When Wikileaks bumped into the CIA: Operation Kudo exposed

rc3 preroll music

Herald: Welcome back on the Chaos-Sound
stage. I hope you had a great day so far.

And after the Algorave talk, we are happy
to we're happy to host a talk by Andy

Mueller-Maguhn. He is a long-time member
of the CCC. Now he is at Wau Holland

Stiftung, and he's also a data journalist.
And today he will tell us a bit about

things between WikiLeaks and the CIA. And
this talk is some kind of successor for

talks he gave previously. And but for all
the details, he will tell them by himself.

And yes, welcome Andy. And we're happy to
see what you can tell us. And all the

interesting details that are in your talk.

Andy: Thank you. OK. Good evening. So, I
named this talk "When WikiLeaks bumped

into the CIA operation Kudo exposed". So,
explain a bit later what that is. Just as

a reminder, the hacker community and the
CCC, even in its bylaws, one of the core

things has always been information wants
to be free. First sentence up the hacker

ethics brought a small snippet from Wau
himself where you will not hear the sound

at this moment due to technical reasons,
but where he talked about the hacking of

society through Freedom of Information. My
talk will have two parts, what happened so

far and what should be done now. In the
first part. I just want to refer a little

bit on the context of what I'm talking
about. So, this is about what happened

surrounding WikiLeaks in the context of
the CIA and the United States government.

Yeah, getting on them. I had two talks
about similar topics already in 2018 and

2019 at the ..., you know, unfortunately
also. No, that was still the last real

Congress. I talked about the technical
aspects of the surveillance. And you will

see one image that I needed to copy from
that again. Then last year, I talked a

little bit about the CIA versus WikiLeaks
to intimidation tactics. That was more

what happened to me and other surrounding
WikiLeaks. Now, in the meantime, this

year, end of September, came a very
important article in this context on Yahoo

News, that seems to have been doing that.
Some guys have been hired there, who

previously worked for Newsweek and others.
The article, from 26 of September, is

called Kidnapping, Assassination at the
London Shootout, inside the Secret CIA

Secret War Plans against WikiLeaks, and it
did reveal quite some things. It finally

referred to my talk. It links even to the
video of my talk. It takes some quotes

from it. It confirms a lot of it and adds
a lot. But it also frames and was framing.

I mean, there is some disinformation
that's poisoning that otherwise very

helpful article to understand what the
fuck was going on. So, what I'm trying to

do today is to reconstruct the whole thing
a little bit to reframe it and help

everybody to understand a little bit what
happened here. The Yahoo article

rightfully distinguishes the timeframe of
the interaction, so to say, between the

United States government and WikiLeaks
into four to five timeframes. One of them

at the beginning of the WikiLeaks project.
Or, let's say, before Snowden, so before

mid-2013, the Obama administration
authored the diplomatic cables had been

published by WikiLeaks, Afghan / Iraq War
Logs and so on were out. They had the view

that as long as some entity or some people
are publishing, are engaging and

publishing it in journalistic activity,
there's nothing they can do because First

Amendment of the United States
Constitution talks about the freedom of

publishing the freedom of speech, and a
freedom that does include journalistic

activity of all kinds. After the Snowden,
not revelations, but the fact that Edward

Snowden was getting from Hong Kong on the
way to somewhere else, but he got to

Moscow with the help of a WikiLeaks
editorial member, therefore in acting in

what you could call journalistic source
protection. However, that brought the U.S.

government to a slightly different view of
WikiLeaks. It didn't really like it, so

Obama allowed the intelligence community
to prioritize collection WikiLeaks, search

warrants, subpeonas, US National Security
Letters. So here we're not talking about,

as far as the article mentions, about the
legal investigation yet. This intelligence

work to, like they allowed them to get on
them? They also, in the context of the

Snowden revelations, now, where it wasn't
WikiLeaks, it was Glenn Greenwald and

Laura Poitras who had been given by Edward
Snowden the material, and they published

the material together with Guardian, Der
Spiegel, the others. I was also involved

with the Spiegel I should disclose.
However, they tried to relabel, not only

WikiLeaks, but also Glenn, Laura and
others from journalists away to like

information brokers. They tried all kinds
of definitions to circumvent the

protection of the United States
Constitution, you could say. That went not

that far. At least I have no actively
knowledge of a criminal prosecution

running against Laura and Glenn. However,
there were for sure intelligence

activities that they also reported on that
everybody who was involved in the

publications, as you might know from
history, the Guardian was later forced to

even destroy the computers where they had
put this Snowden material and so on. So,

that was quite some things going on. In
2016, the next, yeah, like milestone in

the change of the relations between the
United States government, WikiLeaks, to

say it nicely, was the publication of the
DNC emails that by the definition of the

National Security Agency, like they said,
this was Guccifer 2.0 was the Russian

military intelligence at GRU and that the
whole publication was with the intention

to hurt the interests of the United
States. This now is a first point where we

could sit back from our European
perspective for a little bit and say, wait

a moment. This was about leaking. I mean,
this was leaked emails. Or, however, let's

say it was emails that somehow got leaked,
obtained or otherwise, but in any way,

WikiLeaks published them. What the
discussion was about was how Hillary

Clinton had treated Bernie Sanders as the
other candidate of the Democratic Party,

and here obviously did not make it. She
made it. So, this we could call this

exposing the facts in the public interest.
But as I said, the United States, at least

National Security Agency and others seem
to have agreed that this was not intended

to harm the United States, not what
Hillary Clinton did, but what WikiLeaks

did in this publication. I think it's
important that we distinguish between how

we evaluate these things and how the US
government puts this into different

baskets or categories. However, then it
got much more wild, when WikiLeaks started

at the beginning of 2017 to publish, with
the so-called full seven series, documents

from the Central Intelligence Agency from
the CIA. Mike Pompeo was in charge of it.

I did talk about this at length, and I
want to repeat this last year, so he got

very upset personally because he was also
potentially personal responsible for it.

So, It was under his watch, so to say.
However, the framing aspect of the article

are worth having a brief look. The what
happened this year was so sad that the key

witness of the prosecution Icelandic guy
called Sigurdor Thordarson made it public

that actually he lied to the FBI and that
they fabricated part of the evidence based

on his lies. Also, they could have
verified things. He later even was

imprisoned for his multiple illegal acts,
and the Icelandic government saw it as

reason enough to declare him a danger to
society and therefore lock him up. And

that's not happening that easily in a
country like Iceland who normally people

are very calm and down to earth. However,
the article came just after, a few weeks

after, the publications on this fabricated
evidence. And it's fair to say that the

gravity of the Yahoo article was a lot
higher and a lot more was discussed than

about the fake evidence of the key witness
and so on. However, one other aspect that

was in the Yahoo article was a thing that
is, from my reading, and I've talked to

many people, there was no evidence for
this whatsoever. The Yahoo article claimed

that there was the Russian government also
having like kind of officers in front of

the Ecuadorian embassy or in the immediate
surrounding, preparing to help Julian to

evacuate him, so to say, from England to
sneak him out, as the article says.,

Russian intel preparing to sneak Assange
out of the UK. And this is a little bit

wild and it's double wild when you or when
one looks at how the involvement of the

Russian government, how that upsets
American people, the American media and so

on. This is such a polarized environment
where the moment the Russian government is

declared to be involved, it changes
everything. What's happened really here

with something different and that is that
Julian had, in cooperation and in

coordination with the Ecuadorian
government, found a way to legally leave

the embassy and the United Kingdom by
becoming first an Ecuadorian citizen, then

an Ecuadorian diplomat, and then in theory
he would have been able to leave the UK

because a diplomat on the way to a
different working place has, under Vienna,

diplomatic assurances, is immune from any
kind of interference. However, the article

does reveal some aspects of what happened.
For example, the kidnapping plans, the

assassination plans that the US government
considered the CIA played through ways to

kill him in the embassy, to poison him, to
kidnap him from there. This kind of

extreme acts did not happen, and the
article claims that, you know, justice

prevailed. White House lawyers had doubts.
The National Security Council and the

heads of the Senate and House Intelligence
Committees ensured that this wild ideas

because they were not compatible with the
legal framework, not even with that of the

United States, that that did not happen.
So, the article gives you kind of this

American song melody of, yeah, we had some
wild things at the CIA going on, but you

know, we are a democracy and we stopped
it. However, there were some actions that

where, according to the article and the
witnesses and lawyers I talked to, well

caught out, extensive spying on WikiLeaks
associates dealing with electronic

devices. Then there were things there we
could talk about, like the article claims

that, to what was also carried out, sowing
discord among the group's members. So now,

if anyone of you is longer than a few
weeks in a CCC- like hacker club or

working for a journalist organization or
working in any other group. I mean,

according to my little experience, there's
quite a fight-club atmosphere out there

for a while, and I'm personally, I
wouldn't always be able to distinguish

between is this now a CIA operated, you
know, group fight? Or It's just normal

group dynamics. People don't like each
other, people having disputes, people

having different ideas how to do things
and so on. So, I would suggest you take

this kind of claim with a grain of salt.
Not every dispute among a group has been

created by the CIA. Also, I'm very
generous on bashing them. However, they

also talked at some point they changed the
whole context of Julian and WikiLeaks from

a target of collection to target of
destruction. Well, for sure, some things

happened there, but this is not what I can
go into detail. So far, no detailed report

on it. However, the project I talked about
that Julian would get legally out of the

embassy as a member of Ecuadorian
diplomatic staff is coming together in a

very it's like the most critical time
frame also, according to the article, and

that we were able, that we were going
through with the lawyers to log files of

the embassy security service, the videos
and so on. So, we have been able to

identify the timeframe and the timeframe
is the 16th of December 2017 until the

26th. This is the most critical timeframe,
because, around the 16th, he was

officially not only declared a diplomat,
there was a publication in the Ecuadorean

like a legal "judge set" or what it's
called. So like the legal publication in

Ecuador to have him declared. He had,
around the 21st, the head of the

Ecuadorian intelligence visiting him. So,
that means he also had the diplomatic

passport. It was fully, formally done.
There was a discussion of the process and

this meeting on the 21st I had mentioned
it in my talk last year was the most high

priority conversation that ever happened
in the embassy, at least as far as we know

from the witnesses of the security service
who later revealed to the court that they

had been, yeah, instructed on behalf of
the CIA to do other things than to protect

the embassy, but to spy on Julian. So this
meeting on the 21st was extremely

important to the Americans, and we do know
roughly that the whole story ended through

various means, but mainly to pressure on
the on the Ecuadorian government in Quito,

in Ecuador, around the 26th when they
actually called the plan off because the

Americans knew about every detail,
including how he would get out of the

embassy, in what type of car and so on.
And they also then at some point denounced

his diplomatic status after pressure from
the United States government. And in this

time frame, I make here a little bit of an
event matrix, which is completely

incomplete. I have to say this many things
missing for legal, for other reasons. You

know, some things are just too wild. The
U.S. government, for example, would never

break into a European law office, right?
We can. That's bullshit. That's conspiracy

stuff. They don't do these things. They,
of course, comply with the law. However,

we have some events that are funny and fit
well into our picture, for example, that

after on the Saturday, the lawyers from
Spain and England were sitting together

with Julian that two days later, in
preparation of that meeting on the 21st

came the fire protection service into the
embassy. And those who seen my talk last

year know that one of the fire
extinguishers placed in the meeting room

had the main role for holding a bug.
However, I'm coming to that than we have

this observation that every day in this
time frame, there was a silver gray Ford

car with sometimes two, sometimes three,
sometimes more people sitting outside the

embassy, seeming obviously to wait for
instructions. Something to happen. I'm

coming to that and we have other things
going on at that timeframe, that kind of

fit into the frame. So on the, ... I
selected three events to talk about them a

few minutes. The first is this fire
extinguisher. 19:26 Here you see it and in

on the right picture, you're seeing the
black bottom of the fire extinguisher.

That's where they had a magnetic little
box with an audio microphone, I mean,

audio bug in it, that seemed to have not
only recorded, but also transmits the

conversations, in life, to the American
intelligence outside. Funnily, this, ...

on the 18th comes a company, not even from
London, the Iceland Fire Protection

Limited, a guy and goes into all the rooms
in the embassy to check the fire

extinguishers. Now, according to the
lawyers, there had been intensive

discussions with the employees, and David
Morales, the owner of U.C. Global, the

company that was originally hired to
protect the embassy, is known to have

talked to his people and emailed them,
mentioning that the Americans want also

that all the other rooms at some point to
be bugged and want access to the fire

extinguishers. We don't know exactly what
happened in that discussion to the last

detail, but we know that on the 18th came
this British company. And this is a little

bit crass, and I think there will be many
other embassies of other countries who

will be interested to check if they don't
are maybe serviced by the same company.

Now, the other nice event that I selected
is the night from the 23rd to the 24th.

So, the very morning, early morning hours
on the 24th of December morning, Christmas

morning, so to say, where you have the
three guys sitting in the car and on the

back seat on the right side, someone reads
the briefing notes, I will show you the,

oops. Don't tell me this. Hopefully it
works. OK, great. The video doesn't work.

I'm sorry. I can't show you the video
today. Maybe courtesy of the CIA, however.

So, the guy in the back seat browses
through the briefing notes, and we have

been able to at least read part of what
they have been, ... what this briefing

notes say. It says this page that we have
been able to read mostly was in the event

of loss of camera coverage. So, there was
a process to be established when the

surveillance cameras in the embassy
wouldn't deliver pictures anymore and the

guys outside a sitting partly, according
to the article, the British police guys

with guns, eight people, maybe without
guns, would be ready to jump into the

scene. Crash diplomatic cars, shoot into
tires of cars that would try to bring

Julian away, and so on, indicates which
way he would walk out. And so there's a

few key words here that I just want to
emphasize in the event of lots of camera

coverage standards, then there is talking
about something called GS7 that might be

code-word for CIA or something different.
MET is clearly the Metropolitan Police.

That's a normal acronym in England, and
they talk about the context of the

operation Kudo. So we looked up the word
Kudo. Kudo is something saying roughly

like friendship. So, we have to assume
this was a joint British American

operation, and that's exactly what the
Yahoo article describes. However, what it

does not describe is the legal
implication, because this could well be

one of the most or best well documented
breaches of the Vienna Convention,

basically saying that the premises of the
mission shall be inviolable, which is,

normally means that you shall not bug, you
shall not, you know, put surveillance

devices, cameras, hidden cameras or
whatever. You shall not hack into the

camera surveillance system, of an embassy,
asked to host state and so on and so that

intelligence do it and that the CIA was
doing it. In the case of the Ecuadorian

embassy, it's already part of a Spanish
lawsuit. However, the dimension is a

little bit different, as the British
police seems to have access have had

access to that video surveillance, and
that is potentially legally different

thing. That will be subject to some legal
steps going on in the next weeks and

months. The third event I selected for
relaxation issues is on the last day. You

see here two police officers carrying an
astonishing amount of eight cups of coffee

for a relatively small police car. That
gives you an idea what was going on there.

The British police being prepared to set
aside the conference room is about in the

area where there was a trash bag on the
left side is so giving you an idea of how

intense the British police was also on the
scene outside. So, what is currently

happening with this and a lot of other
material? Is, well, checking the violation

of the Vienna Convention then parsing
together many of the events and observing

patterns and trying to see those patterns
at other places. As we, of course, still

do not know the full scope of the
operations of the CIA and other

intelligence agencies against WikiLeaks.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, what

happened in London, but also to see where
other journalists were other citizens,

where other governments, organizations,
whatever were may be targeted with same or

similar ways and methods. So this brings
me to the second part of my little talk.

The question what needs to be done? So,
and I tried to first invite you to a

little reflection because, as some of you
might know, Julian Assange presented the

WikiLeaks project in the CCC Congress, end
of 2009. If I recall correctly, he made

another talk in 2010. This was very much a
project of the hacker community and it was

highly welcomed at the time because it was
like combining the idea of Freedom of

Information, which had always been and
sharing information which had always been

the spirit of the hacker scene with those
of journalists and democratic, yeah, think

tanks to ensure that we would have
actually an informed society, not just

this very weird concept of an information
society which does not really say anything

between the relationship between
information and society. But an informed

society is a clear picture, I think. And
therefore, the better wording. So, the

other question is, of course, is what?
What does this whole thing? This what we

have been reading in the article and what
we're now a step by step here revealing

and starting to understand. What does it
tell us about the United States

government's prosecution, of DOJ, Pompeo,
the CIA, all these people? How (competent)

are they really to decide to society that
is based on an informed electorate, like

the people making decisions based on
knowledge and voting based on knowing

what's going on? And that's slightly
disturbing, I think what we what this

thought brings us to. So, here's my little
ideas, and then I will just come with some

questions to the audience. So, yeah, what
can we do and what maybe should we do?

This is, here, just some ideas of mine.
While we could, of course, hope that the

United States, the people of the United
States, the government of the United

States would understand that core
democratic value was attacked here when

going against Assange, WikiLeaks and so
on. So in theory, we should, we could hope

that the self-healing or the self
understanding and mechanisms of the United

States society will stop this madness
because they will see, Hey, wait a moment,

this is our constitutional First Amendment
that we are attacking here indirectly. And

if we don't have like the publishers,
right, journalists and publishers right to

inform the public, then we have nothing.
Well, the second, obviously, level would

be to dissolve the CIA. Yeah, I mean,
Kennedy had this idea before, shatter it

and the wind and so on. But I don't know
how at least this shall continue with that

budget, with the information operations,
with the influence operations, where

actually "wag the dog" is just a tiny
little aspect of it. Because the question

is how shall a democratic government work
as long as there's an intelligence agency

that has all the knowledge about every
person involved in all the little

compromat boxes and the aspect of how to
nudge and how to influence and how to

manipulate and so on? Well, and then the
third aspect outside the United States,

here in Europe, is of course, the question
of how can we immunize those people,

entities governmental organization and so
on where it still seems possible to

understand that this is core, that
journalism and the right to inform the

public by making also information and
material public that governments,

corporations or whoever would like to keep
secret? But if that documents are playing

a role in informing the public in the
public interest and it must be allowed to

make it public, and that was what's called
the Fourth Estate or the right of the

press to inform the public. Yeah, how can
we do that? That of course, more a

question. And and here's my list of
questions that I will want to address to

the audience. We should have 20 minutes
and maybe a few seconds for a discussion

of this. So guys, how do we get Assange
out of jail? Ladies and gentlemen, how do

we do it? How do we stop the
criminalization of journalism and those

who ensure access to information in the
public? Is this in order to achieve an

informed society? That's our duty I fear.
How do we ensure a value driven community?

So, as everybody knows, the CCC had always
different factions. The political and the

technical factions then came at some point
a party, the event and hedonism aspects

all together. And we had a great fun time.
But I'm not sure that we also took care of

ensuring that we are value driven
community all the way. I mean, when we

look at this year and the NSA methods
that's obviously some kind of atmosphere

between those who work in the I.T.
security industry and those who maybe then

take offers from the intelligence
community. And that's not the spirit of

the hacker ethics, and that's not just the
spirit of the CCC, and that's not the

spirit of an informed society that people
with money who instrumentalized technology

people and. You don't have to like look at
the CIA as the most crass, may be entity.

It starts with the so-called Open
Technology Fund. I mean, we had various

years the ability to observe how the Tor
project had its issues between the two

worlds of the US government having this
and that ideas and our community having

other ideas of how anonymization works.
And I'm not sure we can say that our

values have been preserved and we have
ensured that OTF finance projects do not

serve just some funny governmental
interest. And when it was relabeled partly

from internet freedom to circumvention
measures that I think gave already some

ideas on what could go wrong if, yeah,
governments start to fund projects of the

so-called hacker scene. Yeah, so, this is
my questions to you guys. How do we get

him out? How do we ensure our society
stays intact and democratic? And how do

we, as a scene, avoid to be corrupted by
governmental money and funny interests?

And I hope the moderation cannot take over
and provide some answers from the

audience.

Herald: All right, thank you very much,
Andy, for your talk. Let's see how this

will work. Thank you, also, for your
questions to the audience.

Andy: I will try, in the meantime, to fix
this video and make it this one minute, 23

seconds video.
Herald: All right.

Andy: I can show it, but maybe you can
start to take the questions.

Herald: Sure, yeah, and yes, so let's say
to the audience, please put your possible

answers to Andy's questions in the chat. I
will. I will follow them as good as I can.

And so that we can have a lively
discussion. I know it might be a little

bit limited because in a presence
Congress, it would be easier to interact

with it with each other. And. But yeah,
let's see that. And but first of all,

maybe Andy, if you have the capacity for a
question from the interwebs. Then the

question would be, how did you obtain the
pictures and camera footage from the

embassy?
Andy: Well, this has to do with a legal

analysis of this material. I'm myself, by
the way, you could switch on the video if

you wanted. Well, I am myself accusing the
Spanish company to have spied on me and

other colleagues, and so I'm part of that
legal proceedings. As as such, I'm also

helping the lawyers to obtain the
technical evidence. There was a shitload

of digital evidence confiscated that
needed forensic examination and so on. So

this is material accessible to those who
have been affected by the illegal

activities performed by U.C. Global and
others.

Herald: All right. Then there's also the
question of are there pictures of the four

or the people inside it, but I think
that's pretty much a part of the video you

have just shown or is there something
different?

Andy: Is it? I'm sorry, I don't see what
is being broadcasted. Do you have access

to my sliding-to-the-streaming-laptop?
Herald: OK, yeah. I guess that

Andy: This is the full video where you can
see the guys reading the briefing notes on

the back seat. We have been able to zoom
in at (unintelligible) and so on.

Herald: And yeah, where the question was,
where did you get it from? But I think you

already answered that in the previous
question, because ...

Andy: That's no answer to my question.
What should we shall do, guys? laughing

Herald: Yeah. So, we have one line of
feedback, for example, that, uh, how to

get Julian Assange out of jail. One
proposal is "ask our foreign minister,

give Julian German citizenship", make it a
"Chef-Sache". So, part of the part of the

chancellor. Uh, that's what it means in
German, in every German activities.

Question mark? Would that work?
Andy: Mm hmm. It's being worked on. I

mean, the new we have a new foreign
minister who is a woman from the Green

Party, and she seems to be very much a fan
of United States German relationship. I'm

not sure how much she sees about a lack of
values that the U.S. government represents

watching the history of the U.S.
Constitution and so on. But I'm sure there

is a lot work to be done there, and the
Green Party used to be also interested in

a society and stand for human rights and
so on. So I would say, yes, it's

definitely it is a path to go.
Herald: All right. There's also a

question, are you so be you personally
still under surveillance? Do you know?

Andy: Well, I've taken some legal and
technical measures, and the German

authorities have some evidence I provided
to them still in their analytical labs and

so on. It's a little bit unrealistic to
assume that the Americans would not

continue watching those who surrounded
Assange and WikiLeaks it as a member of

the Wau Holland foundation, and we finance
the, ... we financed many of the

publications and things or aspects of the
publication. So, it would be unlikely that

the US lost interest. But at least for the
moment, they seem to behave a little bit

more, especially after the Yahoo article.
I think it became very obvious also to the

German authorities what was going on. So
the article was helpful. It's just that

some aspects of the article are just pure
rubbish and disinformation that try to

smoothen it up a little bit.
Herald: Mm hmm. All right. May I ask you

to, maybe, just also bring up again the
slides with your questions, so we will

have to put
Andy: Just a second.

Herald: I think this will help to spark a
bit of discussion also.

Andy: Sure, good point. ...Seem to need to
browse through. Here are the questions.

Herald: All right, thank you. And, uh.
Another answer to how to get him out of

jail is "Keep talking about Julian Assange
and the public attend vigils". I don't

know what that means. Actually, uh, write
articles, write comments. Call the

Department of Justice, talk to
politicians. Communicate." So this is this

is one answer. Like, like keep, keep the
word out.

Andy: Yeah. I mean, let me briefly try to
interact with whoever gave that

suggestion. I think it's well known that
in Germany, in France and some countries,

there was quite some campaigns going on at
the last months, quite some people on the

street acting for Julian and a series of
events and so on. Also, a little bit in

England, but England seems to be a very
tough under two aspects. The one is that

they don't have that of a self
understanding of a country with a

constitution guaranteeing freedom rights,
You know the United Kingdom does not have

a constitution and it doesn't have what's
called constitutional rights. It does have

similar statements, but they are not as
clearly defined and as a value system of a

democratic society. So, most British
people, if you ask them to do something

for freedom of press like the press, these
assholes, what should I do something for

them? It's all very complicated and a bit
polarized over there. So but then the

other aspect is that the UK government, to
say it bluntly, there's quite some people

who say that the UK government does what
the US government says. And in this case,

there is no way, according to that
interpretation, that you can avoid the UK

government handing Julian over to the
Americans. So, the problem needs to be

addressed in the US. And Germany and other
European countries have a different

history, obviously, and I'm at least sure
that if Julian would be in Germany, I'm

not sure he would be not having any
issues, but there would be a different

discussion. However, the question how the
so-called old Europe or the continental

Europe that is now even more ignored,
after a bitter exit from the Brits, can

have any influence here in England, I
would say forget it on the US. It's more

complicated. But for the moment, it seems
that similar to what happened to Julian

and WikiLeaks in our own community, that
there was quite a time-frame when the

reputation to character assassination had
took on so much that actually he was seen

as as a persona non grata more or less.
The United States political atmosphere is

even more complicated and more polarized
between left, right and nuts, and whatever

that, it seems a very tricky task to bring
some sense into that discussion. As long

as you have the military intelligence
apparatus and Hillary Clinton saying,

like, "hang him on the highest trees". So
there seemed to be quite, and that's also

mentioned in the Yahoo article, a revenge
aspect of the United States legal system

here. Not only Pompeo, that want to, yeah,
basically, to kill Julian as a symbol that

no one should ever try to reveal the dirty
laundry of the United States. So yeah,

this is a bit tricky and we will need more
ideas and how to also initiate a better

discussion in the United States, maybe.
Herald: Mm hmm. Related to that. Another

answer we got was, for example, of how to
how to stop the criminalization of

journalism. And maybe also other question
of these questions is a vote for the right

people. And uh, while it probably can help
for some things, and what comes to my mind

is, I mean, indeed, in this and also other
prosecutions and trials, very often there

are some, uh, some ancient laws involved
on those grounds. People could get

prosecuted, right? Isn't it, for Julian?
There is. There is the Intelligence Act,

or what's the name of...?
Andy: It is called the "Espionage Act". So

basically what the U.S. prosecution does
is there's a so-called secret grand-jury

that might have even more investigations
running against Julian, and WikiLeaks than

that what has been put into the
extradition inquiry to the U.K. at this

point. However, that one already accuses
him to violating the Espionage Act, not

declaring him having spied for another
country, but funnily having revealed

secrets to the American public and to the,
of course, public of other countries.

That's what they call espionage. That's a
little bit ridiculous. And it is, however,

even more of a concern watching the fact
that a U.S. journalist would be able to

claim the protection of the First
Amendment, the right of freedom of speech

and the right of publishers and
journalists and so on. However, they deny

that because he's not a U.S. citizen. So
the US partially exports their laws and

says, Well, you violate that against this
American law called the Espionage Act, but

they do not grant him the protection of
the U.S. legal system. And that is, to

call it hypocrisy is, I'm sorry, is too
nice. This is just really fucked up.

Herald: Mm-Hmm. OK. Shouldn't, try to get
rid of, maybe like, the Espionage Act or

or at least...
Andy: I am all for it. Dissolve the CIA,

get rid of the Espionage Act. I'm all for
it. I just fear that at least part of our

community will have to become, I don't
know, lawyers, lobbyists. Maybe we need to

look for better communications with the US
hacker scene and see if they can kindly

get into political consciousness mode and
get for a moment distracted from

technology developments into society
development and see what can be done to

ensure that in the future, we have the
right as a citizen to know what's

happening in our name by government and so
on.

Herald: Mm hmm. All right. Yeah, because
for example, I remember a couple of years

ago, I don't know whether it was in the
2013, the year of Snowden or later where

we also had a talk at Congress about the
German post surveillance, for example,

where back in the,... I think it was the
seventies. Uh, where we had the "Nato

Truppen-Statut", got into play. But there
was a verbal note from the from the forum

to the German government who told the
allies, Well, we will be part of the "Nato

Truppen-Statut" and all but don't be
afraid you will be able to have these

powers. And as before, under Allies law,
you could say, and only after this, uh,

the information the the investigative
journalism of I think it was a historian.

(...His toleration?...) Exactly. Mr
(...Fischer-Bot...). But uh, only after

that came out, uh, to government had to
say, OK, well, we want to stop this. And

now this at least officially is over.
Andy: Well, I mean, it's not really over.

Germany is still a member of NATO, and
these regulations are still in place. And

just to have it said, I mean it. The vault
7 revelations. If you look at the

publications of WikiLeaks, you will see
the modules the CIA had developed to make

software, a Trojan, a malware, whatever
kind of manipulations, to look like, it

was coming from a specific country
timezone. So to make a malware or attacks

on it systems make them look like they
come from Russia, China, Iran, you name

it. North Korea issued a list as well. And
this is the scenario we're looking at

already. If you if you look at the news,
what happened the last years, we had all

these attacks, it was Russia, it was
China, it was Iran, It was North Korea

must probably have forgotten some other
people who it was blamed on. But the

discussion that the CIA would be having
the tools to make attribution misleading

to a country. So what's called a false
flag operation in military terms is

creating a scenario where exactly we as a
NATO member are now looking into military-

like conflicts again, because the media
environment has been so poisoned with, "it

was those guys and those guys hacking our
I.T., our parliament, our, you name it".

This worries me. It worries me that we as
a technical community have not spent more

attention to avoid the media environment
was able to like, create again just

paintings of enemies and create an
atmosphere where war between countries

seems possible again. And that's something
that's deeply disturbing to me. And I

think this is something we have to work on
more as a community also to ensure that

technical knowledge is not abused for
like, yeah, political games by withholding

information.
Herald: Mm-Hmm.

Andy: And what I should mention is, yes,
we are only having about two minutes left

here, something I didn't agree to be
available for a little discussion and a

whistleblower tent that's somewhere in
that virtual world. And the audience will

hopefully find it.
Herald: All right.

Andy: So then or whatever it's called.
Herald: Uh, sorry, and once once again,

what's the name of the of the whistle
blowert tent..

Andy: Of the dog whistle blower village?
Herald: Okay, all right. So go out to the

whistleblowers tent. And so after after
this talk. And so maybe one last question.

Is it possible to sue the UK government
for the treatment of Assange before the

European Court of Human Rights?
Andy: And it's a little complicated.

What's happening right now is I don't
think other talks have covering it is that

Julian tries to avoid his extradition and
there is specific aspects of this which he

might at some point be able to address at
the European Court of Human Rights. That,

in theory, could stop his extradition, but
only if specific criteria are met, met and

so on. How much now the UK government will
listen to it after the Brexit, and so one

is its end due to political atmospheric
reasons. That's a little tricky. The

European Court of Human Rights is not part
of the EU agreement, so it doesn't matter

that the UK stepped out of the EU, but it
is still an instrument of Europe and not

of the friendship between the United
States and Great Britain. So. The

atmosphere of the British government does
not suggest at this moment to be overly

sensitive to anything coming from
continental Europe to say it carefully.

And that's pretty bad. All right, so,
yeah. Thank you, Andy, for your for your

talk. For everyone who's interested in to
form a discussion with you, please go over

to the whistleblower. Talk on this channel
at cos it's on the stage. The next talk

will be reproducible building network
infrastructure by Astro, which will start

at 9:30 p.m.. So tune in for the next
course on a talk as well. And that's it

for now. Thank you.

rc3 postroll music

Subtitles created by c3subtitles.de
in the year 2022. Join, and help us!