Come on, fire!
Come on!
All right. There were uh approximately four to five individuals in that truck, so I"m counting about twelve of fifteen.
Julian a.s.sange, in good company, at the Hack In The Box (HITB) conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 2009.
Rickard Falkvinge, head of Sweden"s political Pirate Party.
Daniel Domscheit-Berg, former WikiLeaks/a.s.sange collaborator, at the Chaos Computer Club conference in Berlin. December 29, 2010.
20.
THE DOUBLE32.
Jacob Appelbaum was a pa.s.sionate man. He was not the nerd you"d picture in his bas.e.m.e.nt, glued to his computer. He was a hacker, photographer, activist and security specialist for NGOs. He liked motorcycles, doc.u.mentaries, traveling, robotics, scuba diving, piloting and writing. He was interested in the world and wanted to change it however he could.
Almost thirty years of age, he still has the air of a street kid: anarchist, raised by an addict father, left by a schizophrenic mother and molested by his entire family at a very young age.
Appelbaum dropped out of school, taught himself the finer points of code and developed a healthy dose of paranoia along the way. As a programmer and hacker he felt that the world as not a lost place. The Internet was his reason to live.
He lived on very little. His San Francisco apartment had very little furniture: a couch, a chair and a table. His travel pictures covered the walls of his office and in a corner there were small sandwich bags full of currency from the countries he had visited. He was a global citizen.
Appelbaum was like Julian"s double. "I want to be left alone as much as possible. I don"t want a data trail to tell a story that isn"t true." He added: "You won"t find anything about my childhood online."
Appelbaum explained that they had transferred their most intimate information like bank accounts, e-mails, photographs, phone conversations, medical records to digital networks, trusting that it was all locked away in some secret crypt. He knew that this information wasn"t really protected, because he could find it.
An extremely talented hacker, he could potentially access almost every computer network in the world. He had decided to dedicate his life to protecting people"s private lives.
Appelbaum had traveled around the world to teach political dissidents, human rights activists and other "ghosts" how to use the Tor program and become anonymous on the Internet to those who would like to stop them from carrying out their actions.
Jacob considered himself an advocate of freedom of expression: "The only way we"ll make progress in the human race is if we have dialogue," he said. "Everyone should honor the United Nations human rights charter that says access to freedom of speech is a universal right. Anonymous communication is a good way for this to happen. Tor is just an implementation that helps spread that idea."
By distributing Tor around the world, Appelbaum didn"t distinguish between good guys and bad guys: "I don"t know the difference between one theocracy or another in Iran. What"s important to me is that people have communication free from surveillance. Tor shouldn"t be thought of as subversive. It should be thought of as a necessity. Everyone everywhere should be able to speak and read and form his or her own beliefs without being monitored. It should get to a point where Tor is not a threat but is relied upon by all levels of society. When that happens, we win."
Just like Julian, Jacob was a man who did exactly what he said. Beyond nice words, he worked hard to make a difference in the world. He chose to remain anonymous and knew to whom and how to provide information about himself. If during his travels his computer stayed out of his sight for too long, he would destroy it and throw it away. Someone could have bugged it, so he couldn"t be too careful. His measures were radical, but anonymity was very difficult to keep when you were in this deep.
In July 2010, shortly before WikiLeaks released the cla.s.sified Afghanistan war doc.u.ments, Julian was scheduled to give the keynote speech at Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) in a major New York hotel. Federal agents were spotted in the audience, presumably waiting for Julian to appear. The lights of the auditorium went out so that the speaker could come on stage. A man entered, wearing a black hoodie. The drama was deliberate; the lights were turned on just as the man uncovered his face. To everyone"s surprise, it wasn"t Julian: it was Jacob Appelbaum.
"h.e.l.lo to all my friends and fans in domestic and international surveillance. I am here today because I believe 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 were wondering, I"m an American, born and raised, who"s unhappy. I"m unhappy with how things are going." He paused, interrupted by thundering applause. "To quote from Tron33, I fight for the user."
He went on to talk about WikiLeaks, their need for volunteers and the interest in the cause. When the lights went out, he put his hoodie back on and left the auditorium, escorted by volunteers. The group headed to the hotel lobby. The hooded man later uncovered himself. It was not Jacob Appelbaum, but another young man. The real Appelbaum had slipped away backstage and left the hotel through a security door. He was already on his way to the airport to catch a plane to Berlin!
Less than two weeks later, Appelbaum was arrested and detained for several hours by the authorities at Newark airport, New Jersey. In the meantime, newspapers were reporting that the doc.u.ments on the war in Afghanistan "leaked" by WikiLeaks helped identify dozens of Afghan informants and potential defectors who were cooperating with US troops. The response of American politicians came swiftly.
Appelbaum was questioned for a few hours on his relationship with WikiLeaks and Julian a.s.sange, and on his thoughts about Iraq and Afghanistan. They confiscated his computer and three of his cell phones. Even though they threatened him with not being able to enter his own country, the investigation led nowhere and he was released.
Two days later, while he was expected to speak at a hackers conference in Las Vegas, Appelbaum was approached by two FBI agents: "We"d like to chat for a few minutes," one of them said. "We thought you might not want to. But sometimes it"s nice to have a conversation to flesh things out."
On January 10, 2011, in Seattle, coming back from Iceland, he was arrested and, despite asking for his lawyer, he was then searched without his consent. Next, he was interrogated on the nature of his trip to Iceland. The authorities were obviously disappointed with not having found a computer or cell phone. Appelbaum informed his friends as quickly as possible about this situation using Twitter.
According to the WikiLeaks site, Jacob Appelbaum had then become the most dangerous man after Julian a.s.sange. Although he was the only known WikiLeaks activist, he was surely not working alone on this sizable site. Targets were being unmasked one after the other. How many more have succeeded in hiding in order to continue their action thanks to such an intricate and perfect knowledge of the Internet?
21.
CRYPTOME.
Since 1996, cryptome.org had been broadcasting doc.u.ments prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance open, secret and cla.s.sified doc.u.ments but not limited to those34.
This American based site was structured with distant mirror sites in order to deal with attacks and guarantee online availability. The archive was accessible by donation as a DVD. The site was free and financed by funds and donations, and was considered the G.o.dfather of whistleblower sites.
The site"s founder, John Young was respected by anyone who deals with secrecy and confidentiality. He managed the site himself, with the help of his wife, Deborah Natsios.
It was only logical that Julian a.s.sange would contact Young in 2006 to register the wikileaks.org domain name. WikiLeaks needed to personify the holder of the name with a man known for his integrity in the Internet world.
a.s.sange and Young didn"t know each other personally, but they were both members of the Cypherpunks mailing list. This high place of sharing between all the fans and activists of cryptography in the 1990s was created by John Gilmore, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that helped the legal defense of court cases related to the digital world and rights issues.
This forum helped make spectacular advances in encryption technology and the liberalization of open-source software for personal protection. It was the first time in the history of the electronic age that private citizens had access to powerful encryption software allowing them to communicate amongst themselves without government agencies being able to listen in on them. This was why in this list, suggested by John Young back in 1994, he offered some personal Internet s.p.a.ce so that some members could publish confidential doc.u.ments, sowing the seeds for his site Cryptome.
Anonymity and using pseudonyms were major themes of the mailing list and so John Young (JYA) happily accepted to support this new adventure with Proff, aka Julian a.s.sange. He saw in it an opportunity to consolidate his commitment with a new dynamic and innovative partner. The intention of WikiLeaks came very close to that of Cryptome.
There were so many secrets to reveal, so many realities to clear up. Young liked to remind people: "There are no secrets that shouldn"t be published." Young couldn"t stand the engineering of intelligence agencies and threw spotlights on them as quickly as he possibly could.
When Young published the contacts of 116 MI6 agents (British secret services) in 1999 and 400 j.a.panese secret services agents in 2000, the FBI paid him a visit every time. After a cordial chat, he"d hurry up and publish the names and contacts of the agents that left his house.
John Young had a clear idea of confidentiality on the Internet: it was non-existent. And publishing secret doc.u.ments didn"t endanger States, because their enemies had already had access to these doc.u.ments. It was merely a public service announcement.
He also refuted the complaints about the security of agents when he stated their names. He had discussed this at length with former agents (his stepfather worked for the CIA): "They lie so much and run so many false operations and plant so many false agents. They expose their own agents so much there"s nothing you can do that they haven"t already done. In fact, they hope you will do it. To muddy the waters."
Actually, he thought that the promises made by WikiLeaks about protecting the ident.i.ty of their sources were a bit utopian and totally fraudulent: "They do have a lot of smoke blowing on their site. Page after page after page about how they"re going to protect you. And I say uh-oh. That"s over-promising. The very over-promising is an indication that it doesn"t work. And we know that from watching [...] how governments operate. When they over-promise, you know they"re hiding something. People who are really trustworthy do not go around broadcasting how trustworthy they are."
Today Cryptome stands across from WikiLeaks like an artist faced with the industrialization of a concept. The site is very rudimentary, listing leaks one under the other as hyperlinked texts, cla.s.sified by publication date. They also publish cla.s.sified information, but claim not to depend exclusively on leaks. The biggest part of the Cryptome collection consists of doc.u.ments accessible elsewhere, open-source information and public domain doc.u.ments. John Young himself takes care of reposting the information he finds or receives from his network of friends and sympathizers.
Every morning John Young reads the Federal Register35 and the files on information requests to the FOIA agency (Freedom of Information Act, a federal law of 1966 that allows the public"s right to obtain information from federal agencies). Steven Aftergood, who visits the site every day, said of him: "John Young sees many things that others do not see, and posts things others do not, or would not, post."
For John Young, always active as a famous architect in New York, it was a pastime: "It"s not a lot of work, it"s something I do periodically. As long as there"s no personal intent behind it, my business can"t fail. It just takes its course. The pastimes continue on and on until one day they consume themselves."
He was an amateur in the n.o.blest sense of the term, at the service of his cause and pa.s.sion: "I"ve never had any desire to overturn governments [...] or jack up journalism."
It was because of this crucial difference that John Young didn"t join Julian a.s.sange. Although he was a member of the original mailing list of WikiLeaks prior to launching the site in January 2007, John Young responded brutally (he"s known for being totally unpredictable) to a message from Julian a.s.sange who wanted to raise a budget of five million US dollars to launch WikiLeaks into cybers.p.a.ce. He estimated that hosting his site didn"t cost him more than a hundred dollars a month and just couldn"t agree with this highly suspicious ambition. He left the organization on January 7, 2007 and deleted his JYA account from the members list.
However, John Young took care of creating another more anonymous account and continued to follow the e-mail circulating within the project. He regularly published messages about financial and ethical questions on actions and even on the divisions discussed among members. He made everyone who opposed WikiLeaks very happy.
In any case, his position was more complex. He often repeated that n.o.body should trust him and that you couldn"t trust anybody, and even said, "I"m a member of WikiLeaks... I am critic of WikiLeaks. My current shtick is to pretend that I am an opponent of WikiLeaks. It"s called friendly opposition. Praising each other is so insipid. Your parents praise you. Your friends never do. They know it"s a con job, so praise is manipulation. Criticism is more candid." He added with some irony: "a.s.sange hasn"t returned the favor."
According to John Young, the problem was what Julian had done with WikiLeaks: "I have separated WikiLeaks from Julian. He has now taken off on his own path... He"s on the verge of a career of being Julian a.s.sange. He"s used WikiLeaks to leverage that. So now WikiLeaks is breaking away from him and other wikis are being set up by other people disaffected by his monomania."
In fact, he was always a bit suspicious of this "humorless" character, poking fun at pretentious people. He recognized his acting talent. He wasn"t at all surprised to see WikiLeaks picked up by mainstream media: "The mainstream media have used flattery, attention and bribery, all the usual ways that you bring people in the fold because it"s irresistible if you have a narcissistic streak."
John Young felt that WikiLeaks had lost some of its original simplicity and that the problem was on the inside. Members didn"t know how to manage Julian"s ambitions and their naive amateurism was confronted with a tough business world.
As for their continuous need for money, Young said: "You should never do it for money. Only because that contaminates the credibility and it turns it into a business opportunity where there"s great treachery and lying going on. And it will contaminate WikiLeaks. They"re acting like a cult. They"re acting like a religion. They"re acting like a government. They"re acting like a bunch of spies. They"re hiding their ident.i.ty. They don"t account for the money. They promise all sorts of good things. They seldom let you know what they"re really up to. They have rituals and all sorts of wonderful stuff. So I admire them for their showmanship and their entertainment value. But I certainly would not trust them with information if it had any value, or if it put me at risk or anyone that I cared about."
If John Young continued to broadcast all the information he received, found or discovered about WikiLeaks, it was always with the goal of sharing knowledge and letting the public form its own opinion. He didn"t hesitate to publish very critical e-mails about a.s.sange that he received from a strange WikiLeaks insider without even checking their ident.i.ty.
Young also didn"t hesitate to heavily criticize the attacks directed at Julian or WikiLeaks by press giants or politicians.
Even though John Young could be seen as Julian"s rival, he was still a great defender of the truth and would never let anyone attack knights of transparency.
22.
DDOS: DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG OR SCHMITT.
December 29, 2007: 24C3, Twenty-Fourth Chaos Communication Congress This Berlin congress, organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), has become Europe"s main hacker and hacktivist gathering. The CCC was founded on September 12, 1981 in the offices of independent newspaper Die Tageszeitung (aka Taz), and one of its founders was Herwart Holland-Moritz, known to people as Wau Holland, famous German hacker of the 1980s. The Wau Holland Foundation is a tribute to this national hero of hacktivism who died in 2001 at the age of forty-nine. It supports several projects that the CCC holds dear: the social aspect of technical evolution, and the history of technology and freedom of information. In October 2009, CCC became WikiLeaks"s main lender.
The Chaos Computer Congress (C3) has been growing constantly since its launch. In a relaxed atmosphere, it welcomes expert speakers in front of an impa.s.sioned audience among which WikiLeaks members are regulars.
In 2006 at the 23C3, Jacob Appelbaum presented his method to circ.u.mvent FileVault, Apple"s encrypted disk storage system. His co-speaker was Ralf-Philip Weinmann, former colleague of Julian a.s.sange on Rubberhose, freeware they created together in 1997.
In 2007 at the 24C3, Rop Gonggrijp gave a presentation on electronic voting systems in the Netherlands. Another pa.s.sionate presentation was given by Annie Machon, former MI5 agent (British FBI). She told her story of deceptions and life as a recluse whistleblower in France. She was also invited by Julian a.s.sange in 2008 to the Hacking At Random event in the Netherlands.
The twenty-fourth congress featured four days of conferences. The themes discussed ranged from electronic crime to freeware and from cryptography to anonymity, with the Tor program being featured four times.
Aside from these conferences, workshops were organized on various emerging themes. On December 23, at 9:30 p.m. a certain "Julian a.s.sange," member of the advisory board of an organization called WikiLeaks presented "Wikileaks a place for journalists, truth tellers and everybody else."
German IT professional Daniel Berg attended the presentation. He was a network engineer for the international company EDS, which deals in electronic data. On the social professional network LinkedIn his profile features the keywords: "realitya.n.a.lyzer, dreamshaper, freedomdefender, interestdetester, whalesaver, bookeater, overflower, underminer, wardriver, packetizer, hacker, a.s.soffworker, motivator, creator."
Julian a.s.sange presented WikiLeaks, its mission, technical challenges and the already realistic visibility of the project thanks to articles published in The Guardian, The New York Times, Washington Post, Die Welt and Der Spiegel. He finished his presentation by asking the audience to join the movement.
After Julian and Daniel Berg met, Berg decided to join.
Daniel was a technician, IT graduate from the University of Cooperative Education of Mannheim, a university that gave incompany training based on immersion practice. Daniel had been working at EDS since 2002. He liked running, mountain biking, David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and was a workaholic. He once endured a 428-hour work marathon in four weeks to save a project in danger in Moscow.
WikiLeaks was in full upswing, and so such a resource was more than welcome. Daniel worked as an a.n.a.lyst for the organization in his spare time.
His commitment was impa.s.sioned and his extraordinary ability to work quickly brought him close to Julian a.s.sange. The Number One of the organization asked him to come along to the 25C3 to present a conference called "WikiLeaks vs. the World." Julian a.s.sange, under his real name, presented himself as an Investigative Editor of the organization, while Daniel Domscheit-Berg was referred to as "Berger."
By December 30 2008, WikiLeaks had already experienced a lot of painful events linked to the increasing success of their actions.
At the beginning of 2008, they suffered through being sued by the Julius Baer Group following the publication of a list of 1,600 fortunate clients who benefited from the bank"s expertise in matters of fiscal evasion. They attracted the ire of Sarah Palin, running mate of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, following the publication of her personal Yahoo e-mails during the presidential election campaign. They felt the aftershock of the earthquake they caused in Great Britain after the publication of a list of 10,000 members of the far-right British National Party, which included policemen, clergy members and teachers.
a.s.sange and Berger showed up quite tired in Berlin at 25C3 to relate these facts. The duo worked in harmony, each with their a.s.signed tasks. Julian explained matters, the impact and lessons to be learned, while Daniel presented some foundations and technical needs. The audience was sold. Julian got a standing ovation when he solemnly declared, making sure to let silence wrap every word, "We have never had a source exposed. We have never had a source prosecuted."
Daniel Berg"s role started to crystallize. He quit his job and took on the role of Daniel Schmitt, movement spokesperson. At the end of December 2008, his name appeared in articles regarding threats made to the site, following the publication of secret doc.u.ments of the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst, German secret services). As of 2009, within a bit more than a year, Daniel would give about one hundred interviews throughout the world.
Daniel was the public face of WikiLeaks, while Julian continued to travel the world from conference to conference. He talked about having published the 500,000 text messages from mobile phones and pagers on September 11, 2001 during the collapse of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. He took the floor during the online release of 6,780 reports of the CRS (Congressional Research Service), a.n.a.lytical reports on different subjects of interest to the US Congress. It was with Julian that he covered the Icelandic affair linked to the bankruptcy of the Kaupthing bank.
Together they returned to the 26C3 on December 30, 2009, the twenty-sixth Chaos Communication Congress. Their conference first presented the WikiLeaks project in its original concept, in its heyday. It specifically showed a dynamic duo of speakers and brothers in arms.
In front of a few hundred people, the main stage of the Berliner Congress Center had a lectern on the right-hand side of a big screen. It was 5:15 p.m., Daniel Schmitt was at the lectern looking a bit glum and wearing black pants and a black shirt. On stage there was Julian a.s.sange standing casually in a white shirt with silver hair, his hands in the pockets of his brown pants.
The presentation was ent.i.tled "WikiLeaks Release 1.0," referring to a numbering system used in programming to confirm that the software was matured, was without bugs and was ready to be used before a new updated version was released with additional functionalities.
The conference started with a brief summary of WikiLeaks" foundations and then Daniel Schmitt announced: "The National [English-language newspaper of the United Arab Emirates] wrote that we have probably produced more scoops in our short life than The Washington Post has in the past 30 years." The room applauded. And Daniel added: "Thanks, we"re just getting warm." While Daniel spoke, Julian contemplated this already convinced audience and smiled.
Daniel wasn"t comfortable delivering speeches in front of large audiences, as press relations were more his thing. Conferences really intimidated him. He experienced shortness of breath and his sweaty palms made him drop his notes when handing over the floor to his partner. Julian, on the other hand, had world-cla.s.s experience: he didn"t have notes and didn"t look at the screen, and eased the mood, or rather his co-speaker, with lines like: "When we were putting this together earlier today..."
Julian a.s.sange briefly introduced the events of 2009 by joking that people could look it up on Wikipedia. Daniel then very seriously summarized the description of the leaks published that year: the murdering of Afghan civilians in Kunduz led by the German armed forces supposedly engaged in a peace keeping mission. Very focused, he talked about the reports of the European Inst.i.tute for Security Studies (European think tank of security experts).
Imagine watching a very balanced duo, like yin and yang, the black solid on his positions, pragmatic and direct, with the white lyrical in his explications, strolling on stage, joking here and theorizing there.
Protected behind his lectern, his hands held close to his laptop, people listened to him carefully. He commented on his notes that envision a future police unit of Europe surrounded by a virtual wall to block immigration. He said, "Do we give our silent consent? Is that the world we want to live in the future?"
The two men presented the improvements they wanted to make to the system: an opening to citizens and an access tunnel to "good" journalists to create more legibility from this mountain of information they"d been publishing, and increase its impact.
Then they got into a long presentation of a project initiated by Julian: a haven for information, based on the idea of offsh.o.r.e fiscal paradises. They started off with the Icelandic affair. Julian told of the misadventure of the public television station RUV. The station wasn"t able to broadcast its report on the financial scandal exposed by WikiLeaks, as it had received a legal injunction a few minutes before the broadcast. Julian then said that instead it would broadcast WikiLeaks" homepage for several minutes, which allowed them to point to the story they wanted to break. The audience applauded enthusiastically. The reaction of the two representatives in front of this ovation was typical of them: Daniel hid behind the screen of his computer as to contain his excitement while Julian, head held high, soaked up this beneficial energy.
Julian explained his project, alone, arms crossed, like a preacher in front of his flock. He knew what he was talking about. It was his idea and he didn"t need anybody. At one point he tried to include Daniel who mumbled while putting back the bottle of water he was drinking from. Julian took over. It was only after ten minutes of monologue that Daniel concluded on a humoristic note: "To convince those people in Iceland that did not understand it yet they have conservative parties too that this is the way to go." There was laughter in the room.
The conference ended with a tribute given by Julian to all the sources and their courage. He added, causing a slight uncomfortable silence in the room that he wanted to thank traditional media, as "There are some very, very good people."
As usual, Daniel closed the show with a "Thanks for your patience." After a standing ovation that lasted minutes, the questions were punctuated by a testimony from Jeremie Zimmermann, spokesperson from La Quadrature du Net, a French advocacy group that promotes the rights and freedoms of citizens on the Internet: "First of all I want to tell you how much I admire you. You"re my heroes." One more time, Julian radiated while Daniel got to the point by saying: "the project, please."
At the beginning of 2010, aged thirty-two, Daniel had already spent the last two years working for the organization. He quit his job at the start of 2009 to fully commit himself: "I have invested a considerable amount of time, money and energy into WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks grew totally exponentially, "too quickly.""
The leaks came in every day, and Daniel thought that some of them were very interesting at the local level. For him, the platform mustn"t discriminate and truth is good, whether it had a regional, national or global impact. But one project monopolized most resources of this small organization.