Citizenfour QA Session

... wanted to be able to use

Thunderbird and GnuPG together with Tor,

and so we thought:

oh, it would be really easy, I bet,

to configure Thunderbird to work with Tor

- hah - so a new Free software project

was born.

It's a really simple thing, but basically

it's just a package

that hooks it all together.

So a lot of people were using Thunderbird

and TorBirdy, and GnuPG, and Tor,

and Debian, together for email,

combined with Riseup as an email service.

So it's a literally a real peer to peer,

Free software driven set of things,

actually, that made it possible.

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

process was exactly how the documents were

handled, and maybe that's because nobody

wants to say, but, you know, did you leave

them on a server somewhere and download

them, hand them over to people, and who

took what where, and how do you...

in case I need to do something really

dangerous with a load of documents,

what's the best way of doing it?

Hmm!

It's a good thing

this isn't being streamed.

I'm sorry, what?

There was a voice from god,

what did she say?

I said good we aren't streaming tonight.

Oh yeah, so hello to all of our friends

in domestic and international

surveillance services.

Well, so I won't answer your question,

but since you asked the question,

it's my turn to talk.

So what I would say is that...

if you want to do clandestine activities

that you fear for your life for,

you need to really think about

the situation that you're in

very carefully.

And so a big part of this is

operational security

and a big part of that is

compartmentalization.

So certain people had access

to certain things,

but maybe they couldn't decrypt them,

and certain things were moved around,

and that's on a need to know basis,

and those people who knew,

which is not me - I don't know anything,

I don't know what you're talking about.

Those people knew, and then you know,

it'll go with them to their grave.

So if you're interested in being the next

Edward Snowden,

you need to do your homework

in finding people that will be able to do

the other part of it, let's say.

But just in general, I mean

compartmentalization is key, right.

So it's not just for AppArmor profiles.

So you need to think about

what you want to do.

And I mean a big part of this is

to consider that the network itself

is the enemy, even though is useful

for communicating.

So all the metadata that exists

on the network could have

tipped people of, could have caused this

whole thing to fall apart.

It really is amazing, I feel like you know

two and half, three years ago,

when you talk about Free software,

and you talk about the idea of

Free software,

and you talk about issues relating to

autonomy and privacy, and security

you have a really different reception now

than you did then,

and that's really what it took

to turn the world half a degree,

or a quarter of a degree or something.

So I'm not going to tell you about

detailed plans for conspiracy,

but I highly encourage you to read about

South African history, in particular

the history of Umkhonto we Sizwe.

They are the clandestine communications

group for MK, or rather the operation

who lay inside of MK, which is

Umkhonto we Sizwe,

and they are sort of with

the African National Congress,

and those people have published so many

books about the revolutionary activities

to overthrow the apartheid state.

If you read these books, especially

the book "Operation Vula"

and "Armed and Dangerous"

by Ronnie Kasrils

they give you some idea about

what you need to do

which is to compartmentalize,

how to find people to do various tasks,

specific tasks,

how to work on building trust

with each other, what that looks like,

how to identify political targets,

how you might use things

like communications technology

to change the political topic on,

and the discussion in general.

And I think the best way to learn about

these things is to study previous people

who have tried to do that kind of stuff.

And the NSA is not the apartheid regime of

South Africa,

but there are still lessons

to be learned there,

so if you really want to know the answer

to that, also Che Guevara's manual on

guerilla warfare is very interesting,

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

I'd be happy to talk about it

with you later.

And I have nothing to do with anything

that we may or may not have done.

[laughter]