For the next talk it's called resisting surveillance. It's not just about the metadata and it's not

It's about the people the people that come out so Lily Harry and Jason will tell you how it is to be that people Please an applause

Thanks very much. I'm sure people here know about surveillance what we often hear in the mainstream press in the last few years is about Edward Snowden and metadata and spying and computer spying so on unfortunately the three of us have

Seen a more intense version of state surveillance. I think we've been Targeted by undercover police that have come into the most intimate spheres of our lives and you'll hear about that But I want to talk a little bit about an undercover policing and the history of it

it's not just a new phenomenon of course we all know that and Some of it goes back quite a ways you see here a book on the upper right hand It's called what everyone should know about state repression. It's written in 1921 by victor surge and After the Russian Revolution, they did an analysis they found a bunch of papers of the Russians are and his spying from the 1890s and so on and

Undercover policing tactics go back and it's documented at least as far as the 1890s What we've what this book says is that The czar sent his private intelligence his undercover police into movements that opposed the czar

with some tactics specific tactics that we see today for example going into a social movement a popular movement and Dividing and conquering or spreading lies causing diversion doing whatever they could to neutralize these threats to their power and that's something that concerns me a lot that the use of undercover police has been a

Political policing not really criminal policing and that's that's what's happened the case that we're going to talk about tonight Kind of started for us with the outing of a British undercover cop called mark Kennedy in 2010 2011 the book in the middle undercover is a very good prize-winning book in England

That came out a couple of years ago about that case if you want to read more about the case We're going to talk about read undercover My personal case as as an activist being targeted Within my broader circles goes back to 1989 the first year I became an activist was with environmental groups and in this year 1989 it came out that the FBI had done a big project

operation project called operation therm con where they sent an undercover activist into environmental groups group From earth first and this person had intimate sexual relations with an activist they were selling LSD to activists to gain trust that worked for them and

There's a book here on the bottom left if you want more info because I'm I'm jumping over these themes I'm giving you some places to read later spitzel is a German book with a lot of different chapters about different topics of spying It's a very good book on the upper left green is the new red That one does a really good synopsis of the USA

Spying on social movements starting in their 60s and so with the counter intelligence program of the FBI Co Intel Pro going up to 2000 2006 with the efforts to smash or silent Silence radical environmental movements the bottom right is a great book called Secret maneuvers in the dark. It's about corporate spying. We're going to talk about that a little bit too because the person who targeted us

Or was also involved in that Yeah, so that's me Jason and as an activist. I've done a lot of different things protest Writing writing articles in my small town in California. I was a vice mayor and a kind of radical

Activist II town for four years. That's interesting guy for four years I actually was in a position to kind of be a boss of the police so That's helped me to come out and speak against police So anyways, I'm I'm making a film now called spy to pawn You're gonna see me filming a little bit here and you can look at more on my website

I can give you cards later. But yes, I'm directing this film because I think that I don't want to be silenced I'm not going to be silenced about what happened to me. And so I'm in the middle of this film also, we're looking for financing if you have Leads for financing that'd be great. And then next up is Hi, yeah Oh, you want to the film show the film clip is the film clip ready go for it

It is and here's a clip from the upcoming film spider-pond

It's a very Great British energy companies have been demanding that the government crack down on climate change protesters And Mark Kenyon is about to head into one of his most delicate undercover operations one plan for those who have become his closest friends

This is Racket fund coal-fired power station. We need to deal with the massive threat of climate change Yeah, we have to stop burning coal in the government's buying a new generation at places like this So the big fact is a cooling tower is putting out the steam that comes out from here But the large one is the chimney. That's the smoke from burning coal

that's one of the largest point sources of carbon in the country and People are going to shut down the plant and then when the chimney is cool get up there And climb up with enough perimeter to stay there for a week and then drop about another would have a rolling count of how Many tons of carbon have been saved because this place wasn't in action anymore We knew it wasn't risking anyone's energy supply to do this. Yeah, it's in a national grid system

So the power station can go off and on all the time. There's rising and falling demand all the time They're used to this happening So we know when that winds off a gas-fired power station somewhere else would come on instead so they can reduce carbon emissions But it's not threatening anyone's energy supply. There's no data to anyone Police were saying that this threatens hospitals, this threatens normal people. Threatens

your granny says the guy from the association of chief police officers Who run the unit that Mark Kennedy was in and they know it's in a grid system They know as they say if it's not true They know they're trying to scare people, given that this didn't threaten anybody's welfare at all It's peculiar that they put the resources of hundreds of police officers and months of planning and an undercover officer in the shape of Mark Kennedy

Into the planning group right from the beginning to try and stop this when he wasn't gonna hurt anyone at all Couldn't hurt anyone at all And so it proves that they're not actually only after threats against life on in The threat to corporate profit is just as serious to them. We don't know It's beyond pressure of the police to do this, how close they were working

We do know from other cases that the corporations hire private detectives to come and do this And it's in exchange for information two ways between police and those private eyes And so we came together with this, there was 114 of us Planning to come in and shut this down Because it was 113 activists plus Mark Kennedy who was in the room and we were raided by police preemptively

And all of us were arrested, it's the largest pre-emptive political arrest in English history as far as we know

How much further would it have gone had it not had Mark Kennedy in it, ruining it, we wouldn't have got further And it's going to be a measurable difference because of what those police officers did for the worse

And people's lives and whole species are going to go down in that difference

Okay, so thanks Jason for that absolutely amazing film Hi, I wish Meric who was also of course infiltrated by Mark Kennedy could be here with us Unfortunately instead of getting Meric you got me, a minor bureaucrat of cyberspace as many of you know me

With a side interest in cryptography But actually the reason I do the work I do is because it's just another terrain of struggle And just like protesting in the streets is a terrain of struggle Or fighting Mark Kennedy and undercover police in general in the courts is a terrain of struggle

I was organizing and protesting for many years the anti-globalization movement against the centralization of political and financial power And neoliberal capitalism and then the climate change movement to fight catastrophic climate chaos

During these protests you know sometimes they would go wrong And after they went wrong we would get together and have a meeting and be like well what went wrong And at one of these meetings I was introduced Julian Coupa who is a French revolutionary introduced me to Mark Kennedy

And Mark Kennedy who I'd seen around the scene for a while You know of course the reason why the protests had gone wrong is because we had an undercover cop running all the logistics It's not our fault we didn't know

And then we said well it would be great if we could go and spread this conversation about the future of protest movements outside of just mass mobilizations to the United States So you know I went to the United States we hung out with great people there Many people who later became involved in movements like Occupy

Although it did not occur to us that the guy Fox Mass was going to get big And that sitting down in a tent was going to get really popular Just didn't occur to us really But at the same time Mark Kennedy then followed me to the United States And that is when I got put on a terrorist watch list or something more or less equivalent to that

So when I came into the United States there would be a FBI agent who would say Look buddy you and all your friends you're a domestic terrorist you're going to jail And you know I'd be like hey what's the evidence and there's no crime there's no evidence But you know they would basically seize my computer hold me for multiple hours

And it was just intolerable So the advice of my lawyer Ron Kuby I left the United States I went back to Great Britain where I decided I was going to finish I was finishing my PhD and when I got to Great Britain The undercover police were harassing my PhD advisor

And harassing my school And when my friends left the UK they would be asked You know about You know me And when I left the UK the police would say Tell us what you know about domestic extremism And I would say well you know the large coal burning power plants

They're ran by extremists who want to destroy our civilization And they weren't very happy with that And they would force my DNA out of me And then at some point I was like this is too dangerous I'm a threat to my friends And I left the UK And I landed up in Germany Where it was revealed we were also spied upon later

And I was organizing Helping work with organizing a protest against global climate change The COP in Copenhagen And in the COP in Copenhagen I was targeted for arrests And beaten so I couldn't see or walk And at that moment I decided

That I was no longer going to do street protests It was just too dangerous I didn't know that the cause of all of this Was Mark Kennedy Undercover police officer who we thought was a friend I personally got out kind of light Julian and nine other French people are on charges for terrorism

They spoke at Congress last year on Google Other friends I have are on no fly list And they're still on no fly list And I would basically just sort of say that You know you learn a lot being on a terrorist watch list I think everyone should do it at least once

Hi, oh wow I can't actually see any of you So I've been dreading making this introduction I'm one of eight women who are bringing a case in the UK right now

Against the Metropolitan Police For assault and deceit and abuse of our human rights I'm in the program as Lily And any of you who might have read about the case Or some of the articles that have appeared in Germany and Britain about it Would know me as Lily

In 2003 I met this man Mark Stone At a meeting for the mobilization against the G8 summit In 2005 in Scotland He was charming and disarming And he shared my interests and he shared my passion For the political things that we were doing

And he told me lots of his most intimate stories and secrets We became very close We spent two years living together as lovers He became very close to my parents He spent many nights in their home He attended my grandmother's 90th birthday party He met my entire extended family

And we remained friends for many years after that Very close friends until 2010 when I received a phone call From friends in the UK who told me that This man Mark Stone Who I shared my life with Never existed

And the impact of that I think Marek describes it very well The grief and the paranoia And the sense of shame Really paralyzed me for a very very long time Because of the personal nature of the case that we're bringing

Our anonymity has actually been protected by the court And that privacy and anonymity was very very dear to me And I've spoken out before But always under a pseudonym I've avoided being videoed But over the last five years

There's been a lot more revelations About these undercover police officers And I now know that between 1998 and 2010 At least six people that I knew and worked with And some of whom I considered friends Were actually undercover police officers And this year I went to the Circumvention Tech Festival in Valencia

And after a pretty weird control by the police We found this GPS tracker stuck under my car So much for my privacy And finding the GPS tracker was a bit of a wake up call

They've basically been targeting me For the last 17 years And that happened In part because I didn't believe that they would sink so low I didn't believe that I was doing anything That would be interesting enough And so I think that people need to know

That this happens to real people I've started to feel like the anonymity Is a bit like a gagging order And so I've decided to give it up So hi, that's me

Wow, that feels weird So I wanted to talk a little bit about The reasons why we're bringing this court case And you can get rid of that screen now, thank you

And yeah, the first reason is really personal The knowledge about Mark not being who I thought he was Was kind of like a computer virus It corrupted all my memories of those times And it affects all my relationships that I've had since

And trying to fight back bringing this case against the police Was a way of Taking back control of the story of my life And it's been a really powerful experience Because we're a group of women who've been through similar things Over a 30 year period Like the first relationships happened sometime in the early 80s And they continued right up to 2010

And so one of the things that we've learnt through talking to each other Is that what happened between Mark and me Was not a personal betrayal It was systematic abuse by an institutionally sexist organisation That's been doing it for decades And people say to us

And even the police have actually said as part of the court case That people lie in relationships all the time Which I think is a pretty depressing way of understanding human relationships But it's also really not what was happening here And Mark came into my life with fake ID

And he'd been through a whole load of training programs He was paid overtime for the nights that he spent with me There was a back room that was tracking his movements That was monitoring our communications And there was a command structure that was deciding If I was going to have dinner with my boyfriend that night

And one of the things that we found from talking to the other women Is that there was a psychological and emotional manipulation going on I think I said Mark told me lots of stories About how he was abandoned by his father When he was a kid and his unhappy childhood Actually his parents are still together

And I've read letters from other officers That were supposedly written From his mother's funeral Very very painful letters Actually his mother is still alive And when all of these officers left The relationships and the missions that they were on

The infiltrations They had emotional breakdowns And they disappeared Leaving notes that suggested that they might be thinking of suicide Leaving their partners absolutely distraught And these we now know are tactics That they're specifically trained in In order to manipulate us

And so another of the things that we're really interested in Is getting to the truth And I guess I kind of naively believe That if we accused the police of something They would have to defend themselves And provide us with information about what was really happening Actually of course what's happened Is we've had the full might of the police legal department

And the huge amounts of public funds Being dedicated to making sure They don't have to give any information out at all And one of the things that they are now saying Is that they have a supposed policy Of neither confirming nor denying anything

To do with undercover policing It hasn't been a policy up until now But now they're claiming it's a policy And they've actually tried to get entire cases thrown out of court Because they don't want to answer the questions That they're being asked And then in my case They've tried to have the whole case sent to The investigatory powers tribunal

If you're involved in campaigning around surveillance Or privacy or human rights in the UK You've probably heard of the investigatory powers tribunal It's basically a secret court That was set up just to hear Cases brought against the secret state For abuse of human rights After the human rights act came in in 2000 in the UK

They realised that actually A lot of the activities of the secret state Would be violating people's rights And so they brought in a legal framework And a secret court to make sure that Nobody had any recourse essentially For that Pass the slide

In our case Where we're trying to get our case out of the IPT This is actually what the judge said That parliament clearly intended to override fundamental human rights By bringing that law in So we can't complain that our human rights Are being violated And our claim Human rights claim is sitting in the IPT Still waiting for trial

So I've had to reveal A lot about my personal life And intimate details To the court and to the police In order to bring this case And this is the kind of shit that we're getting In return Nevertheless Over the last five years a lot of information

Has come out We're running over time already I think I can't really go into it in detail But I want to do a big shout out to Some of the people who are doing the research The Undercover Research Group And State Watch Have been Digging for years And they've got really good websites with loads of information

About this The journalists Paul Lewis and Rob Evans And all of their sources That have been giving Giving us this information And putting it out there All of the other Groups and individuals who were affected

By these operations And particularly the ones that are involved In the COPS campaign Who are keeping the pressure on To keep this information coming out And to keep them having to answer questions And where we've got So far Actually it's a kind of specifically

Weird and British thing You can measure how uncomfortable the British state Feels about stuff that's going on By the number of investigations And inquiries and reports that are being Produced about it And on this issue of Undercover COPS There's actually been I think it's 18 different inquiries That have been started

Or investigations that have been started And when all else fails What they do is they call for a public inquiry And that's what they've just done It's starting now It's going to take three years And Okay

Okay, yeah, thanks Private spying This is also getting to be a bigger problem We talked about Say a bit about England and Wales Right, private spying is a big problem And also The next slide will talk about the inquiry more

So It's been entering pop culture even a couple years ago There was a Hollywood film called The East about private spying On the left You see a slide for a group called Global Open That's a private security from the UK We know that they've been spying at least On animal rights groups

And Mark Kennedy After Mark Kennedy stopped working for the police I met him in 2005 When I was a G8 activist And that's when he entered my life He was a police officer at that time But by the time he was out Actually Mark Kennedy was a private spy He said before parliament that he worked for Global Open He also

Kept his fake name And kept hanging out with his activist friends With the name Mark Stone He went to an animal rights meeting In Italy He was planning on coming to an animal rights meeting In late 2010 When he was outed While working for this company And technically Undercover cops are supposed to be somehow accountable If they're undercover police actually

They're not always We see from this lawsuit and so on But as a private security company They're really not accountable And private security companies are not And Mark Kennedy was working for that company There was also Stratfor, the global intelligence group From the USA Their emails and so were hacked by

Anonymous, it was made public So we know from their leaks that Mark Kennedy Even applied to work for Stratfor I'm gonna go I'm just gonna jump onto the next slide Because I'm gonna give a talk on this specific topic At the Just back At the concern protest conference in Berlin There's a one day conference about When companies manage protests

That's a problem too because Companies have actually tried to totally Set the agenda, they call it agenda setting They get undercover cops They write on chat groups And they totally try to change the focus of protests So go to that conference if you want to hear more The German situation As it relates to Mark Kennedy and undercover policing Well it's not just

Mark Kennedy that was in Germany we're worried about Just after Mark was outed In 2010, late 2010 Simon with a fake name Brenner, his real name was Broma, he was outed In Heidelberg After activists campaigning for the last like Five years they're finally bringing this case To court They were targeted by Broma

There's also a demonstration in Heidelberg this month Iris Plata was an undercover cop In Hamburg, she also had Intimate affairs personal relationships With activists They're campaigning on that And the Pitchford inquiry What we heard about the Inquiry in the UK that's coming up Now it says it includes only

England and Wales, it excludes Scotland Which means like all of us hung out with With Mark Kennedy in Scotland And they're excluding that Because of the G8 protest 2005 And so a couple of us are campaigning That we need We want to know what Mark Kennedy was doing in Germany And in the last two weeks Members of parliament

Hans Christian Strobla and Andrei Hunko have made statements There have been articles, if you Google their names And Mark Kennedy blah blah Then you will see that they are demanding that the Mark Kennedy case in Germany be a part of this British inquiry because they say the case is not Solved in Germany Mark Kennedy committed three crimes here Including an arson in Berlin And he gave a fake name

Mark Stone to a judge That's all illegal That has to be clarified Myself and others We are applying for what they call In England core participant status This means when they Pitchford does this inquiry They've actually said that people targeted by Undercover cops

Are allowed to sit there and Be a part of the inquiry So I'm applying to be there I think these other folks on stage with me Are applying because we want to direct This inquiry, we had enough We've had enough of the cops covering up They get paid to cover up, they lie I've interviewed from my film members of Parliament in England who said the police

Have been dishonest to them And we want to get to the bottom of it And if we're trying to get core participant status So we can fight to make sure the truth comes out On the last topic I've met With a German Member of Parliament from the The interior committee Who says that actually for private Undercover cops, they're not specially regulated

So like I said Undercover cops should abide by some laws But the private undercovers can come here and do Whatever they want, it's totally unregulated In Germany Move on to Harry I'm going to speak about the wonderful Logic of the discovery

Of dissidents, domestic extremists And terrorists using Social network infiltration Which is what Mark Kennedy was a specialist at So his job was to go to A meeting of people who Maybe wanted to protest Didn't seem to really care about exactly what But his job was to Map the social network And to discover the top

Influencer And I just want to quickly say this is FBI analysis ran by a Piece of relatively bad graphical Software called Tartan Which was used by Stratfor against Occupy Oakland And solidarity with Jeremy Hammond We would not have this Had Stratfor not been hacked

And lastly The undercover thing Is huge And so you know, power the people but Fuck the secret police, particularly Sabu, like that shit

Kill that guy, metaphorically Not literally So what they're doing is That they are trying to discover who knows who And the problem with this is that By that logic, I'm in rooms with lots of people I actually told my story about Being on a terrorist watch list first To the OECD in Paris On their big data and privacy meeting

And the US representative got me lunch Which was very nice of him, and he apologised Because I'm obviously You know, I don't consider myself a terrorist I have not been Charged with a crime I don't actually think I've committed a crime But nonetheless By virtue of my political beliefs I've been somehow put on

This watch list and then people I know Then would get put on Particularly if they met Mark Kennedy or Hung out with him a bit And essentially, you know, by that logic Everyone I know is a potential terrorist And everyone in this room is therefore a potential Terrorist, and that obviously As a guy who has a PhD in machine learning That's a whole lot of false positives

Right, so It's not, like, whatever the police are trying to do With undercover cops like Mark Kennedy It's not gonna really get you any good data Okay, next slide So, you know, when you realise I'm on this list, what should I do Well, one thing you should do And laws are different, data protection in Europe In the US you have

Free Information Acts, you should file a FOIA You should get a really good lawyer I love Ron Kuby, he's a great lawyer He's the lawyer the dude asked for in the Big Lebowski He's a totally down guy He did a FOIA request, and then a year later Like, yeah, we got 7,624 pages on you I was like, oh man I carried a burner laptop with me How did you get my email? I don't know, what's all in that 6,000

7,624 pages So, you know, they say it's gonna take us A while to redact this And then you get Some of the stuff, and then you get Great files like this one Where everything is redacted but the dates But you realise there's An investigation going on

Called harryhaupen.al At Ali and others My lawyer says, you know You wanna be an et al Something was going on We don't know precisely what Still don't know to this day And then you also Learn a lot about how the FBI Worked by looking at your files

You learn that the FBI are talking To a lot of people about you Some people are saying things that you Don't know because of various Exclusions like B6 and B7C And One thing that definitely happened When Mark Kennedy provoked A lot of various undercover Police, provoked a lot of FBI

Attention, particularly in New York City Where the grand jury was Apparently running out of Is that a lot of people freak out It's like, oh man, like, you know You told me you were harassed at the airport And, you know, Somehow you know some police This is terrible, so you say Maybe you're an undercover cop Really isolating people

Who are being Under threat is really Dangerous At least with Undercover police like Mark Kennedy I can understand why they try to Destroy social movements because they're paid To do it When you see people who are part of social movements Destroy their own social movements

By snitch jacketing Going totally paranoid Calling people police All this sort of stuff Happened a lot in New York, I'm not going to name any names But you are doing the job of the police And not even being paid for it So fuck those people However, you also learn That a lot of people are great people

You know, people make mistakes I've made mistakes Trying to figure out what was going on Who is the source of this data What evidence do the police have on me You also see a lot of people that really Were put under severe pressure By the FBI and resist And a lot of these people, or I would assume Ordinary people, family Friends, employers

And I would just like to big thank you to all the people Who have not folded under tremendous pressure From the secret police And then you're just like, oh man Mark Kennedy He said, I was mentally unstable They didn't give me a psychoanalyst

I just kind of made stuff up Because it was a great job And you're like, wow, well that's wrong You just really screwed with my life For many, many years And I still get hassled at the UK border And going into Shingon And wouldn't it be great to get off This list, or at least find out Why I'm on And you have a UN Human Rights Act

Which basically says you shouldn't do this Unless there's a real reason And some due process Things that come from the Magna Carta We've been fighting it for a thousand years And you also have, particularly in Europe You have personal data Where personal data must be processed fairly And you have the right to have it rectified If it's wrong However, when you ask

If I'm known undercover police And put on a watch list how to get rectified You get something more or less like this You get a national security exemption So why do we release people like Mark Kennedy When we release people like Mark Kennedy And these undercover cops into the world Because there is terrorist everywhere So all this due process And enlightenment

It's thrown out the window instantly Enter what Agamben calls a state of exception Where the application of law Is completely arbitrary And anyone can be labeled a terrorist at any time You just have to look at how The European Council defines terrorism To unduly constrain public authorities

Or an international organization Which I guess could be any Multinational company To perform or to refrain from performing Any action So that means like, you know, fryheights.onx Or maybe, I don't know, boycotting McDonalds That could all be terrorism So it's pretty vague at best

Is this working? So the other reason Why we brought the case Was to try and make sure it didn't Happen again In the beginning what It shouldn't happen again meant to me Was that no other women should be Abused in the way that we were

But It's got a lot broader than that Over time And I think Now the thing that You can pass the slide I think So now the thing that we That I really feel is important I mean I've said I

I'm lost Sorry I want my files I want to know, I want them to fill in the gaps For all of those things that I don't know What was happening in my life but They're not giving us that information And the reasons why And these national security exemptions They're all about saying that this kind of undercover policing Is somehow legitimate

And we have Examples from history And I was in Berlin before I came here And that's somewhere Where they actually decided That what happened, what the undercover police were Doing was not legitimate And everybody Was given access to their files And I would really like to see that change of

Attitude happening, there is no Circumstances, there is nothing that people Could be doing That I think justifies this kind of political Policing And then the other thing that I think is now really important Is I want Reaper and the IPT Gone And I think

Yeah basically I think it's important to say here because Lots of people are involved in campaigning around Around issues That can touch on that and basically I would just like to say kick those bastards Every time you get the chance Smash Reaper, smash the IPT Like they're fucked up And we want them gone

And yeah, do you want to do the rest? Okay, I'll go And another thing I just want to bring up is The issue of What's called pervasive

Surveillance, or targeted Surveillance, and these are often viewed As a dichotomy, so you sort of say So I work with like lots of engineers Like Microsoft and Google These places, and they're really nice people For the most part, they're a little angry at mass surveillance They feel violated, and it's kind of freaky Thinking oh NSA is spying on everyone On the planet, and so they're like

Oh we have to stop pervasive surveillance That pervasive surveillance is a threat But there's this like myth That basically says well you know maybe the police might need a back door Cause there's like a legitimate target And you know there's certain people that we should Target, that guy right there For example, and It's basically targeted surveillance

The point of mass surveillance Is targeted surveillance And targeted surveillance, for the most part In my experience at least Targets people who are Activists, who are trying to change the world For a better place, and under the Incredibly vague way that terrorism cases And social network analysis and all this stuff is run And big data, god help us when they start doing real stats You know targeted analysis

Could target anyone in this room And anyone on the planet at any time So you have to be 100% Against targeted surveillance And you need an international response One of the reasons to do focus on Indian crypto And anatomy systems Is because ultimately changing these laws Is going to be really hard May not ever happen

But at the same point we have to do something And I really feel like The way that hackers Can help social movements by building systems They can do that can prevent not only Pervasive surveillance, but also Prevent targeted surveillance Because ultimately any You know, I believe everything I believe Before I met Mark Kennedy You know, I believe in even more

Capitalism is totally ending It's going to be a dead social order The next few decades Climate change is a global threat to humanity And You know the financial system Is screwed It's like if young people Can't go into the streets without being victims Of targeted surveillance and undercover police

We're never going to change And get the world we want Is this all? I think it's really important

To say that Obviously my story is pretty horrible And the stuff that we're talking about Is pretty horrible And I don't want to Send people out of here traumatized and scared And not wanting to Take action I think it's important that people know that this stuff is happening But I think it's also important to say that this stuff

Happened to us because we were doing something right And Yeah, like, don't stop Don't be scared by what we're saying Be aware, but Yeah Yeah, and if you are German or in Germany

Then there are things you can do here We didn't talk about this problem So much at the European Union level But actually there have been questions at the European Union Like How can all of these things happen These human rights violations And these kind of things have to be addressed At the European Union You can make pressure there You can make pressure in the German parliament You can take to the streets You can help support my film

Or if you're in Germany You can help to get rid of Germany's political police The Verfassenchutz When I asked the German police The Beycke, Elke from my file

About Mark Kennedy, they gave me nothing But when I asked the Verfassenchutz, I had a list of 31 Things that had been On my file, like Jason gave a political Protest A lecture, a political lecture about the G8 Whatever, all this political stuff, none of it was illegal 31 things in my Verfassenchutz File, none of which were illegal At all, they were all about public things

So you can support these folks I'm going to give a talk also next month in Berlin We are active We weren't intimidated And we hope that you will stand with us and fight And help us find justice Thank you very much

Last little note, I forgot about this If any of you have been targeted by undercover police Mark Kennedy would be great But there's many, many others

I think you should probably Either give those documents to a lawyer Maybe give them to my lawyers Maybe give you their info Or you could leak those documents somehow I just want to say this to the police officers Watching the video We have lots of documents Really, all this lying You're not going to win

Is that on? Can you hear me? As you can see, now we have a lot of time for questions You see two microphones One is there One is here

So if you want, queue up And we start with you in the blue shirt For a question Thanks for your talk Really great to see that some people fight back If everyone here has the idea or interest to get also files from the BKA or the Fafastenschot

There's tomorrow a workshop How to get your file From the Geheimdienst At the B.A.R. in the dome At 12 o'clock Yeah, at the B.A.R. Dawn's workshop An answer?

Next question Thank you very much for a really excellent talk And I think I say on behalf of probably everyone here

Incredible condolences And solidarity To you guys And everyone else who's been targeted by these undercovers I think one of the most interesting things which has come out of these revelations Which was I guess maybe not really intended at all

It seems to me from having been involved in various activist circles for the past couple of years Certainly I got involved just as the Mark Kennedy thing was really blowing up And it seems like we're really being afflicted by this incredible culture now of paranoia

And so I hear things like As soon as anyone sticks their head above the pulpit Either because they're very experienced or because they're very knowledgeable Or just because they're very good at what they do and very effective

Or as soon as there's an interpersonal disagreement with someone The accusations start flying Oh you see that guy with the camera? He's definitely an undercover Why is he filming? For the rest of you I'm pointing at one of the CCC camera operators Oh do you know I hear it was on CNN the other day

It was on BBC They have really small drones They're the size of your fingernails And they can fly anywhere and land anywhere Even in a hurricane and follow you around This is what the Mark Kennedy thing was all about Of course I have heard this So I guess my question is

Where do we go from here? Have you experienced this kind of paranoia Really almost unreasonable paranoia Yourselves, if so how did you respond? And how do you think we in the activist community can respond to this kind of environment Which has been totally inadvertently arisen? Thank you

Okay it's a really good question In my case I think I wasn't paranoid enough But I also in some ways I'm kind of glad that I wasn't paranoid enough And I spoke to another woman who was friends with Mark after he was found out

And one of the things she said was Well I guess I'm not as good at judging people as I thought But who wants to go around judging people all the time And I think the thing is that you do have to be careful

But you also have to kind of be serious about it Actually long before Mark Kennedy was uncovered The activist movements lived with this culture of paranoia And a lot of the time we do paranoid stuff that is pointless And damaging and I mean the stuff that Harry was talking about from New York

And then we don't actually, we're not sensible about it We don't do the sensible stuff So what I would say is if you think somebody is an undercover cop Don't whisper about it Don't spread rumors, don't try and trash that person personally Actually try and find out

The undercover cops that have been uncovered Are people that people have suspected And they've looked, they've looked for birth certificates They've actually seriously tried to find out And I think it's important to say that actually the people who turned out to be undercover cops Were not the people you didn't like so much You know the weirdo in the corner who doesn't have any friends

And everyone goes oh I think that guy is probably a cop because he makes me feel uncomfortable They were our closest friends I've done actions in affinity groups where there were only two of us And one of the members of that affinity group was an undercover cop And when people actually started to suspect and started to investigate You were investigating your close friends And it was something that was very painful to do

And people took very very seriously It wasn't something that you did as a kind of gossipy, rumoury thing And I think that's really important Don't be sensitive We can also get it wrong Don't say you think someone is a cop unless you know

Also try to be careful about what really really really has to be kept secret And what actually people can be included in Even if maybe that means undercover cops are involved Because otherwise we end up shutting ourselves down And becoming more and more paranoid

And less and less effective I don't know if anyone else A good level of transparency in your group can help along ways And in some of the books that I mentioned there's advice

For example there's a great book from the USA called War at Home Covert, Surveillance Against US American Activists and What We Can Do About It That book has great advice If you're paranoid, you're in a certain group and you can't deal with it Well there's a million ways that you can be active You can pass out flyers, you can cook food, you can do a million things

The thing that I think is sad on occasion is when someone is paranoid And they step out in their activism What we need is a way to think about how we can have a lifelong way of being active And continuing to be active and incorporating that activism into our everyday life And to keep on going

Thanks for your talk I'm so angry when I hear what happened to you I'm amazed at how dignified you are in facing this I was in the UK for a lot of the time when the Mark Kennedy case came up

And then when you started bringing your case And so there were judges talking about, disgusting judges talking about this Like it was some James Bond fantasy Police chiefs talking about how lying is a part of every relationship

And they brought up some old cases where having sex with activists was clearly seen as a perk of the job And while wishing every personal unhappiness that can be won from such attitudes I wondered if you could talk a bit more about the case you're bringing with institutional sexism

And how that's going and how you're arguing that It's a tough one I mean the issue with institutional sexism is

One of the things that is significant about the decades of undercover police That have been inside the political movements in the UK Is that while there have been cases of relationships Of sexual encounters with men

These kind of long term relationships where I mean I think effectively we were used as part of their cover story Only really happened to women And I dread to think what the cafeteria culture must have been like Within those undercover units

Like that's one of the things that keeps me awake at night And I think getting that message across I don't really know how to answer the question Like it's something that we just have to keep saying I think one of the problems with the institutional sexism of the Metropolitan Police

Is that it's embedded in the institutional sexism of the British legal system And within the generalised sexism in our society And so it's a kind of It's something we have to fight on a lot of different levels But what we've been doing is by bringing these cases together

And showing that this is not They tried to say in the beginning that it was just one like lunatic And that Mark Kennedy had done this But that nobody else did And then some other cases came up and they kind of said Yeah well you know there's this unit that was the special demonstration squad

And they were totally out of control and we shut them down And we brought in the regulation of investigatory powers act And everything is now fine And then more cases have come up Since the regulation of investigatory powers act And I think it's just a case of showing that this is systematic This is something that they've been doing

This is part of their operational tactics And yeah we need more whistle blowers for sure And that would be really great so For those undercover cops who are watching the video or sitting in the room

We have time for another question So in New York City for about a decade The NYPD, New York Police Department Intelligence Division The demographics unit was surveilling Muslims en masse

So there was a lawsuit about this two years ago And one of the judges arguments in defense of this was That the actual damage happened was through the revelations of the surveillance itself And not the surveillance itself So I'm curious as you're exposing different policing tactics What is your response to what the damages are

And why surveillance in itself is the damage? So I mean surveillance creates a culture of fear and paranoia And you have a large scale complex society like ours That is in desperate need of social change

By attempting to destroy the creativity and the power of people to self organize You are actually committing large scale social suicide to your entire society That's incredibly damaging You will never change a society by creating a police state

Even a one which is supposedly justified by terrorism So one of the arguments around why shouldn't we release more Indian crypto One of the arguments is well how do we find the terrorists? Well you know this Indian crypto and other technologies Which effectively make targeted and mass surveillance harder

Is a public good in the same way that roads for example are public goods So effectively you know terrorists drive on roads They go on airplanes Do we ban airplanes and stop building roads and destroy the ones we have?

No we don't make them illegal The same with crypto And the culture of surveillance is trying to hold back Innovation and building anonymizing systems And building privacy enhancing technologies Is really possibly going to destroy one of the few things that actually will help defend our rights

When our legal structure is pretty clear with the cases that Kate's been in And you know I'm in and Jason and whatnot Is that you know the legal infrastructure needs the technological guarantees Because the legal structure is being undermined completely by this total nonsense of surveillance

Okay I checked with my supervisor and he said we have another question The last one please It's not really a question it's just a comment All of this, the police surveillance people and activists

Already happened in South America in the years of the desaparecidos And you did a great work because the outcome of that experience Was that many of the persons that were infiltrated in the activism After some years became some sort of political center

And they were actually the people that got elected and got out in the hierarchy even of the states So you did very well because you actually They didn't have the opportunity to become more important and have more influence in the society

That was One little comment which is that the data protection regulations A lot of these regulations were set into place after World War II In order to prevent the rise of a massive secret police apparatus

Because people knew how bad that had gone By undermining those laws and of course holding back technological progress We made it easier for these sorts of large scale surveillance to come back But the fact of the matter is I'm pretty lucky I'm like this white dude I work at MIT

I'm not dead, I'm not in Guantanamo And the fact of the matter is many people who are put on these lists Dirty War for example by Jeremy Scahill does an excellent analysis These people if they're in Pakistan, if they're in Iraq, if they're in Africa If they're in many countries they are killed So this is a big difference

But at the same point that means we have to fight really hard to show it can be defeated Because a lot of these killings are coming from European and American governments And Western governments That's why you really have to fight really hard As someone who lives in these countries as well For also preventing this from happening all over the globe

Alright a big thank you for this really interesting talk A loud applause for Kate, Harry and Jason Thank you so much That's for you guys

Really good job.