the CCC. First of all, I'm not
at all a spokesperson for extinction

rebellion. I do not speak for this
movement called extinction rebellion.

Whatever I say here tonight is entirely my
own opinion. And so not to be taken as any

overarching description of the movement
more generally. What you're looking at

here, of course, might simply be
associated with this thing called

extinction rebellion. But it is not. It
is, in fact, the extinction symbol. And

this is the part where in the first half
of my talk, I depress you. But then we'll

go for a nice, big sort of warm finish.
The extinction symbol was, in fact,

created in 2011 by a UK artist called ESP.
And this entirely relates to, not

extinction rebellion, being long before
extinction rebellion, but the fact that we

have entered the sixth mass extinction on
this planet that we are on. And this has

became practically scientific consensus in
2015, where it has been fairly surely

asserted and since reasserted that we have
in fact entered the largest extinction

event on this planet in 65 million years.
Global populations of fish, birds, mammals

down by about 60 % in 42 years and
according to the WWF a few years ago. The

UN puts it at about 150 species lost per
day. Now, that's a little bit more than

the father of biodiversity, E.O. Wilson,
that says it's around about 27,000 a year.

In other words, one species lost every 19
minutes. But what does that really mean?

Well, when we're talking about background
extinction rates, we're looking at the at

the background extinction rate for the
last 65 million years has been about one

to five species a year. So not 150 a day,
but 1 to 5 a year. This is fairly

conclusive of the fact that we have
entered the sixth extinction on this

planet. I'm here in Germany, for instance.
Just a couple of years ago, there was this

Dutch-German study done that now reflects
pretty much the state of the entire

European continent of the 3/4 of all
flying insect biomass dropping in about 25

years. So three quarters less flying
insects in 25 years and supposedly

dropping it around about 2.5 a year. Now
we need insects much more than they need

us. They are the glue layer of our food
system. But within the planetary boundary

and biological sense, they are absolutely
intrinsic. They also keep much of our

water very fresh. As one biologist put it,
we humans will never see the the end of

the insects. We need them that much. Now,
climate change has become very much

ascribed to this loss of species. But in
fact, it's not climate change that is

responsible for species decline per say.
The WWF Living Planet Index attributes

about seven per cent of species declines
to warming. In fact, the real reason why

we are losing so many species so quickly
is because we're changing their habitats.

We're just removing them entirely, and
certainly urbanization is a part of that

and land change as a result of warming,
but primarily it's because we've replaced

habitats with with farmland. This is, for
instance, in the Amazon basin carving into

the Amazon right there just to lay down
some soy livestock, feed crops. And

there's another another another view
there. Now, most of that soy, all of that

soy is really exported for livestock feed,
mostly to Europe and to China. But getting

onto the warming thing, which is obviously
a massive existential threat we do all

face. We can safely say now that the Paris
accord has entirely failed. The warming

projections presently we're looking at
about 2.8 to 3.2 by the end of the

century, not including self reinforcing
feedbacks. In other words, things like

permafrost melts, just releasing tons of
methane into the air or the wildfires that

we've been seeing in Australia and over in
California that are just sending gigatons

of carbon into the air. So this is still
to be seen as relatively optimistic.

If we're looking at current policies and
where they will lead us, that's a lot more

than 1.5. I think, first of all, it's
important to point out that this is

actually really happening. And even if
it's unimaginable and completely

unacceptable that it is happening, we
still need to remember that science does

not need human imagination for evidence.
It needs instrumentation and lots and lots

of hard work and decades of study. And it
confirms that, yes, indeed, it is really

happening. Technology will not save us.
This is also increasingly scientific

consensus. Most recently, looking at the
idea that we can just simply scrub carbon

out of the air, we can, you know, we can
suck it out of the air and these negative

emission technology. That's if you like.
They're not even gigatons capable. And 29

European science academies concluded that
we can absolutely not rely on any Ts or

negative emissions technologies to pull
enough carbon out of the air at anywhere

near the rate that we need it in order to
save us. What I mean by save us? Well,

when I was born, it was around about
330 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere

and we're now looking at about
412 of the latest reading. This is the

Keeling Curve. Now 450 ppm is seen as
something of a threshold that probably

gets us more or less near 2 degrees of
warming from post-industrial levels with a

70 % probability if we keep it under 2
degrees, in other words, 450 ppm. Sorry.

If we keep it under 450 ppm, then we will
almost certainly manage to avoid that that

2 degrees threshold for the 70 %
probability. Just looking at ocean rise

alone. This is Miami at two degrees, which
is arguably just around the corner. This

is Shanghai. I don't know if you've been
to Shanghai. Where will all those people

go, you might ask yourself. Bangkok is
already underwater at this point. Two

degrees represent something else
relatively significant, however, as

evidenced in this fantastic paper, well,
fantastic if you read this sort of stuff

and don't want to drink yourself under the
table. But trajectories of the Earths

system and the Anthropocene suggests very
strongly that it's highly likely,

extremely probable that if we cross the 2
degrees centigrade warming threshold, we

will be on autopilot to 2.5, 3 degrees,
3.5 and 4 degrees. And that's simply an

unstoppable course. No amount of carbon
scrubbing can possibly compete with the

self reinforcing feedbacks after that
point. We're on a course to a very

different planet. Just to give you a sense
of what 4 degrees, for instance, would

mean, should we ever get there, which it
looks like we will before the end of the

century if we continue business as usual.
The temperature rise from the Ice Age, the

end of the Ice Age back 10,000 years ago
to 1850 was 4 degrees of warming. Now,

that's 10,000 years of time for organisms,
including us, to evolve and adapt to that

warming. We're looking at the same amount
of warming in just 150 years. There's no

time to adapt. This picture I've tweeted a
bit, I suppose, but maybe too much. But

this was done for the New Scientist and
the visualization of what the earth would

look like, what the world would look like
at 4 degrees. Now, Middle and Southern

Europe are obviously entirely gone. North
America, Africa, South America and Asia -

they've all gone. I mean, where would
those people go? Obviously, they'll head

North. The states will move from a geo
strategic perspective, would obviously

move to Canada, China and to Russia.
There's been a lot of talk about as to

what that would mean for human populations
and human population numbers and of course

you read some wild stuff, how can we
possibly know? But this chap who's had his

name on 120 papers or something like this.
He's one of the most highly regarded

atmospheric scientists in the world, cited
over a thousand times across academic

journals in the domain of atmospheric
science, believes it's just a few thousand

people. The carrying capacity of the earth
is just a few thousand people seeking

refuge in the Arctic or Antarctica. And of
course, all the way to 4 degrees, we have

war, we have resource depletion driving
conflicts, we have mass migration and very

unfortunately it is fairly safe to
conclude that children alive today will,

even those still again, relatively
unimaginable, but based on the best

available information, very probably face
mass migration, war and hunger. Should we

not turn things around? This is just
simply the way it is. This is where we are

going. But surely governments would never
let that happen. You hear that a lot. But

the thing is, they have let that happen
and they are continuing to let that

happen. Appropriate response is probably
this. This UK pop artist, experimental pop

stuff, said this, write this down on a
napkin one day. I really like it. "Hope

without honesty is denial" because people
reach for hope at these times. But I also

really like Kate Malveaux, climate
scientist. She said that we don't need

hope, we need courage. Courage is the
resolve to do well without the assurance

of a happy ending. This is more what we
need to be going. Thanks of course, giving

us a bit of a hand here with this. From
this moment the spear ends and techniques

begin. And truth is, there's no hope
without action. This is really where we

stand and this is not just my opinion. It
happens to be an opinion very widely

spread. In fact, the world scientists in
their " A second warning to humanity",

very recently wrote that same thing. They
said that with a groundswell of organized

grassroots efforts, dogged opposition can
be overcome and political leaders

compelled to do the right thing. Now that
is 15,364 scientists from 184 countries.

It's the most scientific document in all
history. They are urging us in the

absolute and, you know, ineptitude and
lack of engagement from governments to

actually rise up and force governments to
act. That's what they're telling us to do.

And you can look at this as a bit like,
you know, imagine you have a disease, a

very rare disease and that the world's
experts, you know, that those those

scientists, 15,364 scientists, contains
most of the world's Nobel laureates,

planetary boundary scientists, food system
scientists, geologists, biologists. They

say that, you know, so from the
perspective of expert opinion, it doesn't

get much better. You can imagine that you
have a disease that very few people have,

and the world's expert says to you:
"Listen, it's really grim. You are looking

at a at a particularly bleak end, an ugly
end, unless, of course, you stop now doing

these things". You can also think that our
space habitat has a variety of subsystems,

it is a freshwater subsystem that looks at
water purification and filtration, a

thermal regulation subsystem. You could
look at food pods. They are being attacked

on our space habitat. If you don't like
the word environmental or earth, you think

it's a bit too kind of patchouli dose to a
hippie. Then think of it this way, because

that is what's happening. What they're
telling us is that it's time to rebel.

It's time to force governments to act
because they are not acting. No more

business as usual. What we need is massive
swarming, nonviolent, uncontainable civil

disobedience en masse. Civil disobedience,
unlike protests were you just get out on

the street on a little key area with a
police permit for the protest, holding

little signs, oi oi oi. Civil disobedience
actually works. It has

provably worked. South Africa versus
apartheid. India versus the British Roche.

U.S. Civil Rights Movement. The Velvet
Revolution. It's the way to go. Extinction

rebellion is very much a manifestation of
that energy at the idea of actually

channeling civil disobedience to the ends
of driving change is very much what it's

about. It's the kernel of the movement. It
started in October 31st, where a bunch of

British activists marched onto Parliament
Square and declared a rebellion against

the British government for its lack of
action on the climate and the ecological

emergency. And then soon afterwards, 6000
or so descended upon London and

effectively shut down the city center by
occupying five bridges. Extinction

rebellion is a leaderless... That's very
important. I mean, is that the press of

always reaches for a figurehead, but it is
very much a leaderless. That's not steered

by the UK , Decentralized International,
apolitical network using nonviolent direct

action and civil disobedience to persuade
governments to act justly on the climate

ecological emergency. I'm just going to
show a couple of videos right now to just

give you a sense of the kind of what civil
disobedience in this case actually

comprises. I'll show you a video from
France particularly focused on

overconsumption. We're talking about
resource depletion here in the CCC this

year, which I think is great. And this was
a protest at Block Friday instead of Black

Friday, which is, of course, a mass
consumers event. Here we go.

music plays

They occupied a shopping mall for seven

hours and a whole bunch of stores across
the country, Apple Store, etc., just

fantastic stuff. And you might think
'where's this going?'. Well. And is that

really the only approach, you know, occupy
malls and shops, et cetera, et cetera?

I'll show you another video for a very
different strategy. This is extension

rebellion, New York City occupying Times
Square. And I think this is definitely...

Oh, what is the video called? That's
right... Player.

music plays, drums beating

Sorry, It's a but cut off, isn't it?

Again? Or wait, whatever.

People in the video shouting repeadeatly:

This is an emergency! This is an
emergency!

music plats, drums beating

This is an emergency! This is an
emergency!

Person in video: Good Morning, New York
City! This is Extinction Rebellion

enforcing an international
rebellion...continues unintelligible

shouting and drums beating

[Subtitles appear in video, therefore left out here]

Julian: Well, anyway, you get the idea.

applause

So something's wrong with my copy of my
with my render buffer there, I can see that.

I don't know, anyway. Three demands.

Typically, some branches have more. There
are many branches now. 600 plus branches

all over the world. Some have four demands
for us, as in the US. Some of these state

branches have added a fourth demand for
climate ecological justice for those most

affected by changes within planetary
boundaries. Sorry, changes above and

beyond planetary boundaries. But in
general, there's this kernel of sort of

three demands. Tell the truth. Government
must tell the truth by declaring a climate

and ecological emergency. Working with
other institutions to communicate the

urgency for change. Act now. Government.
Government must act now to halt

biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse
gas emissions to net zero by 2025. 2025,

you say. Understand? You might think that
is a little bit short, but it's good to

have goals beyond politics. Government
must create and be and be led by the

decisions of a citizen assembly on climate
ecological justice. And it is working

significantly. In fact, if you go to this
climate mobilizationorg map and you will

see that states, municipalities and cities
all over the world, tons of them have in

fact declared a climate ecological
emergency. What they do after that point

is, of course, the next step. But I can't
find a single one of these that is dated

to before April this year. So in just one
year, that is a significant political

transformation.
applause

Yep, yes. And it's certainly not just
extinction rebellion. It's Fridays for

future have been just upping the game.
They're massively, so, respect! At the COP

25, which was obviously like a massive
failure in itself, extinction rebellion

was listed as the most influential
organization above the World Bank,

Greenpeace, et cetera, et cetera. So it's
a relatively short kind of rise of a voice

for this particular movement.
Now, infrastructure for

rebellion. Unfortunately, the movement got
off to a reasonably bad start in the UK in

that respect. They went from the
perspective of...

What's that? That's a bit odd.
referring to the red blink glitch

They went from the perspective that we are
an above ground movement. We work in

the open. It's not really good for civil disobedience
to have that as your mandate or a priority.

And there in the UK, things are, of
course, a little bit different. It's

something of a playground there for civil
disobedience. The police are generally

quite nice. In fact, one of the chief of
police in the UK said 'Well, they're

actually quite nice people, these
activists'. This is not something that

exports very well. It doesn't even export
over the border. I'll talk about them in a

moment. But they really settled on base
camp over in the US. They just went

straight to base camp. Google for sharing
like things like contact lists. They

didn't have anyone with technical, shall
we say, know how or operational security

intuition or interest to look at it any
other way. So they just reach for what's

at hand. The Action Network, too, hosted
over in the United States Base camp, I

mean, the extinction rebellion explicitly
breaks base camps terms of service. You

may not use the service or any illegal
purpose. Well, civil disobedience is

breaking the law. That's what it is.
Action Network, which is widely used by,

unfortunately, activist movements all over
the world, humans rights spaces as well...

They they really use it a lot. They have
just crazy stuff. You understand and agree

that we may disclose your information if
required to do so by law or court order a

legal process some point, including to
respond to any government or regulatory

request. I mean, this is nuts. Action
Network hosted over in the US under a

Trump surveillance apparatus, that massive
apparatus that Obama expanded hugely and

just gave to Trump. And I mean, this is an
unsafe environment for hosting, you know,

contact lists.On the 3rd of of November
last year, my partner said they really

should be an extinction rebellion in
France. And and I immediately thought,

well, they will need a server. There in
France, you do not want your activists on

Action Network. I mean, you don't want
them using Google because, I mean, in

France, this is the situation. Here's
France. This is, in fact, Paris and Sally

Bridge in the center of Paris with just
cops cruising past and just tear gas and

even taking the sunglasses off and just
and just spraying them right in the face.

This is Youth for Climate protesting
outside an Amazon logistics center. Very

recently, in fact. Youth for climate, just
with with a guy wearing the French stripes

in the background overseeing it. He says,
'Yep, you can do it. The state says it's

OK', and just sprays them. You know, this
is France. It's a different environment.

So I just really got them up and running
with something really fast. Iceland was

chosen because Icelanders is very well
known for its strict data protection laws.

It's well outside of obviously the EU and
of course, the five eye states. And I went

the FlokiNET, geothermal direct from
source, more direct from grid source.

Discourse for the forum rather than base
camp, for instance. Nextcloud for all the

vital stuff replacing Google Drive, etc.
hardened opened VPN and a data partition

on AES-XTS on 512, Jitsi-Meet for calls
bit and just a very simple MTA. In fact,

it's not really an empty, it's just a just
email, XM. XM form. Meanwhile, the

international movement as branches were
popping up all over the world, were

descending on slack. Now slack is
particularly problematic for a variety of

reasons. But what's there's a reason why
they were jumping on slack. They wanted a

place to share their extinction rebellion,
broader global needs. I mean, this is just

a few thousand people at that stage. Some
people were members of multiple teams. And

importantly, they chose Slack because
Slack does it for something that group

chat does not. Many teams, each with
channels, public and private, and this is

just the, it is hard to call it, an
innovation, but slack itself, is chosen

for that team based structuring
configuration over group chat for a very

good reason. It is a direct messaging back
end. Many national branches means many

teams. Some people belong to more than one
team. But the problem with Slack is that

Slack is a racist infrastructure. It
actually has its discriminatory

infrastructure. Slack voluntarily chose to
follow Trump's digital trade embargo,

blocking like Crimea, Cuba and Iran.
Several other countries just because they

thought maybe I'd know Trump would buy
them a Rolex, I'm not sure. But it's it's

nuts that they did that. And then they
even defended it, apologizing a little

bit. Sort of not apologizing later. Google
Docs. Branches were jumping to Google Docs

to store contact lists. Here's your
regional coordinator, your national

coordinator, your actions and logistics
teams - terrible stuff! So much so that in

the UK at least a seasoned organization
and protecting activists and ensuring that

they have legal rights or at least legal
protections when they need them in the UK

decided to pull out of support of
extinction rebellion on the basis that

XR UK was storing personal data
inadequately and that they were very sure

that in fact the police would have access
to that information. Thus, when openness

is enforced, we have a regime of openness
doing things out in the open. It excludes.

What about those that might work and
governments or government offices or

corporations or just those that are a bit
nervous about getting involved in a civil

disobedience movement? They're not sure
they want to actually take that big step.

Those are not going to feel very
comfortable at all doing it in the open.

A community owned hub and operated
hub for Extinction Rebellion was absolutely

needed. And so I set out just building

criterion for this had to be community
owned and operated, platform wise, free

and open source software outside of the
Five Eye and EU member states. It needed

to walk its talk and enjoy energy direct
from source. No CO2 credits, a'la Google

and Amazon. Debian simply because I've
been using Debian since the year 2000 only

and and I just love it. weeps If I start
crying, you know why? It's not because the

planet is dying, it's because I just love
Debian so much. But it needs to be

affordable and very well rooted. So,
'mission coherent infrastructure' was what

is really often what I mean by that. Few
people are aware that the global data

center industry consumes or at least
pushes out, I should say, as much carbon

into the atmosphere as the entire airline
industry. This is the same amount as the

UK. The United Kingdom itself actually
burns a year. It's a lot. And for

organise.earth, which was the domain name
that was chosen...Exactly 366 days ago, in

fact, it was born. I settled on mattermost
and I'll explain why in a moment. And I

and I settled on datacenterlight in the
Swiss Alps. Datacenterlight, direct from

source hydro alpine catchment hydro... It
was a beautiful Irony there, actually sort

of like a bleak poetry that as warming
melts the snow on the Alps, it flows down

into these large catchment bays, which
then drive lovely big generators that

power the data center. So I just I can't
get past that. It's extremely well rooted.

Their VMs are wonderfully fast. I settled
on mattermost for these reasons: We had to

get thousands of people off Slack fast. So
the U.S. similarity was mission critical.

There are export path from slack directly
into mattermost. It has that team check

configuration that people in an activist
communities really like now. They've

adopted that wholesale. It's reasonably
unified. UI/UX across the endpoint

platforms, whether you're on iOS or
Android or desktop. Team invite links.

Teams can actually control invitations to
the teams by sending them a link and they

can recycle that link or at least flush it
and generate a new one when they need to,

to control flow. This basic team admin
controls. Extremely low entry barrier. The

server was entirely funded by one fresh,
ahm French - I was going to say Swiss.

Then I said French. So I said fresh. - One
French rebel. scales linearly as regards

system overheads. It's just extremely
performant. In fact, when we got to about

20.000 people on organise.earth, the
server population, matteremost itself was

running at about 30 percent of one core.
"Mattermost for chat. Anything sensitive?

Use Signal or Wire." And that's the rule
now on organise.earth, which has become

very much the global hub for the movement,
with four hundred and seventy-five teams,

mostly national or local branches. It's a
really large Mattermost deployment. Why

not Riot and Matrix/Synapse? Well, in
December 2018, when I was looking at it,

it was a little bit immature. The UI UX
was a bit geeky, but there were also real

problems with with scalability. I just
seem to see that it wasn't something I

could really know that hundred thousand
people, for instance, down the road could

actually all use on my particular site
home server deployment. The device

verification was really freaking people
out. I mean, some of the the great

majority of the rebels, in fact, that we
are hosting are in fact the kind that

would look for a Google link to log in.
There's no markdown. That might seem a

little bit arbitrary, but it's become
relatively critical - especially for the

code / development side of things and
formatting, making lists. Markdown is

important. It doesn't have that link-based
invitation management either. But there's

also this metadata leakage concern -
something that the Matrix team are really

looking at. And they've said so. They've
said that the metadata leakage, they want

to fix that. They want a more unified
experience across the app layer, too, with

Riot. So I'm looking forward to following
that in the future. Zero knowledge: I

would love to go that way. But given the
fact that that we already have use Signal or

Wire for anything sensitive and use
Mattermost for anything else and use your

individual branch servers, which I talk
about in a moment, for anything truly

internal to your branch, we've achieved
basically the same thing because Riot -

just like with a Nimmo - is not
entirely encrypted by default. It's

something that one must actually set up.
So we're effectively in the same place.

Organized.earth has now grown to host a
large number of platforms which I have

deployed there. We have, of course,
Mattermost. We have NextCloud to us. Only

office is used for collaborative editing
that has some missives I talk about in the

moment. Etherpad-Lite is used really
heavily. LimeSurvey replaces Google Forms.

Jitsi-Meet doesn't really replace Zoom.
But this is something that we're working

on very much. Rainloop with Docevot and
PostFix for the for the mailing. And then

we have GitLab. GitLab has been a massive
success. We have a few hundred coders now

working flat-out in the GitLab that we
have deployed. And it is very interesting

that many of them say that would they
would not be able to do what they're doing

on GitHub. Given that GitHub is tied to
their work, GitHub is tied to the to their

real life a little bit too much. And they
are genuinely worried about a boss or

corporation or company surveilling them
when they are maybe, for instance, engaged

in a project that is technically illegal
or quasi-legal. Discourse is used, I

guess, less heavily on the main
organized.earth server than it is on some

of the branch deployments. The French
server, for instance, now has 70,300

members in its Discourse. Yes, 70,300. What
a win. Yeah. It's just like a marketplace

of chatter. Signal and Wire replacing
WhatsApp and Skype. Mastodon node was

created, which has become quite popular
with branches. And we have PeerTube

replacing YouTube. And importantly, we're
working very hard to ensure that we have a

gender balance as much as possible within
the open space of all these platforms. On

the backend, of course, Debian
sobbing. AES XTS for the data

partition. Failed2ban and UFW for the
firewalling. (aside) Those of you that are

taking photos of this are feds. I
see you taking photos. Take photos.

laughs Snort for the intrusion
detection. Prometheus and hardened

OpenVPN. I'm really into Duplicity for
backups and Pecona for hot MySQL backups.

It's a real problem when you're trying to
backup huge databases that are 14-15 GB or

more: You can't take them down long enough
to do a dump with, say, MySQL or something

like this. Percona provides a really
interesting solution for hot backups. I

had to work on optimizations with an IDB
heavily in order to get the kind of

performance that was squeezing out of
Mattermmost in its interaction with MySQL

on the server. Nginx we now support two
protocols: v4 and v6. The v6 addition was

certainly very, very bumpy and I wish it
wasn't so bumpy, but it was. I thought I

knew or understood physics better than I
actually did the day of deployment.

PostFix and Dovecot. And then we have
LetsEncrypt. Platform challenges: Jitsi-

Meat does not replace Zoom. Zoom is just
simply more performant. I think about 1.7

Mbits/s is the lower-level, minimum
bandwidth required for a user in order to

have a quality call but Jitsi-Meet is
higher. And so we do get people on 3G,

they just drop out and we sometimes have
40 or 50 people on the call and Jitsi-Meet

is not cutting it, unfortunately. Only
office unless you want to pay 6,000 a

year, which of course we won't. You're
looking at only 20 simultaneous editors at

the same time. This also needs to, needs to
change. Thankfully, NextCloud's text app

seems to offer us a sweet spot there, as
far as simultaneous editing. In the

meantime, EtherPad-Light is being used
really heavily. There's a lack of epic

controls in MatterMmost, which is
precisely why we are forking it. We are

forking Mattermost, which is a massive
job, such that team admins can have all of

those hundreds of teams can individually
manage their memberships. That having to rely

on me to drop into the into the CLI and
use the Mattermost tooling to do things

like following the GDPR, deleting all of
the posts of a particular member. And we

have SSO expectations for a mostly non-
tech membership. People are so used to the

idea, especially the very that the younger
and the older end of the demographic both

expect one unified log-in for all
platforms. And this is just a real hassle

and very difficult to manage. But with
Mattermost, it acts as a OAuth2 provider

that does offer us some interesting
possibilities there. The XR Server

Platform has since evolved to this. It has
MailTrain as the mailing list manager and

this is working real well. I'm at
MailTrain V2 with a sweet docker compose

deployment. I thoroughly recommend giving
that a go to replace your mailchimp

whatever needs. We also have a 'Rebels
Manager' as the CRM. So this effectively

replaces Action Network and it leverages
MailTrain. There's a very talented

developers in Brussels and Belgium that
have put together the Rebels Manager,

which will be deploying across the entire
movement. And yeah, it's working out real

nice as far as the deployments. The branch
service deployed in the spirit of

decentralization. I have deployed these
and there are many, many more to come. And

these are entirely independent from
organized.earth, from the main hub. They

are self run self-administered. Admins are
trained over ten to twenty five hours and

then the keys are flipped and then they
just sail off on their own. 2020 plans:

the Mattermost-fork I mentioned, but
importantly, the Wire-Mattermost

integration. What I'd really like to see
and what we're talking about with the

Rebel codes is, I guess as we call
ourselves, is to have a Wire Add-On or

Plugin for Mattermost such that you can
just simply click on a bunch of different

people that you'd like to engage in a into
anend-to-end encrypted voice call or chat.

We're excited about that. Enhance team
admin controls: Team administrators should

be able to do a lot of the work that that
I shouldn't be doing. A Federation feature

which effectively replaces Mattermosts
enterprise offering, which is about three

dollars a month or something per seat.
It's a crazy amount of money. I mean, in

our populations that would be completely
impossible to afford that sort of The

Enterprise Enterprise edition anyway. So
we are actually sort of forced to fork

Mattermost, which I'm sure is really gonna
piss them off, but we are going to do it.

We've already started. Jitsi-Meet-rework:
We want to build an OAuth-wall for Jitsi-

Meet so that we can protect our instances.
Simultaneous session recording, not using

Jabari or with the chromium browser on a
server, which I can't believe is the

solution that they have chosen. I will
never, ever install a browser on a server.

It's just it's just illegal. And it's just
it's just wrong. Bandwith optimizations,

we need a lot of work done there. Rebels
Manager replaces Action Network. And then

we want to have a member facing services
dashboard with that OAuth2-flow and

particularly and very importantly,
colocation deployments. Working out of VMs

is all very well but you do have key theft
from RAM as a as a plausible possibility

in many instances, so to speak. And so
what we would like to aim for is being

able to drop off dedicated boxes with the
RAM, epoxied into the slot and good to go,

nice on lockdown. Yes. Swiss VPN for the
entire movement, this is something that I

should have done within it within a few
weeks. And I also want to obsolete myself

so I can dedicate myself to other
movements while maintaining at least a

tech advisory role within Extinction
Rebellion. But it is time for techies to

rebel. There is no hope without action.
But there is no action without

infrastructure, at least not at the scale
that we need it today. We need massive

deployments, distributions. People need
places to work and to organize and to do

so safely. SysOps, DevOps, Codes, front
and back. All can dedicate an hour, a week

or a couple of hours a day to a cause
which is probably best described as the

single biggest challenge that we as a as a
species actually face. Live in your time

and dedicate an hour or two a week or a
day, if you if you can, to this. Maybe not

Extinction Rebellion, but for Fridays For
Future, Sunrise Movement, future movements

to come. If you are interested in getting
involved in Extinction Rebellion and

joining the the the very large tech team,
then visit rebellion.global, find your

local branch, get invited to Mattermost
and then see you there. Another end of the

world is possible. Thanks a lot, guys.

applause

Herald: Thank you very much, Julian Oliver
- Extinction Rebellion.

applause
Herald: If you have questions, you know

the procedure. There are microphones from
one to number six. And as far as I know,

we already have questions from the
Internet. So signal angel, question number

one please.
Signal Angel: Hello, someone from the IRC

wants to know, how do you enter the
encryption passwords for your data

partitions during automated reboots in the
data center?

Julian: This is completely impossible to
do for an encrypted root file system,

obviously, one needs to, in fact, look at
data partitions that are encrypted. But

the root file system not unfortunately on
many the deployments that are not Colo and

those that do not have the flexibility of
presence at the point of entering that

password. So from that from that basis, we
we go with a an encrypted AES 512 Bit

encrypted data partition and one comes in
over the VPN, tunnels in through SSH and

then decrypt and mounts. I realize this is
not exactly ideal, but it is all we can do

in the VM space.
Herald: And the next question from

microphone number two.
Microphone 2: Hello, first of all thank

you so much for all this work you've put
into creating this platform for the

movement. My question is, what measures
have you taken to protect yourself against

the case where, for example, your home is
raided by police and they try to somehow

get into the servers through other means
than just impounding them.

Julian: I'm being socially engineered
aren't I? n public? No, no, I'm I'm

particularly cautious about that stuff.
And all of us, all the sysadmins of which

there are now about 30 across the
different branch deployments, we have

very, very strict procedures for this sort
of thing, including redundancy across

backups, leaving home check, powering off
the laptops. In fact, just like I

installed the entire movement's
infrastructure community on infrastructure

on a thinkpad X230 that I bought for one
hundred and forty five euros on the German

eBay. And. And I've encouraged all of the
SysAdmins to buy the same, precisely

because you have this lovely battery lock
on the back. You can just flip it and and

pull out the battery. You know, if you're
ever facing police or a stop and search.

And of course, some countries like, you
know, maybe India or Brazil, this becomes

really critical. But there is just a
routine. I'm leaving home, I'm powering

off my laptop. Just which screen-locker
we're using, KeePass, you know, phones

encrypted. The files, The, um, the file
system. And we just have to do our very,

very best. There is no such thing as
perfect sort of forward security in this

space. But all we can do is employ best
practice operational security and also

most importantly, treat sysadmins as high
risk first stage targets, and they are

increasingly so from this perspective.
Sysadmins are forbidden to go to actions.

They can not be arrested because there's
always the possibility of coercion. And we

actually have a whole kind of script with
sysadmins when they entering into the fold

to to explain to them, you are aware of
the risks, you know, and you need to lean

on your branch to explain to you the
the legalities of the of your

operating environment. What are your
rights? Can you be coerced to to cough up

a password, you know, to to give the
master key to your to your to KeePass, for

instance, like this. You need to know
those rights. You need to know your

rights. And if you can't deal with the
heat and you don't want to go that

distance, then step down from being
sysadmin and give it to someone else who

is willing to go that distance. There are
so many factors. And again, we can't

generalize across the entire geo cultural,
political jurisdictional space that

Extinction Rebellion works at because it's
just so various. Yeah.

Herald: Thank you. And the Internet has
another question.

Signal Angel: How do you keep your
community of, as you explain mostly non-

technical people on your geeky and
decentralised solution as it grows?

Julian: No problem really keeping them. I
mean, It's maybe when one of the founders

says something like completely
controversial or absurd. This is being

recorded, isn't it? Then then yeah, we
have we have lost some number,

understandably, but still the served
population just grows day in and day out.

And I am expecting in 2020, at this
current rate, we are looking at a at

around 400, 400 to 500 new members a day,
on the Mattermost at least. And with

branch server deployments, it'll be three
or four month until we've filled all the

national branch requirements. There is no
problem for that. Mattermost is seemingly

reasonably enjoyed, not so geeky in that
sense. Discourse is also very widely used

within the, I mean Twitter uses Discourse
internally, but also publicly. We see many

large corporations and organizations and
NGOs using Discourse as a forum solution,

as a discussion forum solution. So it's
actually familiar to a lot of a lot of

people anyway. The geeky ness, I would say
is probably when we start talking about

the need for a VPN. That's when a lot of
people just switch off. So there's a lot

of cultural work, techno cultural work, if
you like, that needs to be done there in

order to secure the movement further.
Herald: Thank you. Microphone number five,

please.
Microphone 5: Hi there. Um, so you talked

all about your communication
infrastructure. Can you share anything

about your financial infrastructure?
Julian: That's also very varied, too. I

mean, branches have their own funding
coming in, but then there are others that

that will receive funding from. Previously
it was the UK was managing a lot of that

funding. That's entirely switching now to
the international support team, which is a

multinational group, if you like,
organization within Extinction Rebellion

that does handle all the finances and
donors would come to the movement wanting

to give money. And then that's distributed
throughout the movement as needed to meet

the ends of branches. It's still just a
year in and it's still quite varied. I

mean, XR Germany, for instance, actually
donated to the global movement recently.

So it came back that way. It's I think
it's it's always going to be relatively ad

hoc, especially also given the fact that
some financial institutions, state craft

are very much on the tail of. I just spoke
too much didn't I. But method no. Yep. You

need to be very careful about about where
bank accounts are as regards the tax

state. And so I think it's it's gonna be a
changing environment for quite some time.

I didn't actually know much about the
finances side of things to answer that

wholely, but yeah. Thanks.
Herald: Thank you. Microphone number

three, please.
Microphone 3: Hi. A lot of people find it

very hard to go from this content to
dissent and more people tend to get

involved, involved if we lower the barrier
of entry. So, you know, it sounds great

when you say like a couple, couple a few
hundred new people a day globally. I

suspect it would be more the low the more
you lower the barrier of entry if you have

some sort of a gateway drug. So what are
you thinking about making some kind of

system, some some kind of easy invite,
sort of a one click, get an invite to

Mattermost thing that would make it
easier.

Julian: Well that already exists. The
organise.earth is really only the global

hub where branches will, for instance,
interrelate, collaborate and interoperate,

if you like. But the branch server
deployments themselves, they will handle

their own onboarding, if you like, but
there is certainly some streamlining to be

done there. One of the things that comes
up a lot is password complexity. We have a

very strict password complexity policy and
that really frustrates people that would

like to name, would like to give the
password the name of the dog, and the

year, maybe, at best. But you know, we
really need to work on on finding a sweet

spot. We don't want to also have people
going into arrest, forgetting to power off

their phone after following the encryption
operational security guiding that we have.

And then their phone is, you know, face
swiped into or something like this or

they're just tricked into swipe-unlocking
the phone as happened in the UK and then

they're going to find their way into the
platforms with best guess passwords. I

mean, who knows? We need to find a common
middle ground, but also educate as to why

it's important that we use these platforms
and in these ways and have passwords of

these strengths, etc.. It's an ongoing
process.

Herald: I see the Interwebs has a
question.

Signal angel: Someone in the IRC wants to
know, why did you think it was necessary

to set up new infrastructure instead of
using other radical tech infrastructures

like Riseup for example?
Julian: Well, Riseup had, yeah, has its

own problems. We really wanted to go have
community-run infrastructure such that we

can legally be responsible for that
infrastructure, that we can say that it is

here for us and that if there is any,
there's any attacks on that

infrastructure, we are in a much better
legal position to be able to represent

ourselves from our operational
circumstance and jurisdictional

circumstance. It was also very important
that it's in Switzerland. Importantly, in

Switzerland, for Swiss data centers, you
need to break the law in Switzerland

before there can even be a request for,
say, a server seizure. And that needs to

go through the highest courts. This makes
Switzerland a very, very nice place to

actually deploy server infrastructure for
a civil disobedience movement. Riseup

simply doesn't meet it in that capacity.
Herald: Thank you. Microphone number one,

please.
Microphone 1: So my question was partially

responded already about the financial
infrastructure you have. I know some

associations, but like, you know, they
could afford a hundred bucks per year or

something like that, because that's so low
and, you know, doing brilliant work. But

so it seems to me that you deployed tens
of servers just for the V1. So what are

your initial cost? Could you lighten up
that so that I can act back home? How do

you get the money initially?
Julian: I installed almost all of that

infrastructure without receiving a single
cent from extinction rebellion. And in

fact, I receive very, very little money
from extinction rebellion now. And it was

only after burning through all of my
savings from November to August, I burned

through all of my savings and ran myself
financially into the ground, ended it

entirely on a gratis basis. And only then
after that, I have a very small amount of

living expenses paid, which is really
tiny, but just enough to cover my costs.

And I can make a lot of money deploying
servers if I wish to for dreary NGOs etc.

etc., but I have dedicated myself to do
this on the grounds that it needs to be

done and it needed to be done. Yeah. So it
was actually free for the movement.

Applause
Herald: Thank you for that.

Julian: Pleasure.
Herald: Microphone number two, please.

Microphone 2: Right. You already mentioned
that these server partitions are encrypted

at the data center. So do you have any
other OPSEC mechanism in place? For

example, if these data center's raided?
Julian: The data center can't actually, at

least without it being a breach of
constitutional law in Switzerland, be

raided. But there, are there are some
measures put in place for a switch-off in

the event. But I can't talk about that
without putting other people on the hot

seat. Yeah, but it is it is all sorted.
Yeah.

Herald: laughing Thank you. The Internet has
another question.

Signal angel: Someone on the IRC wants to
know, do you share the recipes for your

DevOps deployments? And specifically were,
Signal and Wire difficult to set up?

Julian: Well, Signal is not so difficult
to set up, but maybe it is easily confused

with the fact I mentioned the Wire server
deployment. I'm in talks with Wire at the

moment. Does that make Wire about a server
deployment for the movement such that we

can actually run our own entirely and
again, write apps for that for that server

for use in the movement. But I think Wire
and Signal, as far as an end user install,

it is extremely easy in getting them up
and running. I think Signal has problems

obviously with the phone number discovery
aspect. I mean, SIM cards, I don't know,

they're license plate numbers these days.
I'm really quite a fan of Wire's non-

dependance on that. But as far as the
blueprints are concerned, I really do hope

to write, as part of my self-obsolescence
plan is to write a full documentation for

the server installs, for the for the post
install ordering and such that I can be

handed over to someone else to do the
deployments for me. And I think I have

actually found that person. That person
happens to be German and very, very sharp.

So, I look forward to the possibility of
publishing that at that point. But for

now, it's just a case of me doing the
deployment, and then I sit down with

sysadmins for 10 to 25 hours and walk them
through what that server is and how they

can sail that ship. It's how it's done at
the moment.

Herald: Thank you. I think this is a call
for participation, right?

Julian: It is indeed.
Herald: Microphone number two, please.

Microphone 2: Is the Mattermost fork
public available?

Julian: It will be, absolutely. I mean,
it's just started. It's something that we

just kicked off. So hopefully, by about
midyear, I think we might have something

that you could put into staging, maybe not
production ready, but we'll see. Yeah, I

think it's gonna be great. And it's gonna
be great for the community as a whole. I

mean, outside of extinction rebellion, but
just those that would like an alternative

to Slack that doesn't have dumbed down
team admin controls and has maybe

federation, if you really want to grow
something really, really big. The sweet

spot is a folk Mattermost. I'm convinced.
Herald: Thank you. Microphone number

three, please.
Microphone 3: Why no digital civil

disobedience?
Julian: Ah, yes, I can't talk about that,

but I'm very, very enthusiastic about it
and have been engaged in that a little bit

here and there in the past. But yeah,
electronic civil disobedience is, is very

close to my heart. And there's lots of it
happening in the movement and it will be

in 2020, but I can't talk about that
obviously, at all. Yeah. Would love to,

but I can't.
Herald: So sad. Microphone number two,

please.
Microphone 2: You're running a lot of

services with huge attack surface. What is
the worst that could happen should your

infrastructure get compromised?
Julian: With, services with what, sorry?

Microphone 2: What is the worst that could
happen if your infrastructure is

compromised?
Julian: Um, well, the branch servers are

entirely decentralized from the, from the
organise.earth hub. Um, I would like to

think that it's highly unlikely that
organise.earth is compromised, but if it

were to be compromised and I was not able
to instigate a power-off event in process

or prior, then unfortunately it would be,
there'll be access to large email, um,

registration information, largely, and our
DB is database encrypted at the database

layer, but unfortunately if one has root,
if one can privacy escalate to root, then

you would have access, potentially, to a
decryption of the database. But there's

little we can really do about that. Um, if
we find in 2020, let's say there is

encrypted by default. In other words, zero
knowledge with OMEMO or with Riot

abstracted over Matrix and Synapse, well,
hopefully Dendrite, written in Go. And it

is really performant and it can run six
figure populations, it can support six

figure populations, then we'll absolutely
switch to that and I will drive that

change and that time. But in the meantime,
just use Mattermost for general team chat.

Everything else goes over Signal or Wire.
That's how the movement runs right now.

Yeah.
Herald: Thank you. Unfortunately, we run

out of time. Julian, would you be able to
answer questions in the, uh, after talk?

Julian: Yes, of course. Yes, absolutely.
Herald: So the offer, if you have

questions, come together, come to him and
ask you questions. Julian Oliver, thank

you very much.
Julian: Thanks, guys.

Applause

postroll music

Subtitles created by c3subtitles.de
in the year 2020. Join, and help us!