*RC3 preroll music* [Filler please remove in amara]
Herald: Welcome back on the channel, of Chaos zone TV. Now we have an English
speaking contribution. And for that, I welcome pandemonium, who is a historian
and documentary film maker, and therefore we will also not have a normal talk, but
we will see the documentary information. What are they looking at? A documentary on
privacy. And afterwards, we can all talk about the film, so feel free to post your
questions and we can discuss them. Let's enjoy the film.
*film started* [Filler please remove in amara]
---Because the great promise of the internet is freedom. Freedom of
expression, freedom of organization, freedom of assembly. These are really seen
as underpinning rights of what we see as democratic values.
---Just because you have safety does not mean that you cannot have freedom. Just
because you have freedom does not mean you cannot have safety.
---Why is the reaction to doubt it rather than to assume that it's true and act
accordingly? ---We need to be able to break those laws
that are unjust. ---Privacy is an essence, becoming a de
facto crime. That is somehow you are hiding something.
---So just to be sure let's have no privacy.
"Information, what are they looking at? A film by Theresia Reinhold.
"The Internet is [...] everywhere, but we only see it in the glimpses. The internet
is like the wholy ghost: it makes itself knowable to us by taking possession of the
pixels on our screens to manifest sites and apps and email, but its essence is
always elsewhere. ---Before the Internet came about,
communication was generally one editor to many, many readers. But now it's peer to
peer. So, you know, at a touch of a button people have an opportunity to reach
millions of people. That's revolutionizing the way we communicate.
---One of the things that Facebook and to a lesser degree Twitter allowed people to
do is be able to see that they weren't alone. And it was able to create a
critical mass. And I think that's a very important role that social media took on.
It was able to show people a very easy way in people's Facebook feeds: "Oh, wow. Look
at Tahrir Square, there's people out there in Bahrain, in Pearl Square." What people
could feel before walking out their door into real life action, that they could see
that they are not isolated in their desire for some sort of change.
---The great promise of the internet is freedom where the minds without fear and
the head is held high. And the knowledge is free. Because the promise was: This
will be the great equalizer. ---Before the social web, before the Web
2.0, anything you were doing was kind of anonymous. By the very concept of
anonymity you were able to discuss things that would probably be not according to
dominance themes or the dominant trends of values of your own society.
---I don't find this discussion about how to deal with the assertion "I have nothing
to hide" boring, even after many years. Because this sentence is very short, but
very perfidious. The speaker, who hurls the sentence "I have nothing to hide" at
me, not only says something about themselves, but also something about me.
Because this sentence "I have nothing to hide" also has the unspoken component of
"You don't either, do you?" In this respect, I think this sentence lacks
solidarity, because at the same time one does not want to work to ensure that the
other, who perhaps has something to hide, is able to do so.
---One of the things about privacy is that it's not always about you. It's about the
people in our networks. And so, for example, I have a lot of friends who are
from Syria. People that I have met in other places in the world, not necessary
refugees. People who lived abroad for a while, but those people are at risk all
the time. Both in their home country and often in their host countries as well. And
so, I might say that I have nothing to hide. I might say that there's no reason
that I need to keep myself safe. But if you've got any more like that in a
network, any activists, any people from countries like that, it's thinking about
privacy and thinking about security means thinking about keeping those people safe,
too. Privacy is important, because if think of
the alternative, if everything is public, if the norm is public, then anything that
you want to keep to yourself has an association or guild attached. And that
should not be the world that we create. That's a chilling effect. It's a chilling
effect on our freedoms. It's a chilling effect on democracy.
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with this privacy, family,
home or correspondence, for the attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone
has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
---To me, human rights are something which has been put to place to guarantee the
freedoms of every single person in the world. They're supposed to be universal,
indivisible. Having in the eyes of this systems.
---They're collecting data and metadata about hundreds of thousands, millions of
people. And some of that data will never be looked at. That's a fact. We know that.
But at the same time, assuming that just because you're not involved in activism or
you're not well known that you're not going to be a target at some point, I
think, that is what can be really harmful to us. Right now you may not be under any
threat at all, but your friends might be, your family might be or you might be in
the future. And so that's why we need to think about it this way, not because we're
going to be snatched out of our homes in the middle of the night now. But because
this data and this metadata lasts for a long time.
---My observation is what we are experiencing right now is that the private
space that should be and remain private in the digital world is slowly beginning to
erode. It is becoming permeable, and not just factual. Factually, of course, but
not only factually, but also in perception. I imagine the digital world as
a panoptical. This is the ring-shaped building designed by Jeremy Benthem. In
the ring the prisoners are accommodated in the individual cell, and in the middle
there is a watchtower. And there is a guard sitting there. And this guard, who
can observe and supervise the prisoners in the cells around him all the time. The
trick is that the prisoners cannot know if they are being watched. They only see the
tower, but they don't see the warden. But they know very well that they could be
watched permanently at any time. And this fact exerts a changing decisive effect.
---I think surveillance is a technology of governmentality. It's a bio political
technology. It's there to control and manage populations. It's really propelled
by state power and the power of entities that are glued in that cohere around the
state, right? So it is there as a form of population management and control. So you
have to convince people that it's in their interest and its like: Every man for
himself and everyone is out to get everyone.
*relaying music is plays* [Filler please remove in amara]
---I take my cue from a former general counsel of the NSA, Suart Baker, who said
on this question: Meta-Data absolutely tells you everything about somebodies
life. If you have enough Meta-Data you don't really need content. It is sort of
embarrassing, how predictable we are as human beings.
---So let's say that you make a phone one night, you call up a suicide hotline, for
example, you're feeling down, you call that hotline and then a few hours later
maybe you call a friend. A few hours later you call a doctor, you send an email and
so on so forth. Now, the contents of that of those calls and those e-mails are not
necessarily collected. What's being collected is the time of the call and the
place that you called. And so sometimes in events like that, those different pieces
of metadata can be linked together to profile someone.
---David's description of what you can do with metadata, and quoting a mutual friend
Stewart Baker, is absolutely correct. We kill people based on Meta-Data. But that
is not what we do with this Meta-Data. Mayor Denett: Thankfully. Wow, I was
working up a sweat there *Mayor laughs* for a second.
---You know, the impetus for governments for conducting this kind of surveillance
is often at least in rhetoric go to after terrorists. And obviously, we don't want
terrorism. And so that justification resonates with most of the public. But I
think that there's a couple problems with it. The first is that they haven't
demonstrated to us that surveillance actually works in stopping terrorist
attacks. We haven't seen it work yet. It didn't work in Paris. It didn't work in
Boston. t didn't work elsewhere. So that's one part of it. But then I think the other
part of it is that we spend billions of dollars on surveillance and on war, but
spend very little money on addressing the root causes of terrorism.
---I consider this debate security versus freedom to be a bugaboo. Because these
values are not mutually exclusive. I'm not buying into this propaganda anymore. Many
of the measures we have endured in the last ten years have not led to more
security, in terms of state-imposed surveillance. And this is one reason why I
don't want to continue this debate about whether we should sacrifice freedom for
more security. ---I think power is concealed in the whole
discourse around surveillance, and the way its concealed is through this
legitimization that it's in your interest that it keeps you safe. But there have
been many instances where citizens groups have actually fought against that kind of
surveillance. And I think there is also sort of a mystique around *music starts*
the technology of surveillance. There is the whole sort of like this notion that,
ah, because it's a technology and it's designed to do this. It's actually
working. But all of this is a concealment of power relations because who can surveil
who? Is the issue, right? ---But it isn't the majority of the
English population here to get stopped and searched. It's non-white people. It is not
the majority of non-white people who get approached to inform on the community.
It's Muslim communities. ---The surveillance that one does on the
other. So as airport, it's the other passengers that say, oh, so-and-so is
speaking in Arabic. And therefore, that person becomes the subject, the target
that hyper-surveillance. So it's the kind of surveillances that are being exercised
by each of us on the other. Because of this culture of fear that has been
nourished on a way and that's mushrooming all around us. And these are fears, I
think, go anywhere from the most concrete to the most vague.
---In this way, I think this is another way of creating a semblance of control
where this identity is very easily visible. It's very easily targeted and
it's very easily defined. ---For me, this political discussion is
purely based on fear in which the fear of people, which is justified, are exploited.
And where racist stereotypes are being repeated. I think it extremely dangerous
to give in to this more and more, also because I believe that it reinforces
negative instincts in people. Exclusion, but also racial profiling.
Kurz: It's inherently disentranchising, it's disempowering and it's isolating.
When you feel you're being treated as a different person to the rest of the
population, that's when measures like surveillance, things that are enabled by
technology really hit home. And cause you to sort of change that way you feel as a
subject. Because at the end of the day, you are subjective of a government.
---How is it that these mass surveillance programs have been kept secret for years
when they are supposed to be so meaningful and effective? Why didn't anyone publicly
justify it? Then why was it all secretly justified by secret courts with secret
court rulings? Why, after the Snowden publications began, did the Commission of
intelligent Agents, which specifically appointed Obama com to the conclusion that
not a single --zero --- of this cases of terror or attempted terrorist attacks has
been partially resolved by these giant telecommunications metadata? In trying to
stop something from happening before it happens, they can put in a measure and
that thing might not happen. But they don't know it that measure stopped that
thing from happening, because that thing never happened. It's hard to measure. You
can't measure it. And you can't say with certainty thst because of this measure
that that didn't happen. But after 9/11, after the catastrophic level of attack, it
put decision makers into this impossible position where citizens where scared. They
needed to do something. One part of that is trying to screen everybody objectively
and have that sort of panoptical surveillance. Saying that: "No, no. We can
see everything. Don't worry. We have the haystack. We just need to find the needle.
But then obviously, they need ways to target that. You can see it most clearly
over here. You got leaflets through your door a few years ago, basically saying
that if you've seen anything suspicious, call this hotline. It listed things like
the neighbor who goes away on holiday many times a year or, another neighbor whose
curtains are always drawn. It just changes the way you look at society and you look
at yourself. And it shifts the presumption of Innocence to a presumption of guilt
already. ---When is someone a potential suicide
bomber? This is where the problem begins. When they wear an explosive belt and holds
the tiger in their hands? Or when they order the building blocks for an explosive
belt online? Or when they informed themselves about how to build an explosive
vest? When can the state legally intervene? For me it is about the central
very problematic question whether someone who very problematic question whether
someone who has been identified as a potential danger or a potential terrorist,
without being a terrorist, if someone like that can then be legally surveilled or
even arrested? That means if certain people by potentially posing a concrete
danger ot society can be stripped of, their fundamental human rights?
---We face am unprecedented threat which will last
Two days after the attacks in Brüssel on the 22.03.2016 Jean Claude Juncker and the
french prime minister held a join pres conference. But we also believe that we
need to be a union of security. In it Juncker called to the ministers to accept
a proposal by the commision for the propection of the EU.
---For over 15 years now we have observed a big populist push to adopt even more
surveillance measures. With the attacks of the past years, there was the opportunity
to pass even more. We have this proposal for a new directive whose contents a
purely based on ideology. The Text of the law passed in summary
proceedings was adopteed as an anti- terrorism directive. Green Member of
Parlament Jan Phillipp Albrecht wrote in an Statement to Netzpolitik.org: "What the
Directive defines as Terrorism could be used by governments to criminalize
political action or political protest". ---These type of laws actually are neutral
in principle. In praxis, they are very discrimantory. If you talk to any
politician right now of the EU level or at the national or local level they will tell
you that most likely this people are Muslims.
---Historically and Philosophically this problem is well known to us. We always
tend to put everithing which is unpleasant or eene to us, to the horizon. "This is
strange ti us. It is done by others, not by us." And when one of us does it thent
they have to be distributed. ---And this is Edward Said's point of view
that the western seit comes to define itself in relation to this eastern other.
So everything that the West was, the East was'nt and everything that the East was,
the West wasn't. Ans so the East became this province of emotionality,
irrationality. And the West became the source of reason, everything controlled
and contained and so forth. And it is this dichotomy that continues to play itself
out. ---Terrorism emerged as a term for the
first time in context of the French Revolution. The Jacobins who under
Rebesprierre were the reign of terror, those where the first Terrorists, that's
what they called. The first terrorism was the terrorism of the state and of course
this also included the systematic monitoring of Conterrevoliners.
---Where the proposal of the directive says that it complies with human rights.
It actually does not because they want to increase surveillance measures in order
for the population to feel safer. However, we've seen that more repressive measure do
not necessarily mean that you would have more security.
---The way you sell it to people is to appease their sense of anxieties around
"Oh, this is an insecure world. Anything could happen at any time. And so if
anything could happen at any time, what can we do about it?
---You gut the feeling that the text is trying to make sure that few enforecment
will be able to get access to communications by any means that they
wish. ---To be able to stop something from
happening before it happens, you have to know everything. You have to look at the
past, look at what happened, but also predict the future by looking at the past
and then getting as much information as you can on everything all the time. So
it's about zero risk. Kurz: All developed democraties have a
concept of like proporionality, that's what the call it in Germany. that
surveillance measures are weighed up against the repeat for fundamental rights.
This undoubtly includes privacy. Privacy is very highly viewed in Germany and
directly derived from human dignity. And human dignity is only negotiable to very
tiny degree. ---When we are afraid to speak either
because of our government coming after us because of a partner or a boss or
whomever. All sorts of surveillance causes self censorship. But I think that mass
surveillance. The idea that everything we are doing is being collected can cause a
lot of people to think twice before they open their mouths.
---When all your likes can be traced back to you of course it affects your
behaviour. Of couse it's usually the case that sometimes you think: If you like this
thing or if you don't, it would have some social repressions.
---But if you look throughout history, the Reformation, the gay rights movements all
these movements where illegal in some way. If not by law, stricktly, then by culture.
And if we'd this kind of mass surveillance would we have had this movements?
---If all laws were absolutes, then we would never have progressed to the point
where women had equal rights because women had to break the laws. That said: "You
can't have equal rights". Black people in America had to break the laws that said
they could not have equal rights. And there's common thread here. You know a lot
of our laws historically have had the harshest effect on the most vulnerable in
society. Kurz: The components of whomever has
something to hide has to blame only themselves only emerged in recent years.
In particular, the former CEO of Google Eric Smith is known for that of course, he
certyinly said that. "If you have something that you don't want
anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be dooing it on the first place. " But this
is so hostile to humans that is almost funny. You could think it is satire. A lot
of people can't help that they have something to hide in a society, that is
unjust. *wieder Eric Shmid" "But if you really need that kind of privacy, the
reallity is that search changes including google to retain that information for some
time. " ---Big corporations that have this
business model of people farming are interested in you becaurse you are the row
materials. Right. Your Infromation is row materials. What they do is they process
that to build a profile of you. And that's where the real value is. Because if I know
enough about you, if I as much information about you that I can build a very
lifelike, constantly evolving picture of you, a s simpulation of you. That's very
vulnerable. ---The economy of the net is predicting
human behaviour, so that eyeballls can be delivered to advertising and that's
targeting advertising. ---The system in ways is set up for them
to make money and sell our lettle bits of data, our interests, our demographics for
other people and for advertisers to be able to sell things. These companies know
more about us than we know about ourselves. Right now we're feeding the
beast. And right now, there's very little oversight.
---It has to reach one person, the same ad at particular time, if at 3:00 p.m. you
buy the soda you get your lunch. How about 2:55pm you'll get an ad about a discount
about a pizza place next door or a salad place. Where had exactly the soda comes.
So that's what targeted advertising is. ---It is true, it is convinient. You know,
I always laugh every time I'm on a site. I'm looking at, let's say, a sweater I
want to buy. And then I move over to another site and it advertising for that
same sweater. It pops up and reminds me how much I want it. It's both convinient
and annoying. ---It's a pity that some of the greatest
minds in our century are only wondering how to make you look advertising. And
that's where the surveillance economy beginns, I will say, and not just ends.
---To a lot of people that may seem much less harmful. Bur the fact that they're
capturing this date means that data exists and we don't who they might share it with.
---There is whole new business now, you know, data brokers who drew upon, you
know, thousands of data points and create client profiles to sell to companies. Now,
you don't really know what happens with this kind of things. So it is hard to
tell, what the implications are until it is too late. Until it happens.
---The Stasi compared to Google or Facebook, where amateurs, the Stasi
actually had to use people to surcail you to spy on you. That was expensive. It was
time consuming. They had to pick targets. It was very expensive for them to have all
of these people spying on you. Facebook and Google don't have to do that. They use
Algorithms, that's the mass in mass surveillance. The fact that it is so
cheap, so convenient to spy on so many people. And it's not a conspiracy theory.
You don't need conspiracies when you have the simplicity of business models.
---When we talk about algorithms, we actually talk about logic. When you want,
for example, buy a book on Amazon. You have always seen a few other suggestions.
These suggestions are produced for you based on the history of your preferences,
the history of your searches. ---They learn by making mistakes. And the
thing is, that's fine if it's like selling dog feed. But it's about predictive
pollicing and about creating a matrix where you see which individuals are
threatening, that's not ok for me. You know, that has to be limits. There has to
be lines. And these are all the dynamics that are coming from the bottom up. These
are the discussions that need to be had, but they need to be had with all actors.
It's can't just be a an echo chamber. You don't talk to the some people who agree
with you. ---So one consequence of this would be
many minorities or many people who have minority views would be silenced. And we
always know that when a minority view is silenced, it would empower them in a way
and it would radicalize them in the long run. This is one aspect. The other is that
you would never be challenged by anyone, who disagrees with you.
---We have to understand that our data is not exhaust. Our data is not oil. Data is
people. You maybe not doing anything wrong today, but maybe three governments from
now when they pass a certain law, what you have done today might be illegal, for
example, and governments that keep that data can look back over 10, 20 years and
maybe start prosecuting. ---When everything we buy, everything we
read, even the people we meet and date is determined by this algorithms, I think the
amount of power that they exert on the society and individuals in this society is
more than the state to the some degree. And so there I think representatives
democracy have the duty to push the government to open up these private
entities, to at least expose to some degree how much control they exert.
---If you adopt the technological perspective and realize that technology
will slip into our lives much more than is already the case: Technically into our
bodies, our clothes, into devices that we sit in an we're wearing, in all sorts of
areas of our coexistence and working life, then that's definitely the wrong way to
go. Because it leads to a total surveillance. And if you think about it
for a few minutes, you will realize that the dichotomy is between control &
freedom. And a fully controlled society cannot be free.
*post film music* [Filler please remove in amara]
Herald: Hello and welcome back from the movie and know I welcome also our
producer. And. It was very. Oh, yeah, showing very good. What information can do
and what could be done with information, I give some people a bit more time to ask
more questions. And in the meantime, I could ask, Oh, well, this is moving. Those
of these remote to your home was not shown today for the first time. So what would
you do different or what you think has maybe changed in the meanwhile since you
made it? pandemonium: What I would change is I
would definitely try much harder to secure funding to just simply make a better movie
and have more time and edited faster because the editing process, because I had
to work on the side was quite long. And this film, and the way it stands now, was
essentially only funded by a few very great people who supported me on Patreon
and helped me with some of their private money, essentially so that it was
essentially an almost no budget production. So I would definitely change
that. But documentary seen in Germany being what it is, it's very hard to secure
money if you're not attached to a TV station or if you don't have a name yet.
And since I didn't have a name, but I still want to make the movie, I made the
movie. I am still very happy with the general direction of it. But of course,
since that was mainly shot in 2015 and 2016, some of the newer developments in
terms of especially biometric mass surveillance and police. Especially in the
U.S., the way police uses body cams, etc. is not really reflected. But I still think
that the I would still go with the whole angle on colonialism and racism that is
deeply entrenched in the discussions around surveillance and privacy. And we
can see that in discussions about shutting down Telegram in Germany at the moment
because right wing groups the there we see it in discussions about how to deal with
hate speech online on Facebook or the Metaverse. And it's going to be called
Zoom. And all of these things are already kind of in the movie, but I would have
probably focused a bit more on them if I'd known. Six years ago what would happen and
if I would make it now? But generally, the direction I would choose the same.
Herald: Yeah, it's quite fascinating. So it was nearly no budget was so low, and it
was also an interesting point to entertain now, because in principle, I understood
the ideas that body cams should create actually a means of protecting people
against police and not the other way around as it happens sometimes.
pandemonium: So there are definitely and the problem with especially body cams or
also other of other means of surveillance is that a video is always thought to be an
objective recording of the reality. But of course, it always depends on the angle and
cases of body cams, quite literally the angle, but also data interpretation. And
since humans are always full of biases and always full of presumptions about who
might be in the right and who might be in the wrong, these imagery, images or videos
tend to never, even if they would be showing the objective truth, they're
barely ever interpret it that way. And it's exactly the same with any sort of
film or photography that we're doing. I mean, for this movie, I assembled a ton of
interviews and there were very long there were several hours long in many cases, and
I could added probably 100 different versions of this movie going essentially
almost opposite directions, exactly the same material. It shows very strongly how
important it is, that at the end of the day we overcome our biosies as judges, as
police people, as people walking on the street an trying to overcome any sort of
surveillance on this impossible on the technical level, is always connected with
the way, we understand world. Herald: Yeah, this is, I also remember a
talk several years ago , it was about one of "freiheit statt Angst" Demonstrations
in Berlin. And there was also a case, where the term was established, the guy
with a t-shirt got beaten by police and it was very hard to assemble different videos
and to tell the whole story, what had happened. You should be able to find that,
there was a talk , where this was constructed somehow.
Producer: I will definitely looked that up.
Herald. But I'm not sure about the year anymore but you will find it. Now we have
a real question from the audience. The first is, can I find the movie anywhere
and show it to somebody else? Producer: Yes. It is on YouTube. *laugh*
Herald: Ok. Producer: You can literally find it by
typing my name, which is Theresia Reinhold. And you can find it.
Herald. ok. So, its very good. So, I hope they are happy. Is the 21. Century
attention span for non-technical friend with biggest claim. I don't get the
questions. The Idea is: Is there a way of explaining the non technical people, what
is the problem with "I do not have nothing to hide".
Producer: If there is anything in your life, where you are happy, no one is
watching you doing, whether it is a Century video, that a lot of people don't
know, that you are watching. Or singing in the shower or anything, then that is your
absolute right that you are not. No one is judging you on them, and that's the same
with mass surveillance and surfing online or walking down the street. We have a very
basic comfort zone, should be protected. Know we have a human right to privacy and
whether it's in a technical room or in an analog room, like being in a shopping mall
and picking up, I don't know whatever you don't want other people to know that
you're buying. You should have the right to do that in private and not have it be
known to other people. And when we are surfing the internet, everything we do is
constantly analyzed and watched in real time and you notice our movements online
are sold to the highest bidder and as a whole, massive advertising industry behind
it. And that's just immoral because humans should have always the ability to share
only what they want to share. That's how I try to explain it to non tech people. And
if they're not tech, people from the former east, is just here to move to Stasi
and they know exactly what you're talking about.
Herald: Yes, thanks for this explanation again. And I think also what is important,
what was also mentioned in the movie is the thing with that is and speak, since it
can be stored now that it's so that future can haunt your history. Kind of.
pandemonium. Yeah. Herald: And actually, the question was
now be more precise. And actually, it was not what I asked you *Laughs*. Actually is
the question of whether there is or there could be a short teaser that people could
send to your friends to two of their friends to to watch the whole movie?
*laughs* Reinhold: Oh yes, there is. And that is
also on YouTube and on Vimeo. OK, sorry. Yes. *Laugh*
Herald: Well, I also didn't get it from the question. So OK, so people will find
it very good. So then I guess we are through with the questions, and I thank
you again for your nice movie and for being here. Yeah, and. Then this talk is
over here. Chaos zone a TV comes back to you at four p.m. with the talk "tales from
the quantum industry" until then? Oh yeah. Which some other streams go to the world
or. Have some lunch. See you. [Filler please remove in amara]
*post roll music* [Filler please remove in amara]
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