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?

[laughter]

[Jacob]: Hmm!

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

I'm sorry, what?

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

[audience]:
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 it is useful
for communicating.

So all the metadata that exists
on the network

could have tipped people off,
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 something,

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]

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

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

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

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

How do you see this?

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

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

is that in inspired hope,

and the hope is very important,

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

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

of the things which actually do
make it better.

For example ridding ourselves of the
chains of proprietary software

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

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

they care about security.

And even though I think those are
really simliar things,

previously they just thought we were just
Free software hippies,

in tie-dye shirts

and while that may be true on the weekends
and evenings

or with Bdale every day
[laughter]

I think that actually does make it better

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

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

because if you really go down the
rabbit-hole

of thinking about what the security
services are trying to do

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

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

It doesn't matter if something is authenticated

You could still trigger some action
to take place

with these kinds of surveillance machines

that could for example drone
strike someone,

and so it raises that.

And that gives me a lot of hope too,

because people understand the root
of the problem,

or the root of many problems

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

And so it helps us to reduce that
violence

by getting people to acknowledge
that it's real

and also that they care about it

and that we care about each other.

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

and part of that is the documents

but the other part of it is that..

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

like a big deal,

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

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

that we wouldn't be arrested.

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

well, two years and three months
or something

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

and then this happened

and I've been hear ever since.

It's a really long, crazy trip.

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

and eventually it will turn around

and I will be able to go home,

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

Obviously, Julian is still stuck in the
Ecuadorian embassy

Sarah lives in exile in Berlin,

I live in exile in Berlin,

And Ed is in Moscow

So we're not finished with some of
these things

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

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

But what matters is that the rest
of the world

can actually move on and fix some of
these problems,

and I have a lot of hope about that.

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

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

People really understand the root reason
for needing to do that

and actually seems quite reasonable
to people

who would previously have expended energy
against it,

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

And there's a lot of other hopeful things.

So I would try and be as uplifting
as possible.

It's not just the rum!

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

I may have been missing some news
or something

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

Do you know what happened to them?

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

is still anonymous, and they're still free.

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

but I also saw the end of the film

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

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

"Someone you trust is one of us,

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

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

I think that guy has a question as well.

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

was not so easy to use, right?

And I think part of the challenge
for everyone

was to improve on that situation
to make it better

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

have we done anything to improve on that?

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

that makes encryption easier to use,

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

For example Moxie Marlinspike has done
a really good job

with Signal, Textsecure and Redphone

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

and whatever apps,

sext-secure is what I think it's nicknamed

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

and it's something which in the
last two years

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

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

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

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

or as a profession.

You see their names in those systems

often more than some of the
Free software people,

and that's really impressive to me

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

also about social responsibility

or people understand they have a
responsibility to other people

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

by sending unsafe stuff over
unsafe communication lines

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

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

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

that it needed to be done

and they believed the lie that is
targetted versus mass surveillance

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

as targeted surveillance.

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

through mass surveillance.

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

they've already seized.

And of course there are targetted,
focussed attacks.

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

on an individual basis

It also has a societal cost.

I think a lot of people really
understand that.

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

but I feel that German society in
particular is extremely aware

of these abuses in the modern world

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

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

So this is how other people relate to
Germany

not just about Germans relate to
each other.

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

who really care about it,

and who really want to do things.

So people's parents email me,
and are like

"I want to protect my children,

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

You know, things like that.

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

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