Minecraft anarchy – The Case Against WikiLeaks: a direct threat to our community

Yeah sure i get a message right now when i restart the stream and it’s a it’s a useless one well welcome back to this advertisement episode and i’m totally not on my phone um for laser gun land reachable underage el.com and um is there anything to say no i don’t think so

Let’s maybe start more than one machine let’s go over here maybe let’s not start this machine at all let’s see so um uh yeah let’s let’s go just get right into it i’m kind of confused right now and we’re going to watch a talk from this is ccc again from the media.ccc.te channel

And it is oh i don’t have tnt and it’s probably also not in there because yeah why would it yeah i blew the mountain up and then i have it in here though um yeah so the title of the video that i’m now going to play back is 30 60 c3 and

It is um the case against wikileaks a direct threat to our community um yeah uploaded in 2019 currently 2 300 views so if you’re interested in that video go check out the original please do not watch it here since it doesn’t make a lot of sense

To have it here in without slides and stuff like that anyways the purpose of this video is to advertise this minecraft server and i hope i i sold it to you and you’re convinced that you should play here it’s anarchy so you’re allowed to do whatever you want and um yeah

That’s kind of cool so you can kill other players there are no protections you can grieve and there are no admins limiting your um yeah nasty desires or whatever anyways why do i have so much cover stuff um yeah let’s get right into it i’m now going to play with a video

That is not made by me and it’s not me speaking but anyways nobody is listening anyway just tuning in later and then complaining about the talk and thinking it’s me but you know struggles then let’s let’s get right into it what did i press okay so our next speakers are going to

Talk about the charges against julian assange and wikileaks which is a topic that’s very close to our hearts i guess most our hearts at least and it’s also something that’s incredibly important for us as a community and it’s a threat against the entire tech community minorities human rights advocates

Activists so a lot of people you should really care about and the speakers are renata avila who’s the executive director of [Applause] who’s the uk program director at blueprint for free speech which is much easier to pronounce thank you so much and angel director who’s a director and writer and artist and

A lot of things and she specializes on whistleblowing and digital digital dissidents and one of the plays which is transmedia play you might know it’s called super nerds so a round of applause for our amazing speakers and let’s begin the talk thank you very much good evening

Everyone and thank you for coming here tonight and thank you also for our introduction by the the moderator very charming guys i thought and also good to give a little bit lightness to this um for me very serious issue actually that we are here um like he said i’m an

Artist and for me wikileaks was very important and also julian assange because somehow they were the entrance for me as an artist to this community that became very dear to me in the last 10 years and i attended some of the congresses in the last 10 years and

Learned a lot about things that i never knew before so i owe a lot actually to wikileaks and and also to this community because it opened so many things for me up so yeah this i wanted to say first and then i will also show a little piece of

Of a recent play i did in zagreb it’s by slavo zizek who is also a supporter by julian and it is not so much it is related to our topic it’s a little bit like a mood board that we want to show before we start and

Yeah and like he said it this will be about um how we can support wikileaks and of course julian assange which is which is also a very personal matter for me because he became a very close friend in the last 10 years who i also

Owe a lot and on the other hand i think it’s not only about him and his life which is serious enough but i think that this thing that is happening to him that he’s being charged with the espionage act this is first time that something like this happens to a publisher

Is a threat to free speech to all of our freedom and it means that actually everyone who speaks truth to power can be kidnapped extradited to the us and then end up in prison for the rest of his life and i think that this is for this community also a threat

Especially because we all know that we are trying to be secure from secure free speech is very important issue here so yeah we will go into the details in the course of this week thank you very much so [Applause] [Applause] Um we will try to be brief to leave enough time for questions because we think that we you have a lot of questions on this case and so we will alternate and discuss different issues starting with where are we at now yes um on the left side you see belmar

Prison this is the high security prison that julian is housed at the moment and what i find very chilling about it is that it’s actually a place where usually you find terrorists murderers and mafia people and so on so high criminals and he is only at the moment

Being held there for extradition reasons which is also extreme because he is 23 hours a day alone in his cell which is actually isolation and then the next picture shows a typical room in a prison in virginia where chelsea manning is held at the moment again and i think it’s must be something

Like 10 months in the meantime that she’s again in prison because she is not willing to testify against julian assange in front of a grand jury so raise your hand if you have less than 30 years so okay thank you that says a lot because it means that probably

Your first encounter with wikileaks was just only five years ago and you were a teen when many things were happening and we know that today’s john hacker’s day so it was important for us to quickly go through the important uh publications that wikileaks published in the last

Uh decade why because there are many misconceptions since 2016. and a lot of misinformation followed followed the election of donald trump and so we want to show here and it is of course is not a detailed list you can find a detailed list on on wikileaks on wikipedia

Uh two concepts at the beginning were all often mixed actually and and and the same principles followed i would say but what i want to show here is the most impactful publications by wikileaks that changed the course of history in many places and also highlighted in green are the political persecution moments

Of not only against julian assange but again against other people that were closely connected to uh these developments in the last decade so 2008 was a very exciting year for wikileaks because i think that even if it was created before was the year that it got mainstream why because it changed elections in

Kenya by exposing extrajudicial killings and it really changed the outcome of the election like people realized that one of the candidates was involved in these extrajudicial killings of young people and that really impacted deeply the african nation and not only that um you might have forgotten about that but it was the

First publication of the batch of uh emails from sarah palin and also uh there were lots of publications in latin america that’s how i became familiar with wikileaks i’m very excited about that uh petrogate a big scandal of corruption in peru also uh publications involving guerrillas and false positives in the colombian war

It was it was it started like from the places from africa from latin america and also the us on 2009 um i will say that the highlight and why we clicks became very visible is exposed a lot of the censorship lists of china and iran and other countries the internet was

Not what it used it is not what is today censorship was tangible you will see a blocked website and now as we will discuss later now is different forms of censorship and so wikileaks at that moment was a guardian of this free internet and also it was the at the big moment in

Iceland and the big opportunity for wikileaks as well in a jurisdiction to become not only uh not only a publisher but a designer of new ecosystem of freedom of information so it exposed uh the corrupt involving the financial scandal there and it got really really exciting there

Things uh like the ime initiative and all the things that are now uh part of our history then 2010 and then 2010 was the year when things started to get really complicated why because instead of touching countries in the periphery or touching developing countries so it’s okay it’s always cool to expose the

Violet human rights violations of an african um or a latin american person in power but when you touch the center of power when you touch the most powerful military in the world you get into trouble so on 2010 uh collateral murder video was published the afghan war diaries iraq

War logs and cable gate and that was the moment when julian assange was arrested it was not arrested because of the publications it was just few days after the the publications started that he was arrested on behalf of sweden and no charges were it was not because of charges it was

Because of ongoing investigation 2011 the gitmo files spy files um spy files was the first batch of publication 160 companies involved in mass surveillance private mass surveillance that was pre-snowden remember that and that at that moment uh julian only spent a little in the same prison that is now only few

Days then he was released on bail but from that moment from the moment that he he put he presented himself he surrounded himself to the police he never had he just voluntarily went there when he was requested from that moment his life became a hell of surveillance

He was not only had a tag on his uncle following him everywhere but he had the most strict bail conditions that you can imagine he could not even give a talk in london because he will have to go back he had ridiculous hours to report himself to the police

He was watched all the time he had to report to the police on a daily basis someone suspect of terrorism was enjoying more relaxed conditions that someone who wasn’t who wasn’t charged and that’s a constant in this case and other politically motivated cases you are not the rule you are the exception

And exceptionally harsh the system treats you and 2012 stratfor emails and also the syria files syria files is a publication that is not often mentioned but it was very relevant uh exposing all the dealings of the syrian elites and julian is granted political asylum in ecuador he could have requested a political

Asylum much earlier but he wanted to go through all the legal process in the uk and all the appeals and it was his last chance to to exercise that right then 2013 the tpp text spyfalse ii and that was the moment when manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison

As snowden is granted asylum in moscow as well and jeremy hammond is convicted and sentenced for uh to 10 years in prison jeremy hammond is the alleged source of the stratfor uh the global intelligence files um then 2014 taissa spy fights 3 and the updated tpp text

Then 2015 the sony archives the saudi cables actually that saudi cable publication was a one of the most dangerous ones you you you saw what happened to journalist jamal khashoggi i mean it’s very very dangerous publication and hacking team searchable database and the tpp final texts this is very

Important because it really changed the life for better of lots of people i personally work on global trade issues and uh the negotiators of developing countries or or representing underrepresented communities like uh they are so thankful to wikileaks of really for releasing and publishing the tpp ip chapter

Uh because it means uh better access to medicine it it got the people with better conditions for negotiations in key issues such as access to medicines then 2016 i will say that i will compare it to 2010 then you again touch the center of power we click stoch again the center of power

By publishing the clinton podesta and dnc emails and that changed a lot the narrative and changed a lot the narrative in a very different world because it was not anymore the tangible censorship on the or the clear publication but our information ecosystem as we know uh had been modified by social networks but

Different forms of distributing and accessing content 2017 under obama leaves the administration by uh commuting uh chelsea manning sentence and she’s later released that year and wikileaks publishes nsa spine and french election vault seven which is the toolkit of spine of the cia and spy files russia 2018 amazon atlas u.s embassy shopping

List and the weapon leader dealers details here is very important that uh the conditions of julian changed radically after 2016 at the ecuadorian embassy and the pressure of the u.s increased terribly and he was not allowed anymore to do his job as a journalist he spent most of the year gagged and he

Could not participate actively directly directly on his role as editor and 2019 you saw in the video assange is arrested manny is arrested again but in spite of in spite of that in spite of all the pressure wikileaks refuses to shut down and continues publishing the pope orders thermochemical attack and fish drugs

So as you can see julian has upset and weakness has upset enough people from the most powerful army in the world to the most powerful governments to most powerful corporations that saw their plans frustrated with the tpp collapse and the ttip collapse and the thaisa collapse

To even the pope so if you upset if you expose so many people you have very few allies left you have basically the people as your allies so that’s why this talk is really really really important and you have also the media because over the 10 years wikileaks has worked closely with most

Of the news outlets all over the world if you check the newspaper tomorrow morning it’s highly likely that it was one of the wikileaks media partners this is just a small sample of over 125 media organizations all over the world that had collaborately collaborated closely with wikileaks yes

And i just want to add a very interesting little detail that john gutz told me who was at that time he’s a journalist he now works for suit deutsche and iad at that time he was working for der spiegel who also worked closely with wikileaks at that time 2010

And they published cablegate and it’s interesting to know that due to a technical glitch because the deal was that nick wikileaks publishes first and after that the newspapers follow spiegel new york times guardian and so on and due to this glitch wikileaks was not able to publish

In time so they were too late with their publishing and all the newspapers came out already so technically they published first which is very important for the case in a way because he’s charged because he published it first the cable gate and it would be interesting because what

Does it mean it means that actually the journalists from spiegel and new york times and guardian could face the same penalties and when you imagine that then then you i think the impact it has on publishing becomes even more chilling and clear you know so i thought to tell you this little uh

Detail about the publishing of cablegate so what happened so what happened on april 11 when he was expelled from the embassy and dragged out is something that goes beyond just julian assange as a human rights lawyer you know when i see political unrest when i see people dissidents at risk i always tell

Tell them have a good relationship with a friendly embassy that defends human rights and in case of trouble get there get inside an embassy it’s happening now with these students in bolivia for example who are like right now at the most in the museum of mexico

I will advise any of you to do that but now with caution because now since the since the violation uh and since this really brutal way that uh asylum was taken away from an illegal way that asylum was taken away from julian and the way that police from a different country enters

An embassy asylum has been awakened forever until we reverse this that’s why this is yet another reason why this case is very important right now you know even the government of bolivia is threatening the mexican embassy to get inside and take out the dissidents uh seeking asylum inside their embassy it is

Really upsetting to see how an institution that has over 400 years that was designed to protect dissidents is being dismantled by this scandalous case and well when he was out it happened what we had predicted for years for years we have been we have we have been saying

At the moment when he’s arrested they will unseal an indictment for espionage and everyone will look at us like back in 2010 and 2011 say like you’re paranoid is no there’s no way that the u.s is going to prosecute julian he’s just hiding from uh sweet swedish charges they were saying always

Charges even they were never charges and he is a coward and he’s a paranoid and this is not going to happen it happened immediately and it happened immediately and just as predicted and just as predicted it was it was so upsetting to see the result of the swedish investigation because

Not only over there i mean there was a good journalist doing her job and she discovered over the years different irregularities sweden wanted to shut down the case back in 2013 after the asylum was granted and obstacle it was a collusion and it’s go really good if you like documents and

You you got like deep research getting to the documents that are already available and see how the uk system put a lot of pressure on sweden not to not not to prosecute this case as they usually prosecute any case things as simple as a video conference could have been taking place

Back in 2010 back in august september 2010 and it didn’t happen because of a lot of political pressure so now the charges um there are 18 charges against julian assange and there might be charges against more people who are mentioned in the indictment and the charges that he’s facing for publishing

Among 175 years in prison and if to make your life seem simpler basically the charges are for online publishing protecting sources and doing journalism if you read what it is about uh it’s really chilling and it’s especially chilling because look at who’s uh uh in charge now right now

All over the world and it is the first time that the justice department gets away with it it is using a very anachronic law to er and they obtain an indictment from a grand jury that’s from a group of people who thinks that it is okay to prosecute under espionage act charges

Online publication if you get a take away from tonight this is the takeaway this is the serious thing that we are discussing right now and the thing this is this is important because at the center of this is our right to know the right to publish it on the on our

Side is our right to know and three relevant last last three relevant aspects of the charges you will read a lot of oh but wikileaks has and julian had blood in in on his hands it risked uh informants and put that risk it these charges have nothing to do with this

Risk assessment that will not be even uh known by the court these reductions and these measures of protection that are over and over in media are not relevant for the espionage charges and there’s also important that you notice that it mentions uh constantly over the end that meant

Wikileaks as an intelligence agency of the people and that mirrors the language of pompeo the current secretary of state uh who’s uh trying to frame a wikileaks at not non-state terrorist actor like equivalent of al-qaeda and that has huge horrible implications not only on the core wikileaks organization but on supporters even

Wearing a teacher reading a book about it it can place you in a not so nice place and the important thing that is very worrying is that more people might be detained and charged before or after the extradition takes place and we don’t have to speculate about

This dragnet of course because it is already here already here in its pattern of intimidation and petty and vindictiveness chelsea manning one of the great heroes of our time one month before julian was expelled from the ecuadorian embassy and arrested on u.s charges just like he’d always said would happen

One month before chelsea manning received a subpoena to testify before a grand jury in the eastern district of virginia she refused to testify and was imprisoned on con for contempt she is currently she’s served 10 months back in prison she is currently being fined a thousand dollars

For every day she spends in prison not testifying this is what chelsea said about what is happening in a statement in may i believe this grand jury seeks to undermine the integrity of public discourse with the aim of punishing those who expose any serious ongoing and systematic abuses of power

The idea i hold the keys to my own cell is an absurd one as i face the prospect of suffering either way due to this unnecessary and punitive subpoena i can either go to jail or betray my principles the latter exists as a much worse prison than the government can construct

In september jeremy hammond coming to the end of a long prison sentence for his role in the publication of the of the global intelligence files he received us he was called against his will to testify before a grand jury again in the eastern districts of virginia again he refused to testify

Again he’s been jailed for a possible 18 months on contempt this is what he had to say about it in october after seven and a half years of paying my debt to society the government seeks to punish me further with this vindictive politically motivated legal maneuver to delay my release

I am opposed to all grand juries but i’m opposed to this one in particular because a part of the government’s ongoing war on free speech journalists and whistleblowers if this hadn’t happened to jeremy he would be in a halfway house by now he would have been released from prison

He might have been participating in this congress on the 11th of april this year the same day that julian was expelled from the ecuadorian embassy and arrested and indicted by the united states just like he always said would happen his friend olabini was arrested in ecuador ola spent

Two months in an ecuadorian prison in absolutely disgusting conditions until he was released by a writ of habeas corpus ola has now been charged with charges that suggest that the prosecutors in ecuador don’t really understand what it is that security researchers do every day senior ecuadorian politicians the most

Senior ecuadorian politicians have been on television in ecuador saying that ola is guilty before any trial date has been set organizations like amnesty and eff has said that ola’s prosecution is political and of course they are quite correct it’s all political extradition is political don’t let anyone tell you differently

Extradition is an institution developed as um a deal behind closed doors done between sovereign powers it’s only in the past it’s only in the past 100 years or so that parts that have been transferred into courtrooms but politicians still have an active role in extradition proceedings and sometimes extradition is used for

Political purposes extradition in the uk is also very political what is it that every taxi driver in london could tell you about extradition if you don’t believe me you’re welcome to test this out empirically next time you’re in town what is it they’ll tell you they will tell you that the uk

Has an unfair unequal unbalanced inequitable extradition treaty with the united states this treaty dates from 2002 when tony blair was keen to give the united states everything it could possibly want and more one of the gentlemen pictured in this in this slide is gary mckinnon very shortly after the

2002 extradition treaty came into force gary mckinnon started a 10-year battle not to be extradited to the united states on hacking charges he prevailed in the end but only after he’d been through the entire legal process twice and he was rescued eventually by the sato of the uk home secretary the

Other gentleman on that slide is lowry love in february last year larry won his battle against extradition to the united states again on hacking charges at appeal in the high court i was involved in that campaign um i’m glad he won i’m glad he won because it

Means we have a hope of saving julian he’d be in trouble if he hadn’t um lowry won on two different bases one of them is very relevant one of the reasons why lowry won his battle against extradition is because judges in the high court including the most senior judge in england and wales

Ruled that u.s prisons are so bad the conditions are so barbaric so medieval that somebody with pre-existing health conditions like larry there was no guarantee he’d stay alive in a u.s prison you might be hearing more about that in february next year but there are other big big issues involved in julian assange’s

Extradition case big big issues that don’t necessarily involve him that much at all the first clip on that slide is a it’s part of john stewart mills autobiography john stuart mill liberal philosopher and also british politician for a bit and in this extract he’s talking about how he battled to

Change an earlier incarnation of a uk of a uk extradition treaty because he didn’t want the british government to become quote an accomplice in the vengeance of foreign despotisms extradition should not be used as a political tool for foreign governments to pursue and punish people it doesn’t like

People are guilty of political offences it’s a fundamental question of sovereignty if you are at andy miller magoon’s excellent talk this um yesterday morning you will have heard about the pervasive thoroughgoing and quite frightening surveillance that was happening at the acquiring embassy for the seven years that julian assange was living there

This raid is a fundamental issue if your every legal conference all of your discussions with your lawyers are being surveilled and allegedly passed straight to the power that’s trying to prosecute you if all of your legal documents are handed over allegedly well actually we know that to the power that’s trying to prosecute

You what does that mean for your chances of a fair trial if you care about surveillance at all we’re going to have to make a stand in this very extreme case because if we don’t how are we ever going to stand up for fair trail rights for anyone

Yes and before i go further in our topic i just want to say that i have personal experience with the surveillance happening in the embassy because i used to visit julian many many times maybe 30 times from the moment he entered the embassy till the last time i saw him is nearly

Exactly a year ago it was around christmas last year and at that point i mean i really could see the eroding conditions that he lived in i mean um just to see a person that didn’t see the sunlight for for seven years or something was terrible enough but then the last year

When he uh lived uh quasi in uh in isolation and had no access to to phone or to internet nothing because that was the way that that he had contact with the world and had no visitors anymore for for nearly a year i think um because we the people that visited

Him we were kind of the um his door to the world and it it was for me very very very weird to be so well all the time when i was there sometimes i spent five hours at least there and after a while you you just feel very

Uncomfortable i was so happy when i could leave that building actually especially in the last two years and then i could not imagine staying there like him having no private moment i mean they in the end they even put cameras in the bathrooms and

And the toilets and so on that was the i know there was this tiny kitchen sometimes we used to hide from the cameras to just have a moment of just talking without feeling surveilled and and then he had also um this little apparatus i think andy was talking about it yesterday in his

Talk that was causing white noise and i was really annoyed to be honest by this a little thing and i was always i was also thinking about my god maybe he is too paranoid you know because the weird thing is you get used to everything and somehow

And like us now being surveyed all the time through our phones and laptops and so on and we get used to it but he always insisted even when we were talking like banal stuff about i don’t know soccer game or something the little uh sound machine was on causing

White noise and it not only it caused disturbance for the surveyors it also caused headaches in my head and so yeah it’s it’s it’s actually a very sad story and for me it was to see the process when especially after the government the conservative government came into power in ecuador

His status very much changed and so he became more and more something i would describe as a prisoner and not someone who has asylum okay this is on on my personal note how i experienced it and the other thing is i on this picture you see

One of the first protests that we did in berlin it was this year in may it was a little after he was dragged out of the embassy and We were there with some people including sejko horvath croatian philosopher and as you see on the picture also i the chinese artist and human rights advocate who also openly supported assange always and also not afraid of consequences actually and he also visited him in prison and what is also an interesting fact

That every way also made the connection between the protest against the extradition law in hong kong and with the and and he connected it with this very controversial extradition case of julian in the uk at the moment so for me it’s sometimes something i i i could never believe in former times

That i will be in a situation where we in the west who are the good ones and the free west the so-called free west is somehow actually in the top 10 of of having dissidents in prisons including the ones that we just named and and that no human rights seem to be very

Valuable anymore and i find this very concerning i must say also on a private level yes and uh i was there too as you see in the photograph and uh before i go went to the protest uh you can switch it um i was in in moscow and i visited

Edward snowden because i also worked with him together he helped me a lot on the place i did and this was the third time actually that i visited him and we also talked about julian’s case and he gave me a letter of support that i was reading out loud on this protest

And i will just read a little bit of it that you can see now by the government’s own admission assange has been charged for his role in bringing to light true information information that exposed war crimes and wrongdoing perpetrated by the most powerful military in the history of the world it is not

Just a man who stands in jeopardy but the future of the free press yes and i think that he is very much uh right in this case because what does it mean i mean um for me um it’s i’m also in the meantime working as a journalist for devrytac

I published few of articles about him and snowden and basically about whistleblowing in these things and if if he can if publishing becomes a crime telling the truth becomes a crime and if you are not able to work with sources to protect sources and and to actively also

Try to obtain material um about truth and and because we live in a democracy where um uh we the the powers have to be shared and to to have a balance of in power because as we know when power gets into a monopoly it it will always be um um abused and um

So we have continued okay so yeah i will cut it short it has bad implications for journalists and if this happens to julian it is a threat not only to journalism but to democracy itself sorry we will accelerate because all the what comes next is very very important and

Yes we saw immediately after the rest of julian the situation going really badly in australia and but what i wanted to discuss we wanted to discuss with you tonight this is this is about you about someone just like you and you can see i mean i ca

I can see you there i can see julian in these pictures and i can see lots of similarities you belong to the same species basically uh he was oh he was a single father he was prosecuted at a very very young age spent five years of his twenties uh fighting a legal process

But he was all the time with his computer i cannot i really cannot imagine how his life was since april away from his computer can you imagine your life away from your computer even for one day imagine since april he has been away from his computer

And only having 20 one hour a day outside a prison cell and so while he was raising up a kid as a single parent and while he was dealing with a a hacking legal process he also was actively working for our communities he was co-running one of the first

Public access internet providers in australia he was always involved and dedicated thousands of hours to the free software movement his code was even used uh by apple and in other operating systems so chances are that today even today uh our computers our apple devices for the bad people who uses apple like me

Uh are running part of his code um he was also and from very early time uh trying to find ways for vulnerable uh groups such as human rights defenders ways to encrypt their devices and so he was very active before wikileaks wikileaks just was an upgrade kind of on on his plans and

I also want to mention that the ccc is mentioned expressly mentioned in that part of the indictment against julian so what happens here you know it matters there and and uh i think that the the sole fact that the community is mentioned on an indictment against a journalist is enough reason to

Stand up and say something about it and organize around it but it’s not only the community name on the indictment and the criminal complaint is also our communication practices raise your hand if you have a jabber account so yes the java server the cc server is mentioned in the criminal complaint against julian

Um well yeah i mean what’s that what’s there is worrying but what’s even more worrying is this isn’t like the microphone what’s there is worrying but what’s even more worrying is that it’s a moving target things are still continuing this is a part of a submission the us government made

In chelsea manning’s proceedings talk about an ongoing investigation there’s more to come and there’s even more bad omens Like this like that one even more bad omens from across the water in unrelated cases and prosecutors prosecutorial theories that are being put together which are very disturbing and organ for very bad things to come i can’t talk about that now but it’s an excellent issue for the q a

What happens next well immediately what’s going to happen next is that on the 24th of february for three or four weeks julian assange will have his extradition hearing to give you an indication of the size and scale of this case lowry loves extradition hearing which

Was quite a big deal and quite big took two and a half days julian has three he’s going to julian’s is going to be three or four weeks it will take place um in belmar magistrates court um in a horrible part of southeast london near the prison

It will probably take place in the courthouse next door because they’ve got bigger courts but it will be in that place in london so what can you do okay do not be afraid to speak up speak with people and so on and don’t be afraid we still live in a freak

Country immunize yourself against propaganda which is really something that you should be aware that happened massively in the case of julian i think you know what i mean and understand what is at stake this is a political persecution and it’s about everyone um and i want to quote nils mensah the u.n special

Laboratory on torture who i met recently and um this is a very famous quote of him that he was continuously actually saying to people in power assange has been systematically slandered to divert attention attention from the christ crimes he exposed once he had been dehumanized through isolation ridicule and shame

Just like the witches we used to burn at the stake it was easy to deprive him of his most fundamental rights and without provoking public outrage worldwide and i think this is exactly what happened to him and this is a picture of really courageous journalists from all over the world who stand

Up and say like stop this prosecution and they’re a community julian belongs to but i have seen very few real statements from this community so our request tonight will be like please try to organize and try to do a similar effort that matters a lot naomi will explain why it’s really

Important because no man is an island and the uk is not on ireland even after brexit right the uk government does care about its international reputation maybe unlike the us and the uk government needs to know that the world is watching the world is watching they’re hosting entirely unnecessarily the

Most ridiculous the most important press freedom truck case of a generation completely unnecessarily they need to know that we’re keeping a careful eye on it over the past few months we’ve been putting a lot of effort into ensuring that the extradition hearing the trial if you like in

February is properly monitored we have 25 elected parliamentarians from 12 european countries who have committed to be being passed those monitoring efforts reporters on frontier are going to are going to monitor we have a whole group of medics who are going to monitor the extradition proceedings and i think it would be good

To have a similar effort from this community too frankly especially because there are many technical issues being discussed your opinion really matters for this trial you know and and he can do it he cannot do it from prison he counts on you to help lawyers to help the press to help

Everyone understand what is and what is isn’t online publishing an online journalism 21st century journalism is at stake on this case and your voice really matters here it really does yes and you know he’s our friend and it’s not only it’s someone we support but he’s our friend

And he likes to have the final word always so we kind of bring our bringing him back from the 11 years ago from a congress like this one to have the final word oh hey cia yeah no it’s only a glitch He’s gonna be frustrated Try again it’s okay should we try if not we can in the meantime we can read it out we can read it out so go ahead you have better me justice doesn’t just happen justice is forced by people coming together and exercising strength unity and intelligence that’s julian at 25 c3 [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] Shall we try should we try let’s try last time no no oh my god he’ll be annoyed by that silence he would be very annoying he’s gonna be really angry about that that’s right please do not tell him yeah don’t yeah don’t tell him if you don’t tell him you won’t know

Yeah so we are ready for some questions i think that we have very little time but if we don’t have enough time we will be hanging out at the tea house and you can come to us and ask questions and how to help thank you so much It was very insightful moving and incredibly important so i remind everyone that we have six microphones if you have questions why not behind them and also our wonderful signal angels are going to take some questions from the internet one of which we’re going to answer right now

Okay there was the question that which reasons could there be to explain the lack of fair and well-balanced media reports in the sage case and what the reasons for the lack of supportive media okay yes do you want to answer them very quickly i will say that um going

Back to the slide on who he exposed the most powerful people if you have the most powerful people again in the world private sector public sector even hidden sector uh against you and with unlimited resources to take you down is quite easy to kill positive stories

And it is really hard in times that journalism is on the resource and that the courageous journalists are not like really rewarded uh it is it is really difficult to to navigate that ecosystem yes and i want to add that also there’s a reason i think

If journalism today would be do a proper job of investigating and exposing the powerful that that it would not be necessary that wikileaks even exists i think if they would uh do their job as the fourth so-called fourth estate um in democracy um then something like wikileaks wouldn’t even be there

And i think that might be a reason that i think that the the the um he not only exposed the powerful but he also a little bit exposed of course his colleagues at the so-called established press and i think that that every reason that he gave and there was some because he’s not

Perfect julian assange is only human and he did make mistakes like everybody of us and i could say okay take the first stone and throw it but i think that of course bad news is always good news and let’s say many people who knew him said let’s say negative things that the press

Picked up but like when i would say to press oh i also know him i think he’s a decent guy nobody wants to report that because it’s boring and not interesting so yeah there are many reasons for that i think i’m going to add the i mean the fact

That there are 10 years of history here definitely makes a difference but look i speak to a lot of journalists and i speak to a lot of journalists about this case in the uk and particularly as it’s become more obvious that julian is not doing very well

That he’s very unwell i think people are shocked and i can you know people are frightened about it they might not be talking about it very much at the moment but they will it is changing around for sure yes and then speaking of being frightened i also don’t underestimate

That people might be afraid and also i know that there are many journalists here tonight this is your opportunity to change the narrative because you are next if you stay silent thank you we’re going to take the next question from a man who’s wearing a julian assange mask

God reward the effort a microphone two please oh hi um i want to thank you so much for your talk um when we are all facing uh this situation of asking ourselves what we can do uh we should take inspiration from what you just said and what you just did

It is not just about julian it is about every one of us here it is this is wonderful but that is not a question no but i’m getting there it’s about drawing there faster historical perspective on all these aspects about war about power about what we can do

About what the internet is about to question power it is about also maybe admitting much faster much faster that is not perfect you may have said stupid things on twitter like we all did and like anyone would do after seven years in detention uh yet he’s one of us so when asking

Ourselves what to do it’s a modest contribution from the internet there is a wiki that is online for uh a few days now on these stickers that you okay we’re going to take an actual question i am really sorry but microphone one please okay still thank you hi um thank you for the

Inspiring uh talk so i’m a pakistani journalist i now live in exile in berlin um but what the story of assange and what we just saw this um you know everything that happened and the perpetrators they even put the authoritarian regimes and their leaders in shame um especially how the system of asylum

Has been preached that also scares me i’m actually cold because i’m scared but my question is could you as journalists maybe shed some light on the on the chilling effect for journalists i mean i can only imagine that there might be more leaks in line that would have happened but

Maybe has not happened because the journalists are also now self-censoring so what would you advise to such journalists thank you well that is really exactly a very tough question and and this is exactly one of the dangers that we are pointing to you know that people might just not

Expose it and like i said people are starting to get afraid what can we say to them well it yeah i have something to say and i think that julian has something to say it’s the same as with justice with as a community with strength unity and intelligence i mean look at

The talent in this room uh look it it’s not necessarily just the brilliance of one whistleblower of one person is the ecosystem that we need to create to create resilient media and we need resilient media for democracy to work and if if it cannot happen even here in germany

With all the resources and with all the brilliant minds what is going to happen so i think that uh we cannot stop innovating and we need to push for the next uh wave of innovations for the journalism that will serve uh the the the these needs

Uh in our times and that’s why this case matters a lot because it’s punishing these innovations that this redistributed power among people yeah there also needs to be a recognition a bit of solidarity is necessary here because this isn’t just about just about julian as renata mentioned

Briefly um things in australia have gone to pot since julian was arrested and more than that one of the slides i flicked over was the indictment of a drone was alleged um drone whistleblower daniel hale um in daniel hale the count one of daniel hell’s indictment accuses him of um unlawfully releasing information

About unlawfully releasing information to a journalist who he knew would have used it unlawfully so this is like the second time in a u.s indictment we have an accusation of a publisher a journalist acting unlawfully by publishing true information in the public interest we need to um

We need to be aware and we need to raise the alarm because this isn’t just about julian the threat is very real and it’s very broad thank you okay we have time for one last question and we’re going to ask our signal angels again so there was a question how can we help

And support manning assange and snowden well um like we just said also i think it’s very important to show solidarity in different ways by raising your voice well even the uh supporting with donation it’s always good it’s good for manning it’s good for everyone i think courage foundation is is someone

Who’s supporting everyone including jeremy hammond and and chelsea manning who are not so much in the focus maybe uh like julian but also for julian i think that his uh trial will cost oh my god hundreds of thousands of pounds let’s hope that the house pound goes down after

Brexit but okay no i mean and i think speaking up and like like renata also said uh to to have the feeling that we are many and i think exactly this thing that he said people coming together and sharing and and kind of be brave like courage is contagious is one of my

Favorite quotes uh quotes of him and so i think yeah take a stand have an attitude and and do as much as you can in your possibilities which which are not so little i think and i think it is for the good of everyone not only the names people who are in

Danger now but for all of our freedom um resist practically there’s a lot to do and there’s a lot of work to go around um as we’ve mentioned in the talk organizing in the communities you’re part of is very important here in germany to take an example we’ve had parliamentarians coming forward we’ve

Also had the journalists union we’ve also had collections of lawyers all of this is really important and it makes a difference to the work that’s being done in the uk there are a lot of different organizations and groups doing work on this case and it’s all really valuable um

Contribute as you will find the group that you think is doing is doing good work either work that you think will make a difference or that accords with your own ideological perspective and support and support them there’s a lot of people doing doing good work here i know

One of the one of the saving graces of what has been quite a depressing year is meeting so many people who were doing important work on this most dire of issues and we have a lot of faith on you as a community to be honest we count on you

And this community do not leave behind people belonging here and i think that if we can see i think that julian will be like incredibly thrilled and chelsea will be like super happy to know that there’s organized efforts to follow this case closely and to have delegations

Present during the hearings and if they know that you are there even symbolically there they will feel so much better because more to any community snowden chelsea julian really love this love admire and count on this community so please be there and find us later we will explain like

More detailed ways to help and thank you so much for attending this talk like really it means a lot it means a lot to have a full room and i know that there’s many people watching as well and we’ll watch this again please uh continue following this case

Uh we will prepare all the information that you need but we you need we need you to activate it and to translate it into actions thank you so much thank you thank you thank you for Inspiring