cdn.media.ccc.de/.../36c3-11247-eng-Technical_aspects_of_the_surveillance_in_and_around_the_Ecuadorian_embassy_in_London.mp4

36C3 preroll music

Herald: Okay. As you probably know, Julian
Assange, as well as his colleagues and

friends and associates, were extensively
surveilled during his time at the embassy.

And our next speaker, Andy, is going to
talk about procedural and technical

details of that surveillance, which is
what we're really interested in, that's

why the room is full. So, Andy, "Technical
Aspects of the Surveillance in and around

the Ecuadorian Embassy in London", please
give him a warm round of applause.

applause

Andy Müller-Maguhn: Okay. Good morning,
everybody. I'm holding this talk,

actually, for the second time. The first
time was on day one, but somehow the video

recording got fucked up. I would say CIA,
but at this early time of the talk you

might think I'm paranoid, but I'm... well,
we can discuss that after my talk again.

laughter
applause

Andy: The two dis...
oh fuck...

laughter

Herald: Anyone here who knows computers?

laughter

Andy: Let's try again. Does this work?

applause

Andy: OK. So, the presentation does cover

some, but not... gosh, being awake on day
4... This presentation does cover some,

but not all aspects of the surveillance.
There is, of course, stuff happened on the

wireless network, on the bound network.
There was more things going on. There was

an ongoing heat in the embassy, which made
us think they might be using nanometer

waves to look through the walls and from
the ceilings above and below and so on.

However, we are still getting
documentation about other things. So this

is like the state of affairs right now. I
will probably make a long video of

explaining things with also more details
later this year. Second disclaimer, what

I'm presenting is mostly stuff from a
company called Undercover Global. They are

subject to an ongoing lawsuit. The owner
of the company and CEO has been accepting

third party instructions and a lot of
money and has been modifying the official

product, cause and technology used. He's
investigated for violating laws of

privacy, secrecy of lawyer-client-attorney
thingy, whatever the English term is,

bribery, money laundering and so on. And
also the Spanish justice has very

officially started investigation for a
spying foreign foreign intelligence

service, namely the CIA. At the time of
the presentation right today, however, he

is not charged. So this is a subject of
ongoing things. And of course, we don't

have the material from other intelligence
services who have been working around the

embassy although we have some indications
of what they have been doing. As this is a

rather 80 slide plus videos presentation,
I thought it's a good idea to give you a

rough overview of what this is about. I'm
trying to give you the big picture, the

embassy overview, so that you understand
the building, the rooms and so on. The so-

called "Operation Hotel", that was the
official task of the company at the time

to protect the embassy against people
intruding and so on, taking care of the

guests, so they had their own terminology.
The standard operational procedures in

place, the modifications that, as
indicated, David Morales instructed or got

instructed from US intelligence to do.
Overview of what they collected on

visitors. Then, there was a special event
in December 2017 when they went actually

through the whole embassy to identify all
kinds of objects. They documented every

piece of furniture to see where they could
include more hidden bugs and other things

and upgrades to the security situation. A
short thing about what Julian did to

counter the surveillance and how they
countered his countermeasures. And then at

the end, something about the term
"Actionable Intelligence", which becomes

very plastic. The context is, of course,
that Julian has taken the idea of the

hacker ethic, said all information should
be free, serious to an extent, and has

been committed to that, that we can, of
course, also say, well, he has won

probably one of the highest journalistic
prizes being carried out out of a

protected embassy. That's quite a reward
and quite a recognition that he and the

people in power he exposed had the
impression that they don't fit together on

the same planet in this situation.
However, the big picture is to make you

understand the historic overview of
events. So there was a initial phase when

he got into the embassy when they were
actually unprepared, of course, for him

coming in there. And they actually had a
surveillance camera for checking the

visitors before they entered the building.
But that was more or less it. Then in 2015

this company got engaged and installed a
lot of things. There was, however, three

different phases which I want to separate
here for you to understand when the first

phase was under U.S. President Obama and
the more left wing government of Ecuador

under President Correa. However, right at
the beginning of the engagement of

Undercover Global for the Ecuadorian
foreign ministry to protect the embassy he

went to a security conference, or however,
to Las Vegas and presented his little

company and the one customer they had. So
that's so much about the size of the

company. He presented like the one
customer, the one project they did that

was taking care of the embassy and of
course quickly found interested parties

from the US security environment to boost
up his career. And so his spying for third

party started right away. At the beginning
he received payments from a company called

Las Vegas Sense that's owned by Sheldon
Adelson. He was officially hired to take

care of a yacht of Sheldon Adelson
although that yacht already had a security

team. So there's ongoing investigations
also where the money came from and so on.

However, in phase two, 2017, so after some
publications had upset the US maybe even

more and also the Ecuadorian government
had changed in the midst of or the

beginning of 2017. They started serious
modifications of the protocol. Not only

that he switched to encrypted
communication with his employees, with his

instructions. He also, like, pressured
from his American friends, the wish to

have covert audio bugs, higher resolution
cameras, and also cameras in all rooms

with audio. We can say pretty sure that
this has been done on behalf of the US as

the emails he sent to instruct this
modifications - we have all those emails -

the emails show the IP numbers they have
been sending for, the lawyers have

analyzed this. So we know that he has been
in Virginia Arlington and in Las Vegas and

other places, when he came with these
instructions. Also his language, his

English was not very good and technically,
he was not very sophisticated, but he

sometimes sent instructions in very good
English with presentations and detailed

technical details that clearly came not
from him, which also was obtained. So we

are pretty confident in these things that we
claim here. And then there was something

going on at the end of 2017, which I'll
explain later. However, I want to point

out a complete different thing, which
might be or might have led to confusion.

At April 2018 two things happened: The
Ecuadorians, the new government of

Ecuador, made a mutual legal assistance
agreement with the United States in the

investigation against Assange, as they
justified it with the interference in the

elections, so to give the Ecuadorians like
a plausible reason to help them. The

cooperation with UC Global was canceled
because they were unsatisfied with their

quality of their work. And they installed
a second company called Prom Security,

which is an Ecuadorian company made up by
a former colonel of their local

intelligence, which then did the
surveillance. And probably that material

could more easily be used in any legal
proceedings as everything that happened

before was plainly illegal. However, the
material of that second company landed

partly in an extortion attempt against
WikiLeaks, against Julian, against...

Kristinn met these guys with undercover
Spanish police, so the current editor in

chief of WikiLeaks, and that's subject to
a lawsuit also. And there is also

publications about that. But my
presentation is mainly about this first

phase until April 2018 to avoid that
potential confusion. Also it's maybe worth

to point out that all Julian's belongings,
like his computers, his notes and material

and so on, has all been confiscated by the
Ecuadorians and directly given to the

United States based on this agreement they
made in April 2018. So here you get a

rough overview of the embassy. It's not
the whole building, it's just the flat on

the ground floor here on the left side,
going all the way down that little street

on the left where actually Harrods, the
shopping mall, Harrods has their delivery

acceptance situation. So this is like from
the side view. On the right side, you see

the emergency exit of the embassy. Again,
side view and on the right, you see the

courtyard. This is the entrance situation,
in the building there is more embassies.

The Colombian embassy is right on the
right side, for example. There is one more

which I don't recall which it is, however
you see here the entrance door of the

embassy and here the entrance situation
from a different camera perspective. Here

you would have an overview of the
installed cameras before the upgrades in

December 2017. So most important is maybe
this "Sala de reunion" on the upper left

side, not on the left corner, but once to
the right, that's the meeting room. And

here you see that there was only until
then one camera. This is where most of the

meetings with visitors, with lawyers and
so on took place. However, all the green

areas do not only indicate you where video
surveillance took place, but all the

interior ones are exactly the areas Julian
was officially allowed to like use,

including the kitchen on the right side on
the very right bottom "Habitacio n

Huesped" that's his kind of small sleeping
room where he had his bed and things. And

you would see the entrance situation
there. Outside they also had some cameras,

which they had one 8 megapixel 360 degree
monster, which actually made me think I

want that as well. This is the more
harmless cameras on the sideways. But you

see here the idea of that camera. That's
pretty good. It even catched some events

which I will indicate you later. So you get
the idea. Harrods is right next. And also

right left is this entrance delivery
situation. "Operation Hotel" was the code

name of the official security situation.
So they had their own terminology:

"Director" was the ambassador, "Guest" was
Julian Assange, "Hotel" was the embassy.

They, of course, had specific processes in
place, how regular, how visitors would be

accepted. They sometimes in most of the
times needed to be signed off by the

ambassador. So the ambassador had to allow
someone getting into the building in the

first place and how that would be treated,
how their passports would be checked,

their electronics would be taken and so
on. There was an official representative

of the Ecuadorian intelligence titled the
second secretary of the ambassador called

Gabriela PAIZ. She was working in the
embassy and officially in charge of taking

care of the company's contract and their
work. However, she got bribed, according

to statements that are subject to this
ongoing lawsuit, with 20,000 USD in cash

per month. She had to travel with her
husband to some funny places to collect

the money to not violate European
regulations with carrying cash and not

declaring it and so on. So this gives you
roughly an idea and for that money she

like not only accepted the modifications
and made it look like that modification of

the protocol were on behalf of Ecuador and
not on behalf of the Americans, she also

spied sometimes herself, as we have seen
her with a handbag, with a microphone and

all that kind of funny behaviors. The
original Standard Operational Procedures

in place, as I said, was defined helping
against intrusions. Visitors would arrive

at the door, show their passport, then
would be searched with a metal detector

and they would have to leave their
passport and all electronic devices at the

security counter under the lobby. They
would sign in into some kind of a diary

with name, passport number, date, time of
arrival, later sign out with time of their

departure. The guards would bring the
visitors afterwards in the conference

room, close the door and then copy the
passport while the visitors wait. And also

there would be daily, monthly and special
incident reports written by the security

company delivered to the SENAIN, to the
Ecuadorian intelligence. So, from the

visitors, what they would have is like who
invited them, for what, what date, what

time frame, the copy of their passport.
Later then, that one had modifications,

that was that all of their pages with
entry stamps and visas would be

photocopied as well. The exact time when
they really came, the description by the

security guards how they appeared: maybe
if they came alone or with someone or it

was anything. Video footage of the entry
situation, the meeting and the departure

situation. And as I said, extra incidents.
So we would have a lot of material of

passport copies. And this is an example of
the entrance situation from November 16.

This is one of the lawyers arriving. And
you would see, he just rang the door, he

came in, showed his passport, got briefly
checked. And funnily, in the upper left

corner, you see one of the guards doing
some upgrades on the cameras. Same time,

but that's just how it was, there was
ongoing upgrades. So I don't have to show

you the whole video, but here you get the
idea. He's being searched, his phone he

needs to give them. The guard also briefly
checks his bag if there's maybe a

recording device. So this was also to
prevent that visitors would bring any box

or recording devices into the meeting. So
it was meant to to do also like protect

Julian on behalf of them. This is like a
meeting documentation. This is myself,

actually, but this is a little boring and
also I'm not a fan of insinuating myself,

so I brought you the other one, which is
the only positive slide I have.

laughter
That's "missing in action" (M.I.A.), she's

a rapper from - lives in the UK - Is
originally from Sri Lanka, but here you

have a cat, so that's of course more
lovely than meeting boring data

journalists, hackers, whatever. The third
party modifications for the access to the

whole thing started mainly in begin 2017,
after also he switched to encrypted

communications. Actually, the switching to
encrypted communication might, by the way,

also have to do with a regime change, so
to say, in the United States. As the Trump

administration was taking in power and
they were scared that different

departments would interfere with each
other. So it became a little complicated

in their own thread modeling / paranoia,
however you want to call it. They started

to pick up in the mid of the year the
original hard disks from the network video

recorder every two weeks and bring them
first to their office in Spain. Later,

Morales would then fly once a month,
roughly, to the United States. We have his

flight patterns and all the emails and so
on. And he would, yeah, deliver them, as

he explained to the staff, to his American
friends and sending new instructions. Then

in December, they made this new cameras
installation thing with sound and they

also started to optimize things. For
example, there was issues with the audio

filters and the cameras, as Julian had
used this white noise generator, which

will later be a little bit explained, they
needed filter configurations. Also, the

Americans demanded to have direct access
on the streams coming into the office in

Spain. So they installed it already in the
embassy in a way that there would be two

different access layers, one not visible
to the Ecuadorians and one only for the

Americans. We have... this is the one
email I have there, I don't even speak

Spanish, but where he clearly speaks about
the access to the video stream, one for

the Ecuadorians, one for themself and one
for "party X". So the party X is how he

called in the references the American
intelligence he worked for as well. And

then they started to do other things that
they, for example, installed a door phone

at the door, so you couldn't just ring the
bell and the guy would open the door, you

had to actually speak your name. So, and
also the guard, which was... there was a

little guard desk in the lobby area of the
building, there would sit a guy. So he would

hear your name. They would have your voice
sample in the electronic transmission

between this little door phone and the
counter more or less right behind the

door. That was something they did. Then
the guards would start to just open the

door to take your passport. Take it in.
Close the door again. You would wait

outside and then, in that time, he copied
your whole passport with all pages and

waited for further instructions, then
leave you in. They would... the guards

would start to photograph or note all
IMEIs and IMSIs of mobile devices that

they took during your visit. And they
would also sometimes take whole bags of

visitors and search them and photograph
all items. So I have like three examples

of this: This is the most harmless maybe.
National security correspondent of The

Washington Post, Ellen Nakashima's little
collection of devices. It's my own

collection with some crypto phones and a
camera. And this is Italian journalist

Stefania Maurizi who, for what reasons,
wherever she travels with all her USB

stick collections and ...
laughter

I redacted this a little bit, but you can
clearly see they took the SIM cards out to

photograph the IMSIs of the cards and so
on. So they wanted all that. Here you get

an idea of the meeting documentations from
December 17th on with the new cameras,

which had also audio. You get the idea
that the quality has drastically improved.

And here I would say if you would zoom in,
you could even read the notes of what they

were writing. But well, we'll know that
later. However, that was not enough for

them. They had issues, as I said, with the
white noise generator he installed for

critical meetings. And they wanted
improved audio quality, as when you didn't

speak loud enough, these cameras being
mounted under the ceiling were not good

enough. So they made this survey to
identify all kinds of options for

additional hidden microphones and also
off-the-network equipment. So here you see

actually where they ended up later. This
fire extinguisher played then the main

role. He has this PVC button thingy. They
put some of the plastics out and installed

a bug in there. That was working
beautifully as it was also like from the

room level next to the heads of the people
speaking in that part of the room. The

only issue they had is that it was a
battery driven model and they had to

replace the battery and SD card, which
they did then every twelve hours, 26

minutes actually. That was the capacity of
that thing. But you get the idea. They

looked into all of the things here on the
left side, by the way, you see the noise

generator, but they looked at all the art
objects or the kitsch stuff to see what

could be suitable before they identified
it. If I distinguish, it's just the best

thing to do here. Here you would see that
Julian also installed a loudspeaker next

to the window. So there was not only one
loudspeaker above the table for the white

noise generator, but also directly at the
window. Here you see very briefly on the

top the loudspeaker over the table, but
they're also opened during the survey, like

all the electrical wiring things, the
light switches and so on, to see if there

would be any suitable places. And they
also did that in the bathroom number two.

Bathroom number two was originally the
woman's bathroom, which also had a shower.

It was then later, more or less Julian's
personal bathroom, where he also made the

most critical meetings with his lawyers
and and associates while running the

shower, as you would see it in every
better spy movie. However, what they did

was, behind the rubbish that you would see
here, these boxes above the cabinet and

slightly behind that cabinet, they had an
electrical wiring for the light. So they

installed a bug there and that didn't
require any battery change or whatever

that brought ongoing good audio quality.
They also went through the kitchen objects

and at this point they must have been
infected by the WikiLeaks house humor,

however they would bark at that kind of
thing. The other aspect that Morales

discussed with the staff working in the
embassy once when he came back from his

travels was that he asked them if they
could think about a way where they would

accidentally leave one of the doors open
so that the Americans could come in and

kidnap him. He also discussed if they
could put into some poison into the food

or how that... what options there would be
to poison Julian. However, the sting with

the leaving the door accidentally opened,
next to the fact that that, of course,

would be completely legal, like in an
embassy of another country to kidnap

someone from, but well, this is the
Central Intelligence Agency or someone of

the United States, what do they care about
laws? So what they did was provide

documentation of all the doors, all the
locks. They went through the whole thing

to think about how such a kidnaping take
place. They even made a little video

showing, like, the way they could move
from this emergency exit or from a window

and get in. So I have this little video
and you get here the idea of the way it

could work. And yes, the reflections allow
us to identify the person who did it. So

this is actually just one of three videos
we have about this. They also did this for

the rooms in the back and so on, as they
also considered maybe going through in one

of the windows, which would be more easy
for them to leave open a door. So this is

still part of that plan. I can name all
the doors, windows, identify some kind of

rain tube or whatever, which they could
use to maybe come from above. Label all

the windows, to get an idea. So what they
did in 2017 was then these two bugs, the

hidden microphones and recording devices
in the fire extinguisher and in this...

behind, above this storage cabinet and the
bathroom. And they did installation of

high resolution cameras plus the
microphones. They, however, also discussed

that they wanted one more room. That's the
front room where Julian had... it's the

former library, where he had a bit of a
room not for visitors, but to work with

himself and with his staff. That room was
a little bit hard for them to target. They

would have to be going through the
ambassador's room, which was corresponding

to it. So they looked into stetographic -
excuse me - steto-whatever, steto-

microphones to watch through the, no, to
listen through the wall. In order to do

that, the Americans also asked them to
take like a spoon or a knife and bring

them some scratch some parts of the wall
so that they could identify the material

from which the wall was made in order to
identify which drilling machine they would

have to use. They have extremely slow
drilling machines, which you put in a

suitcase next to a wall. And it takes
eight hours for three centimeters, but it

makes no noise. Okay. And that's the way
they would have used this kind of things.

Here again, it's just the places that
hidden microphones. And here is some, as

they documented their work, here is some
video documentation or photographic

documentation of the installation of the
upgrades of the camera with audio. So this

is the upgraded diagram of the camera
installation. You would see all the

interior cameras are four megapixels now.
And the conference room has two. So in

both corresponding sides to cover really
the whole room. So I don't switch back and

forth now between the other slides, but
you would have seen that there would still

have been small areas of the room which
were not covered. This was like full room

coverage of wherever he would be allowed
to go to. So this noise generator however

that Julian installed, made them quite
some headache, it worked pretty well.

However, other people pointed out to me
also, and it is true, if you sit in a room

with this white noise generator, you get
headache. It's not nice. I mean, yes, it

works and it prevents them bugging it, but
it's also pretty tough to do that for one,

two hours. However, the American friends
had issues with it and they already had

started to bug the embassy from the
outside with laser reflecting microphones,

meaning the vibrations on the glass or the
windows would be used. But as his white

noise generator had a loudspeaker directed
to the window, they needed to deal with

that. And they instructed to install
special stickers which will be - there

will be actually in the next days a police
situation, the Ecuadorians have allowed to

take one of these stickers. They have a
kind of foam on the one side and a

reflecting blank side that allowed them to
do it anyhow. So you would have this thing

here and here. Unfortunately, I do not
have, at this point, a very good picture

of this sticker itself. But you would see
here their documentation that they

installed in every window, not only that
of the conference room, one of these

stickers that allowed them to deal with a
laser on site. And actually their

outside camera, the 8 megapixel monster I
mentioned earlier, catched once the

Americans on the other side of the street
when their curtain was a little bit to the

side here with their laser machine. So you
get the idea, that is not a camera. There

is, of course, other things that happened
as well. This slide is more actually for

your entertainment after a rather
depressive technical text. They also did

sometimes normal things. It was not only
spying on behalf of the Americans. But

most important and most impressive is
actually what happened on end of 2017. End

of 2017 the government of Ecuador - the
new government - had already been elected,

but the new government was not in office.
So as one of the last steps of the old

government to solve his situation, they
gave him, they gave Julian Ecuadorian

citizenship. They made him a diplomat. And
they had pre-agreed with some countries,

which he could choose from, to actually
appoint him as a diplomat to one of their

other embassies where he would not have
that hostile environment surrounding it.

On the 21st of December he met in the
embassy the head of the Ecuadorian

intelligence Romy Vallejo. I have one
picture from that meeting. The meeting, of

course, was completely intercepted. The
Americans were on high alert and actually,

after he used a white noise generator and
located himself with a guy slightly away

from the fire extinguisher, by knowing or
not knowing about it, the guards even were

asked to like stand in front of the door
and listen through the door and stuff. The

same night, actually, so this was, as you
could see at the time, it's like 3, 4

o'clock at night, it went on for some
time. The next day, they issued the

international arrest warrant against
Julian. They inform the British and the

British informed the Ecuadorians that they
would not accept the appointing of Julian

as a diplomat. And so the whole plan was
dismissed and massive police came, like

standing in front of, like, on this little
side street right from it. So this is

where the term actionable intelligence has
like a direct meaning that you can

actually talk to your coffee cup and next
moment shit happes, so to illustrate that.

At the end, I brought you some resource
links. This is, as I said, ongoing cases.

There will be more material and it will
probably make us a little bit of a case

study out of it published at bug planet.
If you are interested or willing to

support his legal and other situations at
Wau Holland Foundation, which I am a board

member, and that's also what brought me to
all these meetings, we do collect money

for Julian's defense and also for ongoing
aspects of WikiLeaks publications. Okay.

That's for me, from my side, for now. We
have a bit of time left for questions and

answers. If I just knew how much, like 20
minutes or so?

Herald: We have about 20 minutes. We will
be taking questions and we have three

microphones in the room. So please line up
behind them and we take questions from the

Internet as well. The signal angel is
(...).

Andy: The sticker. Oh, yes, sorry, I
forgot to mention that the stickers on the

windows were saying, like, this building
is under CCTV, under camera surveillance.

And Morales had told his people that, oh,
the British law has changed and they would

require to have the stickers now, which
is, of course, completely ridiculous. Also

watching the cover frame of their outside
cameras, like there would have to actually

go all over the place there and tell them,
oh, by the way, your're under

surveillance. So, yeah, that was indeed
remarkable. Awesome.

Herald: Thank you. Let's give a round of
applause.

applause

Herald: Thank you again for the very

insightful talk. We are taking questions,
so stand behind the microphones. Please go

ahead. We have questions from the
internet.

Andy: At this case I would not only be
open to questions, but also to ideas, how

to get him out of Belmarsh Prison, but
just to have it said.

Herald: OK, you can have that, you know.
We're gonna take a question from the

Internet.
Signal Angel: Yeah, just one brief

question from the Internet: What is that
laser with sticker technology. And

furthermore, what's its purpose? So why
are they needed?

Andy: Okay. Maybe I wasn't making it clear
enough. The stickers would have a

reflecting surface to the outside, but the
way they're glued to the window would

somehow detach them from the inside noise.
I don't know how it works at this point in

that detail. We will have one of these
stickers in the next weeks and we'll be

able to study it. But it somehow seemed to
help the Americans with their laser

technology to take the audio from the
vibration of the voice generated or

transported through the glass out the
window.

Herald: Thank you. It appears we have no
more questions or everyone's too scared to

ask one. We are distributing face masks if
that's the case.

Andy: Maybe I want to...
Herald: There is there someone. Hi. You're

brave. Go ahead.
Q: Can you hear me? Hello?

A: Yes
Q: OK. Without revealing your source, how

did you even get all this information? So
the video surveillance cameras and all

these details?
A: Well, subject to lawyers advice, my

answer is that I'm an investigative
journalist and I don't talk about my

methods and sources, but I leave it up to
your fantasy as I said this material is

subject to an ongoing lawsuit. So it is
also in the hands of the Spanish

prosecutor. And maybe just very little
comment because I discuss this also with

Julian and others. I would have to say it.
Let's say before I went all too deep into

this and actually looked at this material
for hours and hours and days, I would, of

course, also have called Julian and myself
paranoid people. But after I did this, I

would call it, well, we had a good
situational awareness, because that's the

more precise terminology where we are
into.

applause
Herald: Next question, same microphone.

Q: In the beginning, you said there are
multiple embassies inside the building. My

question is: The hallway, is it actually
part of Great Britain or is it some

neutral area?
A: Well, no, it's part of Great Britain.

So the hallway was just shared among the
building tenants, but all of the

apartments so to say in that building are
private property. So it was like a shared

thing of the building. There's maybe a
better English term, which I don't know.

But the diplomatic police, which is the
maybe better educated part of the British

hit and run job police guys would not be
allowed normally to step in the embassy.

But in the hallway, they sometimes were in
the hallway right in front of the door. So

they would also listen to the dialog when
you were talking to the guard about coming

in or whatever. And of course, there was
in the first months of his stay or even

years, there was this ongoing police
situation. It was actually the police had

sometimes, in winter, they must have got a
bit cold and installed a van there, saying

"police conference", which was probably
suitable for 12 people, had fancy antennas

and cameras all over it. So they had this
ongoing police conference right in front

of the building.
laughter

Herald: Thank you. We're going to take a
question from the Internet next.

Signal Angel: All right. Have you been
approached by the CIA or the MI5 or met

the police and been asked to cease and
desist from talking about their operation

against Julian Assange and the embassy
itself?

A: Not in a direct way that they talk to
me, but I've been subject to what I would

call "intimidation surveillance". So there
is covert surveillance, that's when they

are hiding their stuff and you see maybe a
camera at a border point or whatever.

Intimidation starts for me when I'm, for
example, coming in the early morning hours

to airport London-Heathrow, come to the
immigration counter, the guy takes my

passport, sees something on the screen,
starts to ask me actually the same

question three times, but he doesn't even
listen to my answers. Like, where are you

going? What's your occupation? He's asking
it again and I'm like, am I talking to a

moron or what's going wrong here? But at
some point I identified as it happened

again and again and again that after some
minutes you got this go material, this go

blink on his screen. And so the guys
outside were standing ready to follow me

the whole fucking day. And that's what I
would call intimidation surveillance. It's

not meant to like watch me. It's mainly
meant to let you know that you are not

liked here, that we are have you on our
eyes, that we know you are a friend of

Julian and so on. So, yeah, that was not
the pleasant part of my life.

Herald: Thank you. Microphone one.
Q: Yeah. First. Thank you. Nice talk, very

dystopian. I'm just following up on what
you just said. I mean, chances are high

that you are under surveillance as well.
What are the personal countermeasures

you've taken? Did you check your fire
extinguisher?

A: Yeah, actually, I could and should
probably at some point in the next month

hold a separate talk about that. I found a
physical bug in one of my phones. I have

all kinds of funny incidents. I was able
to actually create traffic jams in one way

streets in European cities at three
o'clock in the night and that's quite an

interesting experience.
laughter applause

A: And at some point, you maybe get used
to it. You think, well, ok, that's how it

is. But of course, it is a bit of a loss
of quality of life. And also, you are

becoming a little bit different in your
behavior towards other people. But as I

said, unfortunately it's situational
awareness, so you can't be careful enough

in such a situation. Basically, if you
look at it from a balance of budget or

balance of measures or options point of
view, they have an endless astronomy

military budget. We have encrypted e-mail,
OTR and may be crypto phones. So basically

my assumption has become that they know
what I'm doing and I'm not doing anything

illegal anyhow. But the whole case against
Julian and after you have studied all this

material, which includes the pictures of
the bathroom, right, there was an audio

bug also in the bathroom area and so on
with these cameras. And I think for me,

it's pretty clear this is not about him
having violated any laws. This has nothing

to do with law enforcement. This is a
political case. This is intimidation. And

it is that they want to set that
precedent, that they want to actually hang

him on the highest tree. And let us all
aware: Don't try to connect the Internet

with the secrets as we don't like that.
But actually, on the positive side,

speaking as I said, he has shown with
WikiLeaks that it is possible the Internet

is quite suitable to deal and to provide
more aspects of information and knowledge

on government secrets actings to all of
us. So, yes, it comes at a price.

Herald: Okay. This is getting more
dystopian by the minute.

Andy: Sorry for that.
Herald: Let's see if we can go even

scarier. Microphone two.
Andy: I'm sure there will be other talks

about good news.
Herald: Oh, no. No, there won't.

Q: Thank you so much for the presentation.
The details like were really important.

Like to see, you know, have a concrete
image of what surveillance looks like in

the embassy. And as you mentioned, all
what happened was in complicity with the

Ecuadorian embassy, even if also you said
that it's not really related to law

enforcement, I'm really curious from legal
perspective, if there is any way and if

there are ongoing cases, if there is any
way they could get away with it. Are there

any things that they can do or defend or
argument just to make this okay? I don't

know, national security reasons, whatever
not considered, you know, is a violation.

A: OK. So what I can say is that the
Spanish lawyers of Julian are currently

with high pressure also working together
with the state prosecutor and examine the

evidence. So the owner of the company was
briefly arrested. He's out on bail. His

company compound was searched. Computers,
USBs, hard disks were seized and so on.

And that's all stuff that's being worked
on right now, because it might be very

important for Julian's main extradition
case, as it clearly demonstrates that the

United States or some entities of the
United States are being located in the

United States, have violated his ability
to prepare legal defense in a fair way.

And that might be a main argument.
However, when - and I've been talking a

lot with this lawyers - like they say
things like in any normal case, this would

be the end. But this is Julian Assange and
the U.K. government on behalf of the

American government, so we'll see what
happens. No one expects a fair trial here.

And I mean, also the fact that he's kept
in solitary confinement for 22 hours a day

in a high security prison that's normally
for terrorists, organized crime and

murderers, while being none of that, shows
clearly that this is like not a normal

case here. This has nothing to do with
normal justice. The United Kingdom ignores

the United Nations finding on torture
about his psychological state, as he has

been, of course, through a totally
different journey. For him, it was not

only knowing about this surveillance, it
was also the unknown of: can I ever expect

a fair trial, will they want to kill me or
will it just be orange based jumps in

Gitmo or whatever? So he, of course, has
issues through that, but the UK ignores

the United Nations, so in theory we should
all be outraged completely and stand in

front of these British embassies for the
moment, to do, to demand that his prison

conditions are being humanized. As totally
independent from the fact, if the court

will find him guilty or if the extradition
bill plays, the fear is that he is kind of

being killed right now as we speak.
Herald: Thank you. Microphone two.

Q: Hi. Do you know if that Spanish company
is still responsible for the security

installation at the Ecuadorian embassy in
London?

A: No. Maybe I missed that slide. They
have been brought out of their... the

contract has been canceled in April of
2018 and this other company, Promsecurity,

took over.
Herald: Thank you. One more question...

A: What I can say is that some of the -
that's maybe an important aspect - as some

of the employees of UC Global, which have
been working in the embassy and had their

eight hour shifts there, have become
protected witnesses of the Spanish justice

to testify against Morales. They were not
happy with what they were doing. They

understood at some point that this was on
behalf of American intelligence, violating

the official contract they had been
working under. So there was some

resistance. There is the option that some
of this resistance also had to do, that

the owner of the company got a lot of
money every month for this, but did not

share that money. That might have played
into it. But some of these guys also were

not happy as they were like sitting in the
same rooms with Julian the whole day and

talked with him, of course, also.
Herald: Thank you. One more question from

the Internet. Hi, Internet people.
Signal Angel: How do you explain the huge

effort besides the intimidation you
mentioned towards you that motivates the

USA to take these dubious and very
ambitious steps. So maybe just to ask you

one more question to you, sir: How many
intelligence officers do you think then

are in this room right now?

laughter

A: Okay. So the first question was, I'm

not sure I fully got it: Why they are
doing this? Well, I mean, I could also

have introduced me the other way. I could
have said, I don't need to introduce

myself. Go to the Mueller Report, see page
47. I was suspected due to my multiple

visits and actually, look, I brought
Julian food, I brought him clothing, I

brought him computers, USB sticks in like
packages, all kinds of things. I will

never be able to prove what I not brought
him due to the amounts of my visits there.

So the Washington Post came at some point
and said that they had multiple

intelligence sources from somewhere that I
was the person who brought Julian the DNC

emails on a USB stick and I said like,
wow, what a bullshit. But as I said, I

will never be able to prove that I wasn't
doing that. My taking off it is as I am in

a small foundation called Wau Holland
Foundation, one of the five board members,

and actually I'm kind of working in that
project area for freedom of information

that I was to contact prison to weekly
send to Julian for many years. So they

maybe just to follow the money and want to
kill it. I mean, would not be a surprise

that they want to kill like WikiLeaks else
as a publication agency or not. Julian

Assange only as a human being. So here you
go. One theory. There's, of course, many

others, but I guess they're pretty
generous. And the budget they have to deal

with is pretty big. So, and of course, I'm
not the only one that's being followed and

so on. The other question was...?
Herald: How many intelligence officers

that we have here in this room?
drumming on panel

laughter

A: Out there on the stream, I see 23
different. In the room, five to eight.

Herald: I think that guy
walks a bit sketchy.

laughter

Herald: He's wearing a headset.
He's been quiet the entire time.

applause

A: What can I say? I mean, openness

protects from from being blackmailed.
Maybe that was Wau's idea about it. But of

course, not all aspects of WikiLeaks can
be subject to full disclosure as there's

sources to protect, there's people who
have lives to protect, who help with all

kinds of things. There's journalists who
sometimes bring more things from funny

sources, so there's all kinds of things
that as a media project you would want to

protect normally. Under the circumstances,
however, it's a bit tough.

Herald: OK. Thank you. There is a person
next to microphone one and I don't

understand if you actually have a
question, are you there to (...)

A: An answer maybe?
Herald: You have a question?

Q: Yes
Herald: Are you CIA?

Q: I hope not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
laughter

Herald: OK, we're not interested.
Microphone two

laughter

A: It's a little too brutal, maybe?

Q: OK. Thank you. Are there actually any
diplomatic consequences out of this case?

Because like the CIA, with the help of the
British government, kind of violated the

embassy of Ecuador, so, like, installing
cameras is not exactly ok for my

understanding and for embassies?

A: Well, I would think that in any normal

European country, there would also be
investigation, like, official

investigation, maybe even by other
embassies in the building and so on after

learning these things. The U.K. seems to
have just decided not only to get out of

European Union, but also to become more of
a colony of the United States, if they

have not been that all the time. So I
don't have the impression also with the

fact that the current Ecuadorian
government is very pro US, they have

allowed military installations from the
United States in Ecuador. They have made

this agreement to help them in the investigation.
So not that I'm aware of. However, this

Spanish investigation is probably the
strongest thing going on. There have been

contradicting statements about involvement
of Secret Service people, CIA people,

might be a mixture of both of them. But
this is ongoing. And if you ... these

links here is my own little wiki called
osint.info where I'm collecting the

regular updates coming in from the
investigation through the Spanish news and

so on. So you will learn more about the
case in the next weeks. It's all ongoing.

Herald: Thank you. OK, the guy who's
supposedly not CIA, go!

Q: So I want to make clear that I never
received any direct payments from the CIA.

laughter
Q: My question is...

A: No, but that's... that's, by the way,
the nature of them. So I would be very

surprised...
more laughter

applause
A: I would be very surprised that we find

evidence, because one of the core working
principle of the intelligence is of course

deniability. So if you have a situation
like this where you see funny money is

coming in and finding instructions come
in, but you cannot prove who it was,

that's exactly the confirmation and, so to
say, the "proof", because you can't prove

it. That deniability is core of their like
way of acting. And I mean, whom, by the

way, am I telling this. It's not only
them. OK.

Herald: I always thought you kind of
create an invoice for covert spy

activity...
A: Yes, they did at some point, but the

guy was greedy. He traveled then, what we
know is he traveled to Gibraltar and there

might be hidden bank accounts there. And
also the way the cash was transferred

changed from time to time. So, there
was... not all of it seems to have been

going directly through Sheldon Adelson,
but Sheldon Adelson is - actually I missed

him to put him out on a link - he's a
person also worth checking out, is a very

weird international intelligence
operative, I would call him . And he can

sue me for that, but he's 92 years old, so
he's a cover anyhow just for other people

active. He runs casinos in Las Vegas, in
Macao and other places. He has been

running spy operations on Chinese
officials in Macao, he has been accused,

look Wikipedia, on money laundering from
forged USD notes printed in Iran, was not

Korean paper or the other way around being
brought in by Israeli citizen in a funny

operation. So he's a truly interesting
person in this context also.

Herald: So I thought you just send it to
[e-mail] and then get it. OK.

A: Try it
laughter

Herald: Yeah.
A: Try it, and put the...

laughter

A: No, actually, I would also have a lot

of funny fantasy about this, if this
wouldn't be about a friend of mine who's

in serious shit. So, if you could please
also apply your fantasy of how we could

get out him there, not only into the
question of how we deal with the CIA, I

would be very thankful to you guys.
Herald: Thank you. Definitely not try any

of that at home. Question from the
Internet, please.

laughter

Signal Angel: The Internet asks, what will

happen to WikiLeaks as an organization in
case Assange gets a life sentence? And,

since I'm not sure this is the last
question from the Internet, the Internet

wants to say that it really appreciates
your willingness to do the talk again. So,

thank you for your courage.
applause

A: I'm not speaking for WikiLeaks, but I
am in contact with Kristinn Hrafnsson - he

has this Icelandic name that's hard to
pronounce - who is the current editor in

chief and I mean, WikiLeaks is publishing
things ongoing. The last publication was

actually two days ago on the 27th or
something, so they, of course, decided to

continue the work. Also, because they
think that's the only thing they can do to

demonstrate also that, like, this is a
publishing organization and they have been

working with media partners and so on. So
in Iceland, where Kristinn is officially

located, the surrounding environments,
anyhow, are a lot more supportive, as the

other day, some years ago, when this
Kaupthing Bank issue and they had a local

bank corruption issue and that was a
national scandal. It's a small country of

300,000 people, that's a totally different
environment and Kristinn is pretty

confident that they leave him in peace
there and appreciate the work. So that's

not the UK, but for the UK itself, well, I
cannot speak and I can also not speak for

WikiLeaks. If anyone on the Internet has
good ideas on what to do, as I said, this

is maybe the phase where we really need to
crowdsource our ideas on how to get Julian

out of this shit. Thank you.
Herald: Thank you

applause

Herald: Do we take a question from the guy
who was definitely not CIA? OK go.

Q: So we have suspected for a long time

that there was a secret request for
extradition for Julian and that he was

under surveillance, but there was no proof
until now. So the general public and most

journalists dismissed this as conspiracy
theories. Now that it's out, everyone

agrees, ok, that this was obvious, so...
A: This was a situational awareness, yes.

Q: Yeah. So how can we help the next
Julian, which we are not sure yet that

he's definitely under surveillance, to
raise awareness of such a situation?

A: Well, I mean, in theory, as far as I
know, the publishing activities of

WikiLeaks are not illegal, have not been
illegal, at least, yes, there is ongoing

investigations, but these ongoing
investigations are around the question of

how sources were convinced to be a source.
So there's this allegation that, for

example, Chelsea Manning was instructed to
do something in order to submit the stuff,

in order to publish it later. The
publishing itself might have not been

illegal. Chelsea Manning herself is, as
you might know, also in prison again for

not testifying against Julian about
exactly this question. So it's not only

the publishing stuff that's being
threatened here. Yes, also, but also the

treatment of sources and the whole wording
surrounding the process of acquiring a

source. It's hard for me to like right now
come up with like the concept of how this

can continue. But obviously, we are here
at a situation where transparency in

governmental affairs has successfully been
demonstrated to be achievable over the

Internet with the right access to
information and data and also being

challenged by those in power. And so we
better challenge those in power and ensure

that democracy, based on our ability and
our right to know what is happening in our

name is preserved. How are we going to do
that with a country like the formerly

country known as the United States, now
Trumpistan or whatever huff. I mean,

even for the United Kingdom huff. But ok,
here we are in old Europe or in Germany

with all its weird history. There's other
countries surrounding us that at least

have a constitution based on some human
rights. The United Kingdom doesn't even

have a constitution based on that. So at
least for Germany, France, maybe Italy,

Spain and so on, and these countries, I
still see that we can do something. So

this is also a bit of a situation between
European and American understanding of

governance at all. And we just can't let
this happen. I mean, this is not about

Julian. This is about our ability to deal
with governments or if you want to hear it

the other way around with the governments
abilities to deal with us.

Herald: Thank you.

applause

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