The Case Against WikiLeaks: a direct threat to our community
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Transkript: Englisch(automatisch erzeugt)
00:21
speakers are going to talk about the charges against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, which is a topic that's very close to our hearts, I guess, most our hearts at least. And it's also something that's incredibly important for us as a community. And it's a threat
00:41
against the entire tech community, minorities, human rights advocates, activists, so a lot of people you should really care about. And the speakers are Renata Avila, who's the executive
01:15
Naomi Cohen, who's the UK program director at Blueprint for free speech, which is much easier to
01:22
pronounce. Thank you so much. And Angel Richter, who's a director and writer and artist, and a lot of things. And she specializes on whistleblowing and digital dissidents. And one of the plays
01:49
which is a transmedia play, you might know, it's called Super Nerds. So a round of applause for our amazing speakers, and let's begin the talk. Thank you very much. Good evening, everyone, and
02:08
thank you for coming here tonight. And thank you also for our introduction by the moderator, very charming guys, I thought, and also good to give a little bit lightness to this, for me,
02:23
very serious issue, actually, that we are here. Like he said, I'm an artist. And for me, WikiLeaks was very important, and also Julian Assange, because somehow they were the entrance for me as an artist to this community that became very dear to me in the last 10
02:45
years. And I attended some of the Congresses in the last 10 years and learned a lot about things that I never knew before. So I owe a lot actually to WikiLeaks and also to this community, because it opened so many things for me up. So yeah, this I wanted to say first, and then I will
03:08
also show a little piece of a recent play I did in Zagreb. It's by Slavoj Zizek, who's also a supporter by Julian, and it is related to our topic. It's a little bit like a mood board that
03:21
we want to show before we start. And yeah, and like he said, this will be about how we can support WikiLeaks and of course, Julian Assange, which is also a very personal matter for me, because he became a very close friend in the last 10 years, who I also owe a lot. And on the
03:42
other hand, I think it's not only about him and his life, which is serious enough, but I think that this thing that is happening to him that he's being charged with the Espionage Act. This is first time that something like this happens to a publisher, is a threat to free speech to all of our freedom. And it means that actually everyone who speaks truth to power
04:06
can be kidnapped, extradited to the US, and then end up in prison for the rest of his life. And I think that this is for this community also a threat, especially because we all know that we are trying to be secure from secure free speech is very important issue here.
04:26
So yeah, we will go into the details in the course of this week. Thank you very much. We will try to be brief to leave enough time for questions, because we think that we you have
07:34
a lot of questions on this case. And so we will alternate and discuss different issues,
07:40
starting with where are we at now? Yes. On the left side, you see Belmarsh prison. This is the high security prison that Julian is housed at the moment. And what I find very chilling about it is that it's actually a place where usually you find terrorists, murderers, and mafia people and so on. So high criminals,
08:08
and he is only at the moment being held there for extradition reasons, which is also extreme because he is 23 hours a day alone in his cell, which is actually isolation. And then
08:26
the next picture shows a typical room in a prison in Virginia where Chelsea Manning is held at the moment again. And I think it must be something like 10 months in the
08:46
against Julian Assange in front of a grand jury. So raise your hand if you have less than 30 years. Okay. Thank you.
09:01
That says a lot, because it means that probably your first encounter with WikiLeaks was just only five years ago, and you were a teen when many things were happening. And we know that today is Young Hackers Day, so it was important for us to quickly go through the important publications that WikiLeaks published in the last decade. Why? Because there are
09:25
many misconceptions since 2016, and a lot of misinformation followed the election of Donald Trump. And so we want to show here, and it is of course not a detailed list, you can find a detailed list on WikiLeaks, on Wikipedia. Two concepts at the beginning
09:46
were all often mixed actually, and the same principles followed, I would say. But what I want to show here is the most impactful publications by WikiLeaks that changed the course of history in many places. And also highlighted in green are the political persecution
10:08
moments of not only against Julian Assange, but against other people that were closely connected to these developments in the last decade. So 2008 was a very exciting year for
10:22
WikiLeaks, because I think that even if it was created before, was the year that it got mainstream. Why? Because it changed elections in Kenya by exposing extrajudicial killings, and it really changed the outcome of the election. Like people realized that one of the
10:41
candidates was involved in these extrajudicial killings of young people, and that really impacted deeply the African nation. And not only that, you might have forgotten about that, but it was the first publication of the batch of emails from Sarah Palin. And also, there were lots of publications in Latin America. That's how I became familiar
11:05
with WikiLeaks. I'm very excited about that. Petro-Gate, a big scandal of corruption in Peru, also publications involving guerrillas and false positives in the Colombian war. It started from the places, from Africa, from Latin America, and also the US. On 2009,
11:27
I will say that the highlight and why WikiLeaks became very visible is it exposed a lot of the censorship lists of China and Iran and other countries. The internet was not what
11:40
it used, it is not what is today. Censorship was tangible. You will see a blocked website. And now, as we will discuss later, now it's different forms of censorship. And so, WikiLeaks at that moment was guardian of this free internet. And also, it was the big moment
12:03
in Iceland and the big opportunity for WikiLeaks as well in a jurisdiction to become not only a publisher, but a designer of new ecosystem of freedom of information. So, it exposed the corrupt involving the financial scandal there. And it got really, really
12:22
exciting there. Things like the EME Initiative and all the things that are now part of our history. Then 2010, and then 2010 was the year when things started to get really complicated. Why? Because instead of touching countries in the periphery or touching developing
12:41
countries, it's okay, it's always cool to expose the human rights violations of an African or a Latin American person in power. But when you touch the center of power, when you touch the most powerful military in the world, you get into trouble. So, on 2010, collateral murder video was published, the Afghan war diaries, Iraq war logs and cable gate.
13:07
And that was the moment when Julian Assange was arrested. It was not arrested because of the publications. It was just few days after the publications started that he was arrested on behalf of Sweden. And no charges, it was not because of charges, it was because of ongoing
13:23
investigation. 2011, the Gitmo files, spy files. Spy files was the first batch of publication, 160 companies involved in mass surveillance, private mass surveillance. That was pre-Snowden, remember that. And that, at that moment, Julian only spent a little, in the
13:44
same prison that is now, only few days and he was released on bail. But from that moment, from the moment that he presented himself, he surrendered himself to the police, he never had. He just voluntarily went there when he was requested. From that moment, his life became a
14:04
hell of surveillance. He was not only had a tag on his ankle following him everywhere, but he had the most strict bail conditions that you can imagine. He could not even give a talk in London because he will have to go back. He had ridiculous hours to report himself to the
14:22
police. He was watched all the time. He had to report to the police on a daily basis. Someone suspected terrorism was enjoying more relaxed conditions than someone who wasn't charged. And that's a constant in this case and other politically motivated cases. You
14:45
can imagine. And 2012, Stratford emails and also the Syria Files. The Syria Files is a publication that is not often mentioned, but it was very relevant, exposing all the dealings of the Syrian elites. And Julian is granted political asylum in Ecuador. He could have
15:05
requested a political asylum much earlier, but he wanted to go through all the legal process in the UK and all the appeals. And it was his last chance to exercise that right. Then 2013, the TPP text, Spy Files 2, and that was the moment when Manning was sentenced
15:24
to 35 years in prison. Snowden is granted asylum in Moscow as well. And Jeremy Hammond is convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Jeremy Hammond is the alleged source of the Stratford, the global intelligence files. Then 2014, TISA, Spy Files 3, and the
15:45
updated TPP text. Then 2015, the Sony archives, the Saudi cables. Actually, that Saudi cable publication was one of the most dangerous ones. You saw what happened to journalist Jamal Khashoggi. I mean, it's a very, very dangerous publication. And
16:05
then the TPP final texts. This is very important because it really changed the life for better of loads of people. I personally work on global trade issues, and the negotiators of developing countries or representing underrepresented communities,
16:26
like they are so thankful to WikiLeaks for releasing and publishing the TPP IP chapter because it means better access to medicine. It got the people with better conditions for negotiations in key issues, such as access to medicines.
16:44
Then 2016, I would say that I will compare it to 2010. Then you, again, touch the center of power. WikiLeaks touch, again, the center of power by publishing the Clinton, Podesta, and DNC emails. And that changed a lot the narrative and changed a lot the narrative in a very different world because it was not
17:04
anymore the tangible censorship or the clear publication. But our information ecosystem, as we know, had been modified by social networks, by different forms of distributing and accessing content. 2017, Obama leaves the administration by
17:25
commuting Chelsea Manning's sentence, and she's later released that year. And WikiLeaks publishes NSA's spy on French election, Vault 7, which is the toolkit of spying of the CIA, and spy files Russia. 2018, Amazon Atlas, U.S. Embassy shopping list,
17:47
and the weapon dealer's details. Here it's very important that the conditions of Julian changed radically after 2016 at the Ecuadorian Embassy, and the pressure of the U.S. increased terribly, and he was not allowed anymore to do his job as a journalist.
18:05
He spent most of the year gagged, and he could not participate actively, directly on his role as editor. And 2019, you saw in the video, Assange is arrested, Manning is arrested again, but in spite of all the pressure, WikiLeaks
18:25
refuses to shut down and continues publishing the Pope orders, doma chemical attack, and fish trot. So as you can see, Julian has upset, and WikiLeaks has upset enough people, from the most powerful army in the world, to the most
18:43
powerful governments, to the most powerful corporations that saw their plans frustrated with the TPP collapse, and the TTIP collapse, and the Taisa collapse, to even the Pope. So if you upset, if you expose so many people, you have
19:01
very few allies left. You have basically the people as your allies. So that's why this talk is really, really, really important. And you have also the media, because over the ten years, WikiLeaks has worked closely with most of the news outlets all over the world. If you check the newspaper tomorrow morning,
19:22
it's highly likely that it was one of the WikiLeaks media partners. This is just a small sample of over 125 media organizations all over the world that had collaborated closely with WikiLeaks. Yes, and I just want to add a very interesting little detail that John Gertz told me, who was at that time,
19:42
he's a journalist, he now works for Süddeutsche and IAD. At that time, he was working for Der Spiegel, who also worked closely with WikiLeaks at that time, 2010, and they published Cablegate. And it's interesting to know that due to a technical glitch, because the deal was that WikiLeaks publishes first, and
20:03
after that, the newspapers follow. Spiegel, New York Times, Guardian, and so on. And due to this glitch, WikiLeaks was not able to publish in time, so they were too late with the publishing, and all the newspapers came out already. So technically, they published first, which is very important for the case, in a way,
20:25
because he's charged, because he published it first, the Cablegate. And it would be interesting, because what does it mean? It means that actually the journalists from Spiegel and New York Times and Guardian could face the same penalties. And when you imagine that, then I think the impact it has on
20:44
publishing becomes even more chilling and clear, you know. So I thought to tell you this little detail about the publishing of Cablegate. So what happened on April 11, when he was expelled from the embassy and dragged
21:00
out, is something that goes beyond just Julian Assange. As a human rights lawyer, you know, when I see political unrest, when I see people, dissidents at risk, I always tell them, have a good relationship with a friendly embassy that defends human rights, and in case of trouble, get there, get inside an
21:21
embassy. It's happening now with dissidents in Bolivia, for example, who are like right now in the Embassy of Mexico. I will advise any of you to do that, but now with caution, because now, since the violation, and since this really brutal way that asylum was taken away from, an illegal way that
21:44
asylum was taken away from Julian, and the way that police from a different country enters an embassy, asylum has been weakened forever until we reverse this. That's why this is yet another reason why this case is very important. Right now, you know, even the government of Bolivia is
22:04
threatening the Mexican embassy to get inside and take out the dissidents seeking asylum inside their embassy. It is really upsetting to see how an institution that has over 400 years that was designed to
22:21
protect dissidents is being dismantled by this scandalous case. Well, when he was out, it happened what we had predicted for years. For years, we have been saying, at the moment when he's arrested, they will unseal an indictment for espionage. Everyone will look at us
22:43
like back in 2010 and 2011 and say like, you're paranoid. There's coming from Swedish charges, they were saying, always charges, even they were never charges. And he's a coward, and he's a paranoid, and
23:00
this is not going to happen. It happened immediately. And it happened immediately. And just as predicted, and just as predicted, it was so upsetting to see the result of the Swedish investigation, because not only over there, I mean, there was a good journalist doing her job, and she discovered over the years different
23:24
irregularities. Sweden wanted to shut down the case back in 2013, after asylum was granted. And it was a collusion, and it's really good if you like documents and you like deep research, get into
23:40
the documents that are already available, and see how the UK system put a lot of pressure on Sweden not to, not to prosecute this case as they usually prosecute any case. Things as simple as a video conference could have been taking place back in 2010, back in August, September 2010. And it didn't happen
24:03
because of a lot of political pressure. So now the charges. There are 18 charges against Julian Assange, and they might be charges against more people who are mentioned in the indictment. And the charges that he's facing for publishing amount 175 years
24:24
in prison. And if, to make your life simpler, basically the charges are online publishing, protecting sources, and doing journalism. If you read what it is about, it's really chilling.
24:40
And it's especially chilling because look at who's in charge now, right now, all over the world. And it is the first time that the Justice Department gets away with it. It is using a very anachronic law to, and they obtain an indictment from a grand jury, that's from a group of people who
25:01
thinks that it is okay to prosecute under espionage charges, online publication. If you get a takeaway from tonight, this is the takeaway. This is the serious thing that we are discussing right now. And the thing is, this is important
25:22
because at the center of this is our right to know. The right to publish on our side is our right to know. And three relevant, last three relevant aspects of the charges. You will read a lot of, oh, but WikiLeaks and Julian had blood in his hands, it risked in four months and put at risk.
25:46
These charges have nothing to do with this risk assessment that will not be even known by the court. These reductions and these measures of protection that are over and over in media are not relevant for the espionage
26:00
charges. And there's also important to notice that it mentions constantly over the indictment, WikiLeaks as an intelligence agency of the people. And that mirrors the language of Pompeo, the current Secretary of State, who's trying to frame WikiLeaks as a non-state
26:24
terrorist actor, like the equivalent of Al-Qaeda. And that has huge, horrible implications, not only on the core WikiLeaks organization, but on supporters, even wearing a t-shirt, reading a book about it, it can place you in a not
26:42
so nice place. And the important thing that is very worrying is that more people might be detained and charged before or after the extradition takes place. And we don't have to speculate about this dragnet, of course, because it is already here. Already here in its pattern of
27:03
intimidation and petty and vindictiveness. Chelsea Manning, one of the great heroes of our time, one month before Julian was expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy and arrested on US charges, just like it always said would happen, one month before Chelsea Manning received a subpoena to testify before a
27:22
grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia. She refused to testify and was imprisoned for contempt. She is currently, she's served 10 months back in prison. She is currently being fined $1,000 for every day she spends in
27:41
prison not testifying. This is what Chelsea said about what is happening in a statement in May. I believe this grand jury seeks to undermine the integrity of public discourse with the aim of punishing those who expose any serious ongoing and systematic abuses of power. The idea I hold the keys to my own cell is an absurd one, as I face the
28:03
prospect of suffering either way due to this unnecessary impunitive subpoena. I can either go to jail or betray my principles. The latter exists as a much worse prison than the government can construct. In September, Jeremy Hammond, coming to the end of a long prison sentence for his role in
28:23
the publication of the Global Intelligence Files, he received a, he was called against his will to testify before a grand jury again in the Eastern District of Virginia. Again, he refused to testify. Again, he's been jailed for a possible 18
28:41
months on contempt. This is what he had to say about it in October. After seven and a half years of paying my debt to society, the government seeks to punish me further with this vindictive, politically motivated legal maneuver to delay my release. I'm opposed to all grand juries, but I'm opposed to
29:00
this one in particular because a part of the government's ongoing war on free speech, journalists and whistleblowers. If this hadn't happened to Jeremy, he would be in a halfway house by now. He would have been released from prison. He might have been participating in this Congress.
29:20
On the 11th of April this year, the same day that Julian was expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy and arrested and indicted by the United States, just like he always said would happen, his friend, Ola Binney, was arrested in Ecuador. Ola spent two months in an Ecuadorian prison in absolutely disgusting conditions until he was released by a writ of
29:42
habeas corpus. Ola has now been charged with charges that suggest that the prosecutors in Ecuador don't really understand what it is that security researchers do every day. Senior Ecuadorian politicians, the most senior Ecuadorian politicians, have been on television in Ecuador saying that Ola is guilty before any trial date has been set.
30:03
Organizations like Amnesty and EFF has said that Ola's prosecution is political, and of course they are quite correct. It's all political. Extradition is political. Don't let anyone tell you differently. Extradition is an
30:20
institution developed as a deal behind closed doors done between sovereign powers. It's only in the past 100 years or so that parts have been transferred into courtrooms, but politicians still have an active role in extradition proceedings, and sometimes extradition is used for political purposes. Extradition in the UK is also very
30:44
political. What is it that every taxi driver in London could tell you about extradition? If you don't believe me, you're welcome to test this out empirically next time you're in town. What is it they'll tell you? They will tell you that the UK has an unfair, unequal, unbalanced,
31:01
inequitable extradition treaty with the United States. This treaty dates from 2002 when Tony Blair was keen to give the United States everything it could possibly want and more. One of the gentlemen pictured in this slide is Gary McKinnon. Very shortly after the 2002 extradition treaty came into
31:23
force, Gary McKinnon started a 10-year battle not to be extradited to the United States on hacking charges. He prevailed in the end, but only after he'd been through the entire legal process twice, and he was rescued eventually by the say-so of a UK home secretary. The
31:43
other gentleman on that slide is Lowry Love. In February last year, Lowry won his battle against extradition to the United States, again on hacking charges at appeal in the High Court. I was involved in that campaign. I'm glad he won. I'm glad he won because it means we have a hope of
32:02
saving Julian. He'd be in trouble if he hadn't. Lowry won on two different bases. One of them is very relevant. One of the reasons why Lowry won his battle against extradition is because judges in the High Court, including the most senior judge in England and Wales, ruled that US prisons are so bad, the conditions are so barbaric, so
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medieval, that somebody with pre-existing health conditions like Lowry, there was no guarantee he'd stay alive in a US prison. You might be hearing more about that in February next year. But there are other big, big issues involved in Julian Assange's extradition case.
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Big, big issues that don't necessarily involve him that much at all. The first clip on that slide is part of John Stuart Mill's autobiography. John Stuart Mill, liberal philosopher and also British politician for a bit. In this extract, he's talking about how he
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battled to change an earlier incarnation of a UK extradition treaty because he didn't want the British government to become, quote, an accomplice in the vengeance of foreign despotisms. Extraditions should not be used as a political tool for foreign
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governments to pursue and punish people it doesn't like, people who are guilty of political offences. It's a fundamental question of sovereignty. If you were at Andy Miller Magoon's excellent talk yesterday morning, you will have heard about the pervasive thoroughgoing and quite frightening surveillance that
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was happening at the Ecuadorian embassy for the seven years that Julian Assange was living there. This raises a fundamental issue. If your every legal conference, all of your discussions with your lawyers are being surveilled and allegedly passed straight to the power that's trying to prosecute you, if all of your legal
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documents are handed over allegedly, well, actually, we know that, to the power that's trying to prosecute you, what does that mean for your chances of a fair trial? If you care about surveillance at all, we're going to have to make a stand in this very extreme case because if we don't, how are we ever going to stand up for fair trial rights for anyone?
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Yes, and before I go further in our topic, I just want to say that I have personal experience with the surveillance happening in the embassy because I used to visit Julian many, many times, maybe 30 times from the moment he entered the embassy till the last
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time I saw him is nearly exactly a year ago. It was around Christmas last year. And at that point, I mean, I really could see the eroding conditions that he lived in. I mean, just to see a person that didn't see the sunlight for seven years or something was terrible enough. But then the last year when he
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lived quasi in isolation and had no access to phone or to internet, nothing, because that was the way that he had contact with the world and had no visitors anymore for nearly a year, I think, because we, the people that visited him, we were kind of
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his door to the world. And it was for me very, very weird to be all the time when I was there. Sometimes I spent five hours at least there. And after a while, you just feel very uncomfortable. I
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was so happy when I could leave that building, actually, especially in the last two years. And then I could not imagine staying there like him, having no private moment. I mean, they, in the end, they even put cameras in the bathrooms and in the toilets and so on. That was the, I know this tiny kitchen, sometimes we used to hide from the cameras to just have a moment of just talking
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without feeling surveyed. And then he had also this little apparatus. I think Andy was talking about it yesterday in his talk that was causing white noise. And I was really annoyed to be honest by this little thing. And I was always, I was also thinking about my God, maybe he is too
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paranoid, you know, because the weird thing is you get used to everything. And somehow, like us now being surveyed all the time through our phones and laptops and so on, and we get used to it. But he always insisted, even when we were talking like banal stuff about, I don't know, soccer game or something, the little sound machine was on
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causing white noise. And not only it caused disturbance for the surveyors, it also caused headaches in my head. And so, yeah, it's actually a very sad story. And for me, it was to see the process when, especially after the government,
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the conservative government came into power in Ecuador, his status very much changed. And so he became more and more something I would describe as a prisoner and not someone who has asylum. Okay, this is on my personal note, how I experienced it. And the other thing is, on this picture, you see one of the first protests that we did
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in Berlin. It was this year in May. It was a little after he was dragged out of the embassy. And we were there with some people, including Sejko Horvat, Croatian philosopher, and as you see on the picture also Ai Weiwei, the Chinese
37:43
artist and human rights advocate, who also openly supported Assange always, and also not afraid of consequences, actually. And he also visited him in prison. And what is also an interesting fact that Ai Weiwei also made the connection between
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the protest against the extradition law in Hong Kong. And he connected it with this very controversial extradition case of Julian in the UK at the moment. So for me, it's sometimes something I could never believe in former times
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that I will be in a situation where we in the West, who are the good ones and the free West, the so-called free West, is somehow actually in the top 10 of having dissidents in prisons, including the ones that we just named. And that no human rights seem to be valuable
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anymore. And I find this very concerning, I must say, also on a private level. Yes. And I was there too, as you see in the photograph. And before I went to the protest, you can switch it.
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I was in Moscow, and I visited Edward Snowden because I also worked with him together. He helped me a lot on the place I did. And this was the third time, actually, that I visited him. And we also talked about Julian's case. And he gave me a letter of support that I was reading out loud on this protest. And I will just read
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a little bit of it that you can see now. By the government's own admission, Assange has been charged for his role in bringing to light true information, information that exposed war crimes and wrongdoing perpetrated by the most powerful military in the history of the world.
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It is not just a man who stands in jeopardy, but the future of the free press. Yes. And I think that he is very much right in this case, because what does it mean? I mean, for me,
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I'm also in the meantime working as a journalist for the Freitag. I published a few of articles about him and Snowden and basically about whistleblowing and these things. And if publishing becomes a crime, telling the truth becomes a crime, and if you are not able to work with
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sources, to protect sources, and to actively also try to obtain material about truth, because we live in a democracy where the powers have to be shared and to have a balance in power,
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because as we know, when power gets into a monopoly, it will always be abused. And so, I will cut it short. It has bad implications for journalists, and if this happens to Julian,
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it is a threat not only to journalism, but to democracy itself. So we will accelerate, because what comes next is very, very important. And yes, we saw immediately after the arrest of Julian the situation going really badly in Australia. But what I wanted to discuss, we
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wanted to discuss with you tonight, that this is about you, about someone just like you. And you can see, I mean, I can see you there. I can see Julian in these pictures, and I can see lots of similarities. You belong to the same species, basically. He was a single father. He
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was prosecuted at a very, very young age, spent five years of his twenties fighting a legal process. But he was all the time with his computer. I cannot, I really cannot imagine how his life was since April, away from his computer. Can you imagine your life away from
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your computer, even for one day? Imagine, since April, he has been away from his computer and only having one hour a day outside a prison cell. So while he was raising up a kid as a single parent, and while he was dealing with a hacking legal process, he also was actively
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working for our communities. He was co-running one of the first public access internet providers in Australia. He was always involved and dedicating thousands of hours to the free software movement. His code was even used by
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Apple and in other operating systems. So chances are that today, even today, our computers, our Apple devices, for the bad people who use Apple, like me, are running part of his code. He was also, and from very early time, trying to find ways for
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vulnerable groups, such as human rights defenders, ways to encrypt their devices. And so he was very active before WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks just was an upgrade, kind of, on his plans. And I also want to mention that the CCC is mentioned, expressly mentioned in
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that part of the indictment against Julian. So what happens here, you know, it matters there. And I think that the sole fact that the community is mentioned on an indictment against a journalist is enough reason to stand
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up and say something about it and organize around it. But it's not only the community name on the indictment and the criminal complaint. It's also our communication practices. Raise your hand if you have a account. So yes, the Java server, the CCC
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server, is mentioned in the criminal complaint against Julian. Yeah, I mean, what's there is worrying, but what's even more worrying is this isn't the microphone. What's there is worrying, but what's even more worrying is that it's a moving target. Things are still
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continuing. This is part of a submission the US government made in Chelsea Manning's ongoing proceedings talking about an ongoing investigation. There's more to come. And there's even more bad omens, like this, like that one, even more bad omens from across
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the water in unrelated cases and prosecutorial series that are being put together, which are very disturbing and augur for very bad things to come. I can't talk about that now, but it's an excellent issue for the Q&A. What happens next? Well, immediately what's going to happen next is that on the 24th of
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February, for three or four weeks, Julian Assange will have his extradition hearing. To give you an indication of the size and scale of this case, Lowry-Lodd's extradition hearing, which was quite a big deal and quite big, took two and a half days. Julian's is going to be three or four weeks. It will take place in Belmarsh Magistrates Court in a
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horrible part of South East London near the prison. It will probably take place in the courthouse next door because they've got bigger courts, but it will be in that place in London. So, what can you do? Okay, do not be afraid to speak up. Speak with people and so on, and don't be afraid. We still live in a free
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country. Immunize yourself against propaganda, which is really something that you should be aware that happened massively in the case of Julian. I think you know what I mean. And understand what is at stake. This is a political persecution, and it's about everyone.
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And I want to quote Nils Mensa, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, who I met recently, and this is a very famous quote of him that he was continuously actually saying to people in power. Assange has been systematically slandered to divert attention from the crimes he exposed. Once he had been
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dehumanized through isolation, ridicule, and shame, just like the witches we used to burn at the stake, it was easy to deprive him of his most fundamental rights and without provoking public outrage worldwide. And I think this is exactly what happened to him. And this is a picture of really
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courageous journalists from all over the world who stand up and said, like, stop this persecution. And they're a community Julian belongs to. But I have seen very few real statements from this community. So our request tonight will be like, please try to organize and try to do a
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similar effort that matters a lot. Naomi will explain why. It's really important because no man is an island and the UK is not an island even after Brexit, right? The UK government does care about its international reputation, maybe unlike the US, and the UK government needs to know that the world is watching. The world is watching. They're hosting
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entirely unnecessarily the most ridiculous, the most important press freedom case of a generation, completely unnecessarily. They need to know that we're keeping a careful eye on it. Over the past few months, we've been putting a lot of effort into ensuring that the extradition hearing,
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the trial, if you like, in February is properly monitored. We have 25 elected parliamentarians from 12 European countries who've committed to be being passed those monitoring efforts. Reporters on Frontier are going to monitor. We have a whole group of medics who are going to monitor the extradition proceedings and I think it would be good to have a similar effort from this community
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too, frankly. Especially because there are many technical issues being discussed. Your opinion really matters for this trial, you know, and he can do it. He cannot do it from prison. He counts on you to help lawyers, to help the press, to help everyone understand what is and what isn't online publishing and online journalism.
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21st century journalism is at stake on this case. And your voice really matters here. It really does. Yes. And you know, he's our friend and it's not only someone we support but he's our friend and he likes to have the final word always.
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So we cannot bring him back from the 11 years ago from a congress like this one to have the final word. Oh. Oh. Hey, CIA?
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Yeah? No, it's only a glitch. He's gonna be frustrated, he's gonna be hungry.
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It's okay? Should we try? If not, we can in the meantime, we can read it out. We can read it out. So, you have better image. Justice doesn't just happen. Justice is
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forced by people coming together and exercising strength, unity and intelligence. That's Julian at 25C3. Can we try?
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Should we try? Let's try last time. No. No. Oh my god. He'll be annoyed by that. Silence. He would be very annoyed. He's gonna be
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really angry about that. It's great. Please do not tell him. Yeah, don't tell him. If you don't tell him, you won't know. Yeah, so we are ready for some questions. I think that we have very little time, but if we don't have enough time, we will be hanging out at the tea house and you can come to us and ask questions and how to help.
50:43
Thank you so much. It was very insightful, moving and incredibly important. So, I remind everyone that we have six
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microphones. If you have questions, why not behind them? And also our wonderful signal angels are going to take some questions from the internet, one of which we're going to answer right now. Okay, there was the question that, which
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reasons could there be to explain the lack of fair and well-balanced media reports in the Sange case? And what are the reasons for the lack of supportive media? Okay, yes. Do you want to answer that?
51:48
Very quickly, I will say that, going back to the slide on who he exposed, the most powerful people, if you have the most powerful people again in the world, private sector, public
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sector, even hidden sector against you and with unlimited resources to take you down, it's quite easy to kill positive stories. And it is really hard in times that journalism is under resource and that the courageous journalists are not like really rewarded.
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It is really difficult to navigate that ecosystem. Yes, and I want to add that also there's a reason. I think if journalism today would do a proper job of investigating and exposing the powerful, that it would not be necessary that WikiLeaks even exists.
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I think if they would do that job as the fourth, so-called fourth estate in democracy, then something like WikiLeaks wouldn't even be there. And I think that might be a reason that I think that he not only exposed the powerful, but he also a little bit
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exposed of course his colleagues at the so-called established press. And I think that every reason that he gave and there were some because he's not perfect. Julian Assange is only human and he did make mistakes like everybody of us and I could say okay take the first stone and throw it. But I think that of course bad news
53:21
is always good news. And let's say many people who knew him said let's say negative things that the press picked up, but like when I would say to press oh I also know him, I think he's a decent guy, nobody wants to report that because it's boring and not interesting. So yeah there are many reasons for that I think.
53:40
I'm going to add that I mean the fact that there are 10 years of history here definitely makes a difference. But look I speak to a lot of journalists and I speak to a lot of journalists about this case in the UK and particularly as it's become more obvious that Julian is not doing very well, that he's very unwell, I think people are shocked and I can you know
54:00
people are frightened about it. They might not be talking about it very much at the moment, but they will. It is changing around for sure. Yes and then speaking of being frightened, also don't underestimate that people might be afraid. And also I know that there are many journalists here tonight. This is your opportunity to change the
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narrative because you are next if you stay silent. Thank you. We're going to take the next question from a man who's wearing a Julian Assange mask. Got to reward the effort, a microphone too please. Oh hi, I want to thank you so much for your talk.
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When we are all facing this situation of asking ourselves what we can do, we should take inspiration from what you just said and what you just did. It is not just about Julian, it is about every one of us here. This is wonderful but that is not a question. No but I'm getting there.
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Can you get there faster? Historical perspective on all these aspects about war, about power, about what we can do, about what the internet is about to question power. It is about also maybe admitting that... Maybe much faster? Much faster. That is not perfect. You may have said
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stupid things on Twitter like we all did and like anyone would do after seven years in detention. Yet he's one of us. So when asking ourselves what to do, it's a modest contribution from the internet. There is a wiki that is online for a few days now on these stickers that you find everywhere here. Okay, we're going to take an actual
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question. I am really sorry but microphone one please. Okay, still thank you. Hi, thank you for the inspiring talk. So I'm a Pakistani journalist. I now live in exile in Berlin.
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But what the story of Assange and what we just saw, this, you know, everything that happened and the perpetrators, they even put the authoritarian regimes and their leaders in shame, especially how the system of asylum has been breached. That also scares me. I'm actually cold because I'm scared. But my question is, could you as
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journalists maybe shed some light on the chilling effect for journalists? I mean I can only imagine that there might be more leaks in line that would have happened but maybe has not happened because the journalists are also now self-censoring. So what would you advise to such journalists? Thank you. Well, that is really exactly
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a very tough question and this is exactly one of the dangers that we are pointing to, you know, that people might just not expose it. And like I said, people are starting to get afraid. What can we say to them? Well, I have something to say and I think
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that Julian has something to say. It's the same as with justice. As a community, with the strength, unity and intelligence, I mean look at the talent in this room. Look, it's not necessarily just the brilliance of one whistleblower or one person. It's the ecosystem that we need to create to create
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resilient media and we need resilient media for democracy to work. And if it cannot happen even here in Germany with all the resources and with all the brilliant minds, what is going to happen? So I think that we cannot stop innovating and we need to push for the next
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wave of innovations for the journalism that will serve these needs in our times. And that's why this case matters a lot because it's punishing these innovations that redistribute the power among people. Yeah, there also needs to be a recognition, a bit of solidarity is
58:00
necessary here because this isn't just about Julian. As Renata mentioned briefly, things in Australia have gone to pot since Julian was arrested. And more than that, one of the slides I flicked over was the indictment of an alleged drone whistleblower, Daniel Hale. In the count one of Daniel Hale's indictment accuses him of unlawfully releasing
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information, but unlawfully releasing information to a journalist who he knew would have used it unlawfully. So this is like the second time in a US indictment we have an accusation of a publisher, a journalist, acting unlawfully by publishing true information in the public interest. We need to
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we need to be aware and we need to raise the alarm because this isn't just about Julian. The threat is very real and it's very broad. Thank you. We have time for one last question and we're going to ask
59:01
our signal angels again. So there was a question, how can we help and support Manning, Assange and Snowden? Well, like we just said also, I think it's very important to show solidarity in different ways by raising your voice.
59:22
Well, even supporting with donation, it's always good. It's good for Manning, it's good for everyone. I think Courage Foundation is someone who's supporting everyone, including Jeremy Hammond and Chelsea Manning, who are not so much in the focus, maybe
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like Julian, but also for Julian. I think that his trial will cost, oh my god, hundreds of thousands of pounds. Let's hope that the pound goes down after Brexit, but okay. No, I mean and I think speaking up and like Renata also said, to have the feeling that we are many.
01:00:00
I think exactly this thing that he said, people coming together and sharing and kind of be brave. Like, courage is contagious is one of my favorite quotes of him. And so I think, yeah, take a stand, have an attitude and do as much as you can in your possibilities, which are not so little, I think.
01:00:23
And I think it is for the good of everyone, not only the names people who are in danger now, but for all of our freedom. Resist. Practically. There's a lot to do and there's a lot of work to go around. As we've mentioned in the talk, organizing in the communities you're part of is very
01:00:43
important here. In Germany, to take an example, we've had parliamentarians coming forward, we've also had the journalists union, we've also had collections of lawyers. All of this is really important and it makes a difference to the work that's being done in the UK. There are a lot of different organizations and groups doing work on this case and it's
01:01:01
all really valuable. Contribute as you will, find the group that you think is doing good work, either work that you think will make a difference or that accords with your own ideological perspective and support them. There's a lot of people doing good work here. One of the saving graces of what has been quite a depressing year is meeting so many
01:01:24
people who were doing important work on this most dire of issues. We have a lot of faith in you as a community, to be honest. We count on you and this community to not leave behind people belonging here. I think that if we can see, I think that Julian will be incredibly thrilled and Chelsea
01:01:44
will be super happy to know that there's organized efforts to follow this case closely and to have delegations present during the hearings. If they know that you are there, even symbolically there, they will feel so much better
01:02:00
because more to any community, Snowdon, Chelsea, Julian, really love, admire and count on this community, so please be there and find us later. We will explain more detailed ways to help and thank you so much for attending this talk. Really, it means a lot. It means a lot to have a full room and I know that there's many people watching as
01:02:24
well and we'll watch this again. Please continue following this case. We will prepare all the information that you need, but we need you to activate it and to translate it into actions. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for inspiring me.
01:02:41
Thank you.