Date: January 21, 2012
Event:War on the Internet
Venue: Trades Hall, Melbourne
Abstract: Jacob Applebaum speaks at the War on the Internet event, co-hosted by EFA and the Australian Greens at Trades Hall in Melbourne on 21st January 2012.
Video (Vimeo): https://vimeo.com/35478483
Jacob Appelbaum: I’m not really one for preparing speeches beforehand. So I took some things before that have been a theme while I’ve been here. Things that I’ve talked about with other people, people have said to me. Things that my friends that are free software people here have expressed to me, or EFA people.
First I want to start by saying thanks to the good senator, the good, honorable senator. Because he loves it when I embarrass him about this. He actually wrote me an invitation letter to ensure that if I came through Australian customs and I had some trouble, that I would be able to say, “Hey! Don’t fuck with me."
[laughter, applause]
Jacob: Not everybody is on board with the expansion of police powers, maybe it’s all right to speak freely about the right to speak freely. I think that’s really important. I mean if you are not a Greens voter you should fix your shit and vote for the Greens.
[laughter]
Jacob: If we had a Green party that actually mattered in the United States in a really big way, that could make the kind of change that would do things like that, I would be quite humbled by it. I don’t really feel like that’s the case so you should take advantage of that privilege that you’re having. Have a couple more Greens if you can.
With that said, I’d also like to thank the EFA, these guys in front, Andrew Pam especially. During the time when people were debating the Internet filter, and afterwards, Andrew actually gave me access to machines in Australia to look at the censorship directly.
So when people ask me about it, I could have an informed opinion about it based on facts gathered from his account. If you think about it, he gave me a shell on his machine in Australia. He said, “Please don’t get my house raided." It was good that he was willing to take that risk, but it’s quite sad to think that those are the stakes, that a simple IP address and a log will get guys with guns at your house. That’s really quite a concerning thing.
Thanks to Microsoft also because now we know that when an IP address shows up in a log it’s not necessarily because that person has used their computer. They had a long campaign of getting their computers compromised. Computers running Windows for a long time will help people understand that an IP address and a machine are not the same as a person. That was an unintentional campaign on their part, but I really appreciate it. It’s a good, good job.
[applause]
They’re doing a lot better these days. I think this building that we’re in has a really interesting history because it’s like a free software project. It was built by workers, and it was built for the workers. I think that’s awesome. I think in the corner over there, overlooking, a shady character...that guy’s awesome for bringing us here. I really appreciate that, and for Felicity, as well, for making that happen.
This place is in the sense, I feel like, it really is as Bernard said, part of the lineage of movements for a long period of time. The free software movement really builds off a lot of these ideas. The nice thing about the Internet, I think, is that it allows all of us to improve the situation of all of the people on the planet.
I mean, this is important. This is supposed to be themed in a sense, in the same way that the 888 Movement was, and we can look at it in that way. That improved everyone’s life. Everybody’s lives improved with 888, right?
This idea of recreation and also of education and also of a limited amount of time that we will devote our lives to being exploited by capitalism. I think that that’s ‑‑ that’s really important. It isn’t to say that that’s because trading your time in exchange for money is the worst thing.
It can be for some people, and in some cases when it’s not consensual, it definitely is. But that said, it’s good that there’s a limit. It’s good that we express those limits in a way where we recognize that the point of living is not just to enrich other people, but also to enrich ourselves.
It’s fuckin’ awesome to be here. That’s the thank you. Now I’ll actually talk about what I was going to talk about.
[applause]
Jacob: I gave the keynote at the LCA Conference, which is a Linux Conference. Who here uses a Mac or Windows? Raise your hand if you do? One way that you can help out with liberating people, is to liberate yourselves by installing an operating system that is free software, like Ubuntu, or Debian or something like this.
Ditch Apple and the chains of proprietary software. That sounds totally ridiculous, but really, it is absolutely the case. By doing that, you no longer are affected by someone in Cupertino or in Redmond, saying, “Hey, we want to take away this user’s ability to share files. We want to build forensic software for the police into this operating system. We want to spy on you."
When you reject those operating systems, which is a slightly technical thing, when you switch to a free operating system, you give yourself the autonomy that those companies will take away in good time. Consider doing that. Even though it’s quite a big commitment, it’s worthwhile. Just like you would learn to ride a bicycle, or you would learn about your own labor rights, so that you can say no when your boss pushes you harder.
You can say no, when corporations will use that privilege they have over you. It’s a really easy thing to do. Part of the reason is because of the issues that Scott and Bernard and Suelette discussed ‑‑ the ever expanding police powers. That’s what it is. It is an ever expansion of police powers and liberty, that they would like to have over you.
In some cases, it’s nice that we have a statistic, where we can say, “Oh, a quarter of a million.” We don’t really have good details on that. For example, we don’t really understand the tactics and the strategy or the methodology for how those numbers come into existence.
We don’t exactly know the equipment, we don’t really have access to all of that, and that’s pretty scary. Because if the police wanted to know what you were doing, they would be able to deploy those exact resources against you to get all of those answers, so there’s a big power asymmetry.
I have a good friend, he’s a really ridiculous libertarian who’s sitting in the front here, dicking with his phone. He often reminds me that even if the best of intentions exist with the government, and even if you have the coolest president ever, like Obama, who’s in theory the coolest president ever, people really listen to what he says, and they swallow it in a way they wouldn’t if it was George Bush that was saying it.
It’s important that even if you have really awesome politicians. Even if you have really great police officers that actually do good police work, people that really bust, like, for example, domestic violence people. People who are beating up their partners. Right? The police do some good work.
It doesn’t mean that simply because they’re completely awesome, that they should be without scrutiny. It doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be able to describe how they do the things that they are doing. There’s a really worrying trend with technology, which is that since a lot of people do not understand the details, the government likes to gloss over those details, and in fact they like to make an extra argument that it should remain secret, and that that will help them.
That is an extremely worrying trend, because there’s nothing special about technology when it is applied with authoritarianism. We reject authoritarianism, as a whole, I think, without the technology. We don’t actually want that. We want rules where we have understood the basis of the reason for having them, and this rule of law where we agree on them, and where are governed through consent. Specifically because that is where that authority, as Julian says, becomes legitimate.
When people don’t actually understand the Internet filter, and it’s being forced down their throat, that’s something that is not legitimate regardless of it as a law. It’s very important to know that we can’t make smart decisions without the data, and without understanding the methods.
When the government keeps these things a secret and argues that, for example, we shouldn’t know how it is that they’re doing these things, that’s something that is a giant red flag. Every person should be calling their MP about that and saying why is that the case, that these things are being kept secret. How is it that you will represent me if I am not allowed to know about those things?
When governments talk about having data retention, whether it’s selective or huge dragnet surveillance, you have to know that that’s something that is extremely scary, because the details of that, mean that you weaken the whole of society. If you build data retention devices in ISPs, it is the case that they will be compromised. They will be compromised not just by potentially criminal elements here, but by criminal elements abroad.
It was the case in the ’80s and ’90s in the United States that phone hackers actually were able to get access to the telephone tapping equipment of the telecoms in the United States, and they could even see who was being tapped and who was not being tapped.
Ironically, the few probably legitimate times that the telephones are being tapped, the architecture of that authoritarianism and surveillance could be revealed in a way that could endanger actual people’s lives.
In Colombia, the same thing is true. The organized crime elements in Colombia, I’ve heard, I don’t have really hard data on this, but I’ve heard this from people in Colombia, that they actually infiltrated the telephone organizations, looked at the metadata of who was calling who, and then went and murdered people based on the social metadata.
This idea of metadata not needing a high barrier, not needing a warrant, that’s really concerning. Because metadata in aggregate becomes content. In fact, it is content on its own, but in aggregate, it really becomes content, because it tells a story about how your life. It tells who you talk to, who you’re friends with, what kind of relationship can be determined by some basic heuristics.
That’s, I think, really concerning for a free society, because then the power dynamic shifts. The people that control those machines control other people. Generally, especially in a democracy, we reject this idea of letting other people control other people in secret, especially. It is not a legitimate thing.
I gave a long‑winded, hour and a half talk at LCA, and I talked about freedom, like freedom of speech, and the idea to be anonymous online as a thing that you should be able to do. A guy came up after my talk and he was really livid with me. He said, “What about child pornographers and terrorists"?
I have only been called a terrorist in my life a couple dozen times by the police...
[laughter]
Jacob: ...but I thought that I deserved anonymity too. Luckily I have never been called a child pornographer, as I am not. It is really frustrating to me though, that when people, after hearing a talk about freedom, talk about the responsibilities of people being free. They neglect to mention that the people that operate the surveillance systems are usually the ones that kill people. Straight up.
In the United States, my country has killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians, well not in the United States, but the people in the United States have waged a war in Iraq. The people that control the surveillance systems have killed an order of magnitude more people than died in September 11th. What about the responsibility of, for example, my country? As I understand it, your Prime Minister, after September 11th, committed troops to Afghanistan without even having a parliamentary debate.
Now, what about the responsibility that those people have? They already have incredible, incredible control of resources, and as a result, the ability to curtail liberties. There’s a serious question that I have, which is what are we doing in order to draw that back? They are clearly abusing that, when I’ve been tailed by...I don’t even know how many law enforcement agencies get in here.
For example, the good Senator’s phone, has an interesting, short battery life after I’ve arrived. Sorry, I just thought it’s worth mentioning. Can you imagine what that could mean? It seems to me that there is a question about rights and responsibilities there. Right now, the balance of power is just all wrong.
It isn’t that when people wish to speak freely or to be anonymous online, that we should have to cripple those rights, so that people who are actually working for public good, who’re working for bettering the planet, they should have to answer about child pornography and terrorism when the people who are actually doing serious harm are the ones that are waging war and killing innocent people, and tailing peaceful activists, people who are working for the public benefit.
It’s really important when we think about this, to really reject, when we can, this notion that we need to give up our fundamental liberties so that we can somehow give them to the police, who actually, every day, when they beat up occupiers, for example, those are the people who we should in fact be taking things from, just as they take people’s lives, or when they beat them, just as they take those people’s freedoms when they jail them.
It’s especially important to reject surveillance, because that is how they identify people, and that is how they apply pressure.
[13:06]
Now that I’ve depressed you a little bit, I want to talk a little bit about tactics. If we’re going to talk about it in the terms of war, I think it’s important to talk about tactics and strategy in the long‑term.
First of all, when we talk about lawful interception, Julian actually really drilled this into my head when I was visiting him. He said, “so‑called lawful interception”. Don’t say “lawful interception”. “So‑called”.
Really, if the police would come to your house and search it, they would give you a warrant, at least if you live in a reasonable country, when they still deliver warrants to you. They don’t really do that in the United States as much as they used to, because we now have secret black‑bag no‑knock warrants, where they can break into your house in the middle of the night, and never tell you that they did it. Which is pretty fuckin’ scary, right?
Where do you think you’re headed, right? If you don’t change it, you’ll be going in the same direction, probably. The same deal applies here. When people want to spy on you, call it that, it’s spying. Really use that framework, when talking to politicians, “why do you want to promote spying in a democratic society”?
Definitely, if you can, reject dragnet surveillance whenever it comes up. The idea of data retention, push back on data retention, always. Because it’s true. You can retroactively police the population. But once you have a database like that, the stuff that will happen when someone steals the database, if you could really steal information, and by that I really mean copies it, that’s going to be really bad news.
You can really track people. From simple things like knowing where a car is regularly parked so that you can steal it, literally steal that, so the owner of the property is deprived of their property. Real theft there. That kind of thing is very easy to do when you know a perfect pattern of how people live their life. That’s really scary to build that in. It actually helps people who wish to cause a lot of harm. It might be an unintended consequence.
In some places, like Syria, it’s an intended consequence for the benefit of people in a position of privilege. Probably, it’s a bad idea to get trapped into that.
Some specific positive actions. In Australia, you have telecommunications providers. Who here works in the IT industry? Can you raise your hand?
I have a task for you.
[laughter]
Find the interception points. Find out what so‑called lawful interception equipment is deployed in ISPs and in telecoms. Find out who provides fiber taps, find out where the fiber taps are, take photographs of them, and tell the world about it.
The trick is, and the way that you’re going to win, is that you win by just telling the truth about what is actually happening. When you have that, feel free if you want...
[applause]
In the United States, Mark Klein, who is an engineer at AT&T, found out that NSA and AT&T were working together to do wireless wiretapping. He’s lucky, he’s protected. He blew the whistle, he told the world, and then the government said, state secrets, you’re not allowed to know about it. Nobody was harmed, because everybody was harmed. Interesting theory there.
The important thing is that now we know for sure that the NSA wiretaps the American people. We know that they violated the Pfizer Court’s orders, which were supposed to be set up to regulate this type of action.
If you could push the dialogue in that direction, it makes it possible for you to talk to your MP’s about what’s actually happening. There’s no question in my mind that there is wiretapping like that happening in Australia.
In fact, I talked to a telecommunications engineer, I won’t tell too much more about it, but he said, “Oh, I thought that that was all right.” He said there is a wiretapping point.
So your job, as IT people in the room, is to find those points. They exist, they definitely exist now, so find them and expose them.
Tell journalists, like these guys over here. Tell MP’s, like this guy here. It seems to me that it gets extremely important to do that. If you do that, you will really cause a fuckin’ shitstorm, because these people who are spying on you, part of what gives them power is that nobody knows that they’re doing it, and no one knows who they are.
For all the people that don’t work in IT, find out their names, find out their home addresses, build a database on the people that promote the surveillance state. Really, in a good way, watch the watchers. Because no one else is going to do that. They’re not going to put themselves in their database.
[17:33]
Phillip K. Dick talks about it. “What does the scanner see, does it see darkly, does it see clearly, does it see into me?”
Here’s the thing. We don’t quite live in the sort of nightmare world of Phillip K. Dick yet, in that no one’s written the book. It’s possible that we can really, in a good way, find out what these surveillance people are doing, just by watching them.
For example, you know where the new...the ASIO office, I think, is the one you were referring to that was just built? OK. Sit outside and photograph everybody that goes in and out.
[applause]
Find out people that are spying on civilians that are infiltrating. Find out all the license plates of all the cars that park in the police parking lots.
Find out where the undercover officers are that infiltrate peaceful activists and fuck them up. They’re committing a crime. It is a crime. Even if it is legalized to spy on people, it is wrong. It is a violation. It creates a chilling effect.
[18:36]
You could also do stuff like use Tor if you want on your computer or whatever or install Tech Secure on your cell phone if you’re worried about someone intercepting your communications, but the thing is that they are intercepting all of your communications at some point. There are interception points. Text messages are usually stored by telephone companies. You can do that stuff.
But you actually have to adjust the systemic problems. Just using some free software and just encrypting things here and there, that’s useful for protecting yourself, but it doesn’t change the actual systemic problem.
The systemic problem is changed by changing society. And you change that by engaging with it, and one of the ways to engage with it is to out the secret police that violate your rights. And definitely to find out why it is that every Australian, every senator, every politician is not screaming their head off about protecting Julian. Because each one of you is Julian.
If you do something that actually upsets somebody, if you make enough of a difference, your head will be on the same chopping block. So why is it that these politicians aren’t just absolutely foaming at the mouth to protect him, but instead say that what he’s done is illegal, and then later having to retract it because the facts say otherwise?
Really pushing, based on facts, really absolutely getting this information, and really undermining the secrecy of these types of agencies, will help you to regain that autonomy, I think.
For example, Dana Priest in the United States did this with Top‑Secret America. Just talking about the number of clearances got her death threats. You can read them online. Because the thing that scares the shit out of these people is that you know or that I know what’s actually going on, the amount of money that’s being spent.
For example, who here has filed a FOIA request? Anyone? OK. Who here hasn’t? Well, without putting your hand down ‑‑ keep your hands up ‑‑ who’s going to? Keep your hand up.
If every single one of you guys files FOIA requests about the type of equipment that’s being used and the amount of money that’s being spent, and what it is being used for, you’ll start to get some answers about the surveillance state and its capabilities.
You maybe won’t learn about the fiber taps of undersea cables on the edges of Australia, but you’ll find out about what’s happening here in the city. You’ll be able to understand the numbers that Suelette was talking about, where every year it seems 10 or 20,000 more Australians become criminal enough to be followed electronically.
I tried to be on ABC’s 7:30 report last night. I don’t know if I was actually. They interviewed me, and I think they cut it because they asked some really stupid fucking questions, and I didn’t play ball.
[laughter]
They said, “Don’t you think that it’s a nightmare, a kind of weird thing, to believe that protecting individual privacy... it’s not some kind of weird contradiction to also promote institutional transparency"? I was like, “What is this? An Onion interview"?
[laughter]
And they didn’t get the joke, and I think that’s probably why they cut it.
[21:48]
But I think it’s important to do something here, which is you have to protect, especially in law but on your own, individual privacy. The way to do that, one of the ways in the long‑term strategy, is to increase institutional transparency.
When someone challenges you and asks you for ID, you ask them why they need it. When they ask for your birth date, you ask them, “Why? Why should I give you these things?” And really as much as possible to push back on these things because voluntary surveillance encouraged by the structures of society, they weaken us.
They actually create an emergent phenomenon of a surveillance state even if it’s non‑technical. Reporting on each other through things like Facebook is a great example of that. It has incredible advantages. I know lots of people that would’ve never had sex without Facebook, but it’s just not worth it. Really it’s not.
[laughter]
[22:45]
Jacob: If you can, try to pass legislation or push for legislation that does stuff like outlawing black bag jobs, so that spies can go back to being spies. If they get caught, the agency will disown them hopefully. Because breaking into people’s houses is an affront to democracy, when it happens under the cover of night, in secrecy, without delivering a warrant. Because monitoring someone’s telephone is something that, when people think it is possible, changes what they say on the phone.
Try to push for laws and legislation that outline what you really want to see in your world. For example, having EFA talk to people in the Australian parliament is really powerful, because even if people don’t understand technology, and they shouldn’t have to, they do understand essential liberties. They do understand the idea that all people wish to be free from authoritarianism breathing down their neck telling them what to do.
Really engaging with that while you still have a functional government, which doesn’t really seem to be the case in the United States anymore, is really important. I would really encourage you all to do that.
In conclusion, I love the Internet, and I hope you continue to make it a beautiful place.
[applause]