WEBVTT

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... wanted to be able to use

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Thunderbird and GnuPG together with Tor,

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and so we thought:

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oh, it would be really easy, I bet,

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to configure Thunderbird to work with Tor

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- hah - so a new Free software project
was born.

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It's a really simple thing, but basically

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it's just a package
that hooks it all together.

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So a lot of people were using Thunderbird

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and TorBirdy, and GnuPG, and Tor,

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and Debian, together for email,

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combined with Riseup as an email service.

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So it's a literally a real peer to peer,
Free software driven set of things,

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actually, that made it possible.

NOTE Paragraph

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[question]:
So one thing I never understood about this

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process was exactly how the documents were
handled, and maybe that's because nobody

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wants to say, but, you know, did you leave
them on a server somewhere and download

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them, hand them over to people, and who
took what where, and how do you...

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in case I need to do something really
dangerous with a load of documents,

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what's the best way of doing it?

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[laughter]

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[Jacob]: Hmm!

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[audience member]: It's a good thing
this isn't being streamed.

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I'm sorry, what?

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There was a voice from god,
what did she say?

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[audience]:
I said good we aren't streaming tonight.

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Oh yeah, so hello to all of our friends


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in domestic and international
surveillance services.

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Well, so I won't answer your question,

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but since you asked the question,
it's my turn to talk.

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So what I would say is that...

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if you want to do clandestine activities

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that you fear for your life for,

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you need to really think about
the situation that you're in

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very carefully.

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And so a big part of this is
operational security

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and a big part of that is
compartmentalization.

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So certain people had access
to certain things,

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but maybe they couldn't decrypt them,

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and certain things were moved around,

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and that's on a need to know basis,

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and those people who knew,

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which is not me - I don't know anything,
I don't know what you're talking about.

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Those people knew, and then you know,

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it'll go with them to their grave.

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So if you're interested in being the next
Edward Snowden,

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you need to do your homework

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in finding people that will be able to do
the other part of it, let's say.

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But just in general, I mean

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compartmentalization is key, right.

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So it's not just for AppArmor profiles.

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So you need to think about
what you want to do.

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And I mean a big part of this
is to consider that the network itself

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is the enemy, even though it is useful
for communicating.

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So all the metadata that exists
on the network

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could have tipped people off,
could have caused

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this whole thing to fall apart.

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It really is amazing, I feel like you know

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two and half, three years ago,

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when you talk about Free software,

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and you talk about the idea of
Free software,

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and you talk about issues relating to
autonomy and privacy, and security

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you have a really different reception now
than you did then,

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and that's really what it took

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to turn the world half a degree,
or something,

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or a quarter of a degree or something.

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So I'm not going to tell you about
detailed plans for conspiracy,

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but I highly encourage you to read about
South African history,

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in particular the history of
Umkhonto we Sizwe.

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They are the clandestine communications
group for MK,

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or rather the operation who lay inside of MK,

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which is Umkhonto we Sizwe,

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and they are sort of with
the African National Congress,

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and those people have published so many
books about the revolutionary activities

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to overthrow the apartheid state.

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If you read these books, especially
the book "Operation Vula"

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and "Armed and Dangerous"
by Ronnie Kasrils

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they give you some idea about
what you need to do

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which is to compartmentalize,

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how to find people to do various tasks,
specific tasks,

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how to work on building trust
with each other, what that looks like,

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how to identify political targets,

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how you might use things
like communications technology

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to change the political topic on,

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and the discussion in general.

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And I think the best way to learn about
these things is to study previous people

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who have tried to do that kind of stuff.

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And the NSA is not the apartheid regime of
South Africa,

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but there are still lessons
to be learned there,

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so if you really want to know the answer
to that, also Che Guevara's manual

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on guerilla warfare is very interesting,

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and there's a lot of other books like that.

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I'd be happy to talk about it
with you later.

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And I have nothing to do with anything
that we may or may not have done.

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[laughter]

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[question]: Do you think there is a chance
that things may get better

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for example I know that publicly,
some programs were not extended

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but I don't know what is happening
in the background

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so maybe it's the same thing
but they are pretending that it's not

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How do you see this?

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[Jacob]: Well I think a couple of things.

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In general I think what happened, not just
with this movie but with all of these things

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is that in inspired hope,

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and the hope is very important,

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but hope is not a strategy for survival,
or for building alternatives,

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so what it has also done, is that it has
allowed us to raise the profile

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of the things which actually do
make it better.

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For example ridding ourselves of the
chains of proprietary software

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is something that's a serious discussion
with people that wouldn't have previously

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talked about Free software
because they don't care about liberty,

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they care about security.

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And even though I think those are
really simliar things,

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previously they just thought we were just
Free software hippies,

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in tie-dye shirts

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and while that may be true on the weekends
and evenings

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or with Bdale every day
[laughter]

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I think that actually does make it better

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And it also changes the dialogue, in
the sense that it's no longer reasonable

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to pretend that mass surveillance and
surveillance issues don't matter,

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because if you really go down the
rabbit-hole

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of thinking about what the security
services are trying to do

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it becomes obvious that we want to encrypt
everything all the time

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to beat selector-based surveillance
and dragnet-based surveillance.

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It doesn't matter if something is authenticated

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You could still trigger some action
to take place

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with these kinds of surveillance machines

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that could for example drone
strike someone,

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and so it raises that.

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And that gives me a lot of hope too,

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because people understand the root
of the problem,

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or the root of many problems

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and the root of some violence
in the world, actually.

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And so it helps us to reduce that
violence

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by getting people to acknowledge
that it's real

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and also that they care about it

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and that we care about each other.

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So that really gives me a lot of hope,
and part of that is Snowden

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and part of that is the documents

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but the other part of it is that..

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I don't want to blow it up and make it
sound like we did something

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like a big deal,

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but in a sense, Laura, Glen, myself
and a number of other people

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were really not sure we would ever be able
to travel home to our country

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that we wouldn't be arrested.

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I actually haven't been home
in over two and half years,

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well, two years and three months
or something

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I went out on a small business trip
that was supposed to last two weeks

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and then this happened

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and I've been hear ever since.

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It's a really long, crazy trip.

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But the point is that that's what was
necessary to make some of these changes

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and eventually it will turn around

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and I will be able to go home,

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and Laura and Glen will be able to travel
to the US again.

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Obviously, Julian is still stuck in the
Ecuadorian embassy

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Sarah lives in exile in Berlin,

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I live in exile in Berlin,

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And Ed is in Moscow

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So we're not finished with some of
these things

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and it's also possible that we are,
the set of people I mentioned,

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the state we're in, will stay that way
forever.

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But what matters is that the rest
of the world

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can actually move on and fix some of
these problems,

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and I have a lot of hope about that.

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And I see a lot of change, that's the
really big part.

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Like I see the reproducible build stuff
that Holger and Lunar are working on.

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People really understand the root reason
for needing to do that

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and actually seems quite reasonable
to people

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who would previously have expended energy
against it,

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in support of it, so I think that's
really good.

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And there's a lot of other hopeful things.

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So I would try and be as uplifting
as possible.

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It's not just the rum!

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[question]: Near the end of the film
we saw something about another source.

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I may have been missing some news
or something

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but I don't remember anything about that
being public.

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Do you know what happened to them?

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[Jacob]: As far as I know any other
source that was mentioned in the film

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is still anonymous, and they're still free.

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I'm not exactly sure because I was not
involved in that part

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but I also saw the end of the film

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and I've seen a bunch of other reporting
which wasn't attributed to anyone in particular

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So the good news... there's an old slogan
from the Dutch hacker community, right?

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"Someone you trust is one of us,

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and the leak is higher up in the chain of
command than you"

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And I feel like that might be true again,
hopefully.

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I think that guy has a question as well.

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[question]: Part of the problem initially
was that encryption software

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was not so easy to use, right?

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And I think part of the challenge
for everyone

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was to improve on that situation
to make it better

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so I'm asking you if you've observed
any change and to the rest of the room

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have we done anything to improve on that?

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[Jacob]: I definitely think that there is
a lot of free software

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that makes encryption easier to use,

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though not always on free platforms,
which is heart-breaking.

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For example Moxie Marlinspike has done
a really good job

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with Signal, Textsecure and Redphone

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and making end-to-end, encrypted
calling, texting, sexting,

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and whatever apps,

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sext-secure is what I think it's nicknamed

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and I'm very impressed by that,
and it works really well

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and it's something which in the
last two years

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if you have a cell-phone,
which I don't recommend

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but if you have a cell-phone,
and you put in everyone's phone number,

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a lot of people that I was classify as
non-technical,

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that don't care about Free software
as a hobby or as a passion

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or as a profession.

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You see their names in those systems

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often more than some of the
Free software people,

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and that's really impressive to me

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and I think there's been a huge shift
just generally about those sorts of things

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also about social responsibility

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or people understand they have a
responsibility to other people

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to encrypt communications,
and not to put people in harm's way

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by sending unsafe stuff over
unsafe communication lines

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So I think in my personal view it's better.

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But the original problem wasn't actually
that the encryption was hard to use.

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I think the main problem is people didn't
understand the reason

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that it needed to be done

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and they believed the lie that is
targetted versus mass surveillance

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And there's a big lie, and the lie is
that there is such a thing

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as targeted surveillance.

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In the modern era, most so-called
targetted surveillance actually happens

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through mass surveillance.

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They gather everything up, and then they
look through the thing

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they've already seized.

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And of course there are targetted,
focussed attacks.

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But the main thing is that the abuse of
surveillance often happens

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on an individual basis

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It also has a societal cost.

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I think a lot of people really
understand that.

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It's probably because I also live in
Germany now for the last two years

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but I feel that German society in
particular is extremely aware

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of these abuses in the modern world

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and they have a historical context
that allows them to talk about it

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with the rest of the world, where the
rest of the world doesn't downplay it.

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So this is how other people relate to
Germany

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not just about Germans relate to
each other.

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And that has also been really good
for just meeting regular people

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who really care about it,

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and who really want to do things.

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So people's parents email me,
and are like

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"I want to protect my children,

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what's the best way to use crypto
with them"

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You know, things like that.

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And I didn't every receive emails like
that in the past

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and that's to me is uplifting
and very positive.