Jacob Appelbaum WikiLeaks Next HOPE Keynote Transcript

Jacob Appelbaum (http://www.appelbaum.net), WikiLeaks keynote

2010 Hackers on Planet Earth conference, New York City, July 17, 2010

This is a transcript of the audio clip available at http://drop.io/thenexthope_wikileaks/asset/ioerror-hope-wikileaks-20100717-mp3

This is a crowdsourced transcription, please do not quote without verifying with the recording.

[00:00]

Moderator: Everyone having fun? [Cheers. “Yeah!”] Alright. There’s a lot of Feds here. I don’t understand. There is all this interest in the conference this year, for some reason. Say ‘Hi,’ how ya doin’?

Wow. Well, we’ve had quite a conference so far, very active. A lot of people. A lot of activities. Day and night. It’s just continuing.

I want to thank everyone for behaving well, making the hotel happy, making us happy and having a great time. [cheering] Do you all have your bottle of Club-Mate? Alright. I don’t mean now, but I mean did you ingest it. Ok, good, good. It makes you happy.

This is the Saturday keynote. Let me tell you something.. when I first met Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. It was shortly after the video “Collateral Murder” was released. Have you all seen that video? Alright, it has some video of U.S. troops doing some not very nice things that allegedly they never did before the video was actually revealed. WikiLeaks is an organization that accepts leaks from people all over the planet, and, when appropriate, publishes them so that the world can see.

And, I happen to think that’s something that’s extremely important. Something that the hacker world realizes is a valuable part of democratic society. And, I think that the person who leaked the video in the first place to WikiLeaks, should be considered a national hero. [Cheering] And, so the time that I met Julian, the video had just been released. We had him on “Off the Hook” and it was an incredible situation where we were talking to the person

[02:00]

who had received the video, released it to the world and of course was the focal point of attention. Even though he was in the country he felt safe releasing that video there because of all the press attention. Then, a month or so later, I met up with him again and basically - actually wait, it was more recent than that, it was a few days later - we talked about having him give the keynote address here at Hope. I said, you know, this will be a receptive crowd. These will be people who understand what it is you’re doing at WikiLeaks, and will see the importance of it, and we’ll make big contributions to the WikiLeaks table, which is downstairs right now.

And, the work you do is vital; it’s important; it must be encouraged, and people who contribute things like this need to know that there is a safe place for them to actually give their sensitive material that can be used for the greater good. And, if you’ll note, no source has ever been revealed via WikiLeaks. However, there are other ways of revealing potential sources, through the mass media and through other means.

A little while later — about a month or so later — there was an article that appeared in one of my favorite online magazines: Wired. [Audience laughter] Yes, that was sarcastic. And, that particular article was about somebody in the community that the alleged leaker of this video decided to contact thinking that he was a kindred spirit. And, as happens in the hacker world sometimes, people don’t know when to shut up. So, he told this person a lot of things about the video, about I think 260,000 classified documents that he was also leaking to WikiLeaks. And this “person” — I don’t know why I put the word person in quotes, [audience laughter]

[04:00]

some of you may know why — this person decided that that was a bit much and went to the authorities. And, as a result, the person who allegedly leaked all this information is currently in custody in Kuwait. And, at that moment, Julian Assange became a very wanted man in this country. We’ve been able to verify this ourselves, as true that the authorities really, really want to question him about the documents that he is getting from this source, from other sources, about just what it is he’s doing in the first place.

Now, Julian is committed to what he does, just like any of you who work late at night on your various projects, and the rest of the world thinks you’re crazy and wasting your time. This is another version of that, and Julian is one of the most driven and dedicated people I’ve ever met. So, that is why we asked him to keynote here, and that is why he was particularly interested in making sure that that commitment was not lost, that the address to you would be given, regardless of the fact that we were able to verify with our federal contacts that if he were to set foot in this country, he would be immediately detained. Now, with all that said, how many of you expect to see Julian walk through that side door right now and come up onto this stage?

[Cheering, applause] And, how many of you live in the real world? [Audience laughter] Unfortunately, we all do. There is a WikiLeaks presentation today. There is a WikiLeaks keynote address. Without further ado, I would like to introduce WikiLeaks. [Applause, cheers]

[06:00]

Jacob Appelbaum: Hello to all of my friends and fans in domestic and international surveillance. [Audience laughter] I’m here today because I believe that we can make a better world. Julian, unfortunately, can’t make it because we don’t live in that better world right now, because we haven’t yet made it.

I wanted to make a little declaration for the federal agents that are standing in the back of the room, and the ones that are standing in the front of the room, and to be very clear about this: I have on me — in my pocket — some money, the Bill of Rights and a driver’s license. And that’s it. I have no computer system, I have no telephone, I have no keys, no access to anything. There’s absolutely no reason that you should arrest me or bother me. And just in case you’re wondering, I’m an American, born and raised, who is unhappy. I’m unhappy with how things are going.

[Applause, cheers] I’ve dedicated my life to helping other people who need help. In general, and specifically, I work with human rights activists. I work with people who care about a woman’s right to choose, the ability to freely vote.. I work with people who are working for some kind of social change that is positive in this world. This is extremely important to me, and I don’t expect all of you to do this as well, but I expect you to support me, and I expect you to support the activities that take place that are in support of these things. To quote from Tron, “I fight for the user.”

[08:00]

I’ve done some other things, they’re not really that important but they’re in line with what I believe WikiLeaks is in line with. I want to teach people. I want people to learn, want them to collaborate, I want them to cooperate and I want them to be able to speak freely without fear of retribution. That's why I work on Noisebridge and that's why I work on Tor.

I think that if you can, you should organize. You should organize locally in order to make things like this possible, you should help people in whatever way that it is possible. You should also write free software if you have the opportunity, because it is only then that people will be able trust what you do. There are people who’s lives depend upon software the hacker community writes. It's kind of a scary thing to think of that considering some of the quality [audience laughter], but in general, it's extremely important.

So, you should consider the fact its not just about politics, and I am here speaking on behalf of WikiLeaks. I am not here as a representative of the Tor project, who employs me. I'm sure that they would not be too unhappy with me speaking here right now, but they certainly did not know about it before this moment.

So, I believe that we are complicit in crimes against humanity when we know about them and when we don't stop them. I think that it is quite clear to me, that every single person in this room has in some way contributed to the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. And, I wonder how you all feel about knowing that you are the ones, I am the one, that has funded every bullet that has shot a child and every woman who has to come home to a family who has been decimated by troops, where there is no justice, where people don’t have recourse of any kind whatsoever, where the standard operating procedure is for someone to take a .50 caliber machine gun and shoot across the engine block and kill the driver.

I’m not sure that that's the world I want to live in and I'm not sure that that's not the world I want to fund. I'm pretty sure it's not. How about you guys, what do you think? Is that what you want? [Audience shouts: “No!”] That's good. So, what are you doing to change it? [Audience member: “Stop paying taxes.” Audience laughter]

[10:00]

I guess it depends if you’re Branson or not. I grew up listening to how terrible things were in the world before. And the new conservative lie, and it is a lie, is that when the Berlin wall fell, history ended. We were in a new world of prosperity with no problems anymore. But actually that’s not the case. We all live in a mythology. And the mythology that we’re living in is that America does no harm, and that is simply not true. I believe that in general Americans are very good and they want to do the right thing. And I think that’s why none of you are rushing the stage and trying to hurt me right now. But we condemn the past while funding the future, that we would condemn if it were our past. It doesn’t really make sense.

So, I want to quote from one of my personal heroes. I was going to give you a quote from my friend Daniel Ellsberg... but I think that Moxie Marlin’s fight fits with this crowd a little more, [audience cheers] right? He’s a fantastic fellow and he’s really inspired me. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for him. He helped me to engage with the world in a way that I couldn’t previously understand. And he said, what about the truth has helped you? And I always give him countless examples. And, so what I want to hear from people, is on a regular basis, how the truth has helped them.

We have to dismiss with the cynicism. Sincerity is the New Black [audience laughter]. So tell me: has the truth helped you? Write about this. Publish it. Tell people about how it has helped you. Show, that when you learn new things, that they’ve affected you in some way and that you have affected other people... that some good ripples out in your network as a result of knowing things. This is extremely important considering the fact that we teach you things, we tell you things and we give you documents. We need people to do analysis on those documents so you guys can be the ones that can actually say how the truth has helped you. And I’ll tell you why.

[12:00]

There are some people, I would say, in the hacker community, that quite simply just don't believe this statement. That this is from the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. He says, “And mankind's sole salvation lies in everyone making everything his business, in the people of the east being vitally concerned with what is thought in the west, the people of the west vitally concerned with what goes on in the east.” That is our job. When you ignore the injustices of the world, you are a part of the problem. There is no question about that. And it is certainly the case that when you fund it, you are the problem.

So, here's the solution that my friends and I have come up with -- certainly not my idea, but I'm on board 100 percent. We believe that it is absolutely necessary to accept documents that are relevant. Relevant because they are classified, censored, or otherwise restricted. This is extremely important because this is the type of material that is going to be able to make the most amount of change.

When it is accepted to us, we have a pretty strong vetting process. Part of this, and what makes it safe for people to use us, is that we have very strong support for anonymity. We are uncensorable. You can try to take us down. But, for those of you who have read The Mentor, and what he has had to say about hackers, you know that you can't stop us. There's just more of us. And the important thing is that we actually use the rule of law. The rule of law is actually, despite my anarchist tendencies, very important. It is protection of the press that allows me to be here right now, and it allows Julian to travel freely throughout the world. Because people would like to shoot the messenger. There is no question about this.

We believe that we are not the only game in town. But we believe that we are specifically a functional whistle-blowing platform that is useful for people with the promises that we have made.

[14:00]

We think that other people might shine in important ways, but we have a very specific set of goals, which is to make a giant impact. The purpose of this is not profit. You can’t change the world if you’re setting out to make a profit all of the time. The benefit has to be a cooperative one. It’s absolutely important to not think of this as a competitive thing of any kind. And this promise that we make, about it being a public service, sometimes, I think, people might criticize. For example, when we took down the site for a period of time for some re-engineering, and when we asked for donations. But, there is no question that these documents will always be available. And, of course, we plan to release a lot more.

The purpose of releasing this is that we think that special access is probably not the way that we can make a free and democratic society realized throughout the entire planet. We think that it’s absolutely important that you don’t have to be someone special to verify something or to get information. Think about it this way: how can you trust the media, when the media does not behave like a scientific paper? How do you know, that when someone tells you something, that it is true? You don’t, unless you have the original facts.

And so, that’s the purpose of this: to give you the original facts. Of course there will be interpretations. Of course there will be people who do analysis on this, but the purpose here is to give you the facts so that you can draw your own conclusions, to give you the data so that you have the ability to make your own analysis.

And, specifically, and most importantly, we aren’t going to back down. When the media is gagged, we refuse to be gagged; we refuse to be silent. [Aplause] There is no reason, whatsoever, that we should back down, and we refuse to do so simply because... you cannot erase the past.

[16:00]

These things that have transpired must be known, and the mere fact that people fight to erase the past, as if it has not happened, should be quite an indicator of something being very, very wrong, not just with this country, but with every country in the world that attempts to do this.

And so, we have a history of doing this. Let me explain how it works. We have a pretty good process. We like to say that we have around 1,000 people involved. There’s a lot of people involved. There are a lot of people here, right now, that support us in various ways. And, thank you for that. You know who you are. I don’t know you are, and thank you for that, also. [Audience laughter]

Some of the people that work with us are so well-educated and so fantastic, and so magical in what they have done. I really can’t thank them enough for doing something that is really important, which is not giving up, and following your dreams. We need people that are highly educated in every walk of life. It is extremely important not just to be a technologist, or to dig in deep, but, for example, we need people that can tell us, and can help us. I mean, there are some pretty good hackers involved. We have a good idea about cryptography and anonymity and privacy and security, but it’s always good to have another set of eyes.

So, it’s extremely important to continue to do the things with your life that you think that you should do. And then, when you have the skills, when you have the desire, then you can help us, and you can help yourself too. Because, that’s what happens when you help us: We will help everyone.

This is a point of some contention, but it shouldn’t be: our process has never lost a source. It’s very clear that we have not taken down a publication. We have never been forced in a lawsuit to take down a publication, and we haven’t lost a server.

[18:00]

That, myself, I find to be quite surprising. But, we haven’t. And, we’re changing the world. Thank you for helping us with that.

So, Julian likes to say that the goal is justice and the method is transparency. I think that we’re meeting our goals, and I think that we are using transparency in a really strong way. You see, it’s extremely important to remember that what we’re doing is not subversive unless the things that we are subverting are actively trying to harm us; unless they are being deceptive. The idea that when we leak a document or when we do a thing, that somehow we are bad: that is absolutely impossible, because it is these individuals, organizations and governments that wish to suppress information from you.

So, when you’re talking about how some information might be worth hiding, and maybe there are some times that some secrets should be kept, remember what you’re saying is that someone else is more qualified to make a decision than you are. This is an extremely anti-democratic thought process, and you should reject it. [Applause]

Our goal is to unmask the truth, right? I think that this is the most important point that we can make here. We aren’t here to simply tell you some bullshit. We’re here to tell you things that people are actively trying to keep secret. We don’t care if you’re a Republican, or a Democrat, or a Libertarian. It is irrelevant. There are things that are so much bigger than partisan politics. Human lives are much more important than partisan politics.

And, it is important to remember that we’re not here to solve these problems by siding with one person, but rather to reach every person, on all sides, to reach deep down inside of themselves so that they can very easily know what the right thing to do is. [Applause]

[20:00]

Plato says that we can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

So, I ask you, are you all afraid of the light? [audience: “No!”] I didn’t hear everyone. That’s a little surprising! Is there a little fear in the audience here? [audience, louder: “No!”] Good, that’s what I want to hear. Does anybody here believe that they don’t have a right to know what’s going on? Come on now, this is a thought exercise! The purpose is to get you to think, and then to answer the question. [Audience: “No!”] Fantastic. Do you all want to know what is going on with WikiLeaks? [Audience, loud: “Yes!”] I guess you thought about that for a while. [audience laughter]

So, here’s an important thing. I think a lot of anti-authoritarian types like to think that speaking truth to power is good. You know.. you stick it to “The Man” and you show “The Man” how it is. Well, I think that’s stupid. Power knows power, because power’s in power. So, what you need to do is empower yourself. You need to know that it is important to take this power and give it to people that are not simply the people that make decisions. Give it to the people that vote them in and out of office.

That’s why we want to inform everyone about this. This is why we want to make sure that the people who are in power know that they cannot issue a denial when everyone knows the truth. They cannot redact a document when everyone already has a copy of it in their heart and in their mind. This is something that I think that all of you understand. And so, I hope that all of you will take something away from this and do something about it.

Some media has had some things to say about WikiLeaks. We’ll go through that real quick. I think that it’s pretty clear that we’ve done some good work.

[22:00]

I like this one a lot: “schon heute das erfolgreichste journalistische Unternehmen der Welt.” (Zeit Online) [“already the most successful journalistic undertaking in the world.”] That’s a bold statement, and the Germans don’t make bold statements like that unless they’re pretty serious. [audience laughter] This right here are some awards that I would say Julian has pretty clearly won and accepted for the project. But, it’s important to remember that WikiLeaks is not just Julian, so this whole idea of hunting for him: you can cut off the head, but there will be more. You just can’t stop us.

So, here’s an example of WikiLeaks at work: Barclays Bank. There’s essentially this problem, especially in the United Kingdom, which is that people not only like to pretend that they can erase the past, but they try to take the present and pretend that it isn’t happening. They censor publications, and they fight against what is actually happening in this exact moment, being able to be reported in any context whatsoever.

So, what did we do? We published the documents that they were trying to censor. The Internet changes everything. They can’t redact every person’s computer screen. They just don’t have that kind of control. The same is true with this: “The Minton Report shows that there was toxic waste dumping where over 100,000 people have been hospitalized or driven to seek help in some way.” Can you imagine that? That’s every person in this room and every person you know, probably.

And this is something that, when people know this — if we refer to Moxie’s quote, and his question — when people know this, they can get out of there. They can seek help, and they can seek to redress their concerns in a very serious way. And so, these corporations use major legal obstacles in order to make sure that there are secret processes, in order to make sure that there are things that are taking place that you cannot know about, that you cannot talk about, that you can’t repeat, that you can’t quote.

[24:00]

This is ridiculous. This is not the world that we want to live in. So, WikiLeaks published those documents, and we published those documents so that people will have access to them in and outside of that country, so that people will be able to know, and to take action, which is what they should do, which is what you should do. And, there are other publications which are fantastic, like the BBC, but the fact of the matter is they have a structure that does not allow them to actually tell you everything that is going on, and they have a lot to lose. I don’t have anything to lose, right? I want to make a better world. That’s what Julian wants. That’s what Daniel [Schmitt] wants. That’s what other people who will go unnamed want.

And it is extremely important that we don’t let the buck stop with the publications that are afraid of losing their news room. If we get it out there, those gags will become irrelevant. Everyone will know the information. And, I think there’s a little bit of a full disclosure debate here. Well, I think that it’s quite clear where we stand on ‘free leaks” I suppose. But, we believe that the most heavily guarded secrets, as it says here, if revealed, have the most potential for reform. There are some people who do not believe this, they believe that it is possible that we should keep those secrets there. But I ask you, what is it that those secrets say? Is it the idea that if you have something, that someone else would know and that would cause some kind of harm? But I wonder what it is that you’re doing that you’re so afraid of?

What is the hegemony that you are promoting in the world? That’s the question, right? So, I believe that when people in a democracy know these things... it will cause a change, and it will cause a big change. Because when people have things done in their name, it changes things in the hearts and that takes them on a pretty heavy trip to the ballot box.

[26:00]

Journalists sometimes do the wrong thing and it’s a little bit disappointing. There’s a video we’re going to talk about that a journalist had for quite some time and that journalist did not release it because they feared losing their “special access.” You see the military offered a collaboration between journalists and the military and they said, “You can come along for a ride with us but we get to exercise a little editorial control.” And some of these journalists did the right thing and they turned that down. And some of these journalists did the right thing and they talked about what they saw. And some of these journalists did not do the right thing and they kept quiet so that they would keep their access. Those journalists are not very good in my opinion.

So, we believe that disclosure is the thing that is most important. Losing access, we have access to everything because every one of you is in every single system that has all of these documents. We don’t have to worry about it. When you see something that is wrong, you will tell us, and we will tell the world, so that no one knows that it was you that helped us. And this is super important, absolutely without question, because at the end of the day this transparency is what will create change.

There’s little controversial disclosure — the Warlock system — have any of you heard of this? No? OK. The IED detection system manual. This basically says that there are some IEDs, and it blocks them, it explains how it works, and by the time that it was disclosed it had mostly changed. But, it’s interesting what it did because it revealed essentially that there was so much information that people already knew... that by telling everyone that people knew it, it changed things.

[28:00]

It forced people to react in a different way. And it just so happened that we had been spending a majority of our expenses on these devices which insurgents had already figured out how to get around. So this is another thing really important — it’s the idea that there’s this black market for information and as long as only some people have it — and not everyone, then things will be alright. In some cases, I guess, I could see why someone would make that reasoning — that line of reasoning but it’s just not true.

The people in Iraq know what’s going on, right? It’s us — we are the ones that don’t. I mean, it’s quite clear that they’ve been able to get around a lot of these jamming devices. So what’s important is that when things don’t work, that people understand that they’re not working. The military industrial complex is extremely large and very convoluted and it means that there are a lot of players here who benefit regardless of things that save our troops. That’s a really important point, right? And I think that it’s quite clear that there are people that would just like to see this information vanish instead of adapt, instead of changing. And, I understand that because they’re usually the ones that profit from it. But, I say no.

So, it’s important in this case this transparency is quite obviously neutral because now we all know that the Emperor doesn’t have any clothes. This is not bad to know this. This is good to know this. You are now empowered to make a decision about that system and about the people who might be protected by that system or who might try to thwart that system. Now you are as qualified as someone else to make that decision, if not better, because you have the original source documents on the subject. So let’s talk about some other publishing that we’ve done that’s important.

[30:00]

Iceland is a country that is very close and near and dear to my heart, and there’s a very incredible person here from Iceland, and we’ve had long discussions about that country, and I find it to be quite the special place. And I had a chance to go to Iceland earlier this year - it wasn’t a secret of any kind - and we were working together on a fun project there, and I will talk about that in a moment. But the important thing is that WikiLeaks there has a special place in people’s hearts because we released loan books that showed how people had bankrupted a nation state, how they had essentially done a ton of unethical things, and everybody knows who they are now.

Everybody knows what happened. And this is extremely important for a country that has just over 300,000 people. That is a village by comparison, that might even be Greenwich Village by comparison. This document is extremely important. The impact this had on Icelandic society was not small. People understood what happened, they understood that they were robbed blind. So, how has the truth helped? How has that changed things? Well, I think that’s quite clear for the people of Iceland, and probably for you.

So let’s talk about Guantanamo Bay. You guys probably want to see that closed, I suppose, yeah? [Applause and shouts of agreement] Well, let’s talk about how we’re going to close it. We’re going to close it by knowing what’s going on there, right? Lots of people tried to get the operations manual from Guantanamo Bay, and they quite simply couldn’t get it through the Freedom of Information Act — it’s just not possible in some cases to get information. After the document was leaked to us, it was leaked a number of times to us

[32:00]

over some period of time, which shows that every time the US military told us about how things were going and what the procedures were, they were fucking lying to us.

This is really important, because you see this manual was not written for us it was written for people that do these things. And that's the really important point here, right? When you have an internal document you have a view into the mindset of the organization that actually takes these actions, and this is critical. Because when someone crafts a piece of PR for you, it’s for you, it’s to affect some change, it’s to manipulate you to do a thing, right?

So, when you read this document, when you see how the Guantanamo Bay Operations Manual is laid out and you see the operating procedure you know that it is not something you want to support. You understand quite clearly. And the fact that multiple times this document was leaked, lets you know that when they said they made changes in response to media inquiries, you know that they were also lying. And you know now when they move their lips that they're probably lying again. So how does that change your view of that? I suppose you probably still want it to be closed down. But you have some facts on your side here to show that not all the players in the game are doing the right thing and they’re not all on their side — so replace them.

Germany has a little bit of a fetish with the military, let’s say. And this is extremely important because Germany’s military is not supposed to be going on excursions, it’s not supposed to be um... having combat. People in Germany are not supportive of this. Und die anderen deutsche Leute hier, in diesem Vorsaal? Was denkst du? [a woman likely nodding her head] Anja, ok, ich hab gedacht [“What about our German audience in here, what are you thinking? Anja, (she must have nodded her head, saying ‘yes’) ok, that’s what I was thinking.”] Alright, so, thanks for the one German [audience laughter]. It’s great, fantastic.

[34:00]

This is important because this brings change about, right? This shows that the politicians that are involved here in Germany, probably are aware of these types of things. And it doesn’t really matter if they’re aware or not in some regards because what actually matters here is that you know what’s actually going on. You’ve got an idea of what Chancellor Merkel knows about. Just a piece probably but this piece lets you know that maybe things are not going the way that you want them to.

WikiLeaks is pretty well known in the United States for some of the things that have happened recently. And, while I think that that’s fantastic, it’s really important to note... this particular leak talked about around 1700 assassinations essentially. And, this document leak caused quite a stir in Kenya. It really tossed the election in 2007. And, it caused the United Nations to do an investigation. In fact, several people working with WikiLeaks were assassinated. They were murdered for the work that they were doing. They weren’t sources, they were journalists. They were working to take this information... and, there are photos of them, brutally shot to death in their car. Right?

So, you want to talk about change... when you expose 1700 people dying, there’s a chance that you’re gonna go too. It’s very unfortunate that that happened. But, their sacrifice has made quite a difference in Kenya. And, this is something that I think we can all learn from, which is that we have to make sacrifices in order to change the world. We have to make sacrifices that potentially will cost us our lives.

I never expect to work in the computer security industry again but that’s ok. I think this is far more important than anything like that. And, some of you will not make this choice and that is ok. And, some of you will pretend not to make this choice and you will go in deep -- and thank you for that. [Applause]

[36:00]

We don’t like to back down from a fight. And this is a great example where some people tried to pull our domains and it didn’t work out for them. They did manage to get some prior restraint pulled but they lost in the end. And the reason they lost was because it was quite clear that not only the information was out there but we were in the right legally especially in the United States and we had a San Francisco court which didn’t hurt. You laugh but there’s something to look up to about that court. Every court should be like that court — the First Amendment is extremely clear.

This one I think is probably the topic you all want to hear about and we are going to talk about it in a moment as you can see in the upper left hand corner. I want to be very clear about this video: there were two versions released. A completely unedited version of the video and a video that has some commentary. It has some subtitles for people that are hearing impaired and for people that are not able in any way to be able to, well, watch the video as is was intended to be watched.

Don’t take this as editorial commentary that is flippant. We chose the name because it was important. We chose the name because that is the language of the people that are committing these crimes. And the sad thing about this video is that the main reason that any of you know about it and the only reason that anybody really cares about it is because some journalists died. And that’s not to knock journalists because they are definitely one of my favorite professions. But it is quite clear to me that this is the type of thing that occurs everyday in Iraq.

In 2005, I hitchhiked into Iraq. Let's say as a tourist to visit some friends. And when I was there — some of you know this story —

[38:00]

I visited some friends who lived in Northern Iraq, and Kurdistan and Arbil and As-Sulaymanyah and other areas on the border of Iran after exiting from Turkey.

The people that I met there — Arabs from Baghdad especially — were horrified. Can you imagine meeting a man, a grown man who has tears in his eyes when he explains that everyday that he leaves his house, he kisses his wife goodbye and hopes that he will see here again. Because he knows that if he takes a wrong turn on a street, that he gets killed, and his wife never even gets to see the body.

We are responsible for this.

So this video shows an example of that. It shows people trying to do the right thing. I ask you, if someone invaded your country and you saw one of your fellow men or women shot down — or other frankly — if you saw them shot down in the street... would you stop your car and would you help them... if you saw someone who was brutally murdered and hurt in some way?

I think I would -- I'd stop my car. Because you see... this didn't happen in the middle of nowhere. This happened in the middle one of the largest cities in this country where many, many, many people live. In a neighborhood where normal working-class people live.

Just think about that. You walk out of your house. You see someone who has been shot on the street -- you try to help them. Do you help them directly? Do you maybe call for an ambulance? You have to have a telephone to call a hospital. You help them directly because you don't have a choice.

But this is an example of where a journalist had this video. And that journalist wrote about it in his book that he sells for a profit. And he did not leak the video. What do you think of that? Do you think that is okay?

[40:00]

That's right. It's absolutely terrible. And you know what's even worse is that we support these programs that create that kind of collaboration between the people that are supposed to tell the truth and the ones that are telling the lies. That is not alright.

This got a lot of press. Some of you probably heard about it. We've done some other things that have got some press. One of my favorites as a tor developer is the censorship lists. It's really important that people understand that for example, in Australia, the dentist in Australia is potentially a threat. Because that's what ends up on those lists. And there are a lot of other things that you can see on our web site.

So, we did choose a pretty provocative title: “Collateral Murder.” You guys think that's provocative? [Audience: “Yeah!”] Yeah? And some of you are probably unhappy about that, right? [Audience: “No.”] No? Oh, wow, I'm surprised. Well let's be clear. We chose that title for a really good reason. This is the language of the people that are doing these things. This is without a doubt a murder.

You watched. If you watch this video, more than a dozen people being gunned down. These are not small machine guns. For those of you that have shot a machine gun, it's probably bigger than any machine gun you have ever shot. And it is mounted on a helicopter, which...I don't know about you but it's really, really hard to take down a helicopter with a camera. [Audience laughter] This is not the world that we want to see, right? We don't want to see these things happening. But we don't want to see these things not happening by people suppressing the video. We want to change this. Every single one of you that thinks that it's right that we're in Iraq needs to remember that you are directly, you specifically, are directly responsible for this. And for those of you that aren't, that have friends...

[42:00]

The way that Harvey Milk was so successful in getting people to stop gay-bashing people was that, it wasn't to, you know, if you're gay, which I am, if you're gay, you come out and you say “You know, I'm gay, you should respect me.” No no, what he said was — and this was brilliant — “Go home to your friends and family and come out to them and tell them, listen, when you're talking about killing other gay people, yeah well, um, you're talking about killing your family members and my friends” and that changed things overnight. And it changed it overnight because, you see — and it's quite clear to me — that it changed it because people don't care when things are far removed from them. People care when it's directly in their face and it's something that they already respect.

So you're not forcing this issue. You're allowing them to freely choose and think about it and to change the way that things are going, directly. And so I have lots of friends that used to make lots of slurs about both the war and homophobic slurs. They don't do that anymore because they respect and love me for who I am. And so I ask you to remember that some of these people are distant, but you would do the same thing, you would pick up someone who had been shot on the side of the road, because you are a good person. So it seems to me that we should make sure that we don't forget this.

There's a lot of spin involved with this video — but it's wrong. It's very clear what happened here, which is that it was a series of murders of people who were unarmed, people who were very clearly walking through the streets of a normal city. I mean, sure, it's a city that's at war, but we brought them the war. So it's very hard to fault them for this. And it's also quite clear to me that people on the streets there defend themselves because there isn't a simple normal “thing” like we have here. You don't just have certain expectations. Anything can happen. But that doesn't mean if someone has something that looks like a gun, that it absolutely is a gun. It could be a tripod, and it could be a camera. But what's most telling about this is that the U.S. military knew all of this and instead of copping to it, they tried to cover it up.

[44:00]

How that journalist got that video, it’s up in the air. The fact that they didn’t release it, is quite clear. But now you have it, so now you know. So now it’s up to us to change something as a result of this. On a technical level, this was a test-drive of a new hosting architecture. Some of you have probably also heard of the 9/11 pager messages that were released. Those pager messages were a prototype for this system. It’s not pretty, but it’s not meant to be pretty. It’s meant to deliver the information to you, to replicate it, to distribute it, and in some way, to be scalable in a way that is very difficult to censor. And the purpose here is to make a major political impact. And we did, we met our goal... which we always do.

So, let’s be clear about something. This is obviously in the air, and it’s extremely important to state this: there is someone who has been alleged to be a source... by a person who has no name in this community anymore. Do I have agreement on this? [Cheers and long applause] I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. Could we try that again, with a little sincerity? [Even louder cheers and applause] Thank you for enduring my faith in this community. I was a little bit unsure. Maybe not too much, but I believe the key thing to remember here is silence not violence. Ok? This person prides themselves on being heard and thought about. Just forget them. They are irrelevant.

[46:00]

They are not making a change that creates the world that we want to see and you can agree with me by just forgetting. He doesn’t exist. It isn’t important and he isn’t important. So, someone alleged to be our source, we are going to support them. This is very serious. The charges that are leveled against him are not something like two or three months. At the moment the charges that are leveled are, well... let’s say pretty serious. They look like somewhere over 50 years in prison. That is a really serious amount of time in jail. And can you imagine this, the information you have in your head, that information is the thing that he is alleged to have done. How can we as a society, do something like that? We can’t. We have to support him. So let’s be quite clear about this. There is legal support for him but there are some problems.

Julian and I were speaking a couple days ago and he told me that there are some JAGs involved, and there are some lawyers with clearances and not all of the lawyers have a clearance and not all the lawyers are JAGs. It appears... Julian has stated that there are seven lawyers but most importantly some of the lawyers have agreed to take $50,000. That $50,000 dollars though is not enough they say. They wish to have $200,000 dollars minimum before continuing further. That means we’ve got some fundraising to do. That’s pretty serious. So those of you that are working at a non-profit, and you want to raise some funds in some way, maybe get some matching donations, now is the time to leverage that. For everyone of you that believes that someone who is accused to have done a thing like this needs our support, now is the time to make that support. This is a person that if something happens to him,

[48:00]

if he is convicted, this is quite serious. That is, an entire young man’s life in jail, in a Military prison almost certainly and that is not something that I can support and I and many people at WikiLeaks are very clearly working directly against that outcome, we want to see him walk free. And we can’t do that without everyone of you, literally, getting up and helping us. It is a necessity. There is a website, bradleymanning.org., some of you know about this, this is being spearheaded by a number of people. It’s extremely important that you visit this site, that you read it, that you look for information there. This person is really taking a leap and this group of people is really making a difference. They are extremely, extremely good. Their heart is in the right place. And it’s important to remember, Manning is alleged to have done these things... he is not convicted. So, I want to go on to create a world quite clearly that doesn’t have to have these types of concerns. Where instead of the law being used to prosecute alleged sources... we are going to make some big changes.

So, there’s a Country called Iceland which some of you are familiar with, which I have previously mentioned and Iceland is pretty much the most fantastic country in the World when it comes to freedom of information. It’s really quite amazing. It’s the type of place where when you walk down the streets in Reykjavik, you can actually meet parliamentarians on the street, without a security detail, and they’ll talk to you, and they’ll have coffee with you, and they’ll even take you into the Parliament if you like. That’s some serious representative Democracy in action. [Applause]

[50:00]

WikiLeaks is part of an advisory group. Part of the reason that I went to Iceland was also to be part of that advisory group, as a Tor project person. I guess my roles are a little blurred at the moment, but, to be quite clear, IMMI [pronounced IM-mee] is much bigger than WikiLeaks, and is not simply a WikiLeaks project. This is the people of Iceland saying: You know, a little transparency could have helped us during that banking crisis. Thanks for leaking those documents. Let´s make sure that we clarify that. That we make sure that people understand as a cultural value, that we want to see that, that we want to see that all the time, when people do those types of things, because, those people bankrupted our entire nation.

So, IMMI is an attempt of that. And, imagine, if you will for a moment, the Bill of Rights. It’s pretty fantastic. Well, it turns out it’s not quite good enough. And I say that as a pretty reasonable and loyal American. Which is to say, Sweden has better press protection laws. Iceland will soon have better press protection laws. Belgium has better press protection laws. Lots of other places in the world have better human rights records.

So, we wanted to take things from all over the world, including actually New York State, which has anti-libel tourism laws. Specifically generated in response to some of the things happening in the United Kingdom. And so this is really important, because what IMMI is doing is it’s building a super-information state. Right?

And it sets an example for the rest of the world to follow. And even the Prime Minister of Iceland voted for this. Because, you see, it passed animously in Iceland. 50 people [applause] in their parliament, including the Prime Minister... [sustained applause]

I want to make this... Thank you. I want to make this totally clear: this is not just WikiLeaks. This is a lot of people.

[52:00]

And this is extremely important, I believe, because Iceland is acting in solidarity with the idea that you have the right to know what’s going on. That history shall not be erased. That when things take place, that we will note them and that we will show them. And that when a big corporation who has a lot of money or when a government that has a lot of guns says that you’re going to pretend that it didn’t, well, we’re not going to stand and take that and Iceland has decided that they also are not going to. It’s not finished... and they’re going to go through several more rounds and re-vote on it again.

But the mere fact that it passed unanimously give you an idea about how well this is going to go. And the European Union actually passed a resolution in support of IMMI. And this is incredible, because essentially that means that Iceland is leading the way and is doing so in such a way that the European ‘Superstate’ is taking notice and following. So it’s kind of up to America now to follow.

We need to pass resolutions here, locally, and make this a possibility and naturally that strengthen the things that our constitutions says very clearly and redefine them so that they count in a digital age in a way that is absolutely without question. Because a lot of people like to pretend that there’s a moral panic around the Internet. So if you like, when you see information on WikiLeaks, print it out and hand it to someone and then it’s a newspaper. It’s not different, except that it can’t be stopped. You can’t force collaboration. I like The New York Times a lot, but did you know that they sat on the information that Bush was doing warrantless wiretapping for a year? Until the election passed?

[Audience member: “Yes, mhm.” Silence for a moment] What? [audience laughter] Un-, it’s unbelievable, right? That is the type of collaboration that I don’t want to see anymore.

[54:00]

So? Gotta be the trouble you wanna see in the world and you gotta be the change you wanna see in the world. So, thanks to Iceland and the people of Iceland. We’re going to see that in the future and we’re going to see a lot of things change.

So, I wanna skip around a little bit here. There’s a lot of technical criticism and a lot of misdirection, a lot of misinformation. So, I’m gonna go through these things reasonably fast and I know that some of you are getting a little antsy , because your Club-Mate is kicking in [audience laughs], so, I’m going to answer a bunch of the questions and I’m going to address many of the criticism that people have made.

So, first of all, there’s been someone who has said that WikiLeaks was started by sniffing networks and I’m gonna say that that’s not true: right now, to make a record, to make it very clear. WikiLeaks is an idea that has been going long, long before the Tor network even existed. So to say that is, of course, to show that not only does that person not have a fucking clue. But, they’re actually provably wrong.

Furthermore, they’ve accused me as a Tor developer of having done this and while I really appreciate the idea that they think that I would be such a terrible person — and by ‘appreciate’ I mean: I don’t appreciate that actually — Tor is privacy by design, that means: me being a Tor developer is totally irrelevant to the situation. I write some software, it gets put into our Git repository... in no way does that information... help. The nodes that are exiting from the Tor network are not controlled by me. If I run an exit node that has nothing to do with whether or not I’m a Tor developer, but I can state that I do not and have not sniffed the Tor network and certainly not for documents. And WikiLeaks was absolutely not started by sniffing the Tor network.

[56:00]

So hopefully that’s clear and hopefully no more shady, rag publications on the Web will state that. Because it's quite clear that some of them like to email four hours before they publish a story and expect a comment in Pacific Standard Time, which is not exactly an ethical thing to do.

So, they can refer to this video, which is now probably going to be public, quite quickly. And specifically the documents that they said, were leaked. So that's... that's really important, right? Those went through our normal submission process.

Anyway, Cryptome. Some of you know about this. About John Young. I think that John Young is probably a pretty good guy. I've never met him. I'd love to meet him someday. [Inaudible shout from audience.] Oh? Fantastic. Well today's not the day for him. [Audience laughter] But it's really important to note: he is doing something very good. But it is not the same as what WikiLeaks is doing. In fact, when he publishes information that is provably and clearly false, that's not really so good, that information-vetting. And I think that that's kind of a shame when
that happens. So I'd just like to say that, with all due respect, he's incorrect.

There's a pretty funny thing that's been on there recently. And I'd just like to address it as pure
comedy gold. The WikiLeaks Insider. Whoever you are, I imagine that you're either in the audience or watching it on the stream or watching this video later, it is incredibly amusing. Fantastically wrong. The things that you're saying are incorrect. And just to show the rest of you guys, here's some tips for the Insider. We'd just like...so you’re...so you can correct your Insider writing, so we can have a continued morale boost. We'd like them to be a little funnier, if you could maybe step up the humor a bit. But get a couple basic facts right. Um, Julian — as someone who has spent many a night sleeping in a hotel room

[58:00]

about five feet from Julian — I can tell you: he does not live a life of luxury. Whoa, man, that guy and his socks... But, — there's an insider tip for you, right? — he does not live a life of luxury in South Africa. In fact, as far as I know, and as far as Julian has told me, he's never actually been to South Africa.

Now, I know Africa is a large continent and is not a country. Um, so, in case this is not clear, you know I don't know if the insider is Sarah Palin or not, but I do think to me at least it's quite clear to me at least that that fact is wrong, very very clearly. Kenya is actually in Africa also, but it is again not South Africa. South Africa is a country.

Ok, so Wau Holland [Foundation] — wow, my German is gone. Ok, so, the nonprofit in Germany that does help us quite a bit, that does a lot of funding, and takes donations... they keep records. They show quite clearly that Julian does not buy business class plane tickets. And, while I travel about 150,000 miles a year and some of that is in coach and not necessarily the most comfortable, um, that's sorta a cost that we take. It takes a toll, but we do it. And all of us involved in WikiLeaks very clearly cares enough to be stuck in cattle class to make this happen. Right? And we do that. I think it’s totally reasonable and we have records that show it. And if you say otherwise you have to back that up with some serious, serious proof. And it's pretty, I think, despicable to say otherwise. And no one at WikiLeaks takes a salary. This is really important, right? I work a full-time job with Tor and that’s what I dedicated my life to. And Julian and other people have worked for their whole lives to be in a position to be able to tell the truth and to take

[60:00]

a stand for other people. And to say that we are somehow ripping people off is ridiculous. And it requires a statement of credibility which the WikiLeaks insider does not have.

So, you guys have a special role. Each one of you has a set of skills — we have a lot of information — we want your help processing it. We specifically would like people that are good at visualizations... people who maybe are good at banner hangs... people who like to paint pictures... whatever you want to do. However you want to tell stories. That can be extremely useful to us and to the rest of the world. Everyone will see the visualizations that you have done — millions of people. You’re not going to get a great job out of it. You’re gonna have to do it in your spare time. You’re gonna have to get rid of all your spare time, actually. But it will make a huge impact, because when people interact with complicated data they have this totally new relationship to that data. Right? They have the ability to look at the data and explore the data and it engages them in a way that previously they just wouldn’t have even cared. So, this is I think extremely, extremely important, because it engages. That’s something that we really need — is people to be sincerely engaged.

So, especially since this is a hacker conference I think that this is important. If we build systems that are privacy by design instead of privacy by policy, if we build protocols that are extremely difficult to filter... I know that there are people that work on this here... that this is really useful, because not every country enjoys the warrantless wiretapping surveillance that we do. Some people enjoy the warrantless wiretapping plus serious oppressive police force kicking down their door in response... instead of just building large dossiers that are used later. So, building protocols that can help avoid people leaving behind a footprint now can make a big difference tomorrow

[62:00]

because the story that your day-to-day trail tells about you might not matter to you now. But when you film someone doing something and then you upload it and the sensor data from your camera is used as a weapon against you and it’s found by finding photos on Flickr that you took of your family. That is a really serious problem. So we need tools like for example to find and fingerprint sensor data and to remove it. There is a lot of stuff. Lots anti-forensic stuff needs to be done to protect whistleblowers. And we need help for that. You should focus your activities there. We can really use that help and you will make a difference. You personally might save a life. And this is probably the most important part. Every single one of us is a productive member of society in some point in our lives.

We get to choose which world that we make. So we get to decide if we go home and work for a military defense contractor or if we go home and we work on something that shows that some of those people do the right thing and some of them do not. And we refine our society not by specifically saying that all of those people are bad, but by saying some of these actions are bad. These are the actions that I can support, that I can put my name on. But these ones I don’t. Because I firmly believe this job is something that needs to be done. So this is something I think that we get to choose. And since we build the systems of tomorrow, we are the ones that get to decide the politics of these systems.

The architecture is the political system. Right, the Internet is so amazing specifically because it is so open and it is so free. So, how many here are upset about our submission system? Some of you? Any of you? One person. Fantastic. I hope you are not a leaker. Keep you hands down. OK. There is this funny thing that happens. I mean, if WikiLeaks does anything, there are publications that jump up and down on us, usually because we make them irrelevant. But that said, they get really upset.

[64:00]

So, to be clear, sometimes things happen that are not obvious. The security of our systems is more important than fighting a PR war with people that can’t bother to ask properly contextualised questions in a reasonable time. So, we have relaunched the submission site. There you go. This has a new SSL certificate and there is a Tor hidden service. So, for those of you that were worried about the submission, those of you that want to leak documents; it’s back.

Everyone should take a photograph of that hidden service URL. I’ll leave it up for a moment.

These are the fingerprints. As some of you know certificate authorities... Well, they do a noble job, are a part of a system that isn’t really sustainable when the threat model might include large governments and large corporations. Sometimes people in different countries end up in situations where they have to use a copy of an operating system where all the certificate authorities are removed except for one so that they can be man in the middle transparently. There’s a very serious issue. So, the only way that we can do this is to solve it with key change pretty much directly. If you use the submission process, this is the set of fingerprints you should expect to see from now on, and that means while the certificate authority can give you warm fuzzies, this slide is what will save your ass. So take some photos of it. Put it on line, tag it and spread it around. Because someone somewhere is going to need to see that. And that’s a way you can make a difference right now.

OK. So, we’ve got a wiki, that some of you heard about it. We decided to clean out a lot of stuff. Old accounts that are say, a year old, and that aren’t being used; old contents, silly vandalism from kiddies pissing on it.

[66:00]

We removed that stuff. And there is a lot of progress on updating the wiki, making it faster, dealing with things that are extremely important. As of course coming first but in general we do try to take care of this and we do some house cleaning. And we’ve got some cool stuff coming up. So for example, torrent and magnet links specifically for all of the content. So you don’t just have to rely on us. You can toss up BitTorrent client and you can pretty much be us. How awesome is that? It also means that we’ll have... [applause] It also means that we’ll have dynamic URL support but there is a little bit of a problem. We need some people to write some support and some of the clients. So if you work on BitTorrent here is a great thing that you can do today. We need to make sure that dynamic Magnet URLs are working and they work pretty well. So, this is something that will allow you to download on a regular basis for example all of the documents containing everything to do with the United States and you can do that however you’d like and then you can mirror that data in case, you know, a rainy day comes. So we’ve also done a bunch of other things. It’s really hard to actually tell what we’ve done.

It helps to have a lot of hackers on board that can obfuscate a little bit of our architecture. But I think it’s important to sort of state quite clearly, we have a lot of redundancy involved. And we have a lot of work that has gone into making sure that it’s not exactly obvious how it is redundant so it makes it a lot harder to attack. And we don’t really have to worry about that. We don’t see a lot of things that are terribly scary to be quite honest. The scariest things that we see are usually the content of submissions and that stuff can be quite scary and you know, because you’ve

seen that. So there is going to be a period of time when commenting will return and probably at some point you’ll see more enhanced Tor support with the Wiki. IRC, there is of course a way to come and chat directly with people involved with WikiLeaks.

[68:00]

There is some privacy protections that are built in to this system and they are pretty simple. So if you are just sitting there, idling, wanting to collect information and logs its not really that helpful. We would appreciate it if you don’t do that but in any case you can see that there are some things that will start to hide a little bit of information at a time. It’s not perfect but we think it’s pretty good. It’s a little better than just straight up IRC. Or any other user protection so that people cannot say, demask who you are very easily. And of course we are launching a new web-chat interface which also will be secured. Which I think is pretty fantastic. So we’ve also today, as of... What time is it? I guess it’s probably after 13:00.

So, this: there is no blog. Because we want to be more transparent and open with you guys. We want to make sure that you have questions that are answered, quite frankly. We want to make sure that you understand that we are on your side. Right? We don’t want to fight. We don’t want to have a misinformation campaign going on forever. It takes up our energy and takes up our time. Very easy. So that you don’t just have to look at twitter in order to see this. There will be a blog which people will write to. Some people won’t ever write to it. They’ll just do work behind the scenes but it’s extremely important that we tell you what’s going on because whenever we do anything, when we take down the submission site to make sure that there are some new things that can be launched, we need to make sure that we let you know about it. So that doesn’t cause a huge problem in the media where we have to take a lot of time away from doing important work to talk to people that are not going to be very helpful, and in some cases are quite hostile.

So, we also want to step into Web 2.0. We are going to release an API. So, you’ll be able to get the data in a more usable way. So you’ll be able to do the things that you want with the data, you’ll be able to make visualisations. It will be much, much easier. [Applause]

[70:00]

OK, so, some miscellaneous technical details. I guess some of you guys are more interested in this than all of the leaks and things like that. You wanna know how we run a system like this. Um, basically, compartmentalization. That’s the key, right? You wanna make sure that things are compartmentalized. It’s absolutely imperative that we have a situation that when we involve a new person they don’t have access to everything. Think about the content that we’re dealing with and then you instantly understand why that is a necessity. So, when we get new people involved, you might get access to a system at some point. And, when you get access to that system it will be a very small sliver of access. And, you’ll have to work in a way that shows that it is not possible for you to betray us. I think that’s totally reasonable, what do you guys think? [Applause]

Awesome. Inch by inch, right? So, more horse power. You’ve got a lot of servers driving a lot of things and it’s working out relatively well. I think that it’s, in fact, extremely important for making sure that these things are going to stay up, and they’re going to be able to do their job. Collateral Murder was hosted on a lot of new architecture, and of course, very few people noticed that because it went off without a hitch. There was no question, it just worked. Um, but there were very special improvements to make that possible.

But if you do find a problem, I have an idea. This is a novel one, um. Some journalists out there in other publications that shall not be named, um, well quite frankly they, instead of dropping into IRC which might be too difficult for them to use, or sending an email in a reasonable amount of time, they don’t, they don’t do those things. So you can do that instead. If you notice, or you have a monitoring system, and you wanna toss it up and you wanna monitor the system a little bit in not too invasive a way, we would totally love to hear from you, right? We need your help. If you see something wrong, if you see something that has expired or you see some piece of information that has changed. If you see a certificate that’s being met in the middle by an ISP.

[72:00]

If you see that you cannot reach the site, let us know. Chances are if you can’t reach the site, you can use Tor to reach the site and then you can isolate the network problem. You can figure out who is doing what. And of course we want to basically take the information that we have, that is in the wiki and we want to move it into, sort of more interesting forms of being. So that’s something we are very much working on and we think that the wiki is extremely important. But we also think that there is something more than that. So it is going to change some bit, some bit in the future.

So, I want to talk a little bit about Tor. Have you all heard about that enough by now, I guess. You’ve all heard of Tor, right? OK. First as a developer allow me to apologise for being sometimes slow. I am sorry. As I said in the Tor talk yesterday with Seth, ‘I don’t know how fast you wanna die, but we need to do it securely’. That is the first and most important thing. There are people who use the software in every country of the world and some of them use it, because that is their thread-model. So we want to make sure that it is privacy, security and anonymity by design and not speedy for BitTorrent thing.

They are VPNs for that. So I am sorry that it is not faster, but it works and it works pretty well. So, WikiLeaks really supports Tor and that means that sometimes they run servers, it means sometimes they make sure that some systems are accessible like specifically our Tor, for example this mission system. That mission system that is a .onion that is one that if you have some concerns that’s definitely the best one to use. It’ll be very, very difficult for someone to know what to tamper with and they’re encrypted. Right? The ‘.onion’ url in fact is a cryptographic key. So if you have that right url, you have - and the encryption that ensures that you’re talking to WikiLeaks and those keys are extremely protected - and I think that is the right thing for you to use if you want to.

[74:00]

And, of course, every document being available over Tor is something that we feel very strongly about. We especially support people using Tor to reach WikiLeaks. That is extremely important as well. Because not everybody has the right to visit that site and not everyone wants to tie themselves to having visited that site.

And, well, many of you might be supporters vocally, some of you might only be supporters inside. So using anonymization system so you don’t have to taint yourself if you don’t want to. And, of course, there’s a lot of development that needs to happen.

For example, Tor uses TCP connections between all the other Tor nodes. That means that all of the circuits and connections are multiplexed between single TCP connections. And, we’re working on some alternate designs, potentially UDP with DTLS and using SETP on top of that. Which means that we would have an ability to do better flow control and would allow us to not have so many bottle-necks. But, in order to do that, we need some bad ass developers! And Tor, of course is, at some times — and especially right now — hiring! So you wanna quit your corporate job and come to work at the very best free software company to save the world! Well, we’re looking for some help. So, if you don’t wanna quit your job and you are enjoying it just fine, we could also use some more relays and especially exit relays. And if you are worried about abuse, limit it so that you can only exit to WikiLeaks. If that’s what you wanna support. You can send a very strong message and you can help a great deal! Because anonymity is required, not just for sources, but also for many of our readers. So you can be part of the solution on that.

I think Julian would probably end with something, I think, that is, guess, little, little more inspiring, he would say, something in his typically Australian accent and flop his blond hair around and smile a lot, but I will just say... This: Which is that, we don’t know anything without knowing about history.

[76:00]

These leaks that we’ve been talking about? They are the guidebook for the future because they’re not written to coerce, they’re not written for someone to manipulate your opinion, these are written specifically as inside documents that tell you how these organizations work. And tell you about events that occurred. It lets you know what’s actually going on.

And when you piece these documents together it allows you to know what the future will know about history. It will pave a road that we can walk on as a human culture. Not as nation-state isolated people, not as people who are grouped into good and bad, but what everyone can learn.

The progress of science is because people came before us and made painstaking efforts to understand the way that the world worked. And so, we have to do the same thing with historical records, not just with scientific knowledge. Although it’s important to move journalism in the direction of science, by making sure that they have a citation, right? We’ve all seen the xkcd comic that talks about ‘’citation needed’’. Well, this is really important that we hold journalists to this. When they say, ‘some source says this’, sometimes there’s a need for anonymity, that’s quite clear. But when they say, ‘many of their critics say this thing’, sometimes we look that up, we look up who the critics are, and usually it’s like one person on one blog that someone searched for six hours to find. So they should cite that. So the people will know that that statement is about as credible as it isn’t, actually.

So, I understand that there is a little bit of tension about the fact that we’re, we’re not always the best to respond. We have limited resources and you can only imagine the amount of contact we get. IRC is probably a little better, because it means that people are constantly reading it. But it’s very obvious that while some of you want to do the right thing, there are a few people, a few bad apples, who want to do the wrong thing.

[78:00]

we have to be very very careful about who we let in, because we have things that quite frankly could mean the difference between life and death. And so please be patient with us because we want to work with you, we have to work with you, we need your help. But we can’t always be there and respond instantly, so don’t be upset if you send us an email and you don’t get a response five minutes later. Sometimes it doesn’t happen, sometimes it might take weeks because there are things that are going on inside that just, quite simply, we can’t drop no matter how much help.

It is much easier if you say “I can offer ten gigabits a second, mail me a box, no hassle, no problem,” then it is if you say, “Well, tell me about your requirements, and what do you need?” and so on and we have to take a lot of time. So if you’ve got that, do the first not the second. And if you don’t have the ability to do the first, please don’t do the second. Wait until you’re able.

And of course, this is probably the most important, if you just work on the things like “I see there’s some NoiseBridge people in back, like Steam back there who’s really into visualizations, work on things from large-scale data sets for visualizations like he’s doing. And he has nothing to do with this, but the fact that he has has inspired us to think about the fact that visualizations like that can really make a big impact. And that is something that, if you just work on that, your work speaks for itself. And we can help to direct you a little bit, but you can direct yourself, your creative tasks, the way that you work will be extremely powerful.

And of course, it’s really important that you make it public. And especially if you can release source code. And source code is very helpful because it allows us to make sure that you’re not sending us, for example, a binary that when we run, it does something kind of nasty. I mean, we, we all know how to use Ida Pro, but we don’t want to waste our time doing that, right? Send us source code and show us that you, you know, want to work with us.

And I’d like to emphasize this phrase,

[80:00]

“Think globally, hack locally.” So, if each one of you thinks about the impact you’ll have on the world, go home, work in your communities, change the world by changing the people around you, by changing the situation around you. And you'll do amazing things, there's no question.

So, you can enable people to speak freely right now by running a Tor relay. Every single one of you that has a computer can install Tor and check a single box and when you do that you will grow the network

There are currently 2,000 Tor relays or so in the world. There are more that 2,000 people at HOPE. If every person at Hackers On Planet Jacob Appelbaum, WikiLeaks keynote at 2010 Hackers on Planet Earth conference

New York City, 2010/07/17

[00:00]

Wow. Well, we’ve had quite a conference so far, very active. A lot of people. A lot of activities. Day and night. It’s just continuing.

[02:00]

[04:00]

[06:00]

[08:00]

[10:00]

[12:00]

We believe that we are not the only game in town. But we believe that we are specifically a functional whistle-blowing platform that is useful for people with the promises that we have made.

[14:00]

[16:00]

[18:00]

That, myself, I find to be quite surprising. But, we haven’t. And, we’re changing the world. Thank you for helping us with that.

[20:00]

Plato says that we can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

Some media has had some things to say about WikiLeaks. We’ll go through that real quick. I think that it’s pretty clear that we’ve done some good work.

[22:00]

[24:00]

[26:00]

[28:00]

[30:00]

[32:00]

over some period of time, which shows that every time the US military told us about how things were going and what the procedures were, they were fucking lying to us.

[34:00]

[36:00]

In 2005, I hitchhiked into Iraq. Let's say as a tourist to visit some friends. And when I was there — some of you know this story —

[38:00]

I visited some friends who lived in Northern Iraq, and Kurdistan and Arbil and As-Sulaymanyah and other areas on the border of Iran after exiting from Turkey.

We are responsible for this.

[40:00]

[42:00]

[44:00]

[46:00]

[48:00]

[50:00]

I want to make this... Thank you. I want to make this totally clear: this is not just WikiLeaks. This is a lot of people.

[52:00]

[Audience member: “Yes, mhm.” Silence for a moment] What? [audience laughter] Un-, it’s unbelievable, right? That is the type of collaboration that I don’t want to see anymore.

[54:00]

[56:00]

[58:00]

[60:00]

a stand for other people. And to say that we are somehow ripping people off is ridiculous. And it requires a statement of credibility which the WikiLeaks insider does not have.

[62:00]

[64:00]

Everyone should take a photograph of that hidden service URL. I’ll leave it up for a moment.

[66:00]

[68:00]

[70:00]

[72:00]

[74:00]

[76:00]

[78:00]

And I’d like to emphasize this phrase,

[80:00]

There are currently 2,000 Tor relays or so in the world. There are more that 2,000 people at HOPE. If every person at Hackers On Planet Earth stops making excuses, and starts making a difference you will double the size of the Tor network. That's incredible! If you do that you will make a measurable impact. And so together, we will make a gigantic change in the world.

So, I want to make it clear that we are extremely thankful. So thank you very much for your time, and thank you for your legal support, and your donations, and your help and your ideas.

[Loud sustained applause —- unintelligible comment “introduce the video —- anyway?”] One — one — one last thing. We would like to show you, and I know some of you are antsy to go and that’s fine. We would like to show you something important —- which is the video in question.

So, if you can stomach it, if you can handle to think about the things we’ve all funded, I’d like you to sit through and watch this video. And, it’s going to play for you. And I’d like to thank you again for your time. And, I hope to see all of you again soon, maybe 17 minutes from now. And I hope that all of you will still be here after the video plays. Think about how you can make a difference in the world. And then don’t just think about it, do it!

Earth stops making excuses, and starts making a difference you will double the size of the Tor network. That's incredible! If you do that you will make a measurable impact. And so together, we will make a gigantic change in the world.

So, I want to make it clear that we are extremely thankful. So thank you very much for your time, and thank you for your legal support, and your donations, and your help and your ideas.