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applause
Herald: Alright!

Good evening, everybody.

The ‘Saal’ is pretty full?
So I guess this is gonna be

an interesting talk.
We are on a tight schedule.

Our speaker, Jake Appelbaum is gonna be
joined by Julian Assange via video stream.

I really hope that’s gonna work.

So without further ado – please
welcome our speaker and… have fun!

applause, some cheers

Jacob Appelbaum: So we have a surprise
guest. Some of you might know her.

She saved Edward Snowden’s life.
Her name is Sarah Harrison.

applause and loud cheers

Jacob applauding as Sarah prepares

continued applause

Sarah Harrison: Thank you.
she and Jacob laugh

laughter
one shout from audience

Good evening. My name is Sarah
Harrison as you all appear to know.

I’m a journalist working for Wikileaks.
This year I was part – as Jacob just said –

of the Wikileaks team that saved
Snowden from a life in prison.

This act, and my job has meant that
our legal advice is that I do not return

to my home, the United Kingdom, due to
the ongoing terrorism investigation there,

in relation to the movement of
Edward Snowden documents.

The U.K. Government has chosen to
define disclosing classified documents

with an intent to influence Government
behaviour as terrorism. I’m therefore

currently remaining in Germany. But
it’s not just myself, personally, that has

legal issues of Wikileaks. For a fourth
Christmas, our editor Julian Assange

continues to be detained without charge
in the U.K. He’s been granted formal

political asylum by Ecuador due to
the threat from the United States.

But in breach of international law the
U.K. continues to refuse to allow him

his legal right to take up this asylum.
In November of this year,

a U.S. Government official confirmed that
the enormous Grand Jury investigation

which commenced in 2010 into Wikileaks,
its stuff and specifically Julian Assange

continues. This was then confirmed by the
spokesperson of the prosecutor’s office

in Virginia. The Icelandic Parliament
held an inquiry earlier this year where it

found that the FBI had secretly and
unlawfully sent nine agents to Iceland

to conduct an investigation into Wikileaks
there. Further secret interrogations

took place in Denmark and Washington.
The informant they were speaking with

has been charged with fraud and
convicted on other charges in Iceland.

In the Icelandic Supreme Court we won
a substantial victory over the extra-legal

U.S. financial blockade that was erected
against us in 2010 by Visa, Mastercard,

Paypal and other U.S. financial giants.
Subsequently, Mastercard pulled out

of the blockade. We’ve since filed
a $77 million legal case against Visa

for damages. We filed a suit against Visa
in Denmark as well. And in response

to questions about how Paypal’s owner can
start a free press outlet whilst blocking

another media organization, he has
announced that the PayPal blockade

of Wikileaks has ended.

applause

That wasn’t meant to be a pause for your
clap, I just needed some water. Sorry!

We filed criminal cases in Sweden and
Germany in relation to the unlawful

Intelligence activity against us there,
including at the CCC in 2009.

Together with the Center for Constitutional
Rights we filed a suit against the

U.S. military, against the unprecedented
secrecy applied to Chelsea Manning’s

trial. Yet through these attacks we’ve
continued our publishing work. In April

of this year, we launched the Public Library
of U.S. Diplomacy, the largest and

most comprehensive searchable database
of U.S. diplomatic cables in the world.

This coincided with our release of 1.7
million U.S. cables from the Kissinger period.

We launched our third Spy Files, 249
documents from 92 global Intelligence

contractors exposing their technology,
methods, and contracts. We completed

releasing the Global Intelligence Files,
over five million emails from U.S. Intelligence

firm Stratfor, the revelations from which
included documenting their spying

on activists around the globe. We
published the primary negotiating

positions for 14 countries of
the Trans-Pacific Partnership,

a new international legal regime that
would control 40% of the world’s GDP.

As well as getting Snowden asylum, we set
up Mr. Snowden’s defence fund, part of

a broader endeavor, the Journalistic
Source Protection Defence Fund, which aims

to protect and fund sources in trouble.
This will be an important fund for

future sources, especially when we look
at the U.S. crackdown on whistleblowers

like Snowden and alleged Wikileaks source
Chelsea Manning who was sentenced

this year to 35 years in prison, and
another alleged Wikileaks source

Jeremy Hammond, who was sentenced to ten
years in prison this November. These men

– Snowden, Manning and Hammond – are
prime examples of a politicized youth

who have grown up with a free internet
and want to keep it that way.

It is this class of people that we
are here to discuss this evening,

the powers they and we all have, and can
have, and the good that we can do with it.

I’m joined here tonight for this
discussion by two men I admire hugely:

– hopefully one of them will appear soon –
laughs

Wikileaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange
and Jacob Appelbaum, both who have had

a long history in defending our right
to knowledge, despite political

and legal pressure. There he is!
laughs

applause and cheers

So, Julian, saying as I haven’t
seen you for quite a while,

what’s been happening in this field
this year? What’s your strategic view

about it, this fight for
freedom of knowledge?

Are we winning or are we losing?

Julian Assange: via A/V connection, on screen
Well, I have an 18-page speech

on the strategic vision. But I think
I’ve got about five> minutes, right?

coughs
Sarah: At the most!

No, less? Okay. Well, first off,

it’s very interesting to see
the CCC has grown by 30%

over the last year. And we can see the CCC

as a very important type of institution

which does have analogues(?).
The CCC is a paradox

in that it has the vibrancy of a young
movement, but also now has been going

nearly 30 years since its founding
in 1981 by Wau Holland and others.

video transmission stops/freezes

Sarah: laughs Great point, great point.
laughter

Jacob: Blame the NSA!
Sarah: He, heh?

Jacob: Blame the NSA!
Sarah laughs

So, the new “blame Canada”!
Sounds of Skype, reconnecting

Sarah: Is it here or the embassy
that they’re spying on the most?

laughter
ongoing sounds of Skype reconnecting

Hey, such a good talk, isn’t it, guys?
she laughs

Jacob: I wish Bruce Willis [Assange's
Skype name] would pick up the phone!

laughter

Sarah: Should we move over while we’re
waiting to you, Jake? As I said, I got…

I think that it’s quite interesting, it
does seem to be a trend that there are

these young, technical people. We look
at Manning, Snowden, Hammond…

often sysadmins. Why are they playing
such an important role in this fight

for freedom of information?

Jacob: Well, so, I think there are
a couple of important points.

The first important point is to understand
that all of us have agency, but some of us

actually literately have more agency than
others in the sense that you have access

to systems that give you access to
information that help to found knowledge

that you have in your own head. So someone
like Manning or someone like Snowden

who has access to these documents in
the course of their work, they will simply

have a better understanding of what is
actually happening. They have access

to the primary source documents.
That’s part of their job. This, I think,

fundamentally is a really critical,
I would say a formative thing.

When you start to read these original
source documents you start to understand

the way that organizations actually think
internally. I mean, this is one of the things

that Julian Assange has said quite a lot,
it’s that when you read the internal

documents of an organization, that’s how
they really think about a thing. This is

different than a press release. And people
who have grown up on the internet,

and they’re essentially natives on the
internet, and that’s all of us, I think,

for the most part. It’s definitely me.
That essentially forms a way

of thinking about organizations where
the official thing that they say

is not interesting. You know that
there is an agenda behind that

and you don’t necessarily know what
that true agenda is. And so people

who grow up in this and see these
documents, they realise the agency

that they have. They understand it, they
see that power, and they want to do

something about it, in some cases. Some
people do it in small starts and fits.

So there are lots of sources for lots
of newspapers that are inside of

defense organizations or really, really
large companies, and they share

this information. But in the case of
Chelsea Manning, in the case of Snowden

they went big. And I presume that this is
because of the scale of the wrongdoing

that they saw, in addition to the
amount of agency that was provided

by their access and by their
understanding of the actual information

they were able to have
in their possession.

Sarah: And do you think that it has
something to do with being technical

they have a potential
ability to find a way to do this

safer than other people, perhaps? Or…

Jacob: I mean, it’s clearly the case that
this helps. There’s no question that

understanding how to use those computer
systems and being able to navigate them,

that that is going to be a helpful skill.
But I think what it really is is that

these are people who grew up in an era,
and I myself am one of these people,

where we grew up in an era where we’re
overloaded by information but we still

are able to absorb a great deal of it.
And we really are constantly going

through this. 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. So e.g. Daniel Ellsberg,

who is famous for the ‘Ellsberg Paradox’.
He was of course a very seriously

embedded person in the U.S. military.
He was in the RAND corporation,

he worked with McNamara.
And during the Vietnam War

he had access to huge amounts of
information. And it was the ability

to analyze this information
and to understand, in this case

how the U.S. Government during the
Vietnam War was lying to the entire world.

And it was the magnitude of those lies
combined with the ability to prove that

they were lies that, I believe, combined
with his analytical skill it was clear

what the action might be. But it wasn’t
clear what the outcome would be.

And with Ellsberg, the outcome was
a very positive one. In fact it’s

the most positive outcome for any
whistleblower so far that I know of

in the history of the United States
and maybe even in the world.

What we see right now with Snowden and
what we’ve now seen with Chelsea Manning

is unfortunately a very different
outcome, at least for Manning.

So this is also a hugely important
point which is that Ellsberg did this

in the context of resistance against the
Vietnam War. And when Ellsberg did this,

there were huge support networks, there
were gigantic things that split across

all political spectrums of society.
And so it is the analytical framework

that we find ourselves with, still;
but additionally with the internet.

And so every single person here
that works as a sysadmin, could you

raise your hand? Right. You represent
– and I’m sorry to steal Julian’s thunder,

but he was using Skype, and… well…
laughter and applause

But we all know Skype has interception
and man-in-the-middle problems, so…

I’m gonna take advantage of that fact. You
see, it’s not just the NSA. Everyone that

raised their hand, you should raise your
hand again! If you work at a company

where you think that they might be
involved in something that is

a little bit scary, keep your hand up!
laughter

Right. So here’s the deal: everybody else
in the room lacks the information that

you probably have access to. And if you
were to make a moral judgment, if you

were to make an ethical consideration
about these things, it would be the case

that as a political class you would
be able to inform all of the other

political classes in this room, all of the
other people in this room, in a way that

only you have the agency to do. And those
who benefit from you never doing that,

or the other people that have that. Those
people also are members of other classes

as well. And so the question is: If you
were to unite as a political class,

and we are to unite with you in that
political class, we can see that there’s

a contextual way to view this through
a historical lens, essentially.

Which is to say that when the
industrialized workers of the world

decided that race and gender were not
lines that we should split on, but instead

we should look at workers and owners, then
we started to see real change in the way

that workers were treated and in the way
that the world itself was organizing labor.

And this was a hugely important change
during the Industrial Revolution.

And we are going through a very similar
time now with regard to information

politics and with regard to the value
of information in our information age.

Skype connection being re-established
applause

Skype connection just terminates again
laughter

Jacob: Fantastic, Bruce Willis!

laughter

Hahahaha! Jesus Christ,
Julian, use Jitsy already!

laughter, applause and cheers

Sarah: And so, we’ve identified the
potential of the people that you were

talking about. So you’ve spoken about
how it’s good for them to unite.

What are the next steps? How do they come
forth? How do they share this information?

Jacob: Well, let’s consider a couple of
things. First is that Bradley Manning

– now Chelsea Manning, Daniel Ellsberg
– still Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden

– living in exile in Russia, unfortunately…

Sarah: …still Edward Snowden!
Jacob: Still Edward Snowden! Hopefully.

Sarah laughs
These are people who have taken

great actions where they did not even set
out to sacrifice themselves. But once

when I met Daniel Ellsberg he said:
“Wouldn’t you go to prison for the rest

of your life to end this war?” This is
something he asked me, and he asked it

to me quite seriously. And it’s very
incredible to be able to ask

a hypothetical question…
Skype ringing out

…of someone. That wasn’t a hypothetical
question! What he was trying to say is

that right now you can make a choice in
which you can actually have a huge impact,

should you chose to take on that risk.
But the point is not to set out

to martyr yourself.
The point is to set out…

Are you gonna stick
around this time, Julian?

Julian: via Skype I don’t know, I’m
waiting for the quantum hand, Jake.

Jacob: The quantum hand
that wants to strangle you?

Julian: Yeah! I have protection!
Jacob: We were just discussing right now

the previous context, that is Daniel
Ellsberg, the Edward Snowdens,

the Chelsea Mannings, how they have done
an honorable, or good thing where they’ve

shown a duty to a greater humanity.
I think that is more important than

loyalty, e.g. to a bureaucratic oath, but
rather loyalty to universal principles.

So the next question is: how does that
relate to the people that are here

in the audience? How is it the case that
people who have access to systems

where they have said themselves they
think the companies they work for are

sort of questionable, or doing
dangerous things in the world?

Where do we go from people who
have done these things previously

to these people in the audience?

Julian: Well, I don’t know how much ground
you covered, but I think it’s important

that we recognize what we are, and what we
have become. And that high tech workers are

a particular class. In fact, very
often it’s ‘class hacking’…(?).

…class … a position to in fact
prompt the leaders of society…

[audio crippled, incomprehensible]

[audio crippled, incomprehensible]
mumble in the audience

laughter

Sarah: Should we just leave
him like that and continue?

laughter

laughter and applause

Julian: Am I back?
Audience and speakers: Yeah!!

Sarah: You’ve got three minutes!
To say something!

Julian: Alright!
Sarah: Make it good!

Julian: Those high tech workers – we are
a particular class and it’s time that

we recognized that we are a class. And
looked back in history and understood

that the great gains in human rights and
education etc. that were gained through

powerful industrial workers which
formed the backbone of the economy

of the 20th century, and that we have
that same ability but even more so

because of the greater interconnection
that exists now economically and

politically. Which is all underpinned by
system administrators. And we should

understand that system administrators are
not just those people who administer

one UNIX system or another. They are
the people who administer systems. And

the system that exists globally now is
created by the interconnection of many

individual systems. And we are all… or
many of us are part of administering

that system and have extraordinary
power in a way that is really

an order of magnitude different to
the power industrial workers had

back in the 20th century. And we can
see that in the cases of the famous leaks

that Wikileaks has done or the
recent Edward Snowden revelations,

it is possible now for even a single system
administrator to have a very significant

change to the… or rather apply a very
significant constructive constraint

to the behavior of these organizations.
Not merely wrecking or disabling them,

not merely going out on strikes to
change a policy, but rather shifting

an information apartheid system
which we’re developing

from those with extraordinary power
and extraordinary information

into the knowledge commons, where it can
be used not only as a disciplining force,

but it can be used to construct
and understand the new world

that we’re entering into. Now, Hayden,
the former Director of the CIA and NSA,

is terrified of this. In "Cypherpunks:
[Freedom and the Future of the Internet]"

we called for this directly last year.
But to give you an interesting quote

from Hayden, possibly following up
on those words of mine and others:

“We need to recruit from Snowden’s
generation” says Hayden, “we need

to recruit from this group because
they have the skills that we require.

So the challenge is how to recruit this
talent while also protecting ourselves

from the small fraction of the population
that has this romantic attachment

to absolute transparency at
all costs.” And that’s us, right?

So, what we need to do is
spread that message and

go into all those organizations.
In fact, deal with them. I’m not saying

“Don’t join the CIA”. No, go
and join the CIA! Go in there!

Go into the ballpark and get the ball
and bring it out, with the understanding,

with the paranoia, that all those
organizations will be infiltrated

by this generation, by an ideology
that is spread across the internet.

And every young person is educated
on the internet. There will be no person

that has not been exposed
to this ideology of transparency

and understanding and wanting to keep
the internet which we were born into free.

This is the last free generation.
The coming together of these

systems of governments, the new
information apartheid across the world,

and linking it together such that
none of us will be able to escape it.

In just a decade. Our identities will be
coupled to it, the information sharing

in such that none of us will be able
to escape it. We are all becoming

part of the state, whether we like it or
not. So our only hope is to determine

what sort of state it is that we are going
to become part of. And we can do that

by looking and being inspired by some of
the actions that produced human rights

and free education etc. by people
recognizing that they were

part of the state, recognizing their own
power and taking concrete and robust

action to make sure they lived in
the sort of society that they wanted to

and not in a hell-hole dystopia.

Sarah: Thank you!

applause

So basically all those poor people Jake
just made identify themselves, you have

the power to change more systems than
the one you’re working on right now.

And I think it’s time to take some
questions because we don’t have long left.

If there are any… I did… what’s the…

Herald: If you do have questions please
line up in the middle of the room.

We have microphones there.

If you cannot reach one, please put your
hand up and we’ll try to get one to you.

Julian: While we wait for the first
question I’d just like to say I’m not sure

how many people are in there.
It looks like that it’s quite a lot.

Sarah: Start going to the mike, even while
he’s talking, if you do have a question.

Cause otherwise we won’t know that you
have one, and we’ll just keep on going!

Julian: It looks like there’s
quite a … apologize …

Herald: Alternatively just raise your
hand, and we’ll try to go to you.

Julian: It looks like there’s
quite a lot of people there,

but you should all know that
due to the various sorts of proximity

measures that are now employed by
NSA, GCHQ and Five Eyes Alliance,

if you’ve come there with a telephone, or
if you have been even in Hamburg

with a telephone, you are all now coupled
to us. You are coupled to this event.

You are coupled to this speech in an
irrevocable way. And that is now true

for many people. So either
we have to take command

of the position that we have, understand
the position we have, understand

that we are the last free people, and the
last people essentially with an ability

to act in this situation.
Or we are the group

that will be crushed
because of this association.

applause

Herald: I’d say I think we
have a question at the mike 4.

Question: So you were talking about the
sysadmins here. What about those people

who are not sysadmins? Not only
joining CIA and those companies,

what else can we do?

Sarah: Jake, do you want
to have a go at that one?

Jacob: Sure.
Skype end-connection sound

So this is a question of agency, right?
Sarah: Good timing!

It’s a question in which one has to ask
very simply, what is it that you feel like

you CAN do? And many people that are
in this audience I’ve had this discussion

with them. E.g. Edward Snowden did
not save himself. I mean he obviously

had some ideas, but Sarah e.g., not as a
system administrator, but as someone

who is willing to risk her person.
She helped specifically

for source protection, she took actions
to protect him. So there are plenty

of things that can be done. To give you
some idea, as Edward Snowden’s

still sitting in Russia now, there are
things that can be done to help him

even now. And there are things to show
that, if we can succeed in saving Edward

Snowden’s life and to keep him free, that
the next Edward Snowden will have that

to look forward to. And if we look also
to what has happened to Chelsea Manning,

we see additionally that Snowden has
clearly learned. Just as Thomas Drake

and Bill Binney set an example for every
single person about what to do or

what not to do. It’s not just about system
administrators, it’s about all of us

actually recognizing that positive
contribution that each of us can make.

Herald: Okay. Our next question
will be microphone 2, please.

applause

Question: Hi Julian, I’m wondering, do you
believe that transparency alone is enough

to inject some form of conscience
into ‘evil’ organizations,

and if not, what do you
believe the next step

after transparency is?

Julian: It’s not about injecting
conscience. It’s about providing

two things: One, an effective deterrent
to particular forms of behavior

and two, finding that information which
allows us to construct an order

in the world around us, to educate
ourselves in how the world works

and therefore be able to manage
the world that we are a part of.

The restriction of information, the
restriction of those bits of information

colors it. It gives off an economic
signal that that information is important

when it’s released. Because otherwise
why would you spend so much work

in restricting it? So the people who
know it best restrict it. We should take

their measurement of that information
as a guide and use that to pull it out

where it can achieve some kind of
reform. That in itself is not enough.

It creates an intellectual commons
which is part of our mutual education.

But we need to understand – say,
if we look at the Occupy event,

a very interesting political event – where
revelations and perhaps destabilization

led to a mass, a very large group
of people wanting to do something.

However, there was no organizational
scaffold for these people

to attach themselves to, no nucleus
for these people to crystallize onto.

And it is that problem, which is an endemic
problem of the anarchist left, actually.

The CCC. Why are we having this right now?
Because the CCC is an organized structure.

It’s a structure which has been able
to grow, to accommodate the 30%

of extra people that have occurred this
year. To shift and change and act like

one of the better workers’
universities that are around.

So we have to form unions and networks

and create programs and organizational
structures. And those organizational

structures can also be written in code.
Bitcoin e.g. is an organizational structure

that creates an intermediary between
people and sets up rules between people.

It may end up as a quite totalitarian
system one day, who knows? But

at the moment it provides some kind of
balancing. So code and human structures

do things. Wikileaks was able to rescue
Edward Snowden because we are

an organized institution
with collective experience.

Sarah: Okay, I think there’s
one question left for me

that’s coming from the internet.

Signal Angel: Yes, on IRC there was the
question: What was the most difficult

part on getting Snowden out of the U.S.?

Jacob: Hah!
Julian laughs

Jacob: That’s quite a loaded question!

Julian: Yeah, that’s interesting to think
whether we can actually answer

that question at all. I’ll give a variant of the
answer because of the legal situation

it is a little bit difficult. As some of
you may know the U.K. Government has

admitted to spending £6 million a year
approximately surveilling this embassy,

in the police forces alone. So you can
imagine the difficulty in communicating

with various people in different countries
in relation to his diplomatic asylum and

into logistics in Hong Kong in a situation
like that. And the only reason we were

able to succeed is because
of extremely dilligent u…

video transmission freezes
audience uneasy

Jacob: Perfectly timed!
Sarah: And we didn’t use Skype!

laughs
laughter

Jacob: Do we have time
for one more question?

Herald: I think we ran out
of our time, I’m very sorry.

Jacob: That was such a fantastic, perfect
way to make sure that you didn’t learn

the answer to that question!
Sarah: Hehe, yeah!

laughter

applause

Herald: Unfortunately that is all
the time we have for this talk…

Skype sounds audible
laughter

From audience: …he wants to say goodbye!

Herald: …but I want you all, to still (?)
thank you: Jake Appelbaum! Thank you.

applause
I’m very sorry…

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