*36C3 preroll music*
Herald: Okay. As you probably know, Julian Assange, as well as his colleagues and
friends and associates, were extensively surveilled during his time at the embassy.
And our next speaker, Andy, is going to talk about procedural and technical
details of that surveillance, which is what we're really interested in, that's
why the room is full. So, Andy, "Technical Aspects of the Surveillance in and around
the Ecuadorian Embassy in London", please give him a warm round of applause.
*applause*
Andy Müller-Maguhn: Okay. Good morning, everybody. I'm holding this talk,
actually, for the second time. The first time was on day one, but somehow the video
recording got fucked up. I would say CIA, but at this early time of the talk you
might think I'm paranoid, but I'm... well, we can discuss that after my talk again.
*laughter* *applause*
Andy: The two dis... oh fuck...
*laughter*
Herald: Anyone here who knows computers?
*laughter*
Andy: Let's try again. Does this work?
*applause*
Andy: OK. So, the presentation does cover
some, but not... gosh, being awake on day 4... This presentation does cover some,
but not all aspects of the surveillance. There is, of course, stuff happened on the
wireless network, on the bound network. There was more things going on. There was
an ongoing heat in the embassy, which made us think they might be using nanometer
waves to look through the walls and from the ceilings above and below and so on.
However, we are still getting documentation about other things. So this
is like the state of affairs right now. I will probably make a long video of
explaining things with also more details later this year. Second disclaimer, what
I'm presenting is mostly stuff from a company called Undercover Global. They are
subject to an ongoing lawsuit. The owner of the company and CEO has been accepting
third party instructions and a lot of money and has been modifying the official
product, cause and technology used. He's investigated for violating laws of
privacy, secrecy of lawyer-client-attorney thingy, whatever the English term is,
bribery, money laundering and so on. And also the Spanish justice has very
officially started investigation for a spying foreign foreign intelligence
service, namely the CIA. At the time of the presentation right today, however, he
is not charged. So this is a subject of ongoing things. And of course, we don't
have the material from other intelligence services who have been working around the
embassy although we have some indications of what they have been doing. As this is a
rather 80 slide plus videos presentation, I thought it's a good idea to give you a
rough overview of what this is about. I'm trying to give you the big picture, the
embassy overview, so that you understand the building, the rooms and so on. The so-
called "Operation Hotel", that was the official task of the company at the time
to protect the embassy against people intruding and so on, taking care of the
guests, so they had their own terminology. The standard operational procedures in
place, the modifications that, as indicated, David Morales instructed or got
instructed from US intelligence to do. Overview of what they collected on
visitors. Then, there was a special event in December 2017 when they went actually
through the whole embassy to identify all kinds of objects. They documented every
piece of furniture to see where they could include more hidden bugs and other things
and upgrades to the security situation. A short thing about what Julian did to
counter the surveillance and how they countered his countermeasures. And then at
the end, something about the term "Actionable Intelligence", which becomes
very plastic. The context is, of course, that Julian has taken the idea of the
hacker ethic, said all information should be free, serious to an extent, and has
been committed to that, that we can, of course, also say, well, he has won
probably one of the highest journalistic prizes being carried out out of a
protected embassy. That's quite a reward and quite a recognition that he and the
people in power he exposed had the impression that they don't fit together on
the same planet in this situation. However, the big picture is to make you
understand the historic overview of events. So there was a initial phase when
he got into the embassy when they were actually unprepared, of course, for him
coming in there. And they actually had a surveillance camera for checking the
visitors before they entered the building. But that was more or less it. Then in 2015
this company got engaged and installed a lot of things. There was, however, three
different phases which I want to separate here for you to understand when the first
phase was under U.S. President Obama and the more left wing government of Ecuador
under President Correa. However, right at the beginning of the engagement of
Undercover Global for the Ecuadorian foreign ministry to protect the embassy he
went to a security conference, or however, to Las Vegas and presented his little
company and the one customer they had. So that's so much about the size of the
company. He presented like the one customer, the one project they did that
was taking care of the embassy and of course quickly found interested parties
from the US security environment to boost up his career. And so his spying for third
party started right away. At the beginning he received payments from a company called
Las Vegas Sense that's owned by Sheldon Adelson. He was officially hired to take
care of a yacht of Sheldon Adelson although that yacht already had a security
team. So there's ongoing investigations also where the money came from and so on.
However, in phase two, 2017, so after some publications had upset the US maybe even
more and also the Ecuadorian government had changed in the midst of or the
beginning of 2017. They started serious modifications of the protocol. Not only
that he switched to encrypted communication with his employees, with his
instructions. He also, like, pressured from his American friends, the wish to
have covert audio bugs, higher resolution cameras, and also cameras in all rooms
with audio. We can say pretty sure that this has been done on behalf of the US as
the emails he sent to instruct this modifications - we have all those emails -
the emails show the IP numbers they have been sending for, the lawyers have
analyzed this. So we know that he has been in Virginia Arlington and in Las Vegas and
other places, when he came with these instructions. Also his language, his
English was not very good and technically, he was not very sophisticated, but he
sometimes sent instructions in very good English with presentations and detailed
technical details that clearly came not from him, which also was obtained. So we
are pretty confident in these things that we claim here. And then there was something
going on at the end of 2017, which I'll explain later. However, I want to point
out a complete different thing, which might be or might have led to confusion.
At April 2018 two things happened: The Ecuadorians, the new government of
Ecuador, made a mutual legal assistance agreement with the United States in the
investigation against Assange, as they justified it with the interference in the
elections, so to give the Ecuadorians like a plausible reason to help them. The
cooperation with UC Global was canceled because they were unsatisfied with their
quality of their work. And they installed a second company called Prom Security,
which is an Ecuadorian company made up by a former colonel of their local
intelligence, which then did the surveillance. And probably that material
could more easily be used in any legal proceedings as everything that happened
before was plainly illegal. However, the material of that second company landed
partly in an extortion attempt against WikiLeaks, against Julian, against...
Kristinn met these guys with undercover Spanish police, so the current editor in
chief of WikiLeaks, and that's subject to a lawsuit also. And there is also
publications about that. But my presentation is mainly about this first
phase until April 2018 to avoid that potential confusion. Also it's maybe worth
to point out that all Julian's belongings, like his computers, his notes and material
and so on, has all been confiscated by the Ecuadorians and directly given to the
United States based on this agreement they made in April 2018. So here you get a
rough overview of the embassy. It's not the whole building, it's just the flat on
the ground floor here on the left side, going all the way down that little street
on the left where actually Harrods, the shopping mall, Harrods has their delivery
acceptance situation. So this is like from the side view. On the right side, you see
the emergency exit of the embassy. Again, side view and on the right, you see the
courtyard. This is the entrance situation, in the building there is more embassies.
The Colombian embassy is right on the right side, for example. There is one more
which I don't recall which it is, however you see here the entrance door of the
embassy and here the entrance situation from a different camera perspective. Here
you would have an overview of the installed cameras before the upgrades in
December 2017. So most important is maybe this "Sala de reunion" on the upper left
side, not on the left corner, but once to the right, that's the meeting room. And
here you see that there was only until then one camera. This is where most of the
meetings with visitors, with lawyers and so on took place. However, all the green
areas do not only indicate you where video surveillance took place, but all the
interior ones are exactly the areas Julian was officially allowed to like use,
including the kitchen on the right side on the very right bottom "Habitacio n
Huesped" that's his kind of small sleeping room where he had his bed and things. And
you would see the entrance situation there. Outside they also had some cameras,
which they had one 8 megapixel 360 degree monster, which actually made me think I
want that as well. This is the more harmless cameras on the sideways. But you
see here the idea of that camera. That's pretty good. It even catched some events
which I will indicate you later. So you get the idea. Harrods is right next. And also
right left is this entrance delivery situation. "Operation Hotel" was the code
name of the official security situation. So they had their own terminology:
"Director" was the ambassador, "Guest" was Julian Assange, "Hotel" was the embassy.
They, of course, had specific processes in place, how regular, how visitors would be
accepted. They sometimes in most of the times needed to be signed off by the
ambassador. So the ambassador had to allow someone getting into the building in the
first place and how that would be treated, how their passports would be checked,
their electronics would be taken and so on. There was an official representative
of the Ecuadorian intelligence titled the second secretary of the ambassador called
Gabriela PAIZ. She was working in the embassy and officially in charge of taking
care of the company's contract and their work. However, she got bribed, according
to statements that are subject to this ongoing lawsuit, with 20,000 USD in cash
per month. She had to travel with her husband to some funny places to collect
the money to not violate European regulations with carrying cash and not
declaring it and so on. So this gives you roughly an idea and for that money she
like not only accepted the modifications and made it look like that modification of
the protocol were on behalf of Ecuador and not on behalf of the Americans, she also
spied sometimes herself, as we have seen her with a handbag, with a microphone and
all that kind of funny behaviors. The original Standard Operational Procedures
in place, as I said, was defined helping against intrusions. Visitors would arrive
at the door, show their passport, then would be searched with a metal detector
and they would have to leave their passport and all electronic devices at the
security counter under the lobby. They would sign in into some kind of a diary
with name, passport number, date, time of arrival, later sign out with time of their
departure. The guards would bring the visitors afterwards in the conference
room, close the door and then copy the passport while the visitors wait. And also
there would be daily, monthly and special incident reports written by the security
company delivered to the SENAIN, to the Ecuadorian intelligence. So, from the
visitors, what they would have is like who invited them, for what, what date, what
time frame, the copy of their passport. Later then, that one had modifications,
that was that all of their pages with entry stamps and visas would be
photocopied as well. The exact time when they really came, the description by the
security guards how they appeared: maybe if they came alone or with someone or it
was anything. Video footage of the entry situation, the meeting and the departure
situation. And as I said, extra incidents. So we would have a lot of material of
passport copies. And this is an example of the entrance situation from November 16.
This is one of the lawyers arriving. And you would see, he just rang the door, he
came in, showed his passport, got briefly checked. And funnily, in the upper left
corner, you see one of the guards doing some upgrades on the cameras. Same time,
but that's just how it was, there was ongoing upgrades. So I don't have to show
you the whole video, but here you get the idea. He's being searched, his phone he
needs to give them. The guard also briefly checks his bag if there's maybe a
recording device. So this was also to prevent that visitors would bring any box
or recording devices into the meeting. So it was meant to to do also like protect
Julian on behalf of them. This is like a meeting documentation. This is myself,
actually, but this is a little boring and also I'm not a fan of insinuating myself,
so I brought you the other one, which is the only positive slide I have.
*laughter* That's "missing in action" (M.I.A.), she's
a rapper from - lives in the UK - Is originally from Sri Lanka, but here you
have a cat, so that's of course more lovely than meeting boring data
journalists, hackers, whatever. The third party modifications for the access to the
whole thing started mainly in begin 2017, after also he switched to encrypted
communications. Actually, the switching to encrypted communication might, by the way,
also have to do with a regime change, so to say, in the United States. As the Trump
administration was taking in power and they were scared that different
departments would interfere with each other. So it became a little complicated
in their own thread modeling / paranoia, however you want to call it. They started
to pick up in the mid of the year the original hard disks from the network video
recorder every two weeks and bring them first to their office in Spain. Later,
Morales would then fly once a month, roughly, to the United States. We have his
flight patterns and all the emails and so on. And he would, yeah, deliver them, as
he explained to the staff, to his American friends and sending new instructions. Then
in December, they made this new cameras installation thing with sound and they
also started to optimize things. For example, there was issues with the audio
filters and the cameras, as Julian had used this white noise generator, which
will later be a little bit explained, they needed filter configurations. Also, the
Americans demanded to have direct access on the streams coming into the office in
Spain. So they installed it already in the embassy in a way that there would be two
different access layers, one not visible to the Ecuadorians and one only for the
Americans. We have... this is the one email I have there, I don't even speak
Spanish, but where he clearly speaks about the access to the video stream, one for
the Ecuadorians, one for themself and one for "party X". So the party X is how he
called in the references the American intelligence he worked for as well. And
then they started to do other things that they, for example, installed a door phone
at the door, so you couldn't just ring the bell and the guy would open the door, you
had to actually speak your name. So, and also the guard, which was... there was a
little guard desk in the lobby area of the building, there would sit a guy. So he would
hear your name. They would have your voice sample in the electronic transmission
between this little door phone and the counter more or less right behind the
door. That was something they did. Then the guards would start to just open the
door to take your passport. Take it in. Close the door again. You would wait
outside and then, in that time, he copied your whole passport with all pages and
waited for further instructions, then leave you in. They would... the guards
would start to photograph or note all IMEIs and IMSIs of mobile devices that
they took during your visit. And they would also sometimes take whole bags of
visitors and search them and photograph all items. So I have like three examples
of this: This is the most harmless maybe. National security correspondent of The
Washington Post, Ellen Nakashima's little collection of devices. It's my own
collection with some crypto phones and a camera. And this is Italian journalist
Stefania Maurizi who, for what reasons, wherever she travels with all her USB
stick collections and ... *laughter*
I redacted this a little bit, but you can clearly see they took the SIM cards out to
photograph the IMSIs of the cards and so on. So they wanted all that. Here you get
an idea of the meeting documentations from December 17th on with the new cameras,
which had also audio. You get the idea that the quality has drastically improved.
And here I would say if you would zoom in, you could even read the notes of what they
were writing. But well, we'll know that later. However, that was not enough for
them. They had issues, as I said, with the white noise generator he installed for
critical meetings. And they wanted improved audio quality, as when you didn't
speak loud enough, these cameras being mounted under the ceiling were not good
enough. So they made this survey to identify all kinds of options for
additional hidden microphones and also off-the-network equipment. So here you see
actually where they ended up later. This fire extinguisher played then the main
role. He has this PVC button thingy. They put some of the plastics out and installed
a bug in there. That was working beautifully as it was also like from the
room level next to the heads of the people speaking in that part of the room. The
only issue they had is that it was a battery driven model and they had to
replace the battery and SD card, which they did then every twelve hours, 26
minutes actually. That was the capacity of that thing. But you get the idea. They
looked into all of the things here on the left side, by the way, you see the noise
generator, but they looked at all the art objects or the kitsch stuff to see what
could be suitable before they identified it. If I distinguish, it's just the best
thing to do here. Here you would see that Julian also installed a loudspeaker next
to the window. So there was not only one loudspeaker above the table for the white
noise generator, but also directly at the window. Here you see very briefly on the
top the loudspeaker over the table, but they're also opened during the survey, like
all the electrical wiring things, the light switches and so on, to see if there
would be any suitable places. And they also did that in the bathroom number two.
Bathroom number two was originally the woman's bathroom, which also had a shower.
It was then later, more or less Julian's personal bathroom, where he also made the
most critical meetings with his lawyers and and associates while running the
shower, as you would see it in every better spy movie. However, what they did
was, behind the rubbish that you would see here, these boxes above the cabinet and
slightly behind that cabinet, they had an electrical wiring for the light. So they
installed a bug there and that didn't require any battery change or whatever
that brought ongoing good audio quality. They also went through the kitchen objects
and at this point they must have been infected by the WikiLeaks house humor,
however they would bark at that kind of thing. The other aspect that Morales
discussed with the staff working in the embassy once when he came back from his
travels was that he asked them if they could think about a way where they would
accidentally leave one of the doors open so that the Americans could come in and
kidnap him. He also discussed if they could put into some poison into the food
or how that... what options there would be to poison Julian. However, the sting with
the leaving the door accidentally opened, next to the fact that that, of course,
would be completely legal, like in an embassy of another country to kidnap
someone from, but well, this is the Central Intelligence Agency or someone of
the United States, what do they care about laws? So what they did was provide
documentation of all the doors, all the locks. They went through the whole thing
to think about how such a kidnaping take place. They even made a little video
showing, like, the way they could move from this emergency exit or from a window
and get in. So I have this little video and you get here the idea of the way it
could work. And yes, the reflections allow us to identify the person who did it. So
this is actually just one of three videos we have about this. They also did this for
the rooms in the back and so on, as they also considered maybe going through in one
of the windows, which would be more easy for them to leave open a door. So this is
still part of that plan. I can name all the doors, windows, identify some kind of
rain tube or whatever, which they could use to maybe come from above. Label all
the windows, to get an idea. So what they did in 2017 was then these two bugs, the
hidden microphones and recording devices in the fire extinguisher and in this...
behind, above this storage cabinet and the bathroom. And they did installation of
high resolution cameras plus the microphones. They, however, also discussed
that they wanted one more room. That's the front room where Julian had... it's the
former library, where he had a bit of a room not for visitors, but to work with
himself and with his staff. That room was a little bit hard for them to target. They
would have to be going through the ambassador's room, which was corresponding
to it. So they looked into stetographic - excuse me - steto-whatever, steto-
microphones to watch through the, no, to listen through the wall. In order to do
that, the Americans also asked them to take like a spoon or a knife and bring
them some scratch some parts of the wall so that they could identify the material
from which the wall was made in order to identify which drilling machine they would
have to use. They have extremely slow drilling machines, which you put in a
suitcase next to a wall. And it takes eight hours for three centimeters, but it
makes no noise. Okay. And that's the way they would have used this kind of things.
Here again, it's just the places that hidden microphones. And here is some, as
they documented their work, here is some video documentation or photographic
documentation of the installation of the upgrades of the camera with audio. So this
is the upgraded diagram of the camera installation. You would see all the
interior cameras are four megapixels now. And the conference room has two. So in
both corresponding sides to cover really the whole room. So I don't switch back and
forth now between the other slides, but you would have seen that there would still
have been small areas of the room which were not covered. This was like full room
coverage of wherever he would be allowed to go to. So this noise generator however
that Julian installed, made them quite some headache, it worked pretty well.
However, other people pointed out to me also, and it is true, if you sit in a room
with this white noise generator, you get headache. It's not nice. I mean, yes, it
works and it prevents them bugging it, but it's also pretty tough to do that for one,
two hours. However, the American friends had issues with it and they already had
started to bug the embassy from the outside with laser reflecting microphones,
meaning the vibrations on the glass or the windows would be used. But as his white
noise generator had a loudspeaker directed to the window, they needed to deal with
that. And they instructed to install special stickers which will be - there
will be actually in the next days a police situation, the Ecuadorians have allowed to
take one of these stickers. They have a kind of foam on the one side and a
reflecting blank side that allowed them to do it anyhow. So you would have this thing
here and here. Unfortunately, I do not have, at this point, a very good picture
of this sticker itself. But you would see here their documentation that they
installed in every window, not only that of the conference room, one of these
stickers that allowed them to deal with a laser on site. And actually their
outside camera, the 8 megapixel monster I mentioned earlier, catched once the
Americans on the other side of the street when their curtain was a little bit to the
side here with their laser machine. So you get the idea, that is not a camera. There
is, of course, other things that happened as well. This slide is more actually for
your entertainment after a rather depressive technical text. They also did
sometimes normal things. It was not only spying on behalf of the Americans. But
most important and most impressive is actually what happened on end of 2017. End
of 2017 the government of Ecuador - the new government - had already been elected,
but the new government was not in office. So as one of the last steps of the old
government to solve his situation, they gave him, they gave Julian Ecuadorian
citizenship. They made him a diplomat. And they had pre-agreed with some countries,
which he could choose from, to actually appoint him as a diplomat to one of their
other embassies where he would not have that hostile environment surrounding it.
On the 21st of December he met in the embassy the head of the Ecuadorian
intelligence Romy Vallejo. I have one picture from that meeting. The meeting, of
course, was completely intercepted. The Americans were on high alert and actually,
after he used a white noise generator and located himself with a guy slightly away
from the fire extinguisher, by knowing or not knowing about it, the guards even were
asked to like stand in front of the door and listen through the door and stuff. The
same night, actually, so this was, as you could see at the time, it's like 3, 4
o'clock at night, it went on for some time. The next day, they issued the
international arrest warrant against Julian. They inform the British and the
British informed the Ecuadorians that they would not accept the appointing of Julian
as a diplomat. And so the whole plan was dismissed and massive police came, like
standing in front of, like, on this little side street right from it. So this is
where the term actionable intelligence has like a direct meaning that you can
actually talk to your coffee cup and next moment shit happes, so to illustrate that.
At the end, I brought you some resource links. This is, as I said, ongoing cases.
There will be more material and it will probably make us a little bit of a case
study out of it published at bug planet. If you are interested or willing to
support his legal and other situations at Wau Holland Foundation, which I am a board
member, and that's also what brought me to all these meetings, we do collect money
for Julian's defense and also for ongoing aspects of WikiLeaks publications. Okay.
That's for me, from my side, for now. We have a bit of time left for questions and
answers. If I just knew how much, like 20 minutes or so?
Herald: We have about 20 minutes. We will be taking questions and we have three
microphones in the room. So please line up behind them and we take questions from the
Internet as well. The signal angel is (...).
Andy: The sticker. Oh, yes, sorry, I forgot to mention that the stickers on the
windows were saying, like, this building is under CCTV, under camera surveillance.
And Morales had told his people that, oh, the British law has changed and they would
require to have the stickers now, which is, of course, completely ridiculous. Also
watching the cover frame of their outside cameras, like there would have to actually
go all over the place there and tell them, oh, by the way, your're under
surveillance. So, yeah, that was indeed remarkable. Awesome.
Herald: Thank you. Let's give a round of applause.
*applause*
Herald: Thank you again for the very
insightful talk. We are taking questions, so stand behind the microphones. Please go
ahead. We have questions from the internet.
Andy: At this case I would not only be open to questions, but also to ideas, how
to get him out of Belmarsh Prison, but just to have it said.
Herald: OK, you can have that, you know. We're gonna take a question from the
Internet. Signal Angel: Yeah, just one brief
question from the Internet: What is that laser with sticker technology. And
furthermore, what's its purpose? So why are they needed?
Andy: Okay. Maybe I wasn't making it clear enough. The stickers would have a
reflecting surface to the outside, but the way they're glued to the window would
somehow detach them from the inside noise. I don't know how it works at this point in
that detail. We will have one of these stickers in the next weeks and we'll be
able to study it. But it somehow seemed to help the Americans with their laser
technology to take the audio from the vibration of the voice generated or
transported through the glass out the window.
Herald: Thank you. It appears we have no more questions or everyone's too scared to
ask one. We are distributing face masks if that's the case.
Andy: Maybe I want to... Herald: There is there someone. Hi. You're
brave. Go ahead. Q: Can you hear me? Hello?
A: Yes Q: OK. Without revealing your source, how
did you even get all this information? So the video surveillance cameras and all
these details? A: Well, subject to lawyers advice, my
answer is that I'm an investigative journalist and I don't talk about my
methods and sources, but I leave it up to your fantasy as I said this material is
subject to an ongoing lawsuit. So it is also in the hands of the Spanish
prosecutor. And maybe just very little comment because I discuss this also with
Julian and others. I would have to say it. Let's say before I went all too deep into
this and actually looked at this material for hours and hours and days, I would, of
course, also have called Julian and myself paranoid people. But after I did this, I
would call it, well, we had a good situational awareness, because that's the
more precise terminology where we are into.
*applause* Herald: Next question, same microphone.
Q: In the beginning, you said there are multiple embassies inside the building. My
question is: The hallway, is it actually part of Great Britain or is it some
neutral area? A: Well, no, it's part of Great Britain.
So the hallway was just shared among the building tenants, but all of the
apartments so to say in that building are private property. So it was like a shared
thing of the building. There's maybe a better English term, which I don't know.
But the diplomatic police, which is the maybe better educated part of the British
hit and run job police guys would not be allowed normally to step in the embassy.
But in the hallway, they sometimes were in the hallway right in front of the door. So
they would also listen to the dialog when you were talking to the guard about coming
in or whatever. And of course, there was in the first months of his stay or even
years, there was this ongoing police situation. It was actually the police had
sometimes, in winter, they must have got a bit cold and installed a van there, saying
"police conference", which was probably suitable for 12 people, had fancy antennas
and cameras all over it. So they had this ongoing police conference right in front
of the building. *laughter*
Herald: Thank you. We're going to take a question from the Internet next.
Signal Angel: All right. Have you been approached by the CIA or the MI5 or met
the police and been asked to cease and desist from talking about their operation
against Julian Assange and the embassy itself?
A: Not in a direct way that they talk to me, but I've been subject to what I would
call "intimidation surveillance". So there is covert surveillance, that's when they
are hiding their stuff and you see maybe a camera at a border point or whatever.
Intimidation starts for me when I'm, for example, coming in the early morning hours
to airport London-Heathrow, come to the immigration counter, the guy takes my
passport, sees something on the screen, starts to ask me actually the same
question three times, but he doesn't even listen to my answers. Like, where are you
going? What's your occupation? He's asking it again and I'm like, am I talking to a
moron or what's going wrong here? But at some point I identified as it happened
again and again and again that after some minutes you got this go material, this go
blink on his screen. And so the guys outside were standing ready to follow me
the whole fucking day. And that's what I would call intimidation surveillance. It's
not meant to like watch me. It's mainly meant to let you know that you are not
liked here, that we are have you on our eyes, that we know you are a friend of
Julian and so on. So, yeah, that was not the pleasant part of my life.
Herald: Thank you. Microphone one. Q: Yeah. First. Thank you. Nice talk, very
dystopian. I'm just following up on what you just said. I mean, chances are high
that you are under surveillance as well. What are the personal countermeasures
you've taken? Did you check your fire extinguisher?
A: Yeah, actually, I could and should probably at some point in the next month
hold a separate talk about that. I found a physical bug in one of my phones. I have
all kinds of funny incidents. I was able to actually create traffic jams in one way
streets in European cities at three o'clock in the night and that's quite an
interesting experience. *laughter* *applause*
A: And at some point, you maybe get used to it. You think, well, ok, that's how it
is. But of course, it is a bit of a loss of quality of life. And also, you are
becoming a little bit different in your behavior towards other people. But as I
said, unfortunately it's situational awareness, so you can't be careful enough
in such a situation. Basically, if you look at it from a balance of budget or
balance of measures or options point of view, they have an endless astronomy
military budget. We have encrypted e-mail, OTR and may be crypto phones. So basically
my assumption has become that they know what I'm doing and I'm not doing anything
illegal anyhow. But the whole case against Julian and after you have studied all this
material, which includes the pictures of the bathroom, right, there was an audio
bug also in the bathroom area and so on with these cameras. And I think for me,
it's pretty clear this is not about him having violated any laws. This has nothing
to do with law enforcement. This is a political case. This is intimidation. And
it is that they want to set that precedent, that they want to actually hang
him on the highest tree. And let us all aware: Don't try to connect the Internet
with the secrets as we don't like that. But actually, on the positive side,
speaking as I said, he has shown with WikiLeaks that it is possible the Internet
is quite suitable to deal and to provide more aspects of information and knowledge
on government secrets actings to all of us. So, yes, it comes at a price.
Herald: Okay. This is getting more dystopian by the minute.
Andy: Sorry for that. Herald: Let's see if we can go even
scarier. Microphone two. Andy: I'm sure there will be other talks
about good news. Herald: Oh, no. No, there won't.
Q: Thank you so much for the presentation. The details like were really important.
Like to see, you know, have a concrete image of what surveillance looks like in
the embassy. And as you mentioned, all what happened was in complicity with the
Ecuadorian embassy, even if also you said that it's not really related to law
enforcement, I'm really curious from legal perspective, if there is any way and if
there are ongoing cases, if there is any way they could get away with it. Are there
any things that they can do or defend or argument just to make this okay? I don't
know, national security reasons, whatever not considered, you know, is a violation.
A: OK. So what I can say is that the Spanish lawyers of Julian are currently
with high pressure also working together with the state prosecutor and examine the
evidence. So the owner of the company was briefly arrested. He's out on bail. His
company compound was searched. Computers, USBs, hard disks were seized and so on.
And that's all stuff that's being worked on right now, because it might be very
important for Julian's main extradition case, as it clearly demonstrates that the
United States or some entities of the United States are being located in the
United States, have violated his ability to prepare legal defense in a fair way.
And that might be a main argument. However, when - and I've been talking a
lot with this lawyers - like they say things like in any normal case, this would
be the end. But this is Julian Assange and the U.K. government on behalf of the
American government, so we'll see what happens. No one expects a fair trial here.
And I mean, also the fact that he's kept in solitary confinement for 22 hours a day
in a high security prison that's normally for terrorists, organized crime and
murderers, while being none of that, shows clearly that this is like not a normal
case here. This has nothing to do with normal justice. The United Kingdom ignores
the United Nations finding on torture about his psychological state, as he has
been, of course, through a totally different journey. For him, it was not
only knowing about this surveillance, it was also the unknown of: can I ever expect
a fair trial, will they want to kill me or will it just be orange based jumps in
Gitmo or whatever? So he, of course, has issues through that, but the UK ignores
the United Nations, so in theory we should all be outraged completely and stand in
front of these British embassies for the moment, to do, to demand that his prison
conditions are being humanized. As totally independent from the fact, if the court
will find him guilty or if the extradition bill plays, the fear is that he is kind of
being killed right now as we speak. Herald: Thank you. Microphone two.
Q: Hi. Do you know if that Spanish company is still responsible for the security
installation at the Ecuadorian embassy in London?
A: No. Maybe I missed that slide. They have been brought out of their... the
contract has been canceled in April of 2018 and this other company, Promsecurity,
took over. Herald: Thank you. One more question...
A: What I can say is that some of the - that's maybe an important aspect - as some
of the employees of UC Global, which have been working in the embassy and had their
eight hour shifts there, have become protected witnesses of the Spanish justice
to testify against Morales. They were not happy with what they were doing. They
understood at some point that this was on behalf of American intelligence, violating
the official contract they had been working under. So there was some
resistance. There is the option that some of this resistance also had to do, that
the owner of the company got a lot of money every month for this, but did not
share that money. That might have played into it. But some of these guys also were
not happy as they were like sitting in the same rooms with Julian the whole day and
talked with him, of course, also. Herald: Thank you. One more question from
the Internet. Hi, Internet people. Signal Angel: How do you explain the huge
effort besides the intimidation you mentioned towards you that motivates the
USA to take these dubious and very ambitious steps. So maybe just to ask you
one more question to you, sir: How many intelligence officers do you think then
are in this room right now?
*laughter*
A: Okay. So the first question was, I'm
not sure I fully got it: Why they are doing this? Well, I mean, I could also
have introduced me the other way. I could have said, I don't need to introduce
myself. Go to the Mueller Report, see page 47. I was suspected due to my multiple
visits and actually, look, I brought Julian food, I brought him clothing, I
brought him computers, USB sticks in like packages, all kinds of things. I will
never be able to prove what I not brought him due to the amounts of my visits there.
So the Washington Post came at some point and said that they had multiple
intelligence sources from somewhere that I was the person who brought Julian the DNC
emails on a USB stick and I said like, wow, what a bullshit. But as I said, I
will never be able to prove that I wasn't doing that. My taking off it is as I am in
a small foundation called Wau Holland Foundation, one of the five board members,
and actually I'm kind of working in that project area for freedom of information
that I was to contact prison to weekly send to Julian for many years. So they
maybe just to follow the money and want to kill it. I mean, would not be a surprise
that they want to kill like WikiLeaks else as a publication agency or not. Julian
Assange only as a human being. So here you go. One theory. There's, of course, many
others, but I guess they're pretty generous. And the budget they have to deal
with is pretty big. So, and of course, I'm not the only one that's being followed and
so on. The other question was...? Herald: How many intelligence officers
that we have here in this room? *drumming on panel*
*laughter*
A: Out there on the stream, I see 23 different. In the room, five to eight.
Herald: I think that guy walks a bit sketchy.
*laughter*
Herald: He's wearing a headset. He's been quiet the entire time.
*applause*
A: What can I say? I mean, openness
protects from from being blackmailed. Maybe that was Wau's idea about it. But of
course, not all aspects of WikiLeaks can be subject to full disclosure as there's
sources to protect, there's people who have lives to protect, who help with all
kinds of things. There's journalists who sometimes bring more things from funny
sources, so there's all kinds of things that as a media project you would want to
protect normally. Under the circumstances, however, it's a bit tough.
Herald: OK. Thank you. There is a person next to microphone one and I don't
understand if you actually have a question, are you there to (...)
A: An answer maybe? Herald: You have a question?
Q: Yes Herald: Are you CIA?
Q: I hope not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ *laughter*
Herald: OK, we're not interested. Microphone two
*laughter*
A: It's a little too brutal, maybe?
Q: OK. Thank you. Are there actually any diplomatic consequences out of this case?
Because like the CIA, with the help of the British government, kind of violated the
embassy of Ecuador, so, like, installing cameras is not exactly ok for my
understanding and for embassies?
A: Well, I would think that in any normal
European country, there would also be investigation, like, official
investigation, maybe even by other embassies in the building and so on after
learning these things. The U.K. seems to have just decided not only to get out of
European Union, but also to become more of a colony of the United States, if they
have not been that all the time. So I don't have the impression also with the
fact that the current Ecuadorian government is very pro US, they have
allowed military installations from the United States in Ecuador. They have made
this agreement to help them in the investigation. So not that I'm aware of. However, this
Spanish investigation is probably the strongest thing going on. There have been
contradicting statements about involvement of Secret Service people, CIA people,
might be a mixture of both of them. But this is ongoing. And if you ... these
links here is my own little wiki called osint.info where I'm collecting the
regular updates coming in from the investigation through the Spanish news and
so on. So you will learn more about the case in the next weeks. It's all ongoing.
Herald: Thank you. OK, the guy who's supposedly not CIA, go!
Q: So I want to make clear that I never received any direct payments from the CIA.
*laughter* Q: My question is...
A: No, but that's... that's, by the way, the nature of them. So I would be very
surprised... *more laughter*
*applause* A: I would be very surprised that we find
evidence, because one of the core working principle of the intelligence is of course
deniability. So if you have a situation like this where you see funny money is
coming in and finding instructions come in, but you cannot prove who it was,
that's exactly the confirmation and, so to say, the "proof", because you can't prove
it. That deniability is core of their like way of acting. And I mean, whom, by the
way, am I telling this. It's not only them. OK.
Herald: I always thought you kind of create an invoice for covert spy
activity... A: Yes, they did at some point, but the
guy was greedy. He traveled then, what we know is he traveled to Gibraltar and there
might be hidden bank accounts there. And also the way the cash was transferred
changed from time to time. So, there was... not all of it seems to have been
going directly through Sheldon Adelson, but Sheldon Adelson is - actually I missed
him to put him out on a link - he's a person also worth checking out, is a very
weird international intelligence operative, I would call him . And he can
sue me for that, but he's 92 years old, so he's a cover anyhow just for other people
active. He runs casinos in Las Vegas, in Macao and other places. He has been
running spy operations on Chinese officials in Macao, he has been accused,
look Wikipedia, on money laundering from forged USD notes printed in Iran, was not
Korean paper or the other way around being brought in by Israeli citizen in a funny
operation. So he's a truly interesting person in this context also.
Herald: So I thought you just send it to invoices@cia.gov and then get it. OK.
A: Try it *laughter*
Herald: Yeah. A: Try it, and put the...
*laughter*
A: No, actually, I would also have a lot
of funny fantasy about this, if this wouldn't be about a friend of mine who's
in serious shit. So, if you could please also apply your fantasy of how we could
get out him there, not only into the question of how we deal with the CIA, I
would be very thankful to you guys. Herald: Thank you. Definitely not try any
of that at home. Question from the Internet, please.
*laughter*
Signal Angel: The Internet asks, what will
happen to WikiLeaks as an organization in case Assange gets a life sentence? And,
since I'm not sure this is the last question from the Internet, the Internet
wants to say that it really appreciates your willingness to do the talk again. So,
thank you for your courage. *applause*
A: I'm not speaking for WikiLeaks, but I am in contact with Kristinn Hrafnsson - he
has this Icelandic name that's hard to pronounce - who is the current editor in
chief and I mean, WikiLeaks is publishing things ongoing. The last publication was
actually two days ago on the 27th or something, so they, of course, decided to
continue the work. Also, because they think that's the only thing they can do to
demonstrate also that, like, this is a publishing organization and they have been
working with media partners and so on. So in Iceland, where Kristinn is officially
located, the surrounding environments, anyhow, are a lot more supportive, as the
other day, some years ago, when this Kaupthing Bank issue and they had a local
bank corruption issue and that was a national scandal. It's a small country of
300,000 people, that's a totally different environment and Kristinn is pretty
confident that they leave him in peace there and appreciate the work. So that's
not the UK, but for the UK itself, well, I cannot speak and I can also not speak for
WikiLeaks. If anyone on the Internet has good ideas on what to do, as I said, this
is maybe the phase where we really need to crowdsource our ideas on how to get Julian
out of this shit. Thank you. Herald: Thank you
*applause*
Herald: Do we take a question from the guy who was definitely not CIA? OK go.
Q: So we have suspected for a long time
that there was a secret request for extradition for Julian and that he was
under surveillance, but there was no proof until now. So the general public and most
journalists dismissed this as conspiracy theories. Now that it's out, everyone
agrees, ok, that this was obvious, so... A: This was a situational awareness, yes.
Q: Yeah. So how can we help the next Julian, which we are not sure yet that
he's definitely under surveillance, to raise awareness of such a situation?
A: Well, I mean, in theory, as far as I know, the publishing activities of
WikiLeaks are not illegal, have not been illegal, at least, yes, there is ongoing
investigations, but these ongoing investigations are around the question of
how sources were convinced to be a source. So there's this allegation that, for
example, Chelsea Manning was instructed to do something in order to submit the stuff,
in order to publish it later. The publishing itself might have not been
illegal. Chelsea Manning herself is, as you might know, also in prison again for
not testifying against Julian about exactly this question. So it's not only
the publishing stuff that's being threatened here. Yes, also, but also the
treatment of sources and the whole wording surrounding the process of acquiring a
source. It's hard for me to like right now come up with like the concept of how this
can continue. But obviously, we are here at a situation where transparency in
governmental affairs has successfully been demonstrated to be achievable over the
Internet with the right access to information and data and also being
challenged by those in power. And so we better challenge those in power and ensure
that democracy, based on our ability and our right to know what is happening in our
name is preserved. How are we going to do that with a country like the formerly
country known as the United States, now Trumpistan or whatever *huff*. I mean,
even for the United Kingdom *huff*. But ok, here we are in old Europe or in Germany
with all its weird history. There's other countries surrounding us that at least
have a constitution based on some human rights. The United Kingdom doesn't even
have a constitution based on that. So at least for Germany, France, maybe Italy,
Spain and so on, and these countries, I still see that we can do something. So
this is also a bit of a situation between European and American understanding of
governance at all. And we just can't let this happen. I mean, this is not about
Julian. This is about our ability to deal with governments or if you want to hear it
the other way around with the governments abilities to deal with us.
Herald: Thank you.
*applause*
*postroll music*
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