Tractors, Rockets and the Internet in Belarus

37C3 preroll music

Applaus

Boris: All right so everybody can hear me
very well. My name is Boris I'm part of the

ABC black cross Belarus and I will be
talking about tractors Rockets and the

internet and I have very short time so you
will see very few things of those. ne

thing we are in the saal G because I didn't
want to be in the saal Z. Z as it's kind of

like ideologically doesn't pass for people
in the Eastern Europe laughter, applause

yeah and yeah. We will have like a short
question answer section in the end. What

the [ __ ] is ABC-Belarus? Many of you
don't know, we are like an activist

Anarchist Collective that supports for the
last 15 years. People who ended up in

prison fighting dictatorship in the
country. Since our existence beginning of

our existence we never had any people or
we never had a situation where we never

had people in the prison so people are
constantly in prison in Belarus in the

last 15 years fighting the dictatorship. We
do solidarity work also with those who are

around the people who are in prisons so
their families and so on we also promote,

we we promoting we don't have so much time
left anymore, but before building up a

security culture so for the activists to
know how to go around the new mechanisms

of a dictatorship to suppress the
population. We do collect a little bit of

data from like the courts, so we see what
the government is using for example to

crack the laptops, we see all this [ __ ]
coming up in in the documents from time to

time and this is not a talk about our
group so you can check out our website and

see what is it about so tractors here they
are they don't always look like that

sometimes they look like that tractors
are one of the important parts of like for

you to imagine how Belarusian industry
looks like so after collapse of the Soviet

Union Belarusia Bellarus was and remained
like a zone of heavy and Light Industry

production of tractors but also we had
industry that was connected with war or

militarism of the Soviet Union right? So
there are factories that are producing

small chips for the rockets and [ __ ]
like that and this continues so partly

Russian war industry on Belarus in
production of the Rockets the situation

where you know Russian Rockets hit wrong
Target in Ukraine also connected with the

fact that Belarusian workers are stealing
precious metals from the factories. So

like those produced chips are working like
[ __ ] and we do have it but it's not like

Taiwan or something like that it's more
like imagine Soviet Union post Soviet

Union country that people are doing like
some outdated Technologies. Yeah. So those

are like the topic about the Rockets.
Belarus is participating in the war

efforts of Russia right now and it was
participating for very long in buildup to

the war, so helping producing enough
rockets and enough of the you know like

flying [ __ ] that goes to Ukraine right
now. However after collapse of the Soviet

Union Belarus became also very dependent
and it was dependent and became dependent

on Russian resources so oil gas and all
this [ __ ] comes mostly from Russia

economically dependent on Russia and
that's politically dependent as well.

Talking about Lukashenka, so belorus is a
dictatorship that ruled by this guy, next

year is 30 years anniversary. Lukashenka
and Technologies he's a very special

character you can do like lectures in
universities about his personality. I will

do a couple of quotes about how he
perceives Technologies and how he sees

himself in the technological World. For
example "we do not need an imported system

for falsifying elections, we will create
our own one run by the State" and thas is connected

with this notion that for the you know successful dictatorship you don't need some things, you can
produce dictatorship in the country yourself.

A lot of things that are happening in Belarus are homemade
shit. As a child I was groing among animals and plans, so he is

very close to the nature he thinks also
shows his like attitude to Technologies

and the last part is "I even don't have a
mobile phone I'm looking at other

presidents and see how they're preoccupied
with their iPhones I'm not doing that I

know what security is" and even more "I
have enough people who can do that for me".

And that's an important factor Lukashenka
knows how to drive a tractor, he doesn't

know how to operate iPhone most probably.
But he's he has this mentality that

understands okay I need enough smart
people around me who will help me to go

through the modern world and that's what
he's doing a lot. So he has quite a huge

let's say cabinet of people who are
helping him out to figure out the modern

world in a different directions
politically technologically wise

economically. Although Belarus is a
dictatorship it is a country that was for

many years a partner of the European Union.
It changed recently before 2020 protest

before the uprising of 2020 European Union
was cooperating with Belarus on the border

security, what they're doing also in turkey
and many other authoritarian regimes. So

for European politicians to protect the
borders build up a fences it's fine to

have like a bloody dictator that is ready
to kill people. So that's what European

Union was doing and that involved also
transaction of Technologies so for example

you go to the Belarusian border and you
get in controlled and you have this huge

x-ray machine that is going to x-ray your
car or whatever [ __ ] you have and it's

written like there's a plate that says
like this machine is financed by the

European Union and you think like wow
thank you European Union, you're like

really helping democracy in Belarus. So
European Union was also investing a lot in

the infrastructure projects inside of the
country roads and [ __ ] like that this

was connected also because Belarus is
Transit country so you need a lot of

Transit between Russia and Europe not
anymore but before it was the case right

everybody wanted to trade with Russia a
lot still do. Also some countries inside

of the European Union were supporting
police efforts in Belarus, there was a

huge scandal in Germany, that German cops
were bringing Belorussian Riot cops to

evictions of or like protection of
Gorleben transport like the nuclear waste

transport back in the days. So they
wouldn't have like Belorussian cops hitting

you you know but they would have them like
just sitting next to you and and watching

how the German cops are working and that's
where for example Belarusian cops learned

to film everything at the demonstrations
or at some events so they're also running

with these cameras and filming and then
post factum might apply repressions to the

people who were participating in the
protests. And some of the cameras were

donated generously by the German state to
the Belarusian cops. And there are many

more other money flows like ecological,
technological also private public

everything goes in Belarus, dictatorship
yes but I mean money you know that cross

the border easily. Very simple
Technologies to fight the population,

water cannons were brought from Canada so
we had this fancy water Canadian water

cannons. I will show you how Belarussian
people hacked those during the protests

very easy. Camera usage for documentation
as I was mentioning cops running around

with cameras all the time. This is they
what they learned from the German cops

there were like a new technologies that
were like mobile car Shields so they bring

it up to block the whole street. Russians
have like bigger machines belarusians have

smaller machines but in general the idea
is that you you have this kind of like a a

truck that brings a huge shield and you
block the whole street so protesters

cannot go through it. And crowd control
equipment from other countries like we had

tear gas from Czech and stun grenades from
Czech and Israelis and so on so like

everybody were delivering and providing
weapons to Belarus as if it's like sure

you know we know that you doing some [ __
] there but have it for you. But there are

some other funny you know like hacking
from Belarusian state so for example here

like during the protest people were
putting Flags like white red white flags

which were the protest Flags [ __ ] I have
to put the sound in one second, but it's

not really important what people was
laughing about him some laughs. So yeah

this is one of the hack that this is I
think somebody connected with the ban

State who was trying to remove the flag
then we have like this systems of

notification in the city that were used to
play like a patriotic music during the

protests which Belarusian state was doing
trying to like you know demoralize the

protesters looks [ __ ] bizarre and
crazy and that was the hacking part of the

Canadian water cannon. Belarussian people
are very creative you can see you love

hacking we all love hacking that's how you
hack the the water cannon.

Applause

Later on they stopped using them
because this what happened to them when

you hack them

Music yeah.

But they were they were very open for
hacking like nothing is closed you can

just open and take it away. Internet in
Belarus right, so this is a separate topic,

we we are the country of the post Soviet
so we didn't have internet for very long I

think like the general consumers market
for the internet opened like beginning of

2000s maybe middle of 2000s I got my
internet connection first 2004 - 2005 so

internet is a is a is kind of like a thing
that was developing very slowly but then

it exploded. One of the things was for
example internet like online

infrastructure was used for the protests
in 2005, wrong date, of the elections

so we had like a protest camp on the
streets and people set up an indymedia

media information point which was
broadcasting updates online life you know.

And this was one of the first situations
in Belarus where the website started

getting blocked. So Belarus in IND media
was the first attemp of Belarusian state

to fight certain content on the internet.
There was like mirrors there was a lot of

solidarity also from outside. So this
worked pretty well for the protesters

didn't work so well for the government. The
protest was smashed, but for a lot of

people the opportunity of organizing
through the internet became very obvious

and people started using it in mass. Later
on Belarusian State started blocking from

2016 Tor network with different success
of course like you can't block it with

tractors putting it on the road so you
need more sufficient you know like or

complicated systems and of course you
can't get them easily in Belarus from the

factories that are producing Rockets. You
can't hit the Tor network with the rocket.

So like they started searching for those
and you can see that like three years

Belarusian cops were going to security
congresses where like this private

companies was selling [ __ ] to anybody
pretty much and they were searching for

Solutions, there were like for 2014 I think
there was a hacking team Italian hacking

team leak where we figure out that
Belarusian state was trying to buy

something from Italians and stuff like
that, right? So at the end of the day they

got some stuff in 2016 and slowly started
applying more and more censorship in on

the internet, Anarchist websites
oppositional websites starting getting

blocked in 2020 this system like exploded
in Mass so we have like hundreds and

hundreds of the websites some of them like
you know islamist [ __ ] and and stuff

like that but some of them are legit
oppositional anarchists and stuff like

that that are blocked and you can't access
them through like a normal Network. Yeah

and right now because Belarusian state was
under attack for quite often from certain

groups, a lot of websites governmental
websites kind of created a white listing

just for belarussian IPs so you can't go to
the belarussian state websites from outside.

So a lot of people paradoxically left the
country live in Exile but use Belarusian

VPN to know if they're included in
extremist the terrorist lists. Yeah so one

more thing about Belarusian internet and
Belarusian like communication

infrastructure is sorm, some of you have
heard about it this is like a saying that

was developed for many years and there are
different versions of it and it's pretty

much backdoor like legal back door to put
into the networks of the communication

providers before it was just a
cell network now it's also

internet Network and so on internet
providers you just put a black box and the

cops somewhere on the other side of the of
the country can have access to your

network directly and they can see all the
what is happening on the network and they

you know like clone easily IDs and so on
and so forth. So they are like owning

pretty much the net the private networks
of the private providers also what is not

mentioned on the slides Belarusian
internet is in one way or another is

governmental so you have like one exit for
the internet to the outside world and this

is controlled by the state and all the
private companies that are working with

the internet are actually like renting
internet from the state and then reselling

it to the private biders. Internet
censorship. So I was telling you that they

were going and buying [ __ ] on the market
one of the things that kind of blew out

and we figure out in 2020 was this company
sandvine you might have heard about it

they were selling pretty much the the gear
the hardware for for censoring traffic in

the first days after elections. But the
network was set up already for longer so

it was not like s Vine is rushing into
Minsk and on the day of Elections but

rather this was sold for some years before
and the Belarusian and state was successfully

using it and on the day of Elections like
we lost internet connection for most of

the country. There was also coming a lot
of assistance days following that from

Russian and Chinese government who would
try to you know nav help to navigate

Belarusian government through the fact
that they basically shut down not only

like a protest infrastructure but their
own infrastructure because a lot of their

own [ __ ] was dependent on the internet
and that was one of the reasons why

internet was returned to Belarus three
days later as a lot of repressive

infrastructure was not working for the
state. Yeah so those were very supportive

of Belarusian regime and they're still
doing that but there were some also

private companies that were helping
Belarus to deal with the protests

Microsoft I mean there is a lot of pirated
Microsoft installs but Skype server

infrastructure was used for prosecuting
protesters, this was very handy so you

would have a court, where there will be
like just a computer standard, like it's

not really technological country so much
right? So in the court there will be a

laptop and there would be like a guy in
the Mask who would be a witness in the

case of the of the protesters and it takes
around like 2 minutes to prosecute the

person for them to get like 15 25 days in
prison. The person leaves and then there

is a new case and quite often there were
like the same cops basically testifying

for the people on many on multiple
occasions and this provided a lot of

anonymity from one side for the
infrastructure of repressions because the

cops didn't ha:ve to be at the place and
they couldn't be identified but on the

other side it provided allso this kind of
like a mobility of repressions. You don't

need to bring another cop who would stand
there and he doesn't know what to read and

to say and so on and so forth. So this was
there and this was like Skype was not in

any way you know and Microsoft was not in
any way reacting how the Belarusian state

is using their services in the country at
that .Then we had cinezis, cinezis is like

a Belarusian company that was developing a
face recognition system and this smart

City [ __ ] and all the crap you can find
on the pages of the internet days. So one

of the products they had was keyboard and
this was basically like a life face

recognition system that they installed in
Minsk. And this keypod was used for

identifying also protesters during the
protests and also identifying High Target

like high political Targets in the city at
some point. So for example one of the

congress wars an anarchist was arrested
through like a common operation of keyboard.

That was telling the police that he's
there so they would follow him to the

place where he was living underground and
so on and so forth. So, face recognition

system worked pretty well in certain
situations right? They were also using

like their own face recognition system for
postprocess so they get images of high

resolution from Big crowds like 100,000
people and from there they would pick up

some faces of the protesters and this
would be like ending up in the court cases

of the people. So you would have like a
print out from keyboard system that was saying

okay we identify this person like this and
that. The CEO of the company is like a son

of the KGB agent so they had like a lot of
connections with the state and what else

is here? Like the company itself was
trying to present itself, we are like an

IT company that is doing just a you know
like a nice thing for everybody and make

people happy in Belarus. But reality was
different and we figured that also post

factum I think a month later there was a
bigger article published on what they're

doing and how they are basically like
helping out the Belarusian state to

suppress the uprising. And here we also
have a great Corporation Called Intel that

doesn't you know for whom money also
doesn't smell it's it's very funny because

intel was very proud of cooperating with
cinezis till 2022 even though cinezis was

on sanction under sanctions in the
European Union by that time but US was not

sanctioning. So when the fullscale war in
Ukraine broke broke out cinezis ended up

on US sanction list so intel was like okay
we we this is not good imagery for us, so

they deleted the keyboard page from their
website, where they were very proud of it

but if you search keyboard Intel it's you
still find a Chinese page like a page in

Chinese on the Intel website that still
does like all this [ __ ] advertisement we

are helping human rights and developing
Technologies and progress and blah blah

blah. So Intel is still partly proud of
cooperating with the repressive

organization in Belarus but only for the
Chinese market most probably. Social

networks, so there is like a certain you
know a hype around that telegram was used

a lot to coordinate protest and so on and
so forth but reality I mean and it was

but reality the other side of the coin was
that we ended up in quite a [ __ ] storm

because people could be identified through
the telegram or the way telegram is built

through IDs like the unique IDs that
are doesn't matter if you change the phone

number and so on and so forth. So a lot of
people ended up being prosecuted because

they did some [ __ ] on telegram and in
like the further we went after repressions

of the uprising the more ridiculous those
could be, like even putting you know a [

__ ] Emoji under information that a KGB
agent was shot during a raid would be

enough to start criminal prosecution
against you. So those things became very

problematic and at the end of the day
we've seen that Belarusian state is

observing not only telegram but also other
social networks. Telegram at that point

was not really cooperative with
belarussian State and they were still

selling like Durov was still selling this
you know image of we are like for the

human rights and for people and all this [
__ ] but by the time like a year later

we ended up with a situation when the
protest like died out that Durov started

blocking like telegram started blocking
certain website certain [ __ ] not

websites certain channels in telegram
that were for example dedoxing police or

documenting police violence and and court
cases and so on and so forth. So those

channels are for example like, there is a
channel that is called Belarussian

punishers that has a list of police
officers who were responsible for the

violence and this is blocked on Telegram
and you can't find it. Official point of

like telegram this is not us saying, they
said okay, Apple actually forced us to do

that but reality is that it goes both
ways. You know like you have to cooperate

with each other for this to to happen and
this was happening on one side on the

other side telegram was blocking also
channels of the same kind of groups in

Russia that were also dedoxing cops who
were using violence and who were

participating in repressions even after
the fullscale invasion. So we see a lot of

censorship and a lot of cooperation
happening after like the protest, so

during the the active phase like they
would be like yeah we standing with you

and you're almost one so we would like to
be with you but when you know they see

that the status quo is maintained they
start cooperating they start like

following the laws of the country even if
those laws are oppressive or doesn't make

any [ __ ] sense and so on and so forth.
Yeah and vkontakte, I think you know this

is like a social network in Russia, they
are like completely working with FSB and

and [ __ ] and Belarusian State also has
pretty much direct access on what you're

doing there. So there there were some
people organizing but for even like normal

people it became clear that like don't use
Russian social networks, this is like a

bad idea and then apparently you shouldn't
use Chinese social networks and maybe

don't use social networks in general
because a lot of them have like a

potential of repressions of not on the
individuals but the social movements and

and [ __ ] like that. Mobile phones and
data collection. So what did we figure out

during the protests and and the last years
cellebrite of course they are [ __ ] happy

to to sell themselves to any repressive
regime so Belarus is not an exception and

they they're they they were used they're
still used so belarusan state is still

buying cellebrite licenses through some
third party companies and I mean sanctions

is is a [ __ ] joke in general. And even
the companies who are saying we are not

doing that in most cases they are doing
that but through the third party. Data

dumps so through cellebrite but through
other certain other companies you just get

like a set of phones right and I don't
know there would be like 500 people

detained, there would be all the phones
confiscated and the cops would be dumping

all the data from those phones and then
you know like they wouldn't have a time to

go through this data at the point but then
you might be prosecuted in half a year

later for what they found from those
phones. And also you know like there is a

lot discussions during the Congress as
well and in general in the security

Community the strong passwords you know,
encryption is very important but we

figured out that you know encryption works
very bad if they're torturing you. And

that was the Belarussian like way to break
encryption, they didn't try to you know

make a technological way into this, but
rather they [ __ ] you up to the point

where you decide okay I rather die or I
give them the password and quite often it

worked pretty well and it worked also in
the way like not retrospectively but in a

in a threaten way. So you know, okay some
people were tortured to get access to the

encrypted drives and other people would be
like okay I give you the password without

torture. So encryption doesn't work
against torture in Belarusian State and in

many other cases and this is yeah it
doesn't matter how perfect your security

system built technologically wise quite
often the human factor is still the

the weakest link in the whole situation.
Then we had situations where the cops were

impersonating activists. Up to the point
where they were registering like for

example on the dating apps and putting
like naked pictures that they would get

from the data damps and so on and then
people would be calling those activists

hooking up with them and so on and so
forth. Sim cloning that's a huge thing

that I think people should [ __ ] like get
engraved in their like brain that's that

your phone and the SIM cards that you get
do not belong to you you are like

borrowing them from the companies and
quite often if the companies have or the

state has access to the companies then the
state owns those and that means the state

owns your [ __ ] phone number and that
means phone number is not unique

identification. So we had a lot of
situations where telegram accounts were

hijacked by the state just by you know
like cloning the SIM card and getting all

the access and normal person wouldn't put
a password on your account. Yeah so be

aware of that and please like stop using
that for your you know technological

things you're doing or software that you
are developing this is not a secure way in

any way. This also goes to Signal people.
Traffic analysis yes as I was mentioning

like the [ __ ] storm is there so they're
trying to identify what people are doing

and this might be also a reason for a
house rate or something like that if your

traffic looks suspicious. Resistance. So
resistance unfortunately is very low

technologically speaking so there's not so
much of like you know laser rifles and [

__ ] like that. But rather and and and
that's like unfortunately the story of

resistance against authoritarian regimes,
that normally even when the state has like

very sophisticated heat guns and [ __ ]
like that people end up on the streets

with the stones and sticks and that was
the case also in Belarus. However people

started learning Technologies very fast so
there were a lot of people who learned how

to use proxies, Tor, VPN, you see how the whole
usage of those Services spiked during the

protest and this is not like you know your
20 30 year old friends but rather like

older people 50 60 who were forced into
doing that, because they are interested in

joining the protest. So to be part of the
protest you actually have to learn how to

do those. We also figured out that mesh
networks although it's such a great idea

and maybe one day on the other planet it
will work out, but for your average

protester and average participant in in
like an anti-authoritarian uprising this

is not the case you can't [ __ ] get them
working and people are not really capable

of of using them. Destruction of
surveillance property so there were people

who would just go around and smash the [
__ ] cameras that was the way to resist

the facial recognition system. Hacking of
infrastructure so there were a lot of

different attempts and the biggest one I
think was hacking into the ID database

where which brought like a lot of other
stuff so there databases of all this

Belarusian citizens their criminal records
and and [ __ ] like that available to

certain groups right now and this gives
also opportunity to look into police

activity and what the cops are doing what
they own where they work and so on and so

Forth. The doxxing of the police officers
and regime functions like the judges and

other bureaucrats basically as I was
mentioning like on telegram you have this

whole list like thousands and tens of
thousands of people there is also a map so

you can have a look if you're living next
to a [ __ ] in your house who is like a

colonel of repression operatus or
something like that so this is also

helping a lot but it also build up a lot
of pressure on the police because police

apparently think if you know if you know
the address of the police officer most

probably you will go and smash his [ __ ]
house and kill everybody and so on, which

didn't didn't happen but it did provide a
certain pressure on the repression

apparatus. We also ended up with the
solution for like what do you do when the

cops torture you for your password for
encrypted hard drive, you break your hard

drive and sometimes maybe you wouldn't be
able to break your hard drive so you do

like this thing that they do in the movies
you know in US you break the screen. *some

laughs* Really bizarre right? But it works
the the point here and I'm not talking

about the laptop the point here is you
have a smartphone and there you have

something going on so if you smash it the
average Riot cob guy doesn't know what

what to do with it, so he can't torture
you to open it right it doesn't work. And

that was like a solution for a lot of
activist. So basically if you are in the

danger of being arrested you just break
the phone and you have this buffer time

when the cops arrest you put you in jail
and blah blah blah and this expert comes

who knows how to you know open the phone
that has a broken screen. And that's kind

of like a place where most of the torture
happens. So you're capable of avoiding and

the cops also figured out that pretty fast
so they started trying to get you arrested

before you break that and I have a story
like of a friend who you know like who was

laying on the ground and he was putting
his hand in the pocket and like smashing

the screen and he did it and the cops were
like how did you do that we were formed

sitting on you you couldn't [ __ ] move? So
these kind of things and these kind of

things I think saved at least a health of
certain people and also there was a lot of

online education where there were like
workshops for the people how to figure out

out their smartphone security their
telegram security and [ __ ] like that.

This is one of the examples of online
education that is not connected with the

security of the smartphones it is more
about production of new technologies

right? In Belarus not connected the
tractors and those are like just to

immobilize the police Vans. Yeah so this
this was a lot of this kind of online

education as well. The interesting fact
again that a lot of people were afraid to

put to do that online education because
eventually on many social networks you can

get banned for that, like if you put you
know how do you say a video how to make

molotov cocktail this is considered
illegal activity and you know your account

can be banned and [ __ ] like that and I
think people in not in the first World

figure that out a lot. Like people who are
in in Palestine and in many other places

figure that you know the repressions are
working from the private companies against

them when they're fighting against the
regimes. Conclusions so this is a small

sticker that says if you can't break the
dictatorship you can still burn it down.

laughter

Conclusions are very short.
There is a lot to talk about. Capitalism

is [ __ ] evil I mean hundreds of years of
this [ __ ] up story. I hope all of you

figured this out this is not really a [ __
] mystery, you know you don't have to come

from USSR indoctrinated by Marxism
leninism to know that capitalism is evil!

and capitalism
Many Applaus

And capitalism destroys lives not only
here you know like in in Germany in US or

whatever and your political life but it
destroys lives everywhere in Belarus,

Myanmar, Hong Kong, Syria like the [ __ ]
corporations and the [ __ ] private

business is ready to sell anything even
their [ __ ] mothers and brothers and

sisters to the dictators just to make
money. Your phone number is not a good ID

it's a bad ID don't [ __ ] use it ever
because it can be easily identified in

Germany as well in many other countries. It
is like it it's a [ __ ] like if giving a

passport. Just when you are registering
with your phone number just imagine that

you're giving a passport to some company
right?

Someone from the audience: taking
pictures.

Boris: Yeah password is a good thing,
still, many years after you can also

forget it. You get a concussion you forget
it, you get tortured you forget it,

password is good right? Surveillance is
good for the state bad for society so all

those corporations that are selling right
now also in Western world the business of

surveillance they are destroying the
social glue of the society and this is

like a different topic but but in general
like surveillance is destructive for us as

a humankind. Western private companies are
crucial for the dictatorship, we are not

living in the world where you know like
the dictators have horses and they are

riding them into the crowd and like w
hooray but rather a lot of technologies

that are used by the state by the
Belarusian state but also by Syrian state,

by Russian state are not the technologies
that were developed within the small

states by the local companies but rather a
lot of technologies that were brought in

and developed in this countries where we
are sitting you know? And they were

developed under certain freedom but at the
same time they are now used to engrave the

dictatorship and those dictatorships are
spreading like Russia wants to [ __ ]

conquer half of the Europe. So you have to
be aware of that and you have to like WE

have to fight that back. This is not you
know whether it is should be done or not

it is more like how much energy and how [
__ ] your ass should be on on fire to

fight those. Smart also doesn't mean smart
and by that I mean that a lot of Engineers

believe that they they you know they can
open a [ __ ] Wikipedia page, so they know

everything about the world. But it is not
the case a lot of Engineers fail miserably

in understanding how the world is working
how the society is working so if we

develop technological solutions to certain
problems we do have to work with

sociologists, political scientists with
activists to understand how those

technologies will influence the world you
know?

very many ovations

The time is [ __ ] running out and I'm not
talking about all only about ecological

catastrophe but also technologically
speaking. We are in the race with you know

the dictators and authoritarian regimes
who want to enforce and make their regime

stronger through Technologies, face
recognition systems and all this [ __ ]

that is making the state way stronger
against the society so yeah, get your [ __

] done and get your [ __ ] like going
already now today, you know. And digital

resistance is part of a broader Uprising
so do not see yourself you know as a

hackers community that exist in isolated
world and you're in a bubble and [ __ ]

like that but rather if we want to stop
like technological dictatorships or

whatever [ __ ] you can imagine we
actually have to work together,

technological activists, Street activists,
Community organizers all of those get

together and fight against the
dictatorships fight against the

authoritarian attacks on us, on our
society, on our families, on our friends

and only then we can win thank you!

Applause

Engel: I have one more thing ...
Boris: And don't forget to donate to our

group, we are not like getting money for
ourselves we're collecting money for the

political prisoners so don't forget to do
that this is an important part of just

supporting the struggle.
Angel: Yeah Applaus so we have a couple

minutes for questions but if you have to
leave, leave super quietly and also a

question is a short sentence with a
question mark behind it not a long essay.

You have chat GPT for that and we have a
question from the the signal Angel by the

way the microphones are up front here here
1 2 3 4 that's where you have to stand in

order to do a question signal Angel go
ahead.

Signal Angel: Yes the internet wants to
know what you expect Microsoft or Skype to

do for example blocking Belarus as a whole
or wouldn't that also negatively impact

the activist? What's your opinion on that?
Boris: I mean I don't think that blocking

Skype like or Skype stopping providing
services in Belarus would negatively affect

activist scene, nobody in activist scene
was using Skype right? On the other side

like you do have mechanisms of black
listing cord IPS at least you know like

this is Belarussian state is not you know
super sophisticated going to connect to

the [ __ ] bpn and [ __ ] like that, but
rather you block those and the court is

already not doing that. The thing with the
Microsoft and Skype is that it's story of

the past because right now they switched
to Viber so like this is this is gone,

like they did their part and nobody will
most probably remember that and I mean

honestly [ __ ] Microsoft. So...

few ovations

Engel: We're running out of time question
for Num 3.

-Okay I have a question how much would a
better and more secure VPN technology and

better anonymizing systems help in these
kinds of situations and what what has the

Bella russian State done against using VPS
into foreign countries?

B: I mean in the first days of the
protests in the first days of the uprising

the whole internet infrastructure was
gone. Like there were certain ways to go

around the blocking that were connected
with telegram proxies, I have no [ __ ]

clue how they managed to do it
successfully but they did and in general

like the internet was just not working. So
it doesn't matter if you have VPN and a

Tor, the internet doesn't work and later
on when they unlocked the internet they

were very slow in reacting to the fast
protest community so in those cases VPNs

very important somehow but for us at that
point the the local organizing and

providing infrastructure for the local
organizers was way more important. So also

like building decentralized networks
inside of the country sometimes is way

more crucial to the protests than getting
out to the services that are outside of

the country and that's what was happening
as well. But in general like it's still an

important part of fighting back like
having a reliable VPN or any other

anonymizing and like censorship circumsing
Technologies. How to develop those more

successfully? I have no [ __ ] clue
honestly. Because those like the fight

against those are going on very fast and I
like I can't answer this, I'm very sorry.

Engel: So we might be able to squeeze in
another two questions very briefly. on

number one.
-How bad is the suppression of the APC

Belarus activists and can you safely
reside inside Belarus without getting

arrested immediately or do you have to
flee into Exile?

B: Like in general not talking only about
us but the bigger political spectrum of

all the groups that are providing
solidarity work all of them are gone like

from Belarus. So all of the activists from
Liberal also human right defending groups

and so on had to leave and if you would be
identified as a member of such a group

inside of the country this would be enough
to prosecute you and to put I mean any

case they want on you. This is not a you
know like a legal state but rather they

prosecute you and that's it. And with the
case of activist Anarchist activists in

general there are laws that would allow
them to make a group extremist

organization that doesn't need a core
decision and through that you can get like

five six seven years in prison easily
without any other actions you know. And

this is happening to certain solidarity
groups already yeah. So we also have in

tomorrow in like a self-organized sessions
a bigger presentation another collegue

will be doing that about repressions in
Belarus about the political situation less

like focused on Technologies more focused
on social political situation so if you

want to know a little bit more about that
you can come there and ask your questions

and and [ __ ] like that.
Engel: I would suggest that for anybody

in the room but we will take one last
question very briefly from the Signal

Engel and then we'll have to call it quits
unfortunately.

Signal Engel: Yes another question
regarding the use of encryption. It is if

theography is used with to encryption or
instead of encryption in Belarus by

activists.
B: I mean we do not have so many people

who were like technologically savvy and
were participating in the protests that's

why nobody was hiding messages like that
but we did have like a collective for

example that developed a telegram app
that would have like a double I don't know

how it's in English like a double
something double like basically you have

two accounts in the telegram and one of
those accounts like is is is a very nice

fluffy you don't do anything and that's
where what the cops see and then you need

to put a password to get another one so we
got like this kind of hiding your activity

on the internet but this was I think like
the biggest people can imagine using on

their smartphones. In general like we have
to understand that technological savvy is

dropping right people when people are
using smartphones they know less about

Technologies than they did like 10 years
ago. So people are capable of doing less

and less and less yeah.
Engel: So that's all the questions we can

take please help me thank him for this
wonderful talk something we never and...

B: Thanks for doing it!

a lot of ovations

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