1 00:00:10,071 --> 00:00:16,020 All right! 2 00:00:16,020 --> 00:00:19,579 Good evening everybody! 3 00:00:19,579 --> 00:00:21,691 This hall is pretty full. 4 00:00:21,691 --> 00:00:24,132 So I guess this is gonna be an interesting talk. 5 00:00:24,132 --> 00:00:26,103 We are on a tight schedule. Our speaker Jake Applebaum 6 00:00:26,103 --> 00:00:30,576 is gonna be joined by Julian Assange via, by a videostream 7 00:00:31,422 --> 00:00:35,543 I really hope that's gonna work. 8 00:00:35,543 --> 00:00:41,406 So without further do, please welcome our speaker and have fun! 9 00:00:47,636 --> 00:00:53,974 So! We have a surprise guest. Some of you might know her. 10 00:00:55,522 --> 00:01:34,480 She saved Edward Snowdens life. Her name is Sarah Harrison. 11 00:01:57,186 --> 00:02:04,570 Thank You! 12 00:02:04,570 --> 00:02:10,020 Good evening my name is Sarah Harrison, as you all appear to know. 13 00:02:10,020 --> 00:02:12,247 I'm a journalist working for WikiLealks. 14 00:02:12,247 --> 00:02:18,098 This Year I was part, as Jacob just said, of the WikiLeaks-team that saved Snowden from a life in prison. 15 00:02:18,098 --> 00:02:24,418 This act and my job has meant that our legal advice is that I do not return to my home, the UK, 16 00:02:24,418 --> 00:02:29,796 due to the ongoing terrorism investigation there in relation to movements of Eward Snowden documents. 17 00:02:29,796 --> 00:02:33,653 The UK Government has chosen to define disclosing classified documents 18 00:02:33,653 --> 00:02:37,382 with an intent to influence government behavior as terrorism. 19 00:02:37,382 --> 00:02:41,708 I’m therefore currently remaining in Germany. 20 00:02:41,708 --> 00:02:44,254 But it’s not just myself personally that has legal issues at WikiLeaks. 21 00:02:44,254 --> 00:02:49,377 For a fourth Christmas arrested, Julian Assange continues to be detained without charge in the UK. 22 00:02:49,377 --> 00:02:52,175 He’s been granted formal political asylum by Ecuador 23 00:02:52,175 --> 00:02:54,178 due to the threat from the United States. 24 00:02:54,178 --> 00:02:56,048 But in breach of international law, 25 00:02:56,048 --> 00:02:59,799 the UK continues to refuse to allow him his legal right to take up this asylum. 26 00:02:59,799 --> 00:03:02,880 In November of this year, 27 00:03:02,880 --> 00:03:07,407 a US Government official confirmed that the enormous grand jury investigation, 28 00:03:07,407 --> 00:03:09,880 which commenced in 2010, into WikiLeaks, 29 00:03:09,880 --> 00:03:15,128 its staff, and specifically Julian Assange, continues. 30 00:03:15,128 --> 00:03:20,046 This was then confirmed by the spokesperson of the prosecutor’s office in Virginia. 31 00:03:20,046 --> 00:03:21,204 The Icelandic Parliament held an inquiry earlier this year, 32 00:03:21,204 --> 00:03:28,285 where it found that the FBI had secretly and unlawfully sent nine agents to Iceland 33 00:03:28,285 --> 00:03:31,129 to conduct an investigation into WikiLeaks there. 34 00:03:31,129 --> 00:03:35,765 Further secret interrogations took place in Denmark and Washington. 35 00:03:35,765 --> 00:03:38,606 The informant they were speaking with has been charged with fraud 36 00:03:38,606 --> 00:03:42,156 and convicted on other charges in Iceland. 37 00:03:42,156 --> 00:03:46,990 In the Icelandic Supreme Court, we won a substantial victory over the extralegal US financial blockade 38 00:03:46,990 --> 00:03:54,055 that was erected against us in 2010 by VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, and other US financial giants. 39 00:03:54,055 --> 00:03:57,900 Subsequently, MasterCard pulled out of the blockade. 40 00:03:57,900 --> 00:04:02,448 We’ve since filed a $77 million legal case against VISA for the damages. 41 00:04:02,448 --> 00:04:06,368 We filed a suit against VISA in Denmark as well. 42 00:04:06,368 --> 00:04:10,572 And in response to questions about how PayPal’s owner can 43 00:04:10,572 --> 00:04:14,320 start a free press outlet whilst blocking another media organisation, 44 00:04:14,320 --> 00:04:17,967 he’s announced that the PayPal blockade of WikiLeaks has ended. 45 00:04:17,967 --> 00:04:28,016 Sorry! That wasn't meant to be pause for a clap. I just needed some water, sorry. 46 00:04:28,016 --> 00:04:30,489 We filed criminal cases in Sweden 47 00:04:30,489 --> 00:04:33,299 and Germany in relation to the unlawful intelligence activity against us there, 48 00:04:33,299 --> 00:04:38,006 including at the CCC in 2009. 49 00:04:38,006 --> 00:04:41,744 Together with the Center for Constitutional Rights we filed a suit against the US military 50 00:04:41,744 --> 00:04:44,922 against the unprecedented secrecy applied to Chelsea Manning’s trial. 51 00:04:44,922 --> 00:04:49,570 Yet through these attacks we’ve continued our publishing work. 52 00:04:49,570 --> 00:04:52,366 In April of this year, we launched the Public Library of US Diplomacy, 53 00:04:52,366 --> 00:04:57,287 the largest and most comprehensible searchable database of US diplomatic cables in the world. 54 00:04:57,287 --> 00:05:02,046 This coincided with our release of 1.7 million US cables 55 00:05:02,046 --> 00:05:05,935 from the Kissinger period. We launched our third Spy Files, 56 00:05:05,935 --> 00:05:09,206 239 documents from 92 global intelligence contractors 57 00:05:09,206 --> 00:05:12,897 exposing their technology, methods, and contracts. 58 00:05:12,897 --> 00:05:15,571 We completed releasing the Global Intelligence Files, over five million emails 59 00:05:15,571 --> 00:05:17,900 from US intelligence firm Stratfor, the revelations from which included 60 00:05:17,900 --> 00:05:24,530 documenting their spying on activists around the globe. 61 00:05:24,530 --> 00:05:30,416 We published the primary negotiating positions for fourteen countries of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, 62 00:05:30,416 --> 00:05:33,965 a new international legal regime that would control 63 00:05:33,965 --> 00:05:37,069 40% of the world’s GDP. 64 00:05:37,069 --> 00:05:40,148 As well as getting Snowden asylum, we set up Mr Snowden’s defence fund, 65 00:05:40,148 --> 00:05:44,045 part of a broader endeavor, the Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund, 66 00:05:44,045 --> 00:05:47,655 which aims to protect and fund sources in trouble. 67 00:05:47,655 --> 00:05:50,239 This will be an important fund for future sources, especially when we look at the US crackdown on whistleblowers 68 00:05:50,239 --> 00:06:01,299 like Snowden and alleged WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning, 69 00:06:01,299 --> 00:06:03,464 who was sentenced this year to 35 years in prison, and another 70 00:06:03,464 --> 00:06:05,321 alleged WikiLeaks source Jeremy Hammond, who was sentenced to ten years in prison 71 00:06:05,321 --> 00:06:08,732 this November. These men, Snowden, Manning, and Hammond, 72 00:06:08,732 --> 00:06:13,326 are prime examples of a politicized youth who have grown up 73 00:06:13,326 --> 00:06:16,710 with a free internet and want to keep it that way. It is this 74 00:06:16,710 --> 00:06:19,218 class of people that we are here to discuss this evening, the powers they 75 00:06:19,218 --> 00:06:24,465 and we all have, and can have, and the good that we can do with it. 76 00:06:24,465 --> 00:06:27,167 I am joined here tonight for this discussion by two men I admire hugely. 77 00:06:27,167 --> 00:06:31,448 Hopefully one of them will appear soon. 78 00:06:31,448 --> 00:06:34,160 WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange and Jacob Appelbaum, both who 79 00:06:34,160 --> 00:06:39,800 have had a long history in defending our right to knowledge, despite political 80 00:06:39,800 --> 00:06:59,732 and legal pressure. There He is... 81 00:06:59,732 --> 00:07:04,165 So Julian, seeing as I haven’t seen you for quite awhile, 82 00:07:04,165 --> 00:07:07,800 what’s been happening in this field this year, what’s 83 00:07:07,800 --> 00:07:11,248 what’s your strategic view about it, this fight for freedom of knowledge, are we winning 84 00:07:11,248 --> 00:07:13,131 or are we losing? 85 00:07:13,131 --> 00:07:15,845 I have an 18-page speech 86 00:07:15,845 --> 00:07:18,494 on the strategic vision, but I think I’ve got about five minutes, right? 87 00:07:18,494 --> 00:07:21,571 At the most. 88 00:07:21,571 --> 00:07:23,257 No, less? 89 00:07:23,257 --> 00:07:26,963 Okay. Well. First off, it’s very 90 00:07:26,963 --> 00:07:30,885 interesting to see the CCC has grown by 30% 91 00:07:30,885 --> 00:07:32,411 over the last year. 92 00:07:32,411 --> 00:07:36,575 And we can see the CCC 93 00:07:36,575 --> 00:07:41,246 as a type a very important type 94 00:07:41,246 --> 00:07:45,656 of institution which does have analogues. 95 00:07:45,656 --> 00:07:49,246 The CCC is a paradox in that it has the vibrancy 96 00:07:49,246 --> 00:07:53,334 of a young movement, but also now has been going nearly 97 00:07:53,334 --> 00:08:03,717 30 years since its founding in 1981 by Wau Holland 98 00:08:03,717 --> 00:08:08,613 Great point, great point. 99 00:08:08,613 --> 00:08:10,963 Blame the NSA? 100 00:08:10,963 --> 00:08:12,876 Blame the NSA? 101 00:08:12,876 --> 00:08:15,404 It’s the new ‘blame Canada’. 102 00:08:15,404 --> 00:08:18,094 Is it here or the embassy they’re spying on the most? 103 00:08:18,094 --> 00:08:36,406 Such a good talk, isn’t it guys? 104 00:08:36,406 --> 00:08:44,631 I wish Bruce Willis (Assange’s Skype name) would pick up the phone. 105 00:08:44,631 --> 00:08:49,773 Should we move over while we’re waiting to you, Jake. 106 00:08:49,773 --> 00:08:53,883 As I saying, I think it’s quite interesting, it does seem to be a trend that there are these young 107 00:08:53,883 --> 00:08:56,085 technical people. We look at Manning, Snowden, Hammond… 108 00:08:56,085 --> 00:09:01,007 often sysadmins. Why are they playing such an important role 109 00:09:01,007 --> 00:09:03,379 in this fight for freedom of information? 110 00:09:03,379 --> 00:09:05,716 Well, So, I think there are 111 00:09:05,716 --> 00:09:08,130 a couple important points. The first important point is to understand that 112 00:09:08,130 --> 00:09:11,312 ll of us have agency, but some of us actually have literally 113 00:09:11,312 --> 00:09:14,811 have more agency than others in the sense that you have access to systems 114 00:09:14,811 --> 00:09:20,375 that give you access to information that helps to found knowledge 115 00:09:20,375 --> 00:09:24,870 that you have in your own head. So someone like Manning 116 00:09:24,870 --> 00:09:27,717 or someone like Snowden who has access to these documents in the course of their work, 117 00:09:27,717 --> 00:09:31,798 they will simply have a better understanding of what is actually happening. They have access 118 00:09:31,798 --> 00:09:34,769 to the primary source documents as part of their job. 119 00:09:34,769 --> 00:09:37,884 This, I think, fundamentally is a really critical, 120 00:09:37,884 --> 00:09:44,327 I would say a formative thing. When you start to read these 121 00:09:44,327 --> 00:09:47,551 original source documents you start to understand the way that organisations 122 00:09:47,551 --> 00:09:47,882 actually think internally. And, this is one of the things that Julian Assange has said quite 123 00:09:47,882 --> 00:09:54,257 quite a lot, it’s that when you read the internal documents of an organisation, 124 00:09:54,257 --> 00:10:01,383 that’s how they really think about a thing. This is different than a press release. 125 00:10:01,383 --> 00:10:03,881 And people who have grown up on the internet, and they’re essentially natives on the internet, and that’s all of us, 126 00:10:03,881 --> 00:10:06,875 I think, for the most part. It’s definitely me. That 127 00:10:06,875 --> 00:10:11,642 essentially forms a way of thinking about organisations where the official 128 00:10:11,642 --> 00:10:15,178 thing that they say is not interesting. You know that there’s an agenda behind that 129 00:10:15,178 --> 00:10:18,051 and you don’t necessarily know what that true agenda is. And so people 130 00:10:18,051 --> 00:10:20,803 who grow up in this and see these documents, they realise the agency 131 00:10:20,803 --> 00:10:27,250 that they have. They understand it, they see that power, and they want to do something about it. 132 00:10:27,250 --> 00:10:31,970 In some cases, some people do it in small starts and fits. 133 00:10:31,970 --> 00:10:34,332 o there are lots of sources for lots of newspapers that are inside 134 00:10:34,332 --> 00:10:38,614 of defense organisations or really, really large companies, and they share 135 00:10:38,614 --> 00:10:43,302 this information. But in the case of Chelsea Manning, 136 00:10:43,302 --> 00:10:44,846 in the case of Snowden, they went big. 137 00:10:44,846 --> 00:10:49,697 And I presume that this is because of the scale of the wrongdoing that they saw, 138 00:10:49,697 --> 00:10:53,481 in addition to the amount of agency that was provided by their access 139 00:10:53,481 --> 00:10:59,546 and by their understanding of the actual information that they were able to have in their possession. 140 00:10:59,546 --> 00:11:03,003 And do you think that it’s something to do 141 00:11:03,003 --> 00:11:06,406 with being technical; they have a potential ability to 142 00:11:06,406 --> 00:11:09,654 find a way to do this safer than other people, perhaps? Or? 143 00:11:09,654 --> 00:11:13,046 I mean, it’s clearly the case that this helps. 144 00:11:13,046 --> 00:11:19,461 There’s no question that understanding how to use those computer systems and 145 00:11:19,461 --> 00:11:23,166 being able to navigate them, that that is going to be a helpful skill. 146 00:11:23,166 --> 00:11:26,375 ut I think what it really is is that these are people who grew up in an era, 147 00:11:26,375 --> 00:11:29,161 and I myself am one of these people, where we grew up in an era where 148 00:11:29,161 --> 00:11:33,404 we are overloaded by information but we still are able to absorb a great deal of it 149 00:11:33,404 --> 00:11:36,926 And we really are constantly going through this. 150 00:11:36,926 --> 00:11:42,258 And if we look to the past, we see that it’s not just technical people, it’s actually people who have an analytical mind. 151 00:11:42,258 --> 00:11:45,850 So, for example, Daniel Ellsberg, who’s famous for the ‘Ellsberg Paradox’. 152 00:11:45,850 --> 00:11:48,210 So, for example, Daniel Ellsberg, who’s famous for the ‘Ellsberg Paradox’. 153 00:11:48,210 --> 00:11:50,336 He was of course a very seriously embedded person in the US military, 154 00:11:50,336 --> 00:11:53,933 he was in the RAND corporation, he worked with McNamara, 155 00:11:53,933 --> 00:11:59,045 and during the Vietnam War he had access to huge amounts of information. 156 00:11:59,045 --> 00:12:01,542 And it was the ability to analyse this information and to understand 157 00:12:01,542 --> 00:12:06,008 in this case how the US Government during the Vietnam War was lying to the entire world. 158 00:12:06,008 --> 00:12:10,711 And it was the magnitude of those lies combined 159 00:12:10,711 --> 00:12:16,687 with the ability to prove that they were lies that I believe, 160 00:12:16,687 --> 00:12:22,875 ombined with his analytical skill… It was clear what the action might be, 161 00:12:22,875 --> 00:12:24,017 but it wasn’t clear what the outcome would be. 162 00:12:24,017 --> 00:12:26,207 And with Ellsberg, the outcome was a very positive one. In fact it’s the most positive 163 00:12:26,207 --> 00:12:30,446 outcome for any whistleblower so far that I know of in the history of the United States 164 00:12:30,446 --> 00:12:32,654 and maybe even in the world. 165 00:12:32,654 --> 00:12:34,298 What we see right now with Snowden 166 00:12:34,298 --> 00:12:37,712 and what we’ve now seen with Chelsea Manning is unfortunately a very different outcome, 167 00:12:37,712 --> 00:12:39,420 at least for Manning. 168 00:12:39,420 --> 00:12:43,006 So this is also a hugely important point 169 00:12:43,006 --> 00:12:48,900 which is that Ellsberg did this in the context of resistance against the Vietnam War. 170 00:12:48,900 --> 00:12:52,008 And when Ellsberg did this, there were huge support networks, 171 00:12:52,008 --> 00:12:56,454 there were gigantic things that split across all political spectrums of society. 172 00:12:56,454 --> 00:12:59,413 And so it is the analytical framework 173 00:12:59,413 --> 00:13:03,167 that we find ourselves with still, but additionally with the internet. 174 00:13:03,167 --> 00:13:06,564 And so every single person here that works as a sysadmin, 175 00:13:06,564 --> 00:13:10,406 could you raise your hand? 176 00:13:10,406 --> 00:13:11,496 Right. 177 00:13:11,496 --> 00:13:16,373 You represent, and I’m sorry to steal Julian’s thunder, but he was using Skype and well… 178 00:13:16,373 --> 00:13:26,325 We all know Skype has interception and man-in-the-middle problems, 179 00:13:26,325 --> 00:13:29,375 so I’m going to take advantage of that fact. You see, it’s not just the NSA. 180 00:13:29,375 --> 00:13:35,404 Everyone that raised their hand, you should raise your hand again. 181 00:13:35,404 --> 00:13:38,722 If you work at a company 182 00:13:38,722 --> 00:13:42,096 where you think that they might be involved in something that is a little bit scary, 183 00:13:42,096 --> 00:13:44,257 keep your hand up. 184 00:13:44,257 --> 00:13:48,462 Right. 185 00:13:48,462 --> 00:13:49,534 So here’s the deal: 186 00:13:49,534 --> 00:13:54,294 everybody else in the room lacks the information that you probably have access to. 187 00:13:54,294 --> 00:13:58,539 And if you were to make a moral judgment, 188 00:13:58,539 --> 00:14:01,337 if you were to make an ethical consideration about these things, 189 00:14:01,337 --> 00:14:04,324 t would be the case that as a political class you would be able to inform all of the political classes in this room, 190 00:14:04,324 --> 00:14:10,895 all of the other people in this room, in a way that only you have the agency to do. 191 00:14:10,895 --> 00:14:15,538 And those that benefit from you never doing that are the other people that have that. 192 00:14:15,538 --> 00:14:18,788 Those people are also members of other classes as well. 193 00:14:18,788 --> 00:14:22,336 And so the question is, if you were to unite as a political class, 194 00:14:22,336 --> 00:14:26,164 and we are to unite with you in that political class, we can see that there’s a contextual way 195 00:14:26,164 --> 00:14:31,497 to view this through a historical lens, essentially. 196 00:14:31,497 --> 00:14:34,115 Which is to say when the industrialized workers of the world decided 197 00:14:34,115 --> 00:14:37,722 that race and gender were not lines that we should split on, 198 00:14:37,722 --> 00:14:40,721 but instead we should look at workers and owners, 199 00:14:40,721 --> 00:14:48,084 then we started to see real change in the way that workers were treated and in the way the world itself was organizing labor. 200 00:14:48,084 --> 00:14:50,488 And this was a hugely important change 201 00:14:50,488 --> 00:14:52,125 during the industrial revolution. 202 00:14:52,125 --> 00:14:54,204 And we are going through a very similar time now 203 00:14:54,204 --> 00:14:57,093 with regard to information politics and with regard to the value of information in the information age. 204 00:14:57,093 --> 00:15:26,885 Fantastic, Bruce Willis. 205 00:15:26,885 --> 00:15:34,686 Jesus Christ, Julian, use Jitsi already. 206 00:15:34,686 --> 00:15:38,973 And so, we’ve identified the potential 207 00:15:38,973 --> 00:15:42,456 people that you’re talking about and you’ve spoken about how it’s good 208 00:15:42,456 --> 00:15:44,039 for them to unite. 209 00:15:44,039 --> 00:15:45,538 What are the next steps? 210 00:15:45,538 --> 00:15:47,535 How do they come forth? How do they share this information? 211 00:15:47,535 --> 00:15:49,167 Well, let’s consider a couple of things. 212 00:15:49,167 --> 00:15:50,699 First is that 213 00:15:50,699 --> 00:15:55,165 Bradley Manning, now Chelsea Manning; Daniel Ellsberg, still Daniel Ellsberg; 214 00:15:55,165 --> 00:16:01,035 Edward Snowden, living in exile in Russia unfortunately. 215 00:16:01,035 --> 00:16:03,288 Still Edward Snowden. 216 00:16:03,288 --> 00:16:07,122 Still Edward Snowden, hopefully. 217 00:16:07,122 --> 00:16:11,883 These are people who have taken great actions where they did not even set out to sacrifice themselves. 218 00:16:11,883 --> 00:16:14,893 But once when I met Daniel Ellsberg he said, 219 00:16:14,893 --> 00:16:18,289 ‘Wouldn’t you go to prison for the rest of your life to end this war?’ 220 00:16:18,289 --> 00:16:21,370 This is something he asked to me, and he asked it quite seriously. 221 00:16:21,370 --> 00:16:25,617 And it’s very incredible to be able to ask a hypothetical question 222 00:16:25,617 --> 00:16:31,206 of someone that wasn’t a hypothetical question. 223 00:16:31,206 --> 00:16:35,293 What he was trying to say is that right now you can make a choice 224 00:16:35,293 --> 00:16:36,687 in which you actually have a huge impact, 225 00:16:36,687 --> 00:16:38,366 should you choose to take on that risk. 226 00:16:38,366 --> 00:16:40,759 But the point is not to set out to martyr yourself. 227 00:16:40,759 --> 00:16:42,248 The point is to set out... 228 00:16:42,248 --> 00:16:45,194 Are you going to stick around this time, Julian? 229 00:16:45,194 --> 00:16:46,206 I don’t know, I’m waiting for the quantum hand of fate. 230 00:16:46,206 --> 00:16:49,787 The quantum hand that wants to strangle you? 231 00:16:49,787 --> 00:16:55,335 Yeah. 232 00:16:55,335 --> 00:16:58,125 Yeah. So we were just discussing right now the previous context, 233 00:16:58,125 --> 00:17:02,932 hat is Daniel Ellsberg, the Edward Snowdens, the Chelsea Mannings, 234 00:17:02,932 --> 00:17:04,625 how they have done an honorable, a good thing 235 00:17:04,625 --> 00:17:06,962 where they’ve shown a duty to a greater humanity, 236 00:17:06,962 --> 00:17:08,799 a thing that is more important than loyalty, 237 00:17:08,799 --> 00:17:11,968 for example, to a bureaucratic oath, but rather loyalty to universal principles. 238 00:17:11,968 --> 00:17:16,217 So the next question is, how does that relate to the people that are here in the audience? 239 00:17:16,217 --> 00:17:19,881 How is it the case that people who have access to systems 240 00:17:19,881 --> 00:17:24,884 where they have said themselves they think the companies they work for are sort of questionable 241 00:17:24,884 --> 00:17:27,404 or doing dangerous things in the world? 242 00:17:27,404 --> 00:17:30,936 Where do we go from people who have done these things previously to these people in the audience? 243 00:17:30,936 --> 00:17:36,207 Well, I don’t know how much ground you’ve covered, 244 00:17:36,207 --> 00:17:40,796 but I think it’s important that we recognize what we are 245 00:17:40,796 --> 00:17:44,606 and what we have become. 246 00:17:44,606 --> 00:17:48,128 And that high tech workers are... ...a class. 247 00:17:48,128 --> 00:17:52,129 In fact, very often... ... a position 248 00:17:52,129 --> 00:17:58,108 to in fact prompt the leaders of society... 249 00:17:58,108 --> 00:18:04,927 ...cease operating... 250 00:18:04,927 --> 00:18:15,633 Should we just leave him like that and continue? 251 00:18:15,633 --> 00:18:32,298 Am I back? 252 00:18:32,298 --> 00:18:36,132 Yeah. You’ve got three minutes to say something. 253 00:18:36,132 --> 00:18:38,491 Make it good. 254 00:18:38,491 --> 00:18:41,929 Those high tech workers, we are a particular class 255 00:18:41,929 --> 00:18:44,709 and it’s time that we recognized that we are a class 256 00:18:44,709 --> 00:18:46,650 and look back in history and understood 257 00:18:46,650 --> 00:18:49,213 that the great gains in human rights and education 258 00:18:49,213 --> 00:18:53,163 and so on that were gained through powerful industrial workers 259 00:18:53,163 --> 00:18:56,323 which formed the backbone of the economy of the 20th century, 260 00:18:56,323 --> 00:18:59,852 and that we have that same ability 261 00:18:59,852 --> 00:19:04,380 but even more so because of the greater interconnection 262 00:19:04,380 --> 00:19:07,494 that exists now economically and politically. 263 00:19:07,494 --> 00:19:10,323 Which is all underpinned by system administrators. 264 00:19:10,323 --> 00:19:18,216 And we should understand that system administrators are not just those people who administer one UNIX system or another. 265 00:19:18,216 --> 00:19:21,379 They are the people who administer systems. 266 00:19:21,379 --> 00:19:24,769 And the system that exists globally now 267 00:19:24,769 --> 00:19:28,690 is created by the interconnection of many individual systems. 268 00:19:28,690 --> 00:19:36,793 And we are all, or many of us, are part of administering that system 269 00:19:36,793 --> 00:19:38,700 and have extraordinary power 270 00:19:38,700 --> 00:19:43,813 in a way that is really an order of magnitude 271 00:19:43,813 --> 00:19:48,814 different to the power industrial workers had in the 20th century. 272 00:19:48,814 --> 00:19:52,167 And we can see that in the cases of the famous leaks 273 00:19:52,167 --> 00:19:56,285 that WikiLeaks has done or the recent Edward Snowden revelations, 274 00:19:56,285 --> 00:20:02,034 it is possible now for even single systems administrators to have a very significant change, 275 00:20:02,034 --> 00:20:07,368 or rather apply very significant constructive constraint 276 00:20:07,368 --> 00:20:10,533 to the behavior of these organizations. 277 00:20:10,533 --> 00:20:12,615 Not merely wrecking or disabling them, 278 00:20:12,615 --> 00:20:15,866 not merely going out on strikes to change policy, 279 00:20:15,866 --> 00:20:21,790 but rather shifting information from an information apartheid system 280 00:20:21,790 --> 00:20:25,326 which we’re developing from those with extraordinary power and extraordinary information 281 00:20:25,326 --> 00:20:30,948 into the knowledge commons, where it can be used not only as a disciplining force, 282 00:20:30,948 --> 00:20:33,095 but it can be used to construct and understand the new world that we’re entering into. 283 00:20:33,095 --> 00:20:36,487 Now, Hayden, the former director of the CIA and NSA, 284 00:20:36,487 --> 00:20:48,287 is terrified of this. In “Cypherpunks” we called for this directly last year. 285 00:20:48,287 --> 00:20:57,615 But to give you an interesting quote from Hayden, 286 00:20:57,615 --> 00:21:02,408 possibly following up on those words of mine and others, 287 00:21:02,408 --> 00:21:07,122 “We need to recruit from Snowden’s generation” 288 00:21:07,122 --> 00:21:08,292 says Hayden. 289 00:21:08,292 --> 00:21:11,117 “We need to recruit from this group because they have the skills that we require. 290 00:21:11,117 --> 00:21:15,621 So the challenge is how to recruit this talent while also protecting ourselves 291 00:21:15,621 --> 00:21:20,487 from the small fraction of the population that has this romantic attachment 292 00:21:20,487 --> 00:21:24,207 to absolute transparency at all costs.” 293 00:21:24,207 --> 00:21:27,815 And that’s us, right? 294 00:21:27,815 --> 00:21:32,524 So, what we need to do is spread that message and go into all those organisations. 295 00:21:32,524 --> 00:21:34,201 In fact, deal with them. 296 00:21:34,201 --> 00:21:37,498 I’m not saying, ‘Don’t join the CIA’. 297 00:21:37,498 --> 00:21:38,723 No, go and join the CIA. Go in there. 298 00:21:38,723 --> 00:21:41,871 Go into the ballpark and get the ball and bring it out, 299 00:21:41,871 --> 00:21:44,846 with the understanding, with the paranoia, 300 00:21:44,846 --> 00:21:50,285 that all those organizations will be infiltrated by this generation, 301 00:21:50,285 --> 00:21:53,537 by an ideology that is spread across the internet. 302 00:21:53,537 --> 00:21:56,617 And every young person is educated on the internet. 303 00:21:56,617 --> 00:22:00,086 There will be no person that has not been exposed to this ideology 304 00:22:00,086 --> 00:22:07,462 of transparency and understanding and wanting to keep the internet which we were born into free. 305 00:22:07,462 --> 00:22:11,532 This is the last free generation. 306 00:22:11,532 --> 00:22:16,007 The coming together of the systems of governments, 307 00:22:16,007 --> 00:22:17,652 the new information apartheid, across the world, 308 00:22:17,652 --> 00:22:20,691 linking together in such that none of us will be able to escape it in just a decade. 309 00:22:20,691 --> 00:22:30,933 Our identities will be coupled to the information sharing 310 00:22:30,933 --> 00:22:33,203 such that none of us will be able to escape it. 311 00:22:33,203 --> 00:22:36,488 We are all becoming part of the state, 312 00:22:36,488 --> 00:22:38,206 whether we like it or not. 313 00:22:38,206 --> 00:22:46,653 So our only hope is to determine what sort of state it is that we are going to become part of. 314 00:22:46,653 --> 00:22:48,703 nd we can do that by looking and being inspired 315 00:22:48,703 --> 00:22:52,483 by some of the actions that produced human rights and free education and so on 316 00:22:52,483 --> 00:22:55,578 by people recognizing that they were part of the state, recognizing their own power 317 00:22:55,578 --> 00:23:02,687 and taking concrete and robust action to make sure 318 00:23:02,687 --> 00:23:06,974 they lived in the sort of society they wanted to and not in a hell-hole dystopia. 319 00:23:06,974 --> 00:23:08,367 Thank you. 320 00:23:08,367 --> 00:23:26,090 So basically all those poor people Jake just made identify themselves, 321 00:23:26,090 --> 00:23:29,595 you have the power to change more systems than the one you’re working on right now. 322 00:23:29,595 --> 00:23:34,848 And I think it’s time to take some questions because we don’t have long left. 323 00:23:34,848 --> 00:23:40,374 if there are any? What's the... 324 00:23:40,374 --> 00:23:44,281 If you do have Questions, please line up in the middle of the room. we have microphones there. 325 00:23:44,281 --> 00:23:50,537 If you cannot reach one please put your hand up, we try to get one to you. 326 00:23:50,537 --> 00:23:53,651 While we wait for the first question. 327 00:23:53,651 --> 00:23:56,815 I’d like to say, it looks like there’s quite a lot of people there.. 328 00:23:56,815 --> 00:23:59,812 Start going to the mic even while he's talking if you do have a question. 329 00:23:59,812 --> 00:24:03,788 Cause otherwise we won't know that you have one and we just keep on going. 330 00:24:03,788 --> 00:24:09,498 Alternatively just raise your hand... ...quite a lot of people there. 331 00:24:09,498 --> 00:24:14,122 but you should all know that due to the various sorts of proximity measures 332 00:24:14,122 --> 00:24:17,805 that are now employed by NSA, GCHQ, and Five Eyes Alliance, 333 00:24:17,805 --> 00:24:21,621 if you’ve come there with a telephone, 334 00:24:21,621 --> 00:24:24,794 or if you’ve been even in Hamburg with a telephone, 335 00:24:24,794 --> 00:24:27,891 you are all now coupled to us. 336 00:24:27,891 --> 00:24:29,337 You are coupled to this event. 337 00:24:29,337 --> 00:24:31,576 You are coupled to this speech in an irrevocable way. 338 00:24:31,576 --> 00:24:33,890 And that is now true for many people. 339 00:24:33,890 --> 00:24:41,094 So either we have to take command of the position that we have, 340 00:24:41,094 --> 00:24:44,538 , understand the position we have, understand that we are the last free people, 341 00:24:44,538 --> 00:24:46,246 and the last people essentially with an ability to act in this situation. 342 00:24:46,246 --> 00:24:53,205 Or we are the group that will be crushed 343 00:24:53,205 --> 00:25:08,170 because of this association. 344 00:25:08,170 --> 00:25:11,577 So you were talking about the sysadmins here. 345 00:25:11,577 --> 00:25:15,400 What about those people who are not sysadmins? 346 00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:21,561 Not only joining CIA and those companies, what else can we do? 347 00:25:21,561 --> 00:25:25,033 Jake, do you want to have a go at that one? 348 00:25:25,033 --> 00:25:27,116 Sure. This is a question of agency. 349 00:25:27,116 --> 00:25:27,955 Good timing. 350 00:25:27,955 --> 00:25:29,890 It’s a question in which one has to ask very simply, 351 00:25:29,890 --> 00:25:31,934 what is it that you feel like you can do? 352 00:25:31,934 --> 00:25:35,014 And many of the people in this audience I’ve had this discussion with them. 353 00:25:35,014 --> 00:25:38,497 For example, Edward Snowden did not save himself. 354 00:25:38,497 --> 00:25:41,534 I mean, he obviously had some ideas, but Sarah, for example, 355 00:25:41,534 --> 00:25:45,620 not as a system administrator, but as someone who was willing to risk her person. 356 00:25:45,620 --> 00:25:49,247 She helped, specifically for source protection, she took actions to protect him. 357 00:25:49,247 --> 00:25:53,121 So there are plenty of things that can be done. 358 00:25:53,121 --> 00:25:57,408 To give you some ideas, Edward Snowden, still sitting in Russia now, 359 00:25:57,408 --> 00:25:59,922 there are things that can be done to help him even now. 360 00:25:59,922 --> 00:26:06,117 And there are things to show, that if we can succeed 361 00:26:06,117 --> 00:26:07,648 in saving Edward Snowden’s life and to keep him free, 362 00:26:07,648 --> 00:26:09,538 that the next Edward Snowden will have that to look forward to. 363 00:26:09,538 --> 00:26:12,248 And if we look also to what has happened to Chelsea Manning, 364 00:26:12,248 --> 00:26:17,688 we see additionally that Snowden has clearly learned, 365 00:26:17,688 --> 00:26:20,488 just as Thomas Drake and Bill Binney set an example 366 00:26:20,488 --> 00:26:24,561 for every single person about what to do and what not to do. 367 00:26:24,561 --> 00:26:26,486 It’s not just about systems administrators, 368 00:26:26,486 --> 00:26:31,767 it’s about all of us actually recognizing that positive contribution that each of us can make. 369 00:26:31,767 --> 00:26:35,403 OK our next question will be microphone 4 ..2 please 370 00:26:35,403 --> 00:26:41,605 Hi Julian, I’m wondering, 371 00:26:41,605 --> 00:26:42,087 do you believe that transparency alone is enough to inject some form of conscience into evil organizations, 372 00:26:42,087 --> 00:26:52,335 quote and quote “evil” organizations? 373 00:26:52,335 --> 00:26:58,285 And if not, what do you believe the next step after transparency is? 374 00:26:58,285 --> 00:27:02,038 It’s not about injecting conscience, 375 00:27:02,038 --> 00:27:04,656 it’s about providing two things: 376 00:27:04,656 --> 00:27:08,451 one, an effective deterrent to particular forms of behavior 377 00:27:08,451 --> 00:27:17,168 and two, finding that information which allows us to construct an order in the world around us, 378 00:27:17,168 --> 00:27:20,682 to educate ourselves in how the world works 379 00:27:20,682 --> 00:27:25,765 and therefore be able to manage the world that we are a part of. 380 00:27:25,765 --> 00:27:28,700 The restriction of information, 381 00:27:28,700 --> 00:27:33,407 the restriction of those bits of information, colors it. 382 00:27:33,407 --> 00:27:37,563 It gives off an economic signal that information is important when it’s released, 383 00:27:37,563 --> 00:27:41,405 because otherwise why would you spend so much work in restricting it? 384 00:27:41,405 --> 00:27:44,090 So the people that know it best restrict it. 385 00:27:44,090 --> 00:27:46,805 We should take their measurements of that information 386 00:27:46,805 --> 00:27:52,285 as a guide and use that to pull it out where it can achieve some kind of reform. 387 00:27:52,285 --> 00:27:55,033 That, in itself, is not enough. 388 00:27:55,033 --> 00:27:59,485 It creates an intellectual commons which is part of our mutual education. 389 00:27:59,485 --> 00:28:05,455 But we need to understand, say, if we look at the Occupy event, 390 00:28:05,455 --> 00:28:08,487 a very interesting political event, 391 00:28:08,487 --> 00:28:17,246 where revelations and perhaps destabilization led to a very large group wanting to do something 392 00:28:17,246 --> 00:28:23,894 However, there was no organizational scaffold for these people to attach themselves to, 393 00:28:23,894 --> 00:28:29,615 no nucleus for these people to crystallize onto. 394 00:28:29,615 --> 00:28:31,978 And it is that problem, 395 00:28:31,978 --> 00:28:36,287 which is an endemic problem of the anarchist left, actually. 396 00:28:36,287 --> 00:28:39,573 The CCC. Why are we having this right now? 397 00:28:39,573 --> 00:28:43,039 Because the CCC is an organized structure. 398 00:28:43,039 --> 00:28:50,957 It’s a structure which has been able to grow to accommodate the 30% of extra people that have occurred this year. 399 00:28:50,957 --> 00:28:55,244 To shift and change and act like one of the better workers’ universities that are around. 400 00:28:55,244 --> 00:29:01,564 So we have to form unions and networks 401 00:29:01,564 --> 00:29:05,735 and create programs and organizational structures. 402 00:29:05,735 --> 00:29:10,039 And those organizational structures can also be written in code. 403 00:29:10,039 --> 00:29:13,486 Bitcoin, for example, is an organizational structure 404 00:29:13,486 --> 00:29:19,290 that creates an intermediary between people, it sets up rules between people. 405 00:29:19,290 --> 00:29:23,698 It may end up as a quite totalitarian system one day, 406 00:29:23,698 --> 00:29:26,938 who knows, but at the moment it provides some kind of balancing. 407 00:29:26,938 --> 00:29:29,813 So code and human structures do things. 408 00:29:29,813 --> 00:29:37,561 WikiLeaks was able to rescue Edward Snowden because we are an organized institution with collective experience. 409 00:29:37,561 --> 00:29:42,701 Okay, I think there’s one question left that’s coming from the internet. 410 00:29:42,701 --> 00:29:50,785 On IRC there was the question, what was the most difficult part on getting Snowden out of the US? 411 00:29:50,785 --> 00:29:56,654 That’s quite a loaded question. 412 00:29:56,654 --> 00:30:01,042 Yeah, that’s interesting to think whether we can actually answer that question at all. 413 00:30:01,042 --> 00:30:06,792 I’ll give a variant of the answer because of the legal situation it is a little bit difficult. 414 00:30:06,792 --> 00:30:12,958 As some of you may know, the UK Government has admitted to 415 00:30:12,958 --> 00:30:19,851 spending £6 million a year approximately surveilling this embassy in the police forces alone. 416 00:30:19,851 --> 00:30:21,869 So you can imagine the difficulty in communicating with various people in different countries 417 00:30:21,869 --> 00:30:34,884 in relation to his diplomatic asylum and into logistics in Hong Kong in a situation like that. 418 00:30:34,884 --> 00:30:37,176 And the only reason we were able to succeed is because of extemely dilligent… 419 00:30:37,176 --> 00:30:48,541 Perfectly timed. 420 00:30:48,541 --> 00:30:49,795 And we didn’t use Skype. 421 00:30:49,795 --> 00:30:54,486 Do we have time for one more question? 422 00:30:54,486 --> 00:30:57,880 I think we run out of the time. 423 00:30:57,880 --> 00:30:59,333 That was such a fantastic, perfect way to make sure that you didn’t learn the answer to that question. 424 00:30:59,333 --> 99:59:59,999 Unfortunately that is all the time we have for this talk