FICTION AND

REALITY: THINKING
BEYOND BIG
BROTHER

1
2
 Fiction and reality:

Thinking beyond Big Brother

by

Philippe Aigrain, Jacob Appelbaum, Julian Assange, Juan Branco, Noam Chomsky, Cécile

Curiol, Baltasar Garzon, Nan Goldin, Eben Moglen, Laura Poitras, Jennifer Robinson, Éric

Sadin, Rui Tavares & Jérémie Zimmermann

Symposium organized within the Lisbon & Estoril Film Festival

November 2014

Curated by

Juan BRANCO & Philippe AIGRAIN

3
 Transcriptions and editing by Charleyne Biondi

The authors

Philippe Aigrain, PhD, is the cofounder of La Quadrature du Net and the author of Sharing
(Amsterdam University Press, 2014)
Jacob Appelbaum, is one of the most famous hackers and freesoftware activists in the
world
Julian Assange the co-founder and editor of Wikileaks and probably the most known
hacker in the world.
Juan Branco, PhD, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Society
Noam Chomsky, Pr., PhD., is a Professor at the Massachussets Institute of Technology
Cécile Curiol is an author
Baltasar Garzon is worldwide known judge and the director of the legal team of Wikileaks
Nan Goldin is one of the most recognized photographs in the world
Eben Moglen, Pr., PhD, is a Professor at the Columbia Law School
Laura Poitras is an oscarized filmmaker, author of Citizen Four
Jennifer Robinson is a human rights lawyer
Eric Sadin is a French philosopher
Rui Tavares is a Member of the European parliament
Jérémie Zimmermann is the French leading hacktivist and co-founder of La Quadrature du
Net

4
SOMMAIRE

OUVERTURE DU SYMPOSIUM 5

LE CHOC DE LA SURVEILLANCE DE MASSE 50

DÉPASSER LE CHOC, COMPRENDRE LA SURVEILLANCE DE MASSE 76

RÉAGIR CONTRE LA SURVEILLANCE DE MASSE, PLACE À LA SOCIÉTÉ 115

CONVERSATION WITH LAURA POITRAS AND JACOB APPELBAUM 150

5
 Conférence n°1 : Ouverture du Symposium
avec
Noam Chomsky, Philippe Aigrain, Céline Curiol, Jérémy Zimmermann
animé par Juan Branco

Juan Branco: We are very excited to host, during the coming three days, several panels of
artists, activists and more generally speaking, creators, on the issue of mass surveillance.
We believe that the revelation of the Snowden documents – and the mass surveillance
that we are all subjected to – is the major political event of our era. So we have decided to
organize a symposium around it, during a film festival, here, in Portugal.
First of all, we considered the fact that Portugal had never hosted an event with people so
closely linked to this question, and we wanted you, the citizens of Lisbon and Portugal to
have an opportunity to debate it.
Secondly, we decided to organize it here, within the Lisbon & Estoril Film Festival, for the
perspective it would give us on the troubling effects of the Snowden revelations. Of course,
these revelations have been extremely mediatized, and they have had a huge impact, of
which we have, certainly, only seen the beginning. Yet, at the same time, we all have this
shared feeling that, in the end, it hasn’t changed a thing. In fact, we are still living under
the exact same regime of surveillance. The United States – and the other countries, of
course – have barely changed any policies. What is even more troubling is that for most
people, this mass surveillance, and the extremely worrying and potentially dangerous tools
with which it is implemented, seems to have no consequence on their lives. They don’t see
what links them personally to these issues. They don’t feel personally concerned.
So, the idea here is to show that this surveillance is not simply a fiction, that it is not only
an « idea » floating around, that it is not a virtual regime we can ignore, that we cannot
lead our lives beyond it, because it is already affecting us in ways that we may not realize
immediately or consciously, but that are extremely powerful. Surveillance cannot be
reduced to the Yemenites, or to the people who are killed by drones thanks to the NSA
recordings and devices. Surveillance is not only about Julian Assange or Edward

6
Snowden, or all the other heroes who have decided to step out and denounce this system.
Every single one of us is affected by these questions, and we want to show you how.
Naturally, the question that follows is: what is fiction, and what is reality? And how is it that
someone like Snowden shows up and discovers that reality has gone way beyond what
fiction could ever have imagined, even in its worst scenarios, even in the totemic example
of George Orwell’s 1984? How have we not seen it? And how did some of us try to see it
and show it to the world?
We need not only to understand, but to act and react, to look for alternative models and
models of resistance. We need to think about what creators can do to help us, and what
we can do ourselves to create another system, another society, where we would not be
recorded, where we would not be under the pressure and the constant threat of having our
personal information, our intimacy used against us by a state, a government, or any other
actor.

As you know, and I will be very brief on this, we will host very important people who have
been implicated in this fight for a long time. For this, I would like to thank in particular La
Quadrature du Net: Philippe Agrain, the co-organizer of this symposium, but also Jérémie
Zimmermann, who have interceded with many people, and who themselves have been
dedicating their lives to this struggle. I would say that these people are geniuses, who
have decided, at some point, that their lives couldn’t be reduced to making money – or, to
making a lot of money, as their talent would have permitted – because they had something
to fight for. They fought for years, before they progressively started to be covered by the
media. For years, they kept doing what they were doing without any kind of recognition or
visibility outside of their community, and they deserve to be respected and praised for that.
I believe it is very important that we hear them not only as the media animals as some of
them can be perceived today, but as people who have been there a very long time, without
any other objective than to defend their ideals and our rights.

Now, I will leave the floor to Philippe Aigrain, who will tell us why he, personally, and why
La Quadrature du Net accepted to participate in this event.
Also, in one word, we will start today’s session with a video-taped interview of Noam
Chomsky, who wanted to be here but couldn’t, which will be followed by a floor discussion.
And again, one of our main priorities is to implicate Portugal and the Portuguese, and
anyone else in this debate, and try to create a common consciousness, which means we

7
want a dialogue. We don’t mean to be giving you the « Truth », but hope rather to think
through these questions together. Thank you very much.

Philippe Agrain: Thanks, Juan.

So, Juan said most of what there was to say. I will just add a few elements. My name is
Philippe Agrain, I am one of the founders of La Quadrature du Net together with Jérémie
Zimmermann. He will give the impression of being sort of ubiquitous during this whole
symposium, but I think it will be worth your time. Basically, La Quadrature du Net is a
group that defends fundamental rights and freedom in the digital world. I am also a writer
of non-fiction and poetry, which drew me to the idea of organizing a symposium that would
bring activists, whistleblowers and technology technicians together with filmmakers,
photographers, artists. This was truly appealing to me.
I would like to say a few words on what we are expecting from this symposium. We are not
expecting to inform you about the fact that there is a regime of generalized surveillance
coming and developing, or that there is a sort of giant public-private partnership to put in
place means of surveillance, collection of data, processing of data, and action on the base
of this processing, because we think, especially after the Snowden revelations, that you
sort of know. But we would like to forge a better understanding of why and how it
happened. And I think there will be quite some debate on that, because there are many
factors involved. Most importantly, we expect to be thinking about what we can do about it,
as Juan just said.
Now, a final word on why we did not give the floor exclusively to activists, whistleblowers
and technology developers, why it was so important for us to give it to filmmakers, artists
and creators. There are many reasons for that. One of them is that they were first to see it
coming. There are books from the original cypherpunk literature: William Gibson, in the
early 80s, described a world of total exposure through the generalized use of information
technology, which did not exist at the time. There are movies, like Three Days of the
Condor that will be screened during the festival this week, movies from the end of the 70s,
where, for instance, teams from the NSA are massively processing open data. But it’s not
just that, it’s not just that the creators saw it coming. They were also particularly active, in
an unusual way, in denouncing the effects of mass surveillance. This started just after the
Snowden revelations, with a petition, an open letter triggered by four writers within PEN
International. Several were from emerging and developing countries, by the way, and it
was signed by 500 writers in total. It continued in Berlin, with a new declaration. And in
many countries, like Germany, France and Brazil, there were petitions to give, for

8
example, asylum to Edward Snowden, that were signed by a significant number of writers.
And finally, writers are asking themselves what type of narratives, what type of expression
we need in an era of surveillance. I hope you will see some of that here, and I hope it will
give you a feeling of what every one of us can do, in terms of constructing one’s own
identity in the digital world – or identities, because there are multiple – and also in terms of
recovering control of our sovereignty, of our data, and of our forms of communication.
Thank you! I am going to leave the floor to Noam Chomsky and Juan.

Interview with Noam Chomsky

13m17s

Paulo : We talked about cinema and other kinds of creation, how they are intersected with
one another. And this year we are doing a symposium about surveillance : fiction and
reality, beyond big brother…

Noam Chomsky : Very timely !

Paulo : And with my son, we wanted to talk to you, because in accordance and with the
help of Assange, Baltazar Garzon and a lot of intellectuals…

Noam Chomsky : Did you have an interview with Assange?

Paulo : Yes, my son knows him very well.

Noam Chomsky : Did you visit him?

Juan : Yes, in January and in May and…

Noam Chomsky : How’s he making out?

Juan : He’s worse than before, it’s more difficult than before and…

Noam Chomsky : He´s getting stir crazy.

9
Juan : He’s trying to maintain a public face.

Noam Chomsky : He´s living in such constraint.

Juan: It’s starting to be very harsh and the embassy is starting to put more and more
restrictions, the visits etc...

Noam Chomsky: Did you meet him for the interview?

Paulo: Never met him, by the time I got to know him he was already…
Anyway, we are organizing this symposium in order to reflect on issues related to global
surveillance. My son will tell you about it if you don’t mind.

Noam Chomsky: Out of curiosity, how did people your age respond in Italy to the Snowden
revelations?

Juan: I’m living in France. It’s very interesting because in the elite, in the best universities,
there is quite a debate - not so much about Snowden who is quite an accepted figure, he’s
well considered in general - but about people like Assange, there are some controversy: if
their action is good, if it can be supported or not, debates and doubts…

Noam Chomsky: What kind of criticisms?

Juan: They’re very skeptical about the reasons, about the trial. For example, they consider
the Raison d’Etat to be a valid justification. But the further you go from the elite, the
deeper into society, the more admired they are.

Noam Chomsky: I’m asking, because I did a small experiment with my grandchildren, in
their 20’s, and they don’t seem to care. They say, « it’s kind of interesting, but we put
everything on facebook anyways, so… »

Juan : That’s what our discussion is about: how did we arrive to this kind of acceptance.

Noam Chomsky : Yes, teenagers, people in their 20’s, society is so exhibitionist that they
don’t seem to care if anyone knows everything they’re doing.

10
Juan : There is a distinction : many young people, even when they are not politicized, treat
them as heroes; but it doesn’t provoke any kind of mobilisation.

Noam Chomsky : Reaction…

Juan : Yes, it just stays as a perception.

Noam Chomsky : People you know are surprised by what was revealed?

Juan : Yes, the discourse of people like Assange…

Noam Chomsky : Do they follow Wikileaks?

Juan : Yes, there is knowledge about it, but it was considered a bit paranoid, I think that’s
why the Snowden revelations were so important, because it legitimized the discourse of
those who were worrying about Echelon, mass surveillance.

Noam Chomsky : On to something, they didn’t know the least of it…

Juan : I saw you signed a Manifest supporting Snowden, why did you sign it?

Noam Chomsky : Immediately, I thought what he was doing was extremely important.

Juan : Did you see it as an American, or more as global problem?

Noam Chomsky : To some extent every government does it, for example some of the
interesting Snowden revelations had to do about the fact that in England, the government
was requesting the US to use their advanced technology to spy on British citizens. Any
system of power is going to want to have total information about its enemies, and the
domestic population is one of their main enemies.
This goes way back, I don’t know if you read it but a major book to look at is Alfred
McCoy’s. The US pioneered a lot of these things a 100 years ago, when after the US
conquered the Philippines they killed a 100 000 people but had to pacify it; and they
developed, using the highest technology of the day, not of now, but they tried to gather

11
masses of information, about Philippine elites basically. They didn’t have the technology to
go beyond that and they recognized that if they knew enough information about them they
could use it to undermine organisations, to discredit people, to insight conflicts among
people and basically break up the independent nationalist movements, and it was quite
successful. So successful that, if you take a look at East Asia today, South East and East
Asia, there’s the famous Asian miracle, with one exception : the Philippines. It is not
participating, it’s been under US control for a century and it remains a dependent third-
world society, and furthermore, in a pretty astonishing achievement of propaganda,
Philippinos have been so indoctrinated that they tend to support the US and its crimes
beyond their people, even though they’re the main victims: that’s a real achievement. It’s
now over 100 years, as Mccoy discusses, as soon as these methods were developed for
the Philippines they were immediately transferred back home, so Woodrow Wilson used
the same techniques and the red scare, the big repression, the post WWI period, then they
were picked up by the FBI and it goes on from there. The same happened in England, its
system of power is very much afraid of its own population, for good reason, and gaining
information, and using it to control people, find out what they’re doing, discredit them,
undermine them, that sort of stuff.
Incidentally, if you read these reports in the last couple of days about these 42 Israeli
intelligence agents, take a look at what they’re describing, the work that they were doing is
exactly what McCoy was describing in the Philippines a 100 yrs ago. Of course they can
now cover everybody, not just the elites, so find out what everyone in the occupied
territories is doing, then find out if this person is having a homosexual love affair, then the
person can become a collaborator, discredit an activist in his community ,so on so forth.
Same thing, more sophisticated.

Juan : How do you explain that the US have started to master this propaganda a 100
years ago, and now they are able to do these mass surveillance mechanisms?

Noam Chomsky : New technologies, technologies that get stronger.

Juan : And it’s strengthening, and at the same time we can see someone like Edward
Snowden that comes out alone…

Noam Chomsky : In a way, McCoy is dangerous too, but he’s so obscure that they don’t
go after him. He’s a major figure in scholarship.

12
Juan : The question would be : how can it be understood that someone like Snowden
could counter these massive tools that are joined together, and counter the public state
discourse?

Noam Chomsky : Obviously, he’s paying quite a cost, you remember a year ago or so,
when Evo Morales flew to Russia to see him. The European countries are so frightened of
the US. The European cowardice is unbelievable! So frightened that countries like France
wouldn’t allow the plane to cross their airspace for fear that the US might be angry at
them. The plane was finally forced to land in Austria, and they sent a police in. This is a
presidential plane! It’s a coarse violation of every imaginable diplomatic principle, but
nobody complained because they’re just terrified of the US.

Juan : At the same time, the discourse of Snowden, his denunciation is very pervasive;
and the counter discourse of the state doesn’t seem to be working. How to explain that an
individual…

Noam Chomsky : As you said, to some extent, it is working. People have claimed the
Raison d’Etat justifies it. Now, these reservists are being denounced across the spectrum,
almost everyone - not everyone, the French. But the Labour party, who’s supposed to be
left, whatever that means, the right wing, they all..

Juan : That’s interesting. In Israel, 20 years ago, it was possible to have a public debate
about this. What brought that change?

Noam Chomsky : Occupation. That was predicted right away, in 1967. A highly respected
figure in Israel, Yasheyahou Leibowitz - he was a traditional sage, computer expert,
biologist, Tel-Aviv university, very respected. He said - pretty reactionary incidentally - so
he belongs to a traditional jewish culture, nothing matters except what’s good for the Jews.
I had interviews with him, he was bitterly condemning the occupation, and I asked how
about the effect on the arabs, he said he didn’t care about what happens to the arabs, he
cares about what happens to the jews, he says, my grandfather, my great-grandfather,
rest doesn’t matter, but it’s bad for the jews, and what he pointed out right away is that the
occupation is going to turn the Israelis into what he called « judeo nazis », they’re going to
become like nazis, because when you have your boot on somebody’s neck, you have to

13
find a way to justify it, and pretty soon you make up a justification, you internalize the
justification and pretty soon you’re a raving racist. That’s what he predicted in 1967 or 68,
and you can see it happening. The dynamics are perfectly predictable, that’s what
happens when you are crushing someone, you don’t say, « I’m a monster so I’m going
crush him », you say, « I’m doing it for their good and they’re the ones causing the
problem ». The problem is that they’re resisting, otherwise you get people like Golda Meir,
this famous stateswoman, about how she hates the arabs because they’re forcing us
wonderful jews to shoot them which we don’t want to do. By now that’s spread across the
sky. But it’s part of the dynamics of oppression. It was the same with enslavement, in fact
it’s the same with parents and children. Of course there are pathological situations but it’s
just inherent in domination and control. You cannot accept, very few people can look in the
mirror and say, « I’m a monster ». What they want to do is look in the mirror and say, « I’m
benevolent and I’m sort of forced to do unpleasant things because they’re so bad ».

Juan : And do you see a similar trigger moment with the US?

Noam Chomsky : There’s lots of them, it goes way back to the origins of the society.
Naturally, the society of the US was based on two fundamental principles : one is
extermination of the native population. The other was slavery. And both were justified.
When I was growing up as a child we would play cowboys and Indians, we would be the
cowboys killing the Indians, because we have to defend ourselves from these terrorists.
Maybe kids still do it. I was growing up in that kind of oppressive environment. But with
regard to slavery today, the problem with blacks - even Obama says this - is they just have
a better culture. Why, does it have to do with having 500 years of slavery and its aftermath
which is never ending, it’s because there’s something better about them, it’s the way to
deal with it... Back in the 1960’s a friend of mine who worked for Rand Corporation, Tony
Russo, who was later involved with releasing the Pentagon Papers a couple of years
earlier. He sent me a pile of documents which were quite interesting. Rand Corporation
had translated Japanese counter-insurgency literature from the 1930’s because they were
interested in what their counter-insurgency techniques were. And it was pretty interesting,
of course it’s the same the US were using in Vietnam but what was interesting about them
was that these were internal documents not for the public, them just talking to each other,
no reason for them to lie or anything, and they described themselves, at a time when the
Japanese were carrying out horrifying atrocities, all of the Nanking massacres, all those
kinds of things in China and Manchuria. But they were describing themselves as the most

14
noble people who were trying to bring an earthly paradise to the Chinese and to defend
the Chinese people against the Chinese bandits (nationalists and communists) who were
trying to prevent Japan from bringing advantages of high technology and advanced
civilisation, and they were sacrificing themselves for the cause and so on. And it’s the
same with the US version I’ve heard recently. In the Times literary supplement, a kind of
established historian of imperialism, he was reviewing a couple of books on the British
empire up until the mid-19th century and he pointed out, if we the British, were willing to
face the history of our own empire, we will rank our heroes alongside the genocidaire of
the 20th century, but a long time before that’ll happen they’re still heroes.

Juan : Just one thing. Something that for me seems very strange, is the acceptance by
U.S Senators and Congressmen of the idea that they are being controlled, their non-
reaction. Before, if a President tried to know things through illegal means, he would just
fall. But today, Congressmen and Senators know exactly that they are being controlled,
and yet nothing happens.

Noam Chomsky : If they’re being controlled, it’s by private corporate capital, which can’t do
very much to them. In fact, take a look at Watergate. Why was Watergate considered such
a scandal? So Nixon was a crook, Nixon had an enemies list, which is terrible ! How can
he have an enemies list ? I was on it, nothing ever happened from being in the enemies
list, but there wasn’t a fuss because I was on it, it was because people like the head of
IBM was on it, the McGeorge Bundy was on it. How can you call important people «  bad »,
if it was in private? Horrible. They took a bunch of crooks, broke into Daniel Ellsberg’s
psychiatrist’s office, ok, that’s a crime, but it isn’t a major crime. Take a look at what Nixon
was doing at that time : they were major crimes, but they didn’t figure in Watergate. Right
at the time that Watergate was exposed, something else was exposed : the Cointelpro.
This is a program by the national political police, the FBI, through four administrations : it
began with Eisenhower and went through Kennedy and Johnson, and was still going on
under Nixon. It was a program that began by subversion attack on the communist party,
then it spread in the Porto Rican independence movement, to the native American
movement, pretty soon to the left, the Millens movement, and it was a program just of the
time we’re talking about using every technique possible to undermine and discredit and
destroy dissident, and it was pretty serious that one of the main targets was black
nationalists and they were simply massacred. One of the worst cases was exposed right
with Watergate, it was the murder of a Black act organiser, Fred Hampton, in Chicago, by

15
the Chicago police in a typical Gestapo way, literally. The police attacked at four in the
morning, murdered him in bed, he was probably drugged, murdered somebody else who
was with him. This was all set up by the FBI, and the FBI had tried to get some other black
group to kill him who wouldn’t do it, so they set it up with police. That’s the Gestapo style
assassination of somebody who was organizing the black community.
That single event is incomparably worst than all the Watergate story, they never talked, I
never heard about it. Even that was nothing, the worst from Nixon administration was the
bombing of Cambodia, rural Cambodia was bombed literally at the level of all allied
bombings during all the entire pacific area during WWII, rural Cambodia, Nixon’s orders,
transmitted by his loyal servant Henry Kissinger, where anything that flies against anything
that moves. I mean that’s a call for genocide of the kind you just can’t find in an historical
record, and if they found anything like that for Hitler, let’s say, or for Milosevic, everybody
would be overjoyed. But you can’t find it for Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. Does
anybody care? No, I mean, Watergate was considered a crime because important people
were mildly harmed - very mildly ; and mild harm to important people means the
foundations of the Republic are collapsing.

Juan : And you don’t think that now they know they are being controlled by the NSA as
well?

Noam Chomsky : How are they being controlled? Am I being controlled, are you being
controlled? If they want, they can pick up all my emails. I don’t like it but I’m not paying any
attention to it, and there’s no reason for any congressman to. They were controlled by the
FBI long before the NSA. Hoover was using the techniques devised in the Philippines to
get information about everyone in Washington, that’s implying many things the FBI was
doing to get information about people in the political quest so they could blackmail them.
They could come to a Senator and say « if you do so and so, I’ll hint that you released the
fact that he was having an affair with his secretary ». That kind of control has been going
on for… just at scale

Juan : So it is just an extension of a movement that has been going on forever, you don’t
see any great…

Noam Chomsky : The scale is different, but the scale reflects the availability of the
technology. If there were developed techniques to pick up your brainwaves (you know your

16
brain emits electric impulses), maybe the government would figure out a way to pick up
your brainwaves and then blackmail you because of what you are thinking. That’s what the
systems of power are like, that’s why the Philippines’ story is so interesting and should
really be studied. Philippines are the first modern version when high-end technology of the
day was used and it has been fantastically effective. For one thing, it came back
immediately to the US and was used for the worst of the oppression of American history
during Wilson´s Red Scare. But also, as I said, after 110 years Philippines are still
controlled, uniquely in the region. Dramatic.

Juan : Do you think that that this asymmetry, mass propaganda and control of the masses,
is inherent to power? Or is…

Noam Chomsky : It’s inherent to power to try, it’s not inherent to succeed, that depends on
whether the people resist it.

Juan : You were saying before that you think it’s a universal...

Noam Chomsky : It’s universal to try, I think it’s extremely hard to find any structure of
power and hierarchy, and domination, where those who reel the club won’t pride of being
as effective as possible. It’s not totally universal - there are people who refuse to do it - but
it’s a strong tendency.

Juan : Do you think individual tentatives to resist and try to subvert this…

Noam Chomsky : That’s what popular movements have always been about.

Juan : Does it start with individuals?

Noam Chomsky : It starts with… organized groups of individuals which start with
individuals. We have a lot more rights than we had 50 years ago, or 100 years ago, but
those rights were not gifts from above, they always came from popular struggles. It is true
whether you talk about abolitionism or rights of women, opposition to oppression, concern
about the environment : just pick it, it’s always popular activism.

17
Juan : Should this popular activism only aim to obtain and protect rights? There seems to
be a trend of resistance movements nowadays - pacific or not - : do you think these
movements should aim to gain power in order to obtain the results they are fighting for?

Noam Chomsky : That’s a mistake : if they gain power, they’ll do the same. What they
ought to be trying to do is to diffuse power, so nobody has power.

Juan : So you think one can stay outside of the power circle and still…

Noam Chomsky : The transition from kings to parliamentary democracy is an important

step, though it doesn’t eliminate power. Say, the government of the US has much less
power than a king would have 4 centuries ago.

Juan : But is this power coming back to the people or to corporation control…

Noam Chomsky : There are popular controls of what government can do, there are
constraints, and they work. Maybe not well, but they work. Take the Vietnam war : it
happened through the 1960’s, at the beginning there was almost no opposition - and it was
shocking - but finally in the late 60’s, as the opposition developed, the Johnson
administration began to run into economic problems. They had to fight the guns and butter
war, they had to keep the population quiet and controlled because there was so much
opposition to the war. One result of that is they could never call a national mobilisation.
During the World War II, people were really committed to the war, there was a national
mobilisation, people were willing to accept wage controls, rationing, the fact that they
couldn’t drive nor eat meat and so on and so forth, because they really wanted to come in
the war. If Johnson had been able to call such a national mobilisation, then Vietnam would
have been totally crushed - it was practically destroyed anyway, but it would have been
crushed. But Johnson couldn’t do it, there was too much opposition. The result was called
stagflation, a combination of stagnation and inflation: the business world didn’t like that
and in fact by 1968 after at the Tet Offensive which indicated that the war was going to go
on for a long time, the business classes turned against the war and were influential in
forcing Jonhson into entering some kind of negotiations. The war began to harm their
interests, and the reason it began to harm their interests was because of popular
opposition, and actually, it goes beyond that. Take a look at the Pentagon Papers. One of
the most interesting parts is the very end : the Pentagon Papers ends in mid 1968, this is

18
history, internal history, that’s after the Tet offensive. The Tet offensive was a remarkable
event, among other things, made a clear war zone for a long time. Johnson, the President,
wanted to send more troops to Vietnam. The top military was opposed, and what they said
is, if you do that, we’re going to have domestic problems, we’re going to need those troops
for population control in the US, there’s going to be an uprising of young people and
women and many others, we will need them for civil control. That’s an indicator. And in fact
that was effective. What happened was horrible enough, but it could have been a lot
worse. In fact if you look back at Nazi Germany, a totalitarian state, you’ll find pretty much
the same thing. Someday, if you haven’t done it, read the memoirs of Albert Speer, it’s the
Nazi economist. His memoirs are kind of interesting. What he says is probably accurate:
he says the military effort was impeded by the fact that the population wasn’t really that
much committed to the war, so he had to carry out a guns and butter war, he had to pacify
them, and that took resources away from the war. I think he said he lost a year or so, I
don’t remember exactly. But if he’s right, that was the difference between victory and
defeat. Germany was technologically much more advanced than the West, remember the
jet planes, rockets and all sorts of things, but they were overwhelmed by sheer mass much
as the Russians… If they had had more time, who knows, maybe they would have won the
war. Well, that’s popular opposition in a totalitarian state. The population just can’t be
totally disregarded. And there are achievements like, a lot of the human rights, they aren’t
perfect by any means, but it’s a big advance over the centuries.

Juan : Do you think that these individual actions of Snowden and Assange will change
something in the future for the community, in terms of how things…

Noam Chomsky : It’s up to us. They did what they could, from now on it’s up to the people
who have got information thanks to their courageous actions. If you decide to do nothing, it
won’t change anything.

Juan : In the United States, did anything change until now?

Noam Chomsky : Not much. I mean … some has. For example, by now there are some
constraints on government action, not much, but some. There could be more, but that’s up
to the people like us. Same in France, same in Italy, same everywhere else : there are
governments who are doing the same things, just not on this scale.

19
Juan : 50 years ago you were a public enemy, today Snowden is another. Being a public
enemy from the inside is even worse… Do you think there will be another one in 50 years?
Do you think it’s permanent?

Noam Chomsky : Same answer, it’s up to us.

Juan : But you think there can be a society in which we will not…

Noam Chomsky : Sure, there can be freer societies. In fact, in an earlier period, maybe
Snowden would just have been assassinated.

Juan : Yes, that’s a question I wanted to ask you.

Noam Chomsky : I think that’s a change. The US are going to try to catch him in every
possible way, if they do, they’re not going to assassinate him, they will put him in prison for
life.

Juan : As an example?

Noam Chomsky : Yes, as an example. But mostly out of revenge. A lot of it is just plain
revenge. You can tell with what happened with Daniel Ellsberg, they tried to convict him
but the trial fell apart, incidentally because of Nixon’s criminality. I saw it myself, I was
testifying at the trial when the judge called a recess. He left, came back in, and declared it
a mistrial. What had happened is that Nixon had tried to bribe him by offering him the head
of the FBI or something. He could no longer preside over the trial so he had declare a
mistrial. Daniel Ellsberg wasn’t convicted, he wasn’t murdered. However, he was punished
: he has never been able to get a job, his old associates turned against him, don’t talk to
him anymore, and he kind of lives from hand to mouth. A lot of it is revenge, you don´t
break ranks.

Juan : Now, about the question of the legality of resistance : beyond Snowden’s punctual
act of revolt, do we have to respect the legality that’s imposed in order to change the
system?

20
Noam Chomsky : It’s the kind of null hypothesis : unless there is an argument on the
contrary, you follow the laws. So, if I drive home tonight and there is a traffic light that is
red, I will stop. On the other hand, if I see that across the street somebody is being
murdered, maybe I’ll go through it and I won’t stop. You do normally obey the laws, unless
there are reasons not to. A lot of laws are unacceptable, they shouldn’t exist. In fact, the
worst lawbreakers by far, are the powerful. A couple of friends and I have today written a
letter in the New York Times which is pointing out « the obvious », that all the discussion
about whether Obama should put to Congress for authorization of the war is basically
beside the point. There are higher laws, real laws under the US constitution, valid treaties
on the supreme law of land; the major valid treaty is the United Nations Charter that bans
the threat or use of force, so that a law abiding state will not be able to discuss these
issues. But a rogue state like the US, where nobody cares about the law, does whatever it
feels like.

Juan : Thank you very much. Thank you for your time.

Noam Chomsky : Thank you.

53m12

Juan : You told us yesterday about the continuity between the practices implemented by
the United States in the Philippines in the early 20th century, and today’s mass
surveillance. You also mentioned that this control of the population, and more generally,
the confrontation between State and population was very routed in the foundations of the
US, with the genocide of the native americans and other events. So, do you consider that
mass surveillance is just another tool of « governmentality », to use Foucault’s words, that
it is just a different scale, but nothing new ?

Noam Chomsky : Differences in quantities sometimes become differences in quality. My

impression is that it is basically a difference in scale. The practices that were developed in
detail to control the Philippine population back in the early 20th century - mostly the elite,
not so much the peasantry - were very successful in breaking up the nationalist
movements and in imposing a US dominated system that remains until today. The
Philippines are an outlier in East and South-East Asia, the one area that hasn’t nearly
developed, and that has plenty of struggles, a lot of brutalities. For example, in the early

21
1910, the US backed vicious counter-insurgency operations to crush the peasants : there
were independent rebellions, but the system has sustained itself. A few years later, by
1918, 1919, the same systems were applied at home in what is in fact the most repressive
period of american history, the Woodrow Wilson Red Scare, which is quite vicious and had
a long lasting impact.
And then it continues : the FBI used the same techniques, aimed mainly at political elite,
to try to ensure that the senators, congressmen and others, would not get out of line by
collecting information about them that they could use to slander them, to libel them, to
initiate stories, etc.
But in the 1960s and 70s, it started being directed against the entire population. That’s the
COINTEL PRO : operations primarily under the democratic administrations of the 60s that
continued under Nixon before it was finally terminated by the courts. It was a very similar
operation, but in this case directed against the native american movements, the new left,
the black nationalists movements, the women’s movements… It was pretty serious, led
this far as literal political assassination, forcing suicides, breaking-up groups… and that
was a massive operation. It’s pretty horrid to think of it, outside of East Germany and so on
: it’s hard to think of a comparable operation in a Western Society, by a national political
police; it was the FBI, under executive orders, trying to break-up and disrupt popular
activism, which was quite a significant force in the 60s, early 70s, and had substantial
success.
This now takes-up a broader scale. But this is what you can expect a system of power to
do : the more information they have about people, the better able they are - at least think
they are - to control, monitor and undermine them if necessary.

58m00

Juan : There is this idea that information is power… Your activism is very linked to it : you
have to empower people by providing them accurate information on the war and the
different structures of power. Do you think that secret is necessary to form a power?

Noam Chomsky : Secrecy is valuable. Actually, the United States is an unusually open
society. We have more access to internal planing records in the United States than any
country that I know. It is by no mean perfect, but it is substantial. And when you read
through this mass of internal documents, secret documents, as I have done in many
cases, one thing is quite striking : very little has any meaningful relation to any real security

22
issue. Most of it is defending the State against the population. They don’t want people to
know what they are doing, so it’s secret. But there is very little indeed, secret records that
would have been a value, for instance, to the Russians, the Chinese, the Cubans, or
whoever they thought they were fighting. They usually knew it perfectly well just from what
was happening on the ground. But it does maintain secrecy from the population, and the
tacit assumption is, sometimes I have heard, that people shouldn’t know these things.
There is, after all, it’s worth remembering, a leading scene of liberal, progressive
democratic theory, which says that people should not know. You find that expressed
overtly, often, by some of the leading figures, some leading public intellectuals of the 20th
century in the United States : Walter Lipmann, who is a very distinguished figure, he was a
progressive, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy-style progressive and leading commentator on
public affairs. He was also the author of Essays in Democratic and Progressive
Democratic Theory. He says, i quote : « the public are ignorant and meddlesome
outsiders. They have to be put in their place. Decisions have to be made by the
responsible men, people like us ». (The people who write this are always among the
responsible men !) « And we, the responsible men, have to be protected from the
trampling and the roar of the bewildered herd, the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders».
And the job of what he called « manufacturing consent », i borrow this term from his book -
is to ensure that the public is marginalized, put in their place, for they can be spectators
but not participants. They do have a role in the political system : every couple of years they
are allowed to lend their way to one or another of the responsible men, and then they
should go home and keep quiet. And this is quite common. I mean, the founders of
modern political science, Herald Glasswell for example, one of the leading figures who
was, by US standards, a leftist progressive, said that we should not be misled by
democratic dogmatism about people being the best judges of their own interest; argued
that people are too stupid, too ignorant, that it would be unfair to allow them to make
decisions, that it would be like letting a three year old in the street : they are not capable,
so for their own benefit we should control what they do, keep them in the status of
observers, spectators of what happens in the political arena. This is pretty much the way
things work.
If you look at academic political science in the United States, one of the major topics of
studies is the relation between public attitudes and public policy. It’s a straightforward
inquiry. Public policy, you see it. Public attitudes are available from extensive poling
(poling isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good and pretty reliable, and often poles are done quite
sensibly). There is a massive information about public attitudes and public policies and the

23
result, in the major kind of gold standard works of political science, is that about 70% of the
population - the lower 70% on the income scale - is literally disenfranchised, their attitude
have absolutely no effect on policy. Their representatives pay no attention to them.
Whatever they think, it is disregarded. As you move up the scale, you start getting a little
more influence, there is more relation between attitudes and policy. And when you get to
the very top, which is a fraction of 1%, they are basically making policy, so they get what
they want. There is a little fussiness around the edges but that’s the basic picture. Just
recently, there was a study released by Princeton University which got a little publicity to
leading political scientists who have worked on these subjects for years, investigating
about 1700 major public policy decisions to identify who had influence. They had the same
conclusion : the public was irrelevant, almost all of it. On the other hand, when you get to
the business world and extreme wealth, so many have a tremendous influence… They
actually create policy, they usually staff the executives, either they or their representatives.
Someone like Henry Kissinger, for instance, was the representative of the State corporate
system. This is how it works, and it is considered appropriate in progressive democratic
theory. For the good of the population you cannot let these ignorant and meddlesome
outsiders make bad decisions, it would be terrible. When you look at the secrecy system,
that’s what a lot it is about : I would say the overwhelming majority is about keeping the
ignorant and meddlesome outsiders in the dark, because it’s not their business.

01h05

Juan : If the information leaked by Snowden reached the masses - which we don’t know if
it has, nor if it ever will, we don’t know if people are really aware of the full extent of his
revelations and their political implication - do you think it could empower them? Or do you
think the masses are anyway marginalized by the system, and that only the upper classes
could eventually use these informations?

Noam Chomsky : I think the passionate attack on Snowden, since this started, the high-
level claims that we would hunt him to the end of the world, that we would catch him
wherever he is, and we will punish him, shows that they are really afraid. Now it could be
paranoia. For example, if, at the highest level, the White House had simply disregarded
him, it might have just disappeared. It is possible. Their own paranoia may be feeding the
system, their own demise in a sense, but it does reflect the attitudes. How much effect it

24
can have, we are not sure. There were effects in Brazil for example : it canceled a
presidential visit, didn’t quite break relations but certainly harmed them.
Remember a lot of these Snowden revelations are not just about surveillance of people,
they are also about support for corporate efforts to undermine business in other countries,
such as spying on negotiators and energy deals to make sure that american corporations
have a head up on it, and so on. Big corporations in other countries don’t like that. Just like
Merkel doesn’t like the fact that somebody is reading her email. But powerful people and
powerful institutions are being harmed sufficiently so there was reaction. The Congress did
start to get concerned when it turned out that the Senate Committees responsible for this
were being spied on. I should say there is absolutely nothing new about this. If you go
back to the foundation of the United Nations, there was a conference in San Francisco in
1947 which established the United Nations, during which the FBI had been bugging the
offices of the foreign delegations so that American negotiators could have a step up and
get what they wanted. There was a huge fuss made when the Russian did this to the
American Embassy, but it is done all the time.

1m08s40

Juan : At this geopolitical scale, coming back to what you said about the Philippines and
how the strategy put in place by the US continues to be effective more than a hundred
years later : how can we explain that Latin America has had one of the strongest reactions
to the mass surveillance revelations, when we know that the US has always had a very
strong presence and influence on the South American continent?

Noam Chomsky : It is s a very significant phenomenon, really, historically significant. For

500 years, Latin America had been in the hands of foreign powers. A tiny, mostly white
elite accumulated enormous wealth while the population was living in huge, horrendous
poverty, under the hands of the imperial powers. For a long time it was England, and
recently the United States. So Latin America was « taken for granted » in US planning,
they really hardly even had plans for it. There were some : for example in 1945 when the
US was beginning the organization of the world at the end of the Second World War, the
US did call a hemispheric conference in Mexico. The Latin American states came and the
United States imposed (at that point the US could actually impose what it wanted) an
economic charter for the Americas, which banned economic nationalism in all its forms.
The Latin American countries had to follow, they had to be completely open societies,

25
which in fact meant being open to US penetration and control. It wasn’t reciprocal.
Incidentally, the US itself did not accept these principles. On the contrary, it had high levels
of economic nationalism. That’s why you have your computer and are using the internet :
these were largely state sectors of action. The US were concerned at the time with what
the state department called the « new nationalism in Latin America », which was driven by
the idea that the people of a country ought to be the beneficiaries of its ressources. They
had to smash this down : no new nationalism, it’s the foreign investors who are the
beneficiaries, not the people of the country. It was pretty explicit. And at that point you
could just legislate it, and the Latin Americans did what they were told. And so it continued.
Not without violence. On the post-Staline period, violence and repression in the North-
American dependencies in Latin America were much worse than what happened in
Eastern Europe. Much worse. See an indication of it up there : depiction of a murder of an
archbishop in El Salvador, and ten years later the murder of six leading Latin American
intellectuals, by forces pretty much armed and trained by the United State. Eastern Europe
was bad enough, but things like that didn’t happen. And there were vicious, neo-nazi
dictatorships installed, massive torture : that was Latin America until 10 or 15 years ago.
Since then, there has been a sharp turn.It was partly the effect of the neoliberal policies of
the 1980s and 90s : the Latin America followed the rules and it was smashed, the rules
were very destructive. The countries that didn’t follow the rules, like South Korea and
Taiwan, they did fine. But the Latin America observed them and it was a very harsh couple
of decades, so there was a reaction. There was also finally a reaction to the US-backed (or
sometimes US-imposed) dictatorships, and for a variety of reasons in the last ten or twenty
years maybe, Latin America has for the first time in its history, moved towards integration,
or some degree of integration and some degree of independence. It is pretty remarkable.
What you described here, and the NSA is one example but there are many others, one of
the most striking examples had to do with the CIA torture programs. The worse torture
programs, by far, were called « extraordinary rendition ». That’s a program where you take
somebody you’re interested in, you suspect him or you think he has information, you send
him to your favorite dictatorship, Assad in Syria, Mubarak in Egypt, Khadafi in Lybia, and
make sure that he is tortured sufficiently so that he comes out with something, hoping that
he has some information. There was a recent study of the countries that participated in
extraordinary rendition : most of Europe, England, Sweden, all participated. The Middle
East of course, because that’s where we send them to be tortured, and most of the rest of
the world. One exception : no participation from Latin America. Which is doubly
significant : first of all because Latin America used to be the backyard, they did what they

26
were told. Secondly because during the period of US control, Latin America was one of the
world’s centers of torture. Now they refuse to participate in US run torture. It is pretty
significant.

Juan : Even Colombia?

Noam Chomsky : Even Colombia. During the hemispheric conferences, the US used to
give the orders and everybody followed. At the latest ones, the US and Canada were
isolated. It was Latin America against US and Canada. And there are already
organizations formed, CELAC for instance, that exclude North America. That’s a
remarkable change. The United States have simply lost control of the region.

1m15s38

Juan : It’s interesting for Europeans, because it seems that Europe is getting more and
more submitted.

Noam Chomsky : Europe is becoming Latin-Americanized. The case of the Evo Morales
plane was a dramatic example. Bolivia, the poorest country in the hemisphere outside of
Haiti, a country of indigenous majority. : the Bolivian President went to Russia to talk to
Snowden, flew back, and the European countries are so terrified of the United States that
they wouldn’t let him cross their air space. The Europeans are cowering in terror because
the master might be angry at them. Meanwhile, the poorest country in South America
defies the United States. It is remarkable.

Juan : It is also very troubling…

Noam Chomsky : It should tell the Europeans something about their cowardice.

Juan : Yes, it is difficult to understand what happened since the end of the cold war, how
this alignment happened, with, for instance, France entering NATO.

Noam Chomsky : First of all, during the cold war, remember that NATO was partly
designed to keep Europe under control. As long as they had NATO, Europe depended on
the United States. Efforts to move in an independent direction - De Gaulle, Willy Brandts,

27
Ostpolitik and others - were very much feared in the United States. There was fear of what
was called a « third force », Europe would become a third independent force standing
between the US and Russia. It eventually could have happened. Europe’s population is
bigger than the US, European societies are advanced industrial societies, in many ways
more advanced than the US. If Europe had wanted to, if could have become an
independent force. I think a large part the reason why NATO remains and is even
expanded, even though there is no Russian threat (they can create one, but it’s ridiculous),
is to just keep Europe under control. So yes, there was pressure too, you can imagine the
effectiveness of propaganda about legitimizing US influence !

1h18m40s

What has happened since? Take France. France is quite interesting. Until the 1970S, the
French intellectuals were the last Stalinists in the world, fanatic stalinists and maoists.
Nobody in the world, in the West, believed in any of this, but they were still moaning all the
slogans. I remember, when I would talk with friends I couldn't believe what I was hearing,
talk with the leading French intellectuals about the genius Mao… In the mid 70s this
radically changed. As far as I can tell, the event that changed it was probably
Soljenitsyne’s Gulag, that was translated into French. Everybody read it, and since the
French intellectuals have to be in the lead in the world because after all, it is France !, they
suddenly presented themselves as the first people in the world who understood the evil of
stalinism and started writing articles, great self prayers about things I knew when I was 10
years old because everybody knew them. There were obviously factors behind it, but there
was a shift among the intellectual classes, from a weird form or stalinism, third-worldism,
maoism, to becoming the most reactionary sector of the Western intellectuals. And of
course, praying themselves for their magnificence in discovering what everybody always
knew. In fact, it is comical to look at the predictions. And it continues like that. It is a very
strange strain of hysteria in the culture, which is interesting to investigate. A lot of the post-
modern excesses grew out of that. And you had similar things happening in the other
countries. What the reasons are, well, interesting to investigate. But the tendencies are
clear.

1h21m02

28
Juan : Coming back to the issue of whether we can resist legally… Secret services, by
nature, escape to the public scrutiny. Is it in any way possible to control them through
democratic mean?

Noam Chomsky : They should be controlled. Not just the secret services, but also things
like Gladio, which is still largely secret. Some bits and pieces of it have come out, it did
appear to be involved in the neo-facist and terror in Italy in the 70s, but there is not much
research. Daniel Ganser in Switzerland among a few researchers, but this should be
publicly exposed and under public control, and the same with secret services. In the US,
after the NSA exposure, there were some measures passed in Congress to restrict the
right of the executive to spy on Americans, but it was very limited. That’s really a question
of public pressure : if there is enough, it can be eliminated.

1h22m38

Juan : Did you ever question the fact that we needed a State?

Noam Chomsky : A state all together?

Juan : Yes. At the national level.

Noam Chomsky : All my life, since childhood, I have been very much attracted by
anarchist ideas. The nation stage is not some kind of universal property, it is a special
construction, mainly in Europe, spread over the world with European imperialism and
settlements, and in many ways it is a very destructive system. Take the Middle East, which
is falling apart, reaching chaos. Largely, this is a long term effect of the imposition of the
Nation-State system by the European imperial powers, mostly England and France, for
their own interests, not for the interests of the people. Take Irak. Irak was hatched together
by the British after the first world war when they were parcelling out the former Ottoman
Empire, it was put together so that the boundaries, drawn by Britain, ensured that England
would have control of the oil fields near the Turkish border. Koweit was established as a
British-run principality primarily in order to borrow Irak’s free access to the sea. It is a
mechanism of control. And that construction put together Chiites, Sunnites, Kurds and
other minorities, Turkmen, who weren’t hostiles but basically had not much to do with each
other. This was done for imperial interest. Similarly, the French took Syria and Lebanon

29
and did the same thing ; the British took Palestine for geostrategic reasons primarily, not
because the Bible said this and that.
And if you look at Africa : violence everywhere. Almost all of it, when you look at it, had to
do with Nation State systems that were imposed by the European powers for their own
interests. They drew lines that broke tribes in half, putting together people who were
hostiles. Take Pakistan and Afghanistan : the British, during the days when they ruled
India, drew a line, the Durant line, for their interest, that was going to be British India
separated from the rest. The Durant line now separates Pakistan from Afghanistan. It cuts
right through the Pashtun territories. Some of them are in Pakistan, some of them in
Afghanistan. When a tribesman goes from Pakistan to Afghanistan to visit relatives, we
can call it a terrorist attack and send drones to kill him. But from their point of view that is
their country, imperial powers broke it in half. In fact the same is true of the US and Mexico
: US conquered about half of Mexico in a brutal war of agression in the 19th century. The
border was pretty artificial, the same people lived on both sides, so it was a very
permeable border - all kind of developments. Until the border started to be militarized, in
the late 1980s, 1990s. And the militarization of the border in fact took a big step forward
when NAFTA was enacted. In 1994, when Clinton ran through NAFTA over public
opposition, he also started militarizing the border because planers could easily understand
that NAFTA was going to create a huge number of refugees, and Mexican campesinos
can be quite efficient but they can’t compete with highly subsidies US agro-business.
And same is true more in general. If you have a flow of refugees you have to militarize the
border. Now, the big issue of people crossing the boarder… shoot them, send them back
and so on, and this is all over the world. So there is nothing natural about the Nation State.
I mean, you can see how unnatural it is by looking at European history : the centuries
during which this system was imposed were some of the most savage centuries in human
history : the thirty years war, maybe a third of the population of Germany was slaughtered.
This is all part of imposing Nation State system. Finally, in 1945, Europeans did recognize
that the next time they would play their favorite game, slaughtering each other, it was
going to be the end. So Europe did finally move towards some kind of integration which
began to somehow erode the Nation State boarders, which are generally pretty artificial.
And i think that is a positive direction, it should take place elsewhere in the world.

1h28m52

30
Juan : At the same time, this integration creates an even greater distance between the
established powers and the society, making it even more difficult for the European people
to grasp politics.

Noam Chomsky : Because other developments are taking place. One of the things that
has happened in modern integrated Europe is a very sharp attack on popular democracy.
Decisions are being made in Brussels, by bureaucrats and the Bundesbank, and are
imposed on the countries. When Monti was elected in Italy, the population almost had
nothing to do with it, it came from Brussels. When the Greek Prime Minister, Papandreou,
had the effrontery to suggest that you might ask the population « do we want that
policy ?», there was fury all over Europe, « how dare you ask the population ? This is
decided by the responsible men in Brussels! ». Even the Wall Street Journal had an article
pointing out that no matter what political party took power in Europe, right to left, they
always followed the same policy. Of course these policies are not coming from the
countries. So, that’s another tendency. Things don’t happen just mechanically, a lot of
things are going on.

Thank you very much.

Debat - Philippe Aigrain, Céline Curiol, Jérémy Zimmermann, animé par Juan Branco

1h31m30

Juan : Vamos tentar estar a la altura agora do que ouvimos.

So, we are going to discuss in French and maybe English. So please don’t hesitate to take
your headphones for te the translation if you need it.
Je suis entouré de trois français : Jérémie Zimmermann à ma gauche, qui est l’un des
cofondateurs de la Quadrature du Net et l’un des plus importants activistes sur les
questions des libertés sur internet en France et en Europe, et par exemple l’un des grands
responsables de la chute de ce qui n’était pas rien, une des régulations transatlantiques
qui s’appelait ACTA et qui a failli être adoptée à l’échelle européenne (ACTA imposait un
certain nombre de restrictions extrêmement fortes, sur le droit d’auteur et plus
généralement sur le droit d’accès à un certain nombre de médicaments et bien d’autres
choses). Avec la Quadrature du Net, dans un effort collectif incluant bien d’autres

31
organisations citoyennes, ils ont réussi à empêcher l’adoption d’ACTA et à nous permettre
de vivre dans un continent un tout petit peu moins cadenassé et injuste. Evidemment, ceci
n’est qu’un exemple. Par ses activités il a été amené à fréquenter, à aider parfois, d’autres
activistes qui vont de la galaxie Wikileaks au Chaos Computer Club; des milieux qui,
chacun à sa façon, travaillent sur internet et sur la question du numérique. En créant, en
s’engageant politiquement ou en se rencontrant, ils tentent d’influencer les usages et les
politiques publiques et de préserver Internet comme un outil libre et accessible à tous.

Céline Curiol, à ma droite, est une auteur française précieuse à bien des égards. Auteur
de fiction principalement, elle a notamment écrit sur ces questions de surveillance un
roman très important dont nous allons parler. Elle lira quelques extraits de son oeuvre,
comme des intermèdes dans la discussion, pour commencer ce mélange que l’on
essaiera d’établir tout au long de ce festival.

Et tout à ma droite, Philippe Agrain, lui aussi fondateur de la Quadrature du Net; et comme
il s’est lui-même présenté, aussi essayiste et poète, ayant un long passé dont je ne
détaillerai pas toutes les étapes. Il organise ce symposium avec moi et interviendra donc à
de nombreuses reprises.

Je voulais d’abord savoir si quelqu’un dans la salle, avant que l’on reprenne la discussion,
aurait une réaction qu’il voudrait partager de façon spontanée, encore une fois sans
inhibition, et quelque soit la langue.
Então pode ser em português, pode ser em inglês, pode ser em francês… Qualquer
pessoa que quer reagir e dar uma palavra assim a uma coisa que tem ouvido? Não?

Edgar Morin a annulé sa venue il y a 48 heures, c’est une personne âgée qui voyage
beaucoup et qui a eu un problème de santé. Il avait peur que ça s’aggrave s’il venait, donc
il nous a envoyé un long mail très sympathique en nous disant que pour lui, les questions
que l’on va discuter sont les plus importantes politiquement, et qu’il est essentiel que des
événements comme celui-ci se tiennent ici et ailleurs.
Philippe Agrain, auriez-vous une réaction spontanée à nous faire partager?

32
Philippe Agrain : Pour quelqu’un qui est de formation informaticien, Noam Chomsky est un
maître à penser dans un tout autre registre que celui qu’on a écouté maintenant. Donc
pour moi, c’est toujours une grande émotion de l’écouter.
Mais à part ça, ce sont plutôt des questions que je voudrais formuler. Pour moi, il y a deux
aspects de son intervention qui me paraissent devoir être explorés plus avant : le premier,
c’est le sentiment que finalement, ce qui a été révélé n’est que le « business as usual »
des Etats. Cela ne rejoint pas tout à fait mon sentiment; peut être parce qu’en tant
qu’activiste des libertés dans l’espace numérique j’ai tendance à surestimer l’importance
de ces questions, mais néanmoins, pour l’instant je maintiendrais l’idée (que j’essaierai de
documenter plus tard) qu’il se passe, dans ce que Snowden a révélé et qui en fait était en
partie déjà connu, des phénomènes nouveaux. En particulier, l’universalité de la suspicion.
Les actions des américains dans les Philippines (je dois avouer que je ne connais pas le
détail) visaient des populations à risque, des groupes dangereux pré-définis; alors que l’on
voit aujourd’hui apparaître une sorte d’universalité de la collecte, suivie de traitements
algorithmiques pour faire émerger des individus qui devraient faire l’objet d’une
surveillance accrue, cette fois par des méthodes plus traditionnelles. C’est, je pense l’une
des choses qui a créé l’émotion : le volume même des choses qui étaient collectées, le
nombre de gens concernés dans les pays objets des programmes de surveillance, qui
incluent la plupart des pays européens. Ce sont des populations entières qui voient leurs
données collectées. Et la réponse de la NSA aux attaques disant qu’une telle invasion de
l’intimité en masse est contraire aux droits les plus élémentaires a été : «  oh, mais ce n’est
pas vrai que nous vous écoutons et que nous vous surveillons tous, car personne ne
regarde tous ces fichiers. En réalité, ce ne sont que des algorithmes. » Or, c’est vraiment
la question: cette émergence d’une définition de la suspicion par des algorithmes.
Le deuxième point, sur lequel j’aurais tendance à penser que ce que dit Chomsky est un
peu trop simple (je me sens mal à dire une chose pareille!), c’est quand il parle de ses
petits enfants de 20 ans et qu’il dit qu’« ils s’en moquent complètement » : « de toute faon
nous mettons tout sur facebook, nous nous en moquons ». En réalité, il me semble que
les études des sociologues sur la réalité de ce que les adolescents et les gens un peu plus
âgés publient et échangent sur les réseaux et les médias sociaux, montrent qu’ils sont
moins démunis que des personnes de ma génération. Ils font attention à ce qu’ils publient,
mais les critères de choix auxquels ils font attention ne sont plus ceux de ma génération.
L’élément clé de cette différence est la quête et la constitution d’une identité, ou de
plusieurs identités, dans l’espace numérique. C’est-à-dire que tout discours qui viendrait
leur dire simplement « sortez couvert » (slogan pour l’usage de contraceptifs en France),

33
« quand vous allez sur internet, c’est dangereux, prenez des précautions » ; tout discours
qui ne tiendrait pas compte du fait qu’Internet, c’est aussi un espace de réalisation, de
construction de l’identité et de réalisation d’interactions sociales productrices d’humanité,
serait voué à être ignoré et instituerait les intermédiaires d’internet qui ont encouragé ces
phénomènes comme les meilleurs amis de ces populations jeunes et moins jeunes (moi
aussi je construis mon identité sur internet); et par conséquent, ne serait pas la bonne
réponse.

Juan Branco : Chomsky fait quelque chose qui me semble très important : il connecte, à
chaque fois, la question de la surveillance ou les questions politiques générales, à une
question économique et sociale, de violence économique et de violence sociale.
Je voudrais juste rajouter un petit point là-dessus, qui vient de la sociologie : le contrôle
qu’aurait notre, ma génération, celle qui est née avec les réseaux sociaux, sur son identité
et sa capacité à donner des informations est à mon avis limitée par deux facteurs très
importants. Tout d’abord, le facteur sociologique, économique : plus les personnes ont une
origine sociale élevée, plus elles ont été éduquées à contrôler leur image, à contrôler
l’information qu’ils doivent laisser filtrer et ce rapport à l’information. C’est un acquis, ce
n’est pas une capacité avec laquelle on naît. On voit donc une reproduction de la violence
sociale, où ceux qui sont les plus exposés sont ceux qui viennent des classes les plus
fragiles.
Puis le deuxième facteur, en deux mots et sur mon expérience personnelle : quand j’ai 11
ou 12 ans et que je commence à aller sur internet, j’ai le choix entre énormément de
vecteurs pour recevoir et diffuser mon information. Il y a des dizaines de systèmes de
recherche qui sont plus ou moins concurrents (Altavista, Google qui émerge, etc), et c’est
pareil pour les chats et les messageries instantanées. Aujourd’hui, on se retrouve dans
une situation économique où l’on est obligés de passer par certains acteurs dont le
nombre est extrêmement réduit : Google, Facebook, Microsoft pour une partie des choses.
Et le choix est réduit non seulement pour les logiciels ou les moteurs de recherche, mais
aussi pour les systèmes matériels. Je pense que dans cette salle 1/3 aura un iPhone, 50%
un téléphone sous Androïd, et la population restante sera sous Microsoft. Et nous n’avons
pas d’alternative. Il et toujours possible d’essayer de « casser » Androïd, mais aujourd’hui,
pour communiquer normalement, on est obligé de passer par ces plateformes qui
concentrent nos données et nos communications de façon beaucoup plus efficace que la
NSA (qui n’a plus qu’à se servir auprès d’eux pour récupérer ces informations).

34
Dans ces deux dimensions que je viens de citer, il y a, au départ et à l’arrivée, une
question économique, très forte, de contrôle par l’économie, par l’argent…

Je ne sais pas si, Céline, vous aimeriez réagir…

1h45m40

Céline Curiol: Il y a une question qui me semble intéressante, que vous avez posée au
départ et qu’aborde un peu Noam Chomsky, qui est celle de la réaction du public à ces
révélations de Snowden, et finalement, est-ce que ça change quelque chose, est-ce que
ça change quelque chose à nos pratiques, à notre vision des choses?
Je ne parle pas en tant qu’expert informatique, je parle en tant qu’écrivain, et ce qui
m’intéresse aussi, c’est la façon dont la fiction influence la formation de nos opinions. Je
crois que ces révélations de Snowden ne semblent pas réelles à tout le monde : on en
entend parler, mais elles n’ont pas une réalité physique, donc je pense qu’un certain
nombre de personnes ne réalisent pas. Ensuite, je pensais à l’image que certaines
fictions, par exemple les séries télévisées ou les films, nous ont donné de la surveillance
et des services secrets. On n’a qu’à penser à James Bond, par exemple, ce n’est pas la
pire image des services secrets. Dans la série télévisée The Wire, la surveillance
électronique n’apparaît pas non plus comme une mauvaise chose. Je trouve ça
intéressant de voir qu’elle est, chez nous, public, l’image que nous nous faisons de cette
activité de surveillance.
Noam Chomsky disait à un moment que les activités étaient « considered a crime because
important people were harmed ». On pense qu’une intervention était un crime parce que
des gens importants avaient été touchés (en parlant du Watergate). Dans le cas des
révélations de Snowden, on ne parle pas des gens importants, on parle de la population
américaine. Et comme il le note, ça a commencé à faire plus de bruit lorsqu’ Angela
Merkel a appris qu’elle était espionnée par les services secrets américains, ou que Dilma
Rousseff avait été espionnée. Je trouve cela intéressant.
Par rapport à l’écriture, vous avez dit quel était le rôle des artistes, des écrivains pour faire
prendre conscience de l’importance de ces questions de surveillance : je pense que ça
passe aussi, étrangement, par la fiction. Que donner une réalité à ces choses peut passer
par la fiction. Par exemple, le film La vie des autres, été réalisé il y a quelques années, a
fait prendre conscience de façon fictionnelle de l’étendue des pratiques des services
secrets Est-Allemands.

35
1h48m38

Jérémie Zimmermann : Je pense qu’il va être difficile, après Noam Chomsky, de parler de
la relation que l’on a au pouvoir, de la relation que l’on a au gouvernement. Il a étudié cela
de fond en comble et il en livre là un tableau assez explicite. Mais je pense qu’il y a
quelque chose de fondamental qu’il n’a fait qu’esquisser ici, quand il expliquait que le
GCHQ, l’équivalent au Royaume Uni de la NSA, demandait explicitement à la NSA de
surveiller les citoyens du Royaume-Uni. C’est l’un des éléments de ce que l’on entrevoit
des accords qu’il y a entre les Five Eyes (les Etats-Unis, le Canada, le Royaume-Uni, la
Nouvelle Zélande et l’Australie) dans leurs accords privilégiés d’échange de ces
informations collectées en masse. Et on voit là une espèce de jeu - ce n’est même pas un
jeu de poker ! - c’est un jeu dans lequel on va s’échanger des cartes (moi j’ai besoin de
l’as pique, en échange je te passe la dame de trèfle, et ainsi de suite), jusqu’à ce que tout
le monde se retrouve avec l’ensemble du jeu entre ses mains.
Récemment, Eric King, de Privacy International, citait des officiels des services secrets
anglais qui disaient les « SIGINT customers », les clients de cette SIGINT, de cette
collecte de signaux (il les décrivait en terme de clients!) parfois ne savaient même pas
d’où venaient les données, qu’elles existaient parfois en double et en triple, tellement il y a
avait de sources. En gros, tout le monde espionne quasiment tout le monde, pour le
compte de quasiment tout le monde, et s’échange les données. Ce grand bazar est une
forme de globalisation de la surveillance, qui a mon avis est quelque chose de
particulièrement nouveau et qu’il nous faut étudier pour comprendre non seulement nos
relations au pouvoir, mais les relations entre les pouvoir, entre les différents
gouvernements.
Par ailleurs, j’ai l’impression qu’il nous faut discuter, au-delà de notre relation au pouvoir,
de notre relation à nous-même, qui est tout autant concernée par la surveillance de
masse. C’est ce qu’évoquait Chomsky en disant : « de toute façon la nouvelle génération
est exhibitionniste », point sur lequel Philippe réagissait justement à l’instant. J’ai
l’impression qu’il nous faut réfléchir, aussi, sur la façon dont nous développons nos
identités au travers de la technologie, qu’il faut nous demander dans quelle mesure le fait
de perdre ou de gagner le contrôle de notre intimité peut être un facteur de contrôle des
individus, ou d’émancipation. De la même façon, il faut s’interroger sur notre rapport aux
autres, sur notre rapport à la société. Comment peut-on interagir entre individus, citoyens,
activistes, comment un avocat peut-il interagir avec ses clients, un docteur avec ses

36
patients, un journaliste avec ses sources, dans un monde où la surveillance est
généralisée?
Enfin, et c’est la partie qui m’anime le plus en tant que technologiste, nerd, hacker, il faut
s’interroger sur notre relation à la technologie. Ce sont ces appareils que nous avons tous,
aujourd’hui, dans nos poches, qui au cours de ces quinze dernières années ont été
subvertis. Sans que l’on s’en aperçoive, sans que l’on ait à donner notre avis, ces
machines dont on pensait qu’elles étaient nos amies se sont transformées en nos
ennemies. Et nous nous apercevons aujourd’hui qu’elles sont sous le contrôle de leurs
vrais maîtres, qui sont situés quelque part entre Wall Street, la Silicon Valley et le State
Department. Ces appareils dans lesquels on place notre confiance, produits par des
entreprises dans lesquelles nous avons confiance : c’est là une grand nouveauté de la
surveillance au 21ème siècle, le fait qu’elle passe principalement par l’intermédiaire
d’entreprises, et non plus par des appareils d’Etat.
L’une des informations essentielles apportées par Snowden concerne le programme
BullRun dans lequel la NSA investit 250 millions de dollars par an, et qui vise à saboter
toutes les technologies permettant de sécuriser ses communications, pour introduire une
petite porte ouverte par laquelle la NSA peut s’infiltrer pour récupérer les données.
Naturellement, si la NSA peut s’y introduire, peut être que les services Russes, Chinois ou
d’autres personnes plus ou moins malveillantes peuvent le faire aussi.
La notion de confiance est au coeur de notre relation à la technologie. Pourquoi fait-on
confiance, comment peut-on faire confiance à une entreprise, un logo, un produit? Alors
que la confiance, par définition, est quelque chose qui vient entre être humains, quand des
yeux rencontrent d’autres yeux, quand la communication verbale et non verbale est
confrontée à une autre. Comment a-t-on pu en arriver à faire confiance à des logos? Et
maintenant qu’elle a été trahie, comment réinventer cette confiance? Je pense que c’est
une question absolument essentielle.
Ensuite, toujours dans ce qui a été esquissé par Chomsky (et que nous aurons le loisir de
développer au cours du week-end), une interrogation profonde sur notre activisme :
comment mettre en oeuvre un « diffuse power », un pouvoir décentralisé qui nous
prémunirait contre les excès du pouvoir hypercentralisé? « It is up to us », c’est entre nos
mains, disait Chomsky. C’est entre nos mains que se trouve le pouvoir de protéger les
lanceurs d’alerte, de garantir que Snowden, Assange, Manning ne se feront pas
froidement assassiner dans l’indifférence totale, de reconnaître leur courage. Mais aussi,
« it is up to us » d’inventer les narrations, les discours, les symboliques dans lesquelles

37
nous allons tous pouvoir être « empowered », responsabilisés, incapacités pour
décentraliser le pouvoir, pour le mettre en oeuvre ensemble, et changer le monde, voilà !

Question du Public : Il y a une grande contradiction dans ce que vous avez dit : selon moi,
la plus grande contradiction est de croire que nous pouvons être libres, être en-dehors de
cette surveillance, alors qu’en réalité, je ne crois pas du tout que nous puissions être libres
sur internet. Le plus grand dispositif de contrôle et de surveillance est dans nos poches, et
la seule chose à faire est de jeter ces appareils. Si nous restons, comme le suggérait Guy
Debord, des spectateurs, nous n’agirons jamais. On a beaucoup d’information, et cette
information finit par causer de l’inaction.

Jémérie Zimmermann: Tout d’abord, je suis en grande partie d’accord avec vous : on a
quitté la phase du techno-optimisme, de l’optimisme béat, internet comme un truc magique
descendu des cieux qui apporterait la démocratie pure et parfaite. On est sortis de cette
phase qui était peut-être l’adolescence de notre apprentissage de la technologie, et on est
en train d’entrer brutalement dans l’âge adulte, avec les dures réalités concrètes.
Maintenant, quand on parle de surveillance - il va être très important que l’on fasse ça au
cours du week-end - il faut absolument dissocier, même si parfois la limite entre les deux
est un peu floue, la surveillance ciblée de la surveillance de masse.
La surveillance ciblée, si je suis la NSA et qu’avec toutes mes informations je pense que
vous êtes probablement une dangereuse activiste subversive, j’ai 100 façons de faire pour
connaître votre mot de passe, et je vais forcément y arriver. Les gens les plus hauts
placés dans la NSA que l’on a interrogés sur le sujet, nous disent « when you are
targeted, you are targeted ». Quand vous êtes ciblés, vous êtes ciblés. On a un vrai
problème avec ça, on sait qu’on ne peut pas échapper à cette surveillance là, mais c’était
déjà le cas avant internet. Quand vous étiez une cible de priorité pour la Stasi, quand la
Stasi voulait savoir tout ce que vous faisiez, elle y arrivait d’une façon ou d’une autre. Si
vous trouviez les micros derrière le papier-peint, le lendemain il y en avait d’autres dans le
sol ou les canalisations. C’est ce qu’on appelle la surveillance ciblée, c’est un vrai
problème, mais qui n’a pas tant changé. L’échelle technologique a changée, certes, mais
les services secrets peuvent cibler n’importe qui depuis longtemps.
La vraie différence, la vraie nouveauté, c’est la surveillance de masse. Or la surveillance
de masse est une violation massive de libertés fondamentales. Elle n’est jamais justifiée.
Alors que la surveillance ciblée est parfois justifiée et peut être établie dans un cadre
démocratique sous contrôle de l’autorité judiciaire, par exemple avec un rétro-contrôle

38
citoyen des institutions (Chomsky dit que l’on pourrait contrôler les services secrets, donc
nous pouvons éventuellement imaginer des façons d’encadrer ces activités pour que la
surveillance ciblée soit justifiée) ; la surveillance de masse, elle, n’est jamais justifiée. Elle
est toujours une violation massive des libertés fondamentales.
La bonne nouvelle, c’est qu’aujourd’hui nous pouvons échapper à la surveillance de
masse. Nous sommes quelques-uns ici à avoir dans notre poche une petite clé usb, avec
un système dit « bootable » utilisable sur n’importe quel ordinateur : il s’agit de TAILS, qui
a été développé par les informaticiens les plus à la pointe sur ces questions-là et qui
rassemble l’état de l’art de toutes les technologies à base de logiciel libre qui permettent
de protéger ses communications. Si en tant que journaliste vous utilisez TAILS pour parler
avec votre source, si vous êtes docteur et que vous l’utilisez pour parler à vos patients, en
général, on peut garantir que vous n’allez pas atterrir dans les mêmes filets que tout
Facebook, tout Google, tout Apple, tout Microsoft. Voilà la bonne nouvelle.
Sur la vision Debordienne, je suis tout à fait d’accord. Mais ce qui a peut être changé
depuis Guy Debord, c’est le « peer to peer », c’est ce mode d’organisation en réseau dans
lequel nous sommes tous acteurs, et pas seulement consommateurs passifs. C’est une
capacité que nous donne encore le réseau aujourd’hui.
Dans les grandes victoires politiques que nous avons remportées ces dernières années,
Juan mentionnait l’ACTA au niveau européen : c’est aussi SOPA et PIPA aux Etats-Unis,
où nous, les internets, avons battus Hollywood. Beaucoup d’autres victoires comme
celles-ci ont été gagnées par des modes d’organisation citoyen en « peer to peer »,
profondément décentralisés, en réseaux, sans même l’intervention des grands médias
centralisés (ou alors, avec les médias seulement à la fin). Ces modes d’organisation sont
précisément le « diffuse power » que décrivait Chomsky, et qui est, je pense, encore
organisable même avec une surveillance de masse.

2h02m00

Question du Public : Gostaria de fazer apenas quatro comentares, começando por

questionar se realmente os Estados Unidos perderam o controlo da America Latina, o se
eventualmente o governo dos Estados Unidos perdeu o controlo sobre o seu proprio
governo, enquanto que as grandes corporações, Monsanto, controla America Latina, por
lo menos o agro-negocio em uma forma inegável.
En segundo lugar, aquilo que esta acontecendo agora em Europa, e que aconteceu em
America Latina ha 30 - 40 anos atras : a intervenção do FMI. O Portugal tive a terceira

39
intervenção do FMI agora. Mas mais do que a intervenção do FMI que e essencialmente
econômica e que tem a ver com os direitos democráticos, também existem outras coisas
como a cedência que o Portugal fez de todos os dados genéticos da população
portuguesa. Sao coisas que claramente tem tudo a ver com a nossa privacidade e nossos
direitos democráticos.
E depois, em Europa também existem alguns movimentos como na America Latina, por
exemplo em Espana com « podemos », um novo partido politico que vem das massas, e
as redes sociais são utilizadas no sentido da democracia, permitir aos cidadãos participar
ativamente e ter um poder de decisão ate um certo ponto.
Finalmente, discordo com uma das afirmações do Chomsky quando diz que os últimos
stalinistas no mundo foram os intelectuais francês : o partido comunista português
continua a ser stalinista…

Juan Branco : Obrigado !

En deux mots, sur Podemos, j’ai participé en Espagne à une initiative qui venait du 15-M
et du mouvement des indignés, à travers une amie commune qui s’appelle Simona Levi et
du « Partido X », et qui essayait vraiment de donner des outils démocratiques au peuple et
de trouver des façons de gérer différemment la politique à une échelle nationale grâce à
internet. Cette révolution a été récupérée de façon symbolique dans leq images par
Podemos, mais absolument pas dans le fonctionnement, qui reste un fonctionnement
« caudillista », avec une série de défauts que vous avez mentionnés. C’est là que l’on
retrouve ce que disait Debord, d’une façon plus générale, la force des images : quelqu’un
qui a encore accès aux médias traditionnels comme la télévision est capable de capturer,
à un moment, un mouvement qui a mobilisé des millions de personnes, et de faire en sorte
que l’image de son visage (parce que c’est la figure du leader de Pablo Iglesias qui était
sur les bulletins de vote aux élections européennes, ils n’ont pas mis de logo mais son
propre visage sérigraphié) réussisse à capter tout un ce mouvement, qui s’était construit
pendant des années et qui finalement a été « emprisonné » par cette personnalisation et
s’est donc retrouvé impuissant.
Malheureusement, il n’y a pas de solution immédiate : il faut aussi tenir compte des
questions culturelles, sociales; dans la perception on a encore besoin de quelqu’un à qui
se référer, un « visage ». Ce sont évidemment des questions très importantes.

Philippe, es-tu prêt à nous faire l’honneur de ta lecture?

40
2h07m25

Philippe Aigrain : Je partage l’avis de Céline Curiol : la fiction a un rôle essentiel à jouer
dans l’appropriation possible par les gens de la réalité de phénomènes qui ne sont pas
visibles. Elle vous en donnera des exemples tout à l’heure.
La poésie doit être plus modeste. Modeste sur sa propre qualité, mais aussi modeste sur
ce qu’elle essaie d’obtenir comme résultat. Je pense qu’elle peut juste faire échos au
monde. Donc je vais vous livrer un de ces échos. C’est une petite pièce de poésie
phonétique. La poésie phonétique résulte d’un texte d’origine découpé en phonèmes ou
en syllabes qui est ensuite recomposé avec d’autres mots. Là, j’ai fait une forme modérée
de poésie phonétique. La plupart des mots sont intacts. Il y a des formes beaucoup plus
radicales dans lesquelles il n’y a plus un seul mot d’origine qui est conservé. C’est difficile
à traduire, donc soyez indulgents avec les interprètes qui faisaient un travail fantastique
sur du langage normal.

*poésie de Philippe Agrain*

2h14h00

Juan Branco : Philippe, voudrais-tu nous dire pourquoi tu as décidé d’écrire de la poésie
sur ces question?

Philippe Aigrain : Parce que je parle toujours trop longtemps et que la poésie, surtout une
poésie minutée comme celle-là, garantit qu’on ne parlera pas plus longtemps que la durée
prévue…

Juan Branco : Donc nous ne te ferons pas parler davantage sur cette poésie…

Philippe Aigrain : J’ai voulu faire une espèce de tableau général à la fois des éléments
constitutifs de la surveillance tels que je les vois, et des réponses qui peuvent être
apportées. La dernière strophe étant une ouverture à une forme qui reste à explorer.

41
Question du Public : Inspired by the poetry, my question is about the relation of linguistics
and the pathology of mechanisms of power. Chomsky’s work has been known as a
profound study of a minute battle with power. So the question here is about what we can
do for a more profound, more radical war against power. We know from the studies of
Michel Foucault that facism starts with the individual. We also know from the
anthropological studies of Pierre Clastres, that in the primitive societies, the power was
exercised in a different way, through a very intimate relationship with society.
Now, we also know that for at least 3000 years, power has grown and has acquired a
knowledge, capturing everything that was ever created. Power turns against creativity. The
state is very good in capturing this creativity and using it against the people.
Today it looks like, despite all the studies done, we have never developed a way of
preparing against what is coming. Is there a possibility of building a structure that will
promote a more profound war against mechanisms of power? For example, promoting
talent, artistry, a reverse of the linguistics that feeds the power… Can we develop
something on the long-term rather than just reacting to the threats of power?

Juan Branco : J’aimerais demander à Philippe et à Céline si vous considérez que vos
initiatives s’inscrivent, consciemment ou inconsciemment, dans une perspective comme
celle-ci de changement du rapport au pouvoir, voir une perspective de changement du
pouvoir tout court?

Céline Curiol : Votre question est tout-à-fait intéressante, mais je pense que je n’ai pas du
tout la réponse sur cette idée de long terme.
Noam Chomsky le dit : « information is power ». Aujourd’hui, nous avons tous beaucoup
d’information, pourtant nous n’avons pas plus de pouvoir. Il faut donc aussi prendre en
compte les moyens d’action, il ne suffit pas de « savoir ». La créativité, l’art, pour moi, la
littérature, est un moyen d’action dérivé. J’ai envie de répondre à votre question, «  quelle
est l’arme, à long-terme, de cette guerre? » par : l’arme, c’est « reading », « litteracy », la
lecture, la connaissance - pas seulement l’information, mais la connaissance - pour
pouvoir comprendre les choses, pour qu’elles ne nous « tombent dessus ».
Ai-je, moi-même, l’impression de faire cette guerre contre le pouvoir? Je… je ne sais pas.
En tout cas, j’aimerais pouvoir faire en sorte les lecteurs développent leur esprit critique.
C’est toujours par manque d’esprit critique que l’on se fait avoir, dans ce jeu du pouvoir.
Le fait de ne pas questionner ce qui nous est donné, ce qui nous est présenté d’une

42
certaine façon. Dans ce que vous disiez je pensais à Orwell, et au rôle du langage :
comment les choses sont emballées dans des mots, nous sont servies avec certains
termes. Il faut pouvoir nous demander si ces termes correspondent à la réalité qui nous
est présentée.

Philippe Aigrain : J’ai peu de choses à ajouter à ce qu’a dit Céline, si ce n’est insister sur
ce qui est peut-être la première étape de la capacité à agir dans la durée : se fixer nos
propres agendas.
Je vais dire quelque chose qui est contraire à ce que je viens de faire, mais je pense
qu’écrire de la poésie qui n’a rien à voir avec ces questions est une réponse au moins
aussi importante que d’écrire de la poésie qui se met au contact de ces questions. Tout
simplement parce que l’un des grands ressorts de la capacité de capture de nos actes se
trouve dans le fait de leur assigner des buts d’intérêt, des buts de pouvoir, et de ne pas les
laisser vivre dans une sorte de gratuité (je ne parle pas de gratuité pas au sens
économique mais au sens du don et de l’échange).
En tant qu’activiste, ce que Céline a souligné sur le vocabulaire et sur la langue est
fondamental. Nous avons passé quatre ans à imposer le terme « partage » contre le terme
« piratage ». Evidemment, ce n’était pas pour parler de la même chose : il ne s’agissait
pas de dire que tout ce qui était autrefois désigné comme « piratage » allait désormais
être appelé « partage » : il s’agissait de retrouver, de réassigner un but qui émergeait
directement d’une volonté individuelle et collective de donner un sens à la culture, un sens
autre que celui que lui donnent les industries culturelles. Ces questions de lutte pour le
vocabulaire sont absolument essentielles : c’est ce que nous faisons sans arrêt.

Jérémie Zimmermann : Je voudrais ajouter quelque chose…

Désolé par avance, c’est un peu ennuyeux quand un panel est à ce point consensuel,
mais je suis moi aussi tout à fait d’accord avec Céline sur la nécessité de transformer
l’information en connaissance, comme étant la base de ce pouvoir qu’il faut reprendre en
main.
Pour revenir à votre question : pourquoi n’a-t-on rien prévu? Ou alors, qu’a-t-on prévu?
J’ai quelques éléments de réponse. D’un point de vue politique, la charte des droits
fondamentaux, la déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme et un certain nombre de
textes, certes imparfaits, certes appliqués de façon différente de par le monde, nous
donnent un cadre à peu près universel sur lequel nous appuyer pour imaginer des
politiques publique qui permettraient de décentraliser l’information, de la transformer en

43
connaissance, et finalement, en pouvoir. D’un point de vue technologique, les
architectures décentralisées nous garantissent contre la formation d’agrégats de pouvoir
disproportionnés, comme un Google. Une architecture décentralisée s’apparente à ce que
l’on disait sur le « peer to peer » tout à l’heure : c’est un réseau dans lequel chaque
membre est un participant, contrairement aux architecture de Google, Facebook où tout le
monde se connecte en un point central, formant des tours de données telles qu’elles
étaient imaginées dans les livres de William Gibson. L’architecture décentralisée et le
logiciel libre se développent depuis trente ans : ces objets, ces logiciels appartiennent par
leur nature à l’humanité toute entière et offrent à chacun la potentialité de contrôle par
l’auto-appropriation et le partage de la connaissance. La cryptographie quant à elle permet
d’utiliser les mathématiques, les forces de la nature, pour garantir la sécurité de nos
communications et de nos données.
Nous allons en reparler samedi et dimanche, mais ces outils, s’ils sont implémentés
conjointement à des politiques publiques qui les mettraient en avant pour protéger nos
libertés fondamentales, seraient une voie, un chemin que l’on peut espérer tracer.
Je reste cependant convaincu d’une chose : nous n’arriverons pas efficacement à les
mettre en oeuvre si ce mouvement n’est pas accompagné d’une démarche sociale et
culturelle dans laquelle transparaîtrait ce sentiment d’urgence, cette nécessite de
reprendre en main, tous à notre échelle et de façon décentralisée, ce pouvoir.

Juan Branco : Avant de prendre d’autres questions, j’aimerais revenir sur le travail de
Céline Curiol et son roman qui traite en partie sur ces questions, Permission. Céline,
voudriez-vous en dire quelques mots avant de lire? Puis nous finirons par une dernière
série de questions et de réactions à ce que nous aurons entendu.

2h26m56

Céline Curiol : C’est un roman qui a été publié en 2007, il y a maintenant 7 ans. C’était
bien avant les révélations de Snowden, mais à relire certains extraits, on y trouve
quelques échos. Je ne vais pas vous raconter l’histoire. J’ai choisi des extraits qui ne sont
pas dans l’ordre pour essayer de vous donner une idée de ce texte et des questions qu’il
soulève, qui sont liées au thème d’aujourd’hui. Ce roman, c’est une fiction qui se déroule
dans un univers qui est tout à fait parallèle et semblable au notre, à la seule différence que
la fiction y a été abolie, c’est-à-dire qu’on n’écrit plus de roman, qu’on n’en lit plus, et que
la fiction est considérée comme quelque chose de néfaste pour l’être humain. On suit un

44
personnage qui travaille pour une institution qui est plus ou moins modelée sur les Nations
Unies, dans laquelle il exerce une fonction particulière qui est celle de «  résumin », c’est-
à-dire qu’il doit résumer tout ce qui est dit dans les réunions de cette institution. Et en
parallèle de son travail, il lui est demandé de rédiger un rapport sur tout ce qu’il voit dans
sa vie quotidienne, sur toutes ses observations. Il croit qu’il fait un rapport sur le monde
extérieur, mais en fait, ce rapport - et là, on en vient aux questions de surveillance - va
servir à savoir ce qu’il pense. La question de l’écrit, c’est aussi s’exposer à une forme de
surveillance. C’est en gros, le texte… Et vous voulez que j’aille lire maintenant. D’accord.

2h28m52

*texte de Céline Curiol*

Je vous remercie de m’avoir écoutée.

2h46m11

Juan Branco : Voulez-vous nous révéler comment se finit le roman?

Céline Curiol : Evidemment, sélectionner des passages n’est pas évident pour faire
comprendre l’histoire. J’espère que vous avez eu quelques éléments qui font échos aux
questions que l’on s’est posées, mais je ne vous révélerai pas la fin.

Juan Branco : Pourtant, elle est très intéressante, je vous l’assure !

Est-ce qu’il y a des réactions par rapport à cette lecture dans la salle, et plus
généralement, sur ce rapport à la fiction?

Question du public : Thank you for the reading. I had a question about how you see
yourself as an author, or as an artist, writing about a story which has obvious connotation
to major political issues. Also, about this idea of using fiction, or fictional work, whether it is
poetry or a novel, to address political issue : what is, to you, the role of the artist in that
context? Do you see yourself fulfilling the role of an activist? Or fulfilling a civic duty?

Céline Curiol : It’s a complicated question. Art can be political but it cannot be its only goal.
The problem, as an author, is that if you become too political, then you become focused in

45
one direction, and your work looses its diversity. The power of fiction, or one of its powers,
lays in the fact that you have characters, and with them, the possibility to give an array of
point of views. To me , that is the richness of fiction. An author of fiction is not trying to tell
the reader « this is what you should think ». One can try, a little bit, but fiction opens a
landscape, and there should be diversity in it. That is how I see it. Also, being an author,
writing fiction, is a way to escape surveillance, like we were saying earlier. I cannot be held
responsible for what I am writing, because it is just a fiction.

Juan Branco : There were times when you could been held responsible, even for your
fictions.

Céline Curiol : Yes. Of course. I am talking nowadays, in France.

Philippe Aigrain : Je reviens en Français. Une des raisons qui m’ont poussé à demander à
Céline de lire des extraits de Permissions, au-delà des éléments de surveillance, et de
cette surveillance particulière qui est au coeur du gouvernement de soi et de l’adhésion
possible à des systèmes, même lorsqu’il y a toute une partie de vous-même qui sent qu’ils
sont à rejeter ; c’est parce que la description de l’institution dans son livre a pour moi une
énorme portée explicative de pourquoi, avant les révélations de Snowden, il y a eu des
dizaines de milliers de gens qui ont participé à ces programmes de surveillance, sachant
qu’ils étaient secrets, qu’ils n’avaient été que fictivement approuvés par la loi et qu’ils
étaient contraires à la Constitution américaine, et qui n’ont, malgré tout, rien fait pour les
empêcher. Les mécanismes de la pression interne à l’égard d’une institution, et en
particulier lorsqu’elle affiche des valeurs positives et qu’elle pratique une forme de
novlangue, sont pour moi très importants à comprendre. Je suis membre d’une
commission au parlement français sur le numérique, dans laquelle nous avons auditionné
des personnes des services de renseignement, mais aussi des autorités qui les contrôlent,
et un monsieur a dit « je fais plus confiance à un monde où chacun contrôle la désirabilité
de ce qu’il se passe qu’à un monde où il faut des héros pour dénoncer ce qui est
contraire ». C’est aussi mon idée, mais pour que ce monde devienne une réalité, il faut
que les institutions elles-mêmes ne développent pas des environnements qui rendent
impossible pour les individus qui y sont immergés, la possibilité de les transformer de
l’intérieur. Malheureusement, je pense que nous sommes aujourd'hui dans une situation
où les institutions sont souvent incurables de l’intérieur. Il n’y aurait donc que l’action
diffuse dont parlait Noam Chomsky pour les forcer à devenir de nouveau curables.

46
Juan Branco : Snowden a beaucoup raconté ses nombreux efforts pour essayer de
changer le système de l’intérieur, avant d’en sortir et d’être en rupture. Il a tout fait pour
essayer de créer un minimum de prise de conscience, pour voir s’il y avait des marges de
manoeuvre, pour ne pas avoir à être en rupture - en tout cas, c’est comme ça qu’il le
décrit. Car Snowden lui-même se présente comme quelqu’un de très conforme au citoyen
américain moyen, sans aucune particularité, sans aucun héroïsme, sans rien de plus que
sa conscience - quelque chose que tout le monde a, finalement. C’est très important, cette
normalisation de ceux que l’on tend à voir, et à raison, comme des héros. Finalement,
Snowden était comme les 10 000 autres personnes qui travaillaient au même endroit que
lui, mais à un moment, a trouvé les ressources, a su être en rupture… Ce qui implique
beaucoup de questions : les autres sont-ils alors problématiques? Dans quelle mesure?
Ont-il essayé eux aussi? Et cela soulève aussi outes les questions de conformité…

Je voudrais également rebondir sur cette question de la fiction : finalement, la force de

Snowden est d’être presque devenu une fiction lui-même, une fiction alternative à la
propagande étatique. Son image, c’est comme ce renversement de Big Brother : ce n’est
pas Big Brother qui est sur tous les écrans, mais c’est Snowden, qui a réussi à apparaître
comme une figure qui incarne tout ce dont on parle et tout ce qu’on essaye de créer.
Evidemment, son acte ne se veut pas fictionnel, de la même façon que vos écrits ne se
veulent pas politiques; mais en même temps, ils sont fictionnels, comme vos écrits sont
politiques. Snowden créé une fiction par son acte politique. La politque, finalement, n’est
rien d’autre qu’une fiction : qu’est ce que la politique, sinon d’inventer un lien entre nous
tous. Nous inventons un lien entre nous : nous sommes portugais, nous sommes français,
peut-être demain serons-nous rebelles? C’est un rapport que nous essaierons de creuser
demain.

Philippe Aigrain : Un petit « teaser », quand même : il y a quelqu’un qui a beaucoup aidé
Snowden à devenir une fiction en en créant une. C’est Laura Poitras. Ne ratez pas la
projection de son film, en sa présence, demain soir.

Question du Public : Que vont faire les autorités avec toute cette information? On parlait
d’être « target » pour une raison politique ou économique. Mais si l’on s’imagine dans 50
ou 100 ans avec tous les problèmes économiques mondiaux, que feront les autorités, quel

47
est l’intérêt pour le pouvoir d’avoir toutes ces infirmations? Et alors, quel serait notre rôle
en tant qu’artistes? Pourquoi tant d’information?

Juan Branco : Nous essaierons de répondre à cette question demain : nous parlerons de
la fiction du droit, en présence, notamment, des avocats de Julian Assange, Baltasar
Garzon et Jennifer Robinson. Nous parlerons de fiction différemment avec Eben Moglen,
Professeur à Columbia, qui travaille sur ces questions depuis trente ans et qui est l’une
des grandes références universitaires sur ces questions. Il tiendra une conférence dans
laquelle il expliquera « pourquoi les réalisateurs et le créateurs sont responsables de la
surveillance de masse ». Enfin, demain soir, Laura Poitras répondra peut être
indirectement à l’accusation d’been Moglen en présentant CitizenFour, le documentaire
qu’elle a filmé avec Edward Snowden à Hong Kong. Laura Poitras est l’une des
journalistes qui, avec Glenn Greenwald, a révélé les documents de Snowden. Elle nous
fera l’honneur d’être présente demain.

Merci beaucoup, et à demain.

48
49
Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

Conférence n°2 : Le choc de la surveillance de masse

avec
Céline Curiol, Baltasar Garzon, Jérémie Zimmermann
animé par Juan Branco

Juan Branco : Jeremy, in organizations like La Quadrature du Net, how are the actions of
Assange and Snowden valued? And how do these actions help your fights and struggles,
and the way you mobilize people? Is it helpful? Do you think that you reached more people
after the revelations of Snowden and Assange?

Jérémy Z : It is not just about reach. What Wikileaks showed to the world is the power of
information and the power of individuals. Wikileaks showed that secret was abundantly
used to hide lies and crimes ; and that courageous individuals had in their hands the
power to counter this unbalance of power caused by the use of the secret. In a way, a
pandora box was opened, and by definition cannot be closed again ! Since Wikileaks, we
have seen the vati-leaks, the lux-leaks, the French-leaks with Mediapart… there are
countless initiatives where citizens, locally, nationally or globally get organized in order to
help the spread of information that would be useful to understand to counter lies and
crimes. In our everyday activism, of course we are in line. What we stand for at La
Quadrature du Net is the use of digital technologies to empower citizens to be a part of the
public debate surrounding questions of fundamental freedoms online. Our initial motive is
to provide tools to understand what is going on and to react, to act, to participate. Once
again, when there is an unbalance of power, whether it is about copyright or censorship or
internet neutrality, we are always facing some of the most powerful industries in the world,
that are organized on a global scale to influence legislators. One may think, « what can I
do as a citizen? What is in my power? ». But we demonstrated that one million of us,
sending emails, at the same time, making phonecalls, writing on blogs, sending messages
through each and every possible channel, can win ! We can win against Hollywood ! We
can win against Big Pharma ! Maybe we will be able to win against even more powerful
industries, such as the security industry that we are facing with surveillance. Of course,
when we saw the big releases of wikileaks… Wikileaks existed since 2006 or 2007, that
was even before of La Quadrature du Net was born. Since the beginning of it, we were

Page 50 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

very much interested in it. It is when Wikileaks became mainstream that we started feeling
really concerned, and we supported Wikileaks as soon as there was an occasion.
Interestingly enough, our work on ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that we
defeated in the European Parliament in 2012, began 4 years earlier, in 2008. At first, there
were only declarations of intention of the negotiators, with press releases issued by the US
Trade Representatives and by the Trade Commission. And from that moment where all we
had was a press release and we were saying « oh, we think, based on the content of the
press releases, that they are going to hurt freedoms online », to a few month later…

Juan Branco : Can you describe in a few words what was ACTA?

4m29s
Jérémy : It’s just an example, I am not even sure if it’s relevant. ACTA was a transnational
treaty aiming to impose copyright enforcement and modify criminal law, that would have
harmed freedom of speech, privacy and right to a fair trial online.
My point was : at the beginning, we were in the dark, speaking to the general public about
press releases and what we thought were the negotiators’ intentions. And then, there was
a turning point : Wikileaks released a draft version of ACTA. From that moment, we could
plant our teeth in some meat, everything changed : we analyzed the text, we peer
reviewed our analysis so we were sure of what we were talking about. « Yes, we told you
we thought freedom would be threatened, now we have an evidence, now we have a draft
of the negotiations that are going on ».

Juan Branco : It is very impressive. La Quadrature du Net has a small team of permanent
people, while ACTA was a treaty negotiated by States and the European Commission,
with a huge mobilization of means. One of the questions of this symposium being « How
can we act? », I am asking, how an organization like yours managed to stop a movement
that could have seemed unavoidable?

Jérémy : Well, there was this lead off one draft version of ACTA in 2008 by Wikileaks, then
further down the road, we, as La Quadrature du Net, leaked two other draft versions of the
trade agreement. Along the years, we built an analytical foundation to our action. I am not
a lawyer, I am just an amateur lawyer, but in contact with lawyers, academics, trade
experts, industry experts as well, we managed to polish our analysis and made it very
solid, so that when we came to politicians we would crush their arguments with our

Page 51 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

analysis. And from that analytical base, we could rally, we could speak to people about it. I
spoke in maybe 300 conferences about ACTA, we sent 250 press releases during those 4
years. Little by little, people joined from the health industry, along with people caring about
freedom of speech. Little by little, a wider range of actors came together and rallied the
movement, while we turned our analysis into political sense. We built narratives that were
not just a denunciation : we could say, « ACTA will attack the internet, our freedom fo
speech, ACTA is a vision of copyright that is pushed by US industries and that will attack
us as individuals ». By pushing this message forward, through decentralized ways of
connecting individuals and organizations, we created a political momentum that was much
stronger than what those 39 countries and their big industries altogether were able to push
in front of the European Parliament. One year before the final vote, everybody was still
saying that our battle was impossible to win. In the end, we won by a crushing 478 to 39 :
there were 12 times more people against ACTA than people in favor.

Juan Branco : Just with a few citizens deciding to mobilize themselves and to trigger
others…
Hay algo interesante que me parcece que teneis en comun, de manera muy diferente,
Celine y Baltasar, es la manera en la que aveis pasado, los dos aveis decidido pasar de
los dos lados de una misma dimension : Celine de la réalité à la fiction en quelque sorte,
et évidemment Baltasar desde el Estado y trabajar para el Estado, a defender a alguien
que esta perseguido por Estados.
Entonces, ma première question irait à vous Céline : y-a-t-il eu un facteur déclencheur, un
moment clé, où vous avez décidé que votre travail en tant que journaliste ne vous suffisait
pas, soit pour saisir la réalité, soit pour la transmettre? Et comment cette transition s’est-
elle opérée du journalisme a la fiction?

9m53s

Céline Curiol : C’est une question intéressante. Je crois au journalisme, et je n’attaquerai

pas les journalistes ici ; mais personnellement, il y a un moment où il m’a semblé que
l’information devenait tellement surabondante que ma contribution n’était pas suffisante,
pas significative. Une information en elle-même elle ne produit rien, elle n’est pas orientée.
Le recours à la fiction me permettait d’avoir une plus grand liberté de propos, mais aussi
d’incarner certaines choses, de donner un sens, ce qui me semble important. Quand on
parlait tout à l’heure de mobilisation, de comment susciter l’intérêt des gens - monsieur

Page 52 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

Garzon demandait comment faire pour continuer à maintenir l’intérêt du public : ce sont
des questions compliquées, car l’information est par nature quelque chose d’instantané,
qui passe. Nous sommes toujours en train de nous raconter une nouvelle affaire, un
nouvel événement, alors comment faire pour inscrire les choses dans la longue durée,
pour aller au-delà de l’immédiateté des médias?
Le recours à la littérature, c’est aussi une façon de s’inscrire dans le symbolique, et dans
une durée plus longue. Et puis il y a aussi tout le travail sur le langage. C’est intéressant
ce que disait Jéméry tout à l’heure, vous parliez d’un projet de loi sur ACTA, et vous disiez
« il fallait que l’on interprète ce projet », c’est-à-dire qu’il y a toute une langue - et c’est la
même chose à l’ONU aussi ) qui, au premier abord, semble signifier quelque chose, mais
il faut lire entre les lignes pour comprendre ses réelles intentions. Cette médiation pour
interpréter un texte et le faire comprendre à des gens qui ne sont pas forcément initiés à
cette langue, réalité dont je me suis rendue compte en travaillant à l’ONU, est un travail
très important, que l’on peut réaliser au travers de la fiction.

Juan Branco : Baltasar, como vez, ahora que has visto los dos lados, que ya los veía de
una cierta manera como joven instructor, pero, vez una ruptura en la manera en la que
esta tratado Assange, que son como mecanismos que son adulterados, porque tu
evidentemente los mecanismos que son utilizados para buscar a Assange y asegurarse
que esta vigilado etc. son mecanismos que a priori se podrían utilizar de manera legal, de
manera contenida, y tu crees que hay solo un cambio de escala, o una ruptura? Has visto
algo así de fundamentalmente diferente con lo que habías visto tu en tu experiencia
precedente?

13m19

Baltasar : El Estado siempre va acudir a la razón de estado cuando le interese - a la mala

razón de estado. Los movimientos desde el estado para investigar a ciudadanos que los
servicios de inteligencia o otros consideran que pueden ser perturbadores para esta
tranquilidad que necesitan, siempre se va a producir. Los servicios de inteligencia siempre
van a jugar sucio cuando necesiten hacer. Históricamente, siempre ha sido así. Y lo van
seguir haciendo. Muy infantil pensar que por las revelaciones de Wikileaks o por las de
Snowden sobre vigilancias masivas, una deformación de lo que es la inteligencia y las
relaciones diplomáticas hacia un tipo de acción desde mi punto de vista claramente illegal
va a cambiar. Y la prueba es que después de que sean producidas estas revelaciones, se

Page 53 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

sigue actuando y se conoce acciones que se llevan desde adelante desde la ilegalidad. E
estar en una parte o la otra del estado, es decir formando parte de la sociedad y en
defensa de algunos ciudadanos, o ser de los que juzgan, no esta distinto. No esta distinto
si lo haces con apego o con respecto a la legalidad. En mi historia he tenido la posición de
investigar al estado, de ser investigado por el Estado, de investigar la guerra sucia de
servicios de inteligencia y policiales para hacer frente al terrorismo cuando no era esse el
camino, o apoyar acciones claramente ilegales hasta llegar al asesinato, el secuestro o la
malversación masiva de dinero publico para financiar esse tipo de ilegalidades. Por tanto,
desde el estado también se puede estar enfrentado al estado. Y ser perseguido por el
estado. Lo que sucede es que se demuestra una incapacidad permanente por los
servicios de los estados democráticos para desarrollar una razón democrática de la
seguridad. La seguridad participativa por parte de los ciudadanos. Ahi, es la idea de que
la seguridad del estado es hacer las cosas ilegalmente, y que cuando se ponen de
manifiesto parece que se hunda el mundo - y no es así. es mas fácil para quienes están
dispuestos a quebrantar el estado de derecho, torturar que aplicar sistema científicos de
investigación, de preparación, de garantías, que al final producen mejor efecto que la
trampa, que el maltrato, que la tortura, pero… por una razón o por otra, se acuden
siempre a la primera, y no a la segunda. Y eso es donde estamos. Lo que hace Wikileaks,
lo que hace Snowden, lo que han hecho otros a lo largo de la historia, es poner de
manifiesto esta podredumbre, esta forma de actuar, esta mala razon de estado. No la
bueno razón sino la mala razón de estado, es comoda (?? 17m50), que produce mas
rentabilidad personal, que protege no la seguridad de los ciudadanos sino la de los que
ejercen el poder. Al final, siempre es asi. Yo recordaba cuando en el caso Pinochet se
decía por los Pinochetistas y por muchos sesudos, pseudo intelectuales, que la dictadura
de Pinochet había sido diferente a la (??? 18m28), porque Pinochet, mismo que Franco,
no sabia donde llevaba dinero, si habían ido a salvar a la patria del comunismo y de las
hordas rojas que iban a acabar con España y con Chile y con todo lo que se pusiera por
medio. Claro, esta es la idea que ademas había instaurada un cierto sector importante de
la sociedad chilena, como también en es España. Sin embargo, lo que aconteció es que
en 2001 se descubre que el señor Pinochet y su familia tenían 29 millones de dólares en
el banco Riggs. Y era todo honestidad, impoluto pero con 29 millones de dólares. Claro,
entonces es una pura falsedad, es algo que se construye entorno a esta seguridad
personal que prostituye el estado, que se ??? (19m40) del estado y lógicamente va a por
quien denuncia que esto es así, que esta es la situación en la que se encuentran estas
personas como nos hemos encontrado otros cuando hemos ido a investigar. La forma de

Page 54 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

combatirlo es denunciarlo, es ponerlo a la luz publica, porque va a llegar, y ja esta

llegando, una conciencia ciudadana que después de mucho tiempo, por lo menos ahora
por mi pais, esta claro que se esta formando. Se esta formando porque se demuestra
como de la impunidad que arrastramos del franquismo, estamos enlodados en la
corrupción y ahora que parece que nos damos cuenta que esto es así,y es por no atender
estas llamadas de atención que sistemáticamente nos esta mandando, y que cedemos al
interés de los que gobiernan para taparlas, en vez de denunciarlas. Esta es nuestra
responsabilidad : denunciarlas, pero también en la sociedad, ponerlos de manifesto.

20m55

Juan Branco : In the three cases we have discussed, and in the three interventions we
have had, the « revelations » played a huge role. We need to reveal in order to trigger a
mechanism of reaction : but how do we make a revelation efficient? About the Snowden
revelation more precisely : what reactions has it triggered? Has it really triggered any?
We don’t see the consequences yet : they are very small, in terms of public policy. So, I
would like us to think about what is the next step, how we can convert revelations into
actions.
If there are questions in the public, raise your hand and we will pass the microphones. But
maybe Jeremy you want to say something about this first.

Jérémy : Baltasar mentioned « security » several times. Speaking about reality exceeding
fiction, the Snowden revelations precisely exposed the fiction that was erected around that
notion of security : the National Securit Agency, founded to ensure and increase the
« security » of US citizens, was instead actively working, through its bullrun decryption
program to sabotage the online security of every citizen in the world, including US citizens.
This model of State paranoïa where anyone is potentially an enemy is in total opposition
with the original justification of surveillance. Empirical evidence shows that, for instance,
mass surveillance enabled to foil less than 1% of the terrorist plots n-in the US, while, on
the other hand, there are countless examples of mass surveillance being used for political
and economic spying, for intimidation and pressure on activists in the US and in the world.
So, we need to deconstruct the fiction of security : the NSA is working against security. Not
for security.
I would like to add one more thing : we cannot talk about « where to go from here », if we
do not properly talk about the « here ». What really struck me in the very first video of

Page 55 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

Snowden, the 12 minutes video filmed by Laura Poitras in Hong-Kong and released by the
Guardian, was his sentence : « we can see your thoughts as they form when you type
them on your keyboard ». It means that people in the NSA, the 950 000 people in the US
with a level of clearance comparable or superior to the one of Snowden, have the ability to
see in real time what you type on your keyboard, which words you type and then delete
before pressing « send ». They can see on which word you hesitate, they know the way
you write, which indeed tells a lot about you. From there, we all have to reflect on the
impact that mass surveillance has on freedom of thought, which is one of the most
precious fundamental freedoms we have, in the sense that it is key to enabling all the
others.
And again, it goes back to the question of trust : the bullrun and the PRISM programs
provided evidence that Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft (and further revelations
included Intel, Motorola, Qualcom, which all together may amount for 99,9 something-
percent of the technology we use everyday) cannot be trusted anymore. We live in a world
where technology is being used against the security of everyone. We live in a world where
roughly 1 million people in the US, plus their partners in other countries, are enabled to
look into our thoughts. What is the consequence of that, for us, as individuals? And for us
as a society? We have to answer those questions before we can move on to
understanding what we have to do.
Since the Snowden revelations, many more people are caring about these issues; but we
have been activists for years, and we have been so frustrated by how little people cared
about privacy. It was either « oh, I have nothing to hide », argument that is becoming
increasingly easy to dismantle ; or, plainly, « oh, I just need to find a job, I just need to get
money, I just need those very basic things and then maybe, later, I will care about my
privacy ». I think there is a missing link here, between the people (activists, political
scientists, lawyers or journalists) who may already have this notion of privacy as a
fundamental freedom, and the people who just don’t see how this issue concerns them
too. Once again, this quote by Sowden about « seeing our thoughts as they are being
typed on the keyboard » gave me a hint : maybe we should stop talking about « privacy »
and explain how this is a violation of our intimacy. Intimacy is the moment when we are in
full trust, when we feel free to be truly ourselves, with no barrier, with no mask, no role to
play, no costume, and experiment with new ideas, new theories, new practices, new
works, without the fear of being judged. Without being judged. It is in these intimate
moments that we form our identity, that we make our identity evolve, that we have the
ability to become somebody else, maybe a better person. And it is with this ability to

Page 56 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

improve ourselves that we can improve society. So, the essential idea I would like to
convey is: it is the very personal notion of intimacy that is being threatened, not some
abstract fundamental right defined in some dusty charter sitting somewhere.
Also, when we know we are under surveillance, our behavior change. It was obvious at the
time of the Stasi, when those two big agents with blacks and glasses were banging at your
door at four in the morning and telling you « we know who you are, we know what you are
doing, so either you shut up and stop immediately or… something ». Today, we are all
actors of our censorship, it is about self censorship. When you know your boss can read
whatever you type on your keyboard, you won’t type « my boss is a jerk » or « my boss is
a liar » or « a criminal ». When you know everything you say on the phone can be
recorded and used against you, you won’t call your doctor to ask about an abortion or
about an STD, because you are afraid it can be used against you. I am very much
concerned that one of the effect of these revelations on people who are not yet
empowered to do something about it would be to increase their self-censorship : « well, ok,
I know, we are all being watched watched, so I am going to be carefull and I’m going to
shut up ». If the effect of these revelations - and of our activism on this subject - is to make
people to speak less, rather than speak more ; if it makes them act less, rather than act
more, there is very little chance that we can change anything about it.

33m00s

Juan Branco : Baltasar, querias reaccionar?

Baltasar : Quería hacer un, contar un par de anécdotas porque cuando oía Jeremy a mi se
me ocurre que la intimidad es un valor en decadencia, o sea… irremediablemente la
intimidad paso a la historia. Y ademas paso a la historia de forma consentida por casi
todos, no. Cuando uno se enterra de que este acto inocente de colocar en el whatsapp un
avatar donde pones a tus hijos a tus nietos, a tu novia, a tu novio, a tu chica, a tu chico, a
ti mismo, y después sabes quien lo sabe, que hay un archivo, un almacenamiento
sistemáticos por servicios de inteligencia de todos los avatares, pues resulta que con
tanta frecuencia como tu cambias la foto del avatar del whatsapp estas dandole
información a un servicio de inteligencia, sea oficial o no oficial, e de golpe se va a
encontrar con toda tu familia, con tus amigos, con tus amigas, es decir estamos dandole
una información que esta siendo almacenada. Y es así, es reconocido por los propios
servicios. Pero, esto que es así también quería hacer la mención de que los servicios de

Page 57 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

inteligencia siempre, como decía, se van ocupar de aquellos que de alguna forma, desde
el estado importunan desde los medios de comunicación, desde la sociedad en general.
Estaba tratando recordad situaciones, y cuando en España yo estaba investigando el
terrorismo de estado, pues tenia mis comunicaciones intervenidas y ademas para que no
viera duda, me enviaban las grabaciones que me grababan. Luego las cintas
magnetofónicas anónimas me llegaban a mi domicilio, y me oía a mi mismo pues
hablando desde mi oficina, desde mi casa, desde el celular, etc. Después cuando cuando
investigue algunos casos de corrupción relacionados con Silvio Berlusconi y otros jueces
fiscales y lo hicimos, apareció en uno de los juicios que los servicios de inteligencia tenían
un listado de 104 jueces europeos con el titulo de « la internacional judicial roja ». No el
distintivo rojo de Interpol sino rojo ideológicamente. Y después cuando, estando fuera de
la carrera judicial, me entero que los servicios de inteligencia españoles hacen informe
sobre mi cuando voy en algunos países, como por ejemplo el caso de Nicaragua, porque
al parecer le suscita mucha preocupación que yo vaya en Nicaragua, y emiten informes
de inteligencia. Después, apareces en un listado de hasta 100 personalidades en mi caso
con mis correos y mis claves de access. Se supone que por mi defensa de Julian
Assange, y hay una investigación abierta en la fiscalía de Argentina en este sentido. O
que cuando entro, después de que se hizo publico que podia asumir la defensa de
Snowden, yo hice un viaje a los Estados Unidos, seguido, y en Atlanta, nunca me habían
retenido en la frontera, y ademas yo estaba nervioso porque tenia que hacer un enlace
hasta Seattle, y no llegaba. No llegaba y entonces, pues de esta suerte me pasaron a
capilla, es decir me pasaron en una dependencia y empezaron a preguntarme. Y yo con
mi mal ingles trataba de defenderme ahi. Después de una ora el señor que me estaba
interrogando porque era un autentico interrogatorio, le dijo a otro : tu que hablas español,
ayuda-le. Y, yo miraba así, porque veía detrás del mostrador unas manos que salían de
una oficina, veía una mesa y unas manos, y la gente que me trataba a mi, entraba,
hablaba con alguien, y yo veía las manos y nada mas, y un dossier así, sobre mi.
Imposible que subiese hecho en una hora, no. Entonces le dije a el que parecía, que al
final se hizo amigo mío después de una hora y media, el que hablaba castellano, ya
cuando me acompañaba para agarrar el enlace hasta Seattle, le digo « y este tocho que
había allí ?», que dice « no, esto es un informe sobre usted ». Digo « ah, no lo sabia yo
que había un informe en Atlanta sobre mi ». Quiere decir que cuando el servicio de
inteligencia o cualquier servicio del estado le interesa un sujeto, siempre va a tener la
información, siempre va invadir su intimidad, siempre va poner las trampas que sean
necesarias para evitar que avance en la investigación, sea judicial, periodística o de

Page 58 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

escritora. Va a tratar que no salga a la luz. Y eso es el combate permanente, la lucha

entre una falsa seguridad del estado y la razón democrática de los ciudadanos ; que
queremos exactamente lo contrario para que haya mas seguridad jurídica y seguridad
personal.

39m30

Son dos modelos que muy difícilmente se van a reconciliar. Ai estamos.

Juan Branco : Vamos tentar tomas duas outras perguntas consecutivas, comentamos de
aqui com a primeira pessoa.

Question du Public 1 : Eu estou estudando vigilância nas sociedades contemporâneas.

Uma das duas questões que eu queria colocar e se conhece um projeto chamado Indect.
E um projeto cofinaõciado por l’união europeu de investigação e que basicamente
trabalha com algoritmos avançados para tentar processionar dos movimentos das
pessoas. Eu não sei se voce conhece uma serie, em inglês o titulo e «  person of interest »
que parece em Cambridge e que não e ficção, esta se desenvolvendo, são 9 centros de
investigação em europa, o projeto de investigação acabo a coisa de três meses, e penso
que e uma falta de liberdade e esta muito pouco divulgada. No meu estúdio falei com três
entrevistados, o principal entrevistado do Indect tento minimizar todo o que era
investigação, falei com o presidente da comissão nacional proteção dos dados em
Portugal que no tinha conhecimento da situação, e falei ainda com movimento « stop
indect » que existe em toda europa e com activistas dos Anonymous. Acho que … (???)

A segunda questão : ouve uma mudança da lei da vigilância em Portugal. A lei da

vigilância dava puder …

Question du Public 2 : I am a Portuguese citizen but I’ll try to speak in English. I have two
short questions. The first is addressed to Balthazar : I would like to know if you stil believe
in the rule of law. As Julian Assange’s lawyer, you have been waiting for years for a formal
accusation, and there is none. I think we are dealing with something that I would call
« terrorism of state ». States deploy surveillance to fight terrorism, but the terrorism is now
coming from the state itself. I was wondering if the international justice system can still do
something about it.

Page 59 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

The second question is more general, and addressed to the panel : I was rather chocked
that no one, neither yesterday nor today, mentioned the « real » enemy. Of course, we
know that, for governments, citizens are the enemy. But who are our enemies? I don’t
think it is the state or the government. Our emery is something else, that has not been
mentioned here… and I am quite surprised, and chocked. Our enemy is capitalism and
market economy. In fact, who are the major beneficiaries of the information that is being
collected by surveillance? Governments of course, partly. But a lot of the information is
also profitable to corporations who use it, not for mass surveillance, but for mass control.
Why is this room almost empty? Because people are are being mass controlled by
marketing to stay at home and play videogames. Governments are puppets of something
else, which was not mentioned here. Thank you.

Question du Public 3 : Nous vivons dans une société qui n’est pas vraiment démocratique,
dans laquelle les gouvernements sont assez timides lorsqu’ils doivent répondre aux
exigences du peuple. Au-delà de cette conférence, que peut-on faire pour que les gens
soient plus conscients des risques de la surveillance? Quelles sont les actions qui
permettraient de sensibiliser davantage les gens?

Juan Branco : Nous avons là trois questions assez vastes. Je vais d’abord donner la
parole à Baltasar pour qu’il réponde à la question qui le concernait, puis à Céline qui
souhaitait réagir sur la question du capitalisme et du rapport à l’économie, que l’on a déjà
un peu traitée hier avec Noam Chomsky ; et ensuite, nous verrons comment se mobiliser.

49m40s

Baltasar : No conozco el proyecto Indect, yo creo que la respuesta esta en tu propia

pregunta : hiciste la pregunta y formulaste la respuesta. Por tanto yo tendría que decir, me
has aclarado cosas que no sabia. Lo que si puedo decir, como una reflexion, es que lo
que se inicio como un servicio ciudadano de una vigilancia externa supuso el primer paso,
no se si consciente o inconscientemente, - supongo que nada ocurre por casualidad -, que
aceptado por la sociedad, que tuvo alguna oposición a la colocación de cámaras en
determinados lugares públicos, pero el terrorismo internacional daba muy duro en estos
días, y se aprovecho una circunstancia de emergencia social para generar una necesidad
que a este momento no existía. Se preguntaba a los ciudadanos y todo mundo, bueno,
veía las imagen de las torres gemelas que caían, los atentados de Londres, los atentados

Page 60 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

de madrid, pues cualquier ciudadano les decía que si le importaba que hubiera unas
cámaras puestas en la boca de los metros o de unos edificios, decían « ah no, yo no
tengo inconveniente, no ». A partir de ahi se fue generando una necesidad de seguridad.
Obviamente el Leviathan del estado no se sacia nunca. Cuando las cosas se pueden
poner mas faciles, acuden a lo fácil. Es evidente. Siempre fue así. Entonces, si vemos lo
que esta sucediendo ahora mismo, ahora digamos que ha ido cierta reacción después de
Wikileaks y después de Snowden porque si que nos damos cuenta de que ya estamos
invadidos totalmente, estamos atravesados por los ultra-cuerpos de la seguridad. Se ya
no sabemos que es seguridad o no seguridad, por que te milimetran absolutamente todo
lo que haces, y no es una cuestión de película, es una cuestión real. Yo pone al ejemplo
del whatsapp, pero podia poner el ejemplo del Facebook : ya no hace falta que un juez
autorice la acumulación de datos, es que ya esta en la ley, que tienes que felicitar los
datos, que te solicite a efectos de inteligencia, Microsoft, cualquier de ellos, tiene
obligación de darlos, y si se resisten como algunos, se inicia una presión durisima que al
final, por interés económico, y ahi enlazo con la segunda pregunta, se cede.

53m30

Evidentemente, quien gobierna, desde mi punto de vista, no son los gobiernos, son las
corporaciones. Yo me acuerdo de Jose Saramago cuando decía que el ultimo presidente
de los Estados Unidos había sido Bill Clinton, y con dudas lo decia. O sea a partir de ahi
gobiernan las corporaciones. Eso es evidente.
El interes economico, como no va a gobernar una corporación milles de millones de
inversion el sistema de seguridad, son sistemas que se aceptan por los países, e que
cada vez va más allá.
Por tanto lo que si es verdad es que cuando eso esta masivo se produce una reacción. Y
en Europa la directiva de la Union Europea de 2006 y luego 2010 en la que se establece
limites al uso de la inteligencia en estos temas. Bueno es una reacción que fue motivada
por que precisamente se comienzan a masificar este tipo de acontecimientos. Hoy dia
pues también hay una idea de dar mas amplitud a la interceptación de comunicaciones
por que aparecen fenómenos nuevamente - terrorismo, isis, el estado islamico, Al Qaeda
ya agora resulta que al dada casi no es problema, ahora es isis, mañana sera otro - pero
van avanzando e se genera de nuevo una necesidad. ya no hace falta acudir a casos de
hace diez anos. Ahora la gente vive traumatizada por las imagines en las que todo el
mundo se ve asustado, y si en este momento te dicen que es necesario ampliar el sistema

Page 61 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

de seguridad pues tu dices « vale, bien », no piensas en lo que se va generando. Por

tanto este es el problema. No puedes tener el avance de la técnica. pero lo que se tiene
que hacer es la exigencia de controlo de este avance. Tiene que ser un control ciudadano,
un control con participación de los ciudadanos. Y alguien me dira « bueno eso es una
utopia, eso es populismo », no, es que es necesario, porque ya tenemos el ejemplo de lo
que viene sucediendo cuando nos cuidan las instituciones, cuando cumplen con su
obligación de proteger a los ciudadanos, lo vemos, en el ámbito económico, la corrupción,
la seguridad : al final todo se torna curiosamente en una agresión as los ciudadanos. Por
tanto la definición de los controles con participación de la sociedad, desde mi punto de
vista, es uno de los caminos para conseguir para que esa expansion de la seguridad, de
la video-vigilancia, los algoritmos, tenga un desarrollo apacible.

57m07

La segunda cuestión ya he dicho algo sobre todos los temas relacionados con la
economía.
las acusaciones que hay contra Julia Assange… Si, claro. Las acusaciones pueden ser
infinitas. Como infinito es el camino que definen los que tienen el control de la
informacion. pueden ponerle los títulos penales que quieran ponerle. En definitiva lo que
ocurre en el caso Assange es un juego entre la libertad de información y acceso a la
misma, y el control de esta informacion por servicios de inteligencia, por servicios del
estado para tener las manos libres y actuar sin ninguna tipo de cortapisa. Control de la
ciudadania o control estatal, para bien o para mal. Son los dos modelos. Lo que en los
últimos anos se ha puesto de manifiesto a través de todos los mecanismos de internet es
que ese controlo se puede hacer y molesta. Molesta muchísimo. Molesta y ahi aciones
desde el estado, de los servicios de inteligencia, se clama por la inseguridad, se dice que
eso entorpece la lucha contra el terorismo, que hace mas inseguro, es el mismo discurso
de siempre. Porque frente al mismo lo que se quiere es la tranquilidad para hacer lo
bueno y lo malo. No voy a decir yo que todo sea malo, no. Entonces, ese es la
perspectiva terrorismo de estado, justicia internacional, is claro que se puede hacer, se ha
hecho,. Lo que ocurre es que ahora, de una forma o de otra se han concitado, se han
puesto de acuerdo en acabar con la posibilidad de que la justicia de un pais pueda
intervenir en hechos ilegales de otro. Esa es la razón por la cual ahora mismo no hay una
investigación en profundidad de los casos desvelados por wikileaks o por snowden.
Porque no hay una respuesta, un sistema que lo impulse, y porque quienes se atreven a

Page 62 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

hacerlos corren grave riesgo por parte del proprio sistema. Y la uncía posibilidad de que
estoy cambie nuevamente viene por los procesos participativos de la sociedad. Es asi. Lo
único que puede evitar es que un pais donde la acción judicial se desarrolle e que acaben
con los jueces, es el apoyo popular, siempre fue así. Ocurre que el apoyo popular se
diluye, y al final los servicios del estado permanecen, y suelen acabar con esa resistencia.
Quien es el enemigo? Hay muchos enemigos. El estado puede ser un enemigo. El estado
es un enemigo cuando da un golpe de estado, cuando genera impunidad, cuando
persigue a personas que tratan de hacer de la trasparencia un valor, pero también hay
ejemplos de que el estado puede ser y debe ser todo lo contrario.

1h01m00

Me viene a la memoria una anécdota ya hace muchos anos, pero que desvela quien esta
en un sitio y quien esta en otro en el estado. El general Dalla Chiesa, que fue asesinado
por la mafia, pero en 1978 estaba al frente del mando unico antiterrorista en Italia. Cuando
sequestraron a Aldo Moro, al secretario general de la democracia cristiana. Las brigadas
rojas secuestraron y amenazaban su vida. Unas detenciones de miembros de la brigadas
rojas y alguien se planteo la tortura de los detenidos para que confesaran el lugar donde
estaba Aldo Moro. Y el general Dalla Chiesa dijo algo que desvela donde estamos cada
uno. Dijo « Italia se puede permitir la perdida de Aldo Moro pero no la practica de la
tortura ». Aldo Moro murio, lo mataron. Pero hubo perfectamente una razón de estado
representada por el General Dalla Chiesa que no cedió ante de la ilegalidad, y una mala
razón de estado que proponía ese cambio. E, definitiva esa anécdota ejemplifica todo lo
que ocurre antes y ahora. De donde nos coloquemos es la solucion. Que se puede hacer,
que métodos? Supongo que Jeremy y otros técnicos, expertos, podrán disegnar sistemas.
Otros que somos interpreto jurídicos podremos interpretar las leyes, podremos hacerlo en
forma progresiva. Otros hay que las interpretan en contra de las victimas. podemos exigir
movimientos sociales participativos, pero hay otros que también exigen esa « mas-
seguridad » porque tienen intereses económicos. Eso es el modelo de sociedad y de que
triunfe uno o otro pues estaremos mejor o peor.

Juan Branco: Gracias. Celine, vous vouliez répondre à la question plus proprement
économique?

Page 63 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

Céline : Oui, en partie. J’aimerais d’abord revenir un instant sur l’argument sécuritaire, qui
me semble important. Nous n’avons pas mentionné le 11 septembre. Pourtant, le
traumatisme des attentats a justifié un certain nombre de ces politiques sécuritaires. Je
me souviens d’un sondage qui avait été fait auprès des américains peu de temps après le
11 septembre, dans lequel ils répondaient massivement que la sécurité primait sur les
libertés civiques. C’est un argument fort, qui mérite que l’on se demande ce que
représente cette sécurité pour nous. Faire peur à la population, dire « vous êtes
menacés », est une tactique facile qui a fait ses preuves pour tous les partis d’extrême
droite, entre autre. Il faut donc bien réfléchir à ce que représente cette sécurité pour
laquelle nous sommes prêts à tant de sacrifices.
About your question, I would start by saying that the term terrorism has to be used
carefully. There are gradations in state terrorism : we don’t live in Syria, we have to be
careful about how we use this word.
As for this idea of enemy : « having an enemy » is the argument that is being used to
justify the security measures. You ask « who is our enemy? » : I don’t feel like I should
have an enemy. You are right, capitalism is involved. However, I want to believe that
people still have the freedom of choosing if they want to come to a conference or stay
home and play video games. Yes, capitalism has an influence, but this is just an ideology.
We shouldn’t tell people that they are powerless, that they dont have the power to choose.
So that was for your question.
Also, one point on surveillance and our growing desire to become public figures. It seems
like there is a trend of people wanting to be famous, to be exposed, wanting to be seen,
publicly. Maybe the reason why the revelations about mass surveillance have not had that
much impact is because of this desire to be in the spotlight, if I may say.
Last, and i hope we will discuss it a little bit, you were talking about « watching your
thoughts as they form » : this is not new. Orwell, in 1948, when he wrote 1984, was talking
about the « thought police ». But they cannot put one surveillant behind each person, this
mass surveillance is based, and will be increasingly based on algorithms. Now, using
algorithms to detect somebody’s thoughts leaves a huge space for interpretation. We
should all wonder : is the development of technology going to generate more arbitrary
judgements?

Jérémy : I couldn’t agree more. People are already being killed by drones based almost
solely on metadata. This is already happening : arbitrary decisions leading to death by
missile strike. What has changed since Orwell’s 1984 is, precisely, the technology placed

Page 64 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

in between the surveilled and the surveillants. The telescreen in 1984 was a purely
passive device : it showed Big Brother to the citizens and filmed them, but it didn’t process
any information. I believe we are are being optimistic when we argue that « if they really
are collecting all the data there is the world, they will never be able to process it correctly,
therefore we are safe ». To me, one of the most frightening forms of this global
surveillance is not the ability to process information in real time, but the ability to replay it in
the future : if there ever is a hint - maybe given by a random algorithm - that you may be
worth surveilling, then there will be a human being looking at 20 years of what you said on
Facebook, on Google, etc.
Which leads me to the question about Indect. I have heard about Indect but didn’t act upon
it because to me, so far, it is just a research project in the EU about interconnecting many
technologies that exist already : video-surveillance, profiling, facial recognition, passengers
data being picked up at the borders. The idea behind Indect is to aggregate all this data.
Indeed, this is what makes it scary, but it is just a research project. What is interesting is
that the European Union is allocating 500 Million Euros to this project - politically, we could
reclame some of the decision making process of EU funds allocation.
The Indect case shows - and I am sorry to paraphrase once again the title of this
conference - that reality exceeds fiction. We now know that the NSA and the five eyes are
already doing some profiling that goes way beyond what Indect will be able to do. If you
control google, you have the ability to know what everyone here is reading on the internet.
If you look at a webpage that contains advertisement by google, web analytics by google,
Java Script code by Google, phones sent through Google, it means that Google knows
that you are reading that page at that moment. They know if you’re left or right, straight or
gay, they know if you like butter or olive oil, they may know things about you that your
mother doesn’t know. I agree that aggregation of data is extremely worrying - we know that
it is already happening and it is going to happen no matter what. It is, indeed, a very
important battle, but I am not sure if it should be focused on Indect, on Google, on the
marketing data or in whatever secret services are already doing.
Reality exceeds fiction : maybe this also partly answers the question « what shall we do,
where are we going from here ». This is in a way a tactical question. I think we should
think more about how to use fiction, how to pick elements from fictions in order to build our
own narratives. To give an example, at the time, we built this video about ACTA with a
professional animator woking for TV. We chose to make very explicit graphics, images
with strong symbolism, and the video was seen 3 million times. People even used
screenshots of the video for the signs they brandished in the streets during the protests

Page 65 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

against ACTA. In that case, it was not really « fiction », but it was strong symbolism. Each
segment of the video was telling one story with tiny characters and very explicit images,
and this is just one part of it. I would like to tell this other anecdote that to me is utterly
important : it is about one amendment to a law adopted under Sarkozy in 2010, called
LOBSI. It was a security law that modified 42 different codes, texts of law (even the code
regulating sports in France was impacted by this security law). So there was one
amendment that said - this is a very simple way to understand how a legislative process
can work - « replaces, in every legislative and regulatory text, the words « video
surveillance » by the words « video protection ». Don’t laugh. This is official. This is now
how France calls video surveillance : it is not surveillance anymore, because it is
protection. And this is what Baltasar was saying earlier about the narratives of power
based on fear. And this is what I mean when I say we need to build our own narratives.
The danger being, if we try to out-fear them, if we try to build narratives that will generate
more fear or alternative fear to the official fear of terrorist, ebola, entrax, you name it, we
will never make it. I think we have to work on narratives that, instead of being based on
fear, could be based on… maybe on love ! Instead of being based on disempowering
people, they could be based on empowering people. Instead of being based on
individualities, they could be based on sharing together the very sheer of joy, of
knowledge, of empowerment and of participation in our society. This is something activists,
authors and filmmakers can work on altogether. It won’t be easy, but this is one very clear
tactical way where we won’t need an enemy in order to be able to change things.

Juan Branco : Baltasar quiere responder, luego cogemos una intervención de Philip y las
tres ultimas preguntas..

Baltasar : Era un par de reflexiones cuando Jeremy andaba de que no le gusta identificar
enemigos sino señalar coaliciones y sobre la solidaridad y al compartieron de la
información, me parece genial. Yo también. Pero el enemigo existe. Y el enemigo actúa.
En forma permanente. Lo podemos llamar estado, o la deformación del estado. Lo
podemos llamar corporaciones. O la deformación de las corporaciones. pero o mismo que
hay coaliciones para el bien, hay muchas coaliciones para el mal. Demasiadas. Habría
que identificar quien es el enemigo de Julian Assange, por ejemplo. Hay un enemigo,
claramente. Se generan coaliciones de apoyo y de defensa, si. En estas estamos.
Siempre aparece un aliado que puede tender una mano. En esta caso ha sido Ecuador. Y
la confrontación entre quien lo hace, que representaría la buena razón de Estado en este

Page 66 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

caso, se enfrenta a quien representa lo contrario. Es decir, el enemigo existe. No

podemos dejarlo de lado. En cuanto como decía Céline, todos tenemos la posibilidad de
elegir : no todos tienen la posibilidad de elegir. Es mas una gran mayoría de ciudadanos y
ciudadanas del mundo no tienen capacidad de elegir, de ninguna forma, están recibiendo
lo que se decide que reciban. Por muchas razones - no estamos pensando en quien es -
podemos dinamizar de alguna forma, hay que pensar quien recibe todo esa barbaridad de
insumos y de información que no pueden ni siquiera digerir ni ademas quiere que se
digiera. Y ese es el problema.

1h18m54

Mientras que haya capacidad de denuncia, puede haber información suficiente para que
se produzca esa capacidad de elección (???).
Pero en un tanto por ciento muy elevado eso no es posible. Y por eso es ahi donde se
tiene que producir la incidencia. Que hoy dia hay una colaboración entre poder de los
estados, de los países, corporaciones económico-financieras, y ahora estamos hablando
del aria de la seguridad, pero podíamos hablar de otros sectores estratégicos, para
darnos cuenta que no se deja ningún espacio, así de pequeñito, al error, o a la posibilidad
de cambiarlo. Solo de vez en cuanto - y lo estamos viendo en algunos países - se están
oponiendo a esa realidad expansiva y voraz, que quiere acabar con todo. Y la presión que
se esta realizando sobre esos países es tremenda, tremenda. Claro que hay posibilidad
de elegir, pero no en todos los casos, y desgraciadamente, son los menos los por los
cuales esa capacidad se produce.
Y un ultimo apunte, es una pena que no puedo estar mañana con vosotros para oír ese
debate sobre el lenguaje, el uso del lenguaje, el desarrollo de las ideas, la utilización del
lenguaje como instrumento de poder y como instrumento de control, es fundamental, y ahi
si que se puede hacer y hacer mucho por los medios de difusión, de comunicación, en la
red, es decir, es tremendo la sistematicidad con la que se acuden al uso deformado del
lenguaje para trasmitir y controlar. Y ahi si que hay un campo muy potente en el que se
pueden hacer cosas positivas.

Céline : Je veux juste répondre, je parlais des pays occidentaux quand je disais qu’on
avait la capacité pas forcément de décider mais de choisir ce qu’on consomme, comment
on utilise notre temps, si on va sur google, facebook… C’est de ces choix là dont je

Page 67 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

parlais. endettent il y a toute une partie de la population mondiale qui j’a pas ces choix là,
mais je parlais de l’occident.

Juan Branco : Philippe Aigrain voulait intervenir de la salle. Nous donnerons ensuite la
parole au public.

Philippe Aigrain : Unsurprisingly I fully agree with Jérémy that we should understand
where we stand in order to be able to know how to open new paths. I think we are not
actually completely there in understanding where we stand, because we still use
vocabulary or concepts that are coined to deal with different situations. For example, very
rightly Jérémy and also Céline mentioned the fact that surveillance is a kind of delayed
threat, a « sword of Damoclès », something that, like Jérémy said, they can replay if you
have become a subject of interest. But we all say « Google knows » : no, Google doesn’t
know anything. Google has recorded and processed data that can be interpreted to say
that you have this and that interest, that you are connected to this people, etc. The real
question will be : « how do you live in a world where you have this type of sword of
Damocles », a kind of probabilistic threat, which probably will affect only a small share of
the people. It is very interesting to look at other examples of swords of Damoclès. Two of
them come to my mind : one is living with the possibility of a threatening disease. The
second one is what happens in the authoritarian regimes, whether Eastern Germany or
Egypt. The disease threat tells you to keep living just like you were rather than starting to
invest in supposedly preventive drugs, in many cases. And if you look at the situation of
countries like Iran or Egypt, what actually gave rise to their uprising is that people, instead
of hiding, spoke more openly. The 6th of April movement in Egypt… it is almost impossible
to understand the degree to which people were taking risk. Same thing with Syria where
people were filming themselves demonstrating at the beginning of the democratic uprising,
in a country where everybody really massively is under surveillance, where there are more
of 1 million surveillants for a population of little more of 10 millions. Of course I am not
asking people to take this type of risk, but what I am saying is : when we open new paths,
there is a path of hiding communications to espace surveillance, but there are also paths
that are on the side of expressing what you really think, that people could hear, or should
hear. Many fiction and alternative culture mouvements subtly explored these paths.
Lastly, I couldn’t agree more with Céline’s comment : enemies is what is driving all the
prices that we are trying to escape. Sometimes we have adversaries. It is very different to
have an adversary : you know there is something which is harmful. For example,

Page 68 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

capitalism as an enemy means the whole world is your enemy ; but if you state instead
that you know some forms of business models of large companies will eternally be
harmful, there, you have tools to act upon it. You can choose not to use those companies’
services. The good side of capitalism is that when 20 or 30% of people « leave »
something, it is considered as a crisis. Sometimes the responses to the crisis are worst
than the crisis itself, but it means there is some power, which is the type of diffuse power
we were talking about yesterday after the interview of Noam Chomsky.

Juan Branco : Thank you. We will take the public questions now.

Public : As computer users today, do we have a choice or an option other than Windows or
Intel?

Public : I am a member of Parliament and former assistant of Minister of Homeland

Security in this country. First of all, I think the issue is probably more complex than it
seems. We are not dealing only with mass surveillance by the state, we are dealing with
mass surveillance by companies, by individuals, by basically anyone. If you want to buy a
software app that will allow us, or allow me to wire tap you, I can do that easily, almost for
free. So, the scale of the problem is broader than anyone would think by just listening what
we are saying here. It makes is thus much more difficult to empower the citizens. We can
really not empower the citizens without educating the citizens, and this means educating
members of Parliament, of government, in order to take decisions according to high
patterns of security and respect for liberties, for freedom.
My second point is : we are talking about the state, and everyone thinks of the Russian
state or the US state, or the French state. Now, think about a state such as the Portuguese
one, and I’ll offer a story. We are talking about video surveillance in this country. I led the
program of national mass surveillance. It was laughable, because we had no money. I had
to depend upon the generosity of a guy from Porto, who had a bar and wanted his
neighborhood to be under surveillance in order to protect his customers. Choosing the
technological gadgets was a nightmare. Training the members of the police forces was a
nightmare. They didn’t even like the gadget itself. Getting the money to do it was a
nightmare. And when the program was finally launched, the money was burnt in six
months, the national protection commission put it in a drawer, had to be woken up by the
Secretary of State who protested publicly, and it all led to a big crisis. So, one has to be
quick, flexible. So my question for judge Garzon would be : what are we doing at the

Page 69 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

European level to have positive outcomes in cooperation? The cooperation nowadays is

so slow. And then the second question is : why should we respect the privacy of the
people involved in the « golden visa gate scandal » which is now being revealed? What
kind of privacy? Why should we respect the privacy of the mafiosi? Of Espritu Santo family
who creates offshore accounts just like that? We shouldn’t, we simply shouldn’t. There is
no intimacy or private life for scammers or people who purposely steal from us. We need
to make a distinction, and Mister Baltasar Garzon should be congratulated because his
position was « the enemies exist, we should have the democratic tools to fight against
them », and the tools we have now are not sufficient.

Juan Branco : Thank you, we will take one more question and then have our closing
remarks from our guests.

Public : I have a question for Judge Garzon. Yo soy estudiante de derecho y tengo una
question que es un poquito mas técnica. Que importancia tiene el papel del activismo
judicial en impedir la vigilancia masiva? Existe un papel, o es algo que puede ser
impedido una vez que es una vigilancia formalmente legal?

Juan Branco : Who wants to start answering? Baltasar?

1h35m35s

Baltasar : En cuanto que hacer para mejorar la acción de la union europea en favor de las
empresas en el ámbito que estamos hablando, se puede hacer todo y se puede hacer
nada. Quiero decir que va a depender del interés que tengan las grandes corporaciones
para que las pequeñas empresas funcionen. Y si esto significa que estas con los grandes
vas a prosperar, sino, pues lo vas a pasar muy mal, como en la anécdota. Lo traslado a la
realidad, hoy dia, y los que se dediquen al mundo de la seguridad y de la video vigilancia
o la video protección, que decía, San Sarkozy, verán que hay una obsession y hay
grandes proyectos empresariados auspiciados por estados con financiación de los
estados como China, como Russia, como Estados Unidos, como prácticamente todos los
países de la Union Europea para desarrollar sistemas de video protección en países
donde la protección no existe. Y las licitaciones que se producen son amañadas, esta
todo preparado, ya sabemos como se hace, se plantean las alternativas en la licitación
cuando ya se sabe quien se va a quedar con la licitación. y después vemos toda la deriva

Page 70 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

que determinados países establecen para que sea un sistema concreto de video
vigilancia, de seguridad que curiosamente esta conectado a otros intereses. Entonces
como se va a proteger a la pequeña y mediana empresa que hace con esa invención y
creación propia del dinamismo empresarial del buen capitalismo? Pues con el mal
capitalismo. es decir, eliminaras. No hay posibilidad de competición ahi. Y creo que
cualquier legislación va ir mas orientada a la protección de las grandes empresas que a
las pequeñas empresas. Eso es mi punto de vista. En cuanto al activismo judicial, y que
se puede hacer frente a la video vigilancia masiva. Pues lo que se tendría que hacer es
cumplir con las obligaciones legales que los jueces tienen. Es decir, primero, no contribuir
en forma abusiva a la interceptación de las comunicaciones. Segundo, ser muy exigente
cuando se produzcan acciones ilegales de interceptaciones desde el estado, pretextando
una seguridad del estado, un seguridad nacional. Tercero, exigiendo y apresurando
procesos judiciales. Todos hemos visto las revelaciones de Wikileaks, de Snowden, y sin
embargo se cuentan con los dedos de una mano, y me sobran algunos, los
procedimientos judiciales que hay abiertos. Falta un claro compromiso, un aclara
voluntad, por parte del poder judicial para investigar estas cosas. Y yo crea que por una
parte puede ser que se enfrentan a una inmensidad y esa asusta un poco, y segundo
porque hay una serie de valores como ya asumidos. Cuando yo antes decía que la
intimidad es un valer en decadencia, no es solo una frase, es una realidad. El uso de la
intimidad, el aprovechamiento de la intimidad con fines comerciales de exhibición o de
aprovechamiento por razones x, ha convertido en que cada vez el poder judicial tienda
menos a proteger esa intimidad. Por tanto, si la tendencia es a que todo va a ser
compartido, el valor de la intimidad, cae. Y si cae, no es un interés preponderante. Si
ademas a esto le anades la necesidad de la seguridad de todos los ciudadanos frente a
amenazas globales, cuando ya introduces el adjetivo « global », todo se distorsiona, pues
evidentemente pierdes terreno. Si frente a este no le interpones una justicia global, un
compromiso global, pierdes terreno. Que es lo que esta sucediendo : esto, precisamente.
El valor seguridad, mal entendido o interpretado según interesa a quien tiene que ocultar y
tapar sus falencias, se antepone al del control judicial. Y los jueces lo aceptan, pero
porque tienen asumido que el valor intimidad se ha perdido. Y entonces es bueno para
unas cosas pero es malo para otras. Por ejemplo, para cuando se producen abusos
masivos por parte de instituciones que tienen el poder de cometerlos. Podemos enfocar el
siempre hacia el contrario, no hacia cuando la violacion del derecho procede del mismo
estado, y ademas revestida de una necesidad de una seguridad, que te llevan a la
afirmación que decía Céline de que, en Estados Unidos, preferían la seguridad a cualquier

Page 71 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

otro valor. Como no va a ser así si en Ohio tapaban las puertas con plastilina como se
iban a entrar las armas químicas de Sadam allí. Es una locura. O te vas a Méjico : hace
dos anos y ahora mas todavía se hice una encuesta y cerca del 70% de los ciudadanos
decían que renunciaban a la democracia a cambio de que se les garantizar a su
seguridad. Y es eso realmente lo que quieren? No. Pero están determinados por una
influencia negativa de la seguridad que oculta otras causas mas profundas que son las
que no se quieren analizar porque se cruzan intereses corporativos onde les da igual que
haya muertos o que haya vivos. La cuestión es el balance a final de ano. Es una realidad.
Pero no es una realidad demagógica inventada, esta acreditada dia a dia. Y hay es donde
tiene que producirse el compromiso judicial. Pero desgraciadamente no son muchos los
jueces que asumen ese riesgo. Por tanto, desde la sociedad civil debemos impulsarlo,
impulsar esa dinámica, con mas apertura, con mas apoyo, con mas información, pero de
la buena.

Jérémy : First of all, and sorry if I repeat what has been said yesterday, I think we always
need to make a distinction between targeted surveillance and mass surveillance. What you
described about buying a software on some Russian website to target Mister Garzon’s
communications, is targeted surveillance. It can also be considered a crime in that case.
But targeted surveillance can be justified if properly framed by democratic means and
democratic feedback loop. Under control of the judicial authority that will assess the
proportionality of the measure, with open and public institutions that will review the
surveillance mechanisms and expiration date of the secrecy, we could think of ways of
making this targeted surveillance that has always existed, more compatible with
democratic principles. On the other hand, mass surveillance will never be compatible with
democratic principles. It is always disproportionate and always amounts to a massive
violation of fundamental rights, and this is what we are talking about. You mentioned the
international judicial cooperation (which is often very slow and sometimes failing). The
secret services already bypassed this cooperation by getting their own dark international
cooperation. Not only the Five Eyes. Maybe the Portuguese secret services - I am really
saying that out of my head - are getting data of Portuguese citizens from the collection of
the NSA, in exchange for letting the NSA access the infrastructure of some Portuguese
telecom operator. This is the sort of deals that are happening, and citizens have no
possibility to find out about it. In other words, a system of power, parallel to democracy,
has been installed and is massively violating freedoms. This is a subject of great concern.
It is also a conception of security that is 100% wrong, because its model relies on being

Page 72 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

able to target the whole world and therefore weakens the security of the whole world. Any
security expert will tell you that this model is not security. Rather, it is using the pretext of
security in order to instrumentalize fear and give more control and more power to some.
Which leads me to the last question, « what else can we do? ». We can, we are actively
building a model of security where individuals are empowered. You called it education, I
have a bit of a problem with the term education because it is usually done in a centralized,
hierarchical structure where one person is allowed to talk and the others have the
obligation to listen quietly. What we do on the internet is about sharing knowledge in a
more horizontal, « peer to peer » way. By sharing knowledge about the very concepts of
security, about the models for architecture or for information systems, we build models that
are in practice more secure but also build a resilience to attack that we share collectively.
This goes through the use of free software, decentralized architecture, end to end
encryption, all those words that may sound like swear words to some, but that we need to
share in an active and joyful way. We will do it over the next hours and days here, and all
over the internet.

Juan Branco : Então muito obrigado a todos, muito obrigado a nossos invitados. Ah, o
Baltasar quer acabar o debate, quer ter a ultima palavra

Baltasar : Por rematar con una idea, a la ultima pregunta que me hicieron sobre el
activismo judicial y el activismo en general : la cuestión esta en que cuando se habla de
inseguridad o de seguridad, en el ámbito de la violacion a la intimidad, se juega con el
miedo de las personas, con el miedo a que va a descubrirse. Cuando se produce una
ilegalidad una interceptación ilegal de las comunicaciones, hasta que no cambiemos la
primera pregunta que nos hacemos, no vamos a conseguir nada. Y cual es la primera
pregunta que nos hacemos : no es de decir esa es una violacion de un derecho, sino, que
dice? Que es lo que dice la información? Obviamente estamos ya entrado en esa
dinámica, estamos combatiendo el abuso de poder en la invasion de la intimidad y lo que
nos interesa es lo que dice ese hecho ilícito, pues entonces mal vamos a combatir el
proprio hecho ilícito. Si lo que nos interesa es que Assange, Snowden o Wikileaks
quebrantan la seguridad de los estados unidos, en vez de que hechos delictivos se están
desvelando y como actuar contra ellos, no vamos a cambiar la percepción. Por tanto hay
que perderle el miedo a la perdida de la intimidad y combatir efectivamente por el
contenido y por preservar ese valor.

Page 73 sur 160

Conférence n°2 : le choc de la surveillance de masse

Juan Branco : Muito obrigado. Então vemos nos esta tarde para una conferencia que se
anuncia espectacular, as três, com Eben Moglen mas também Jennifer Robinson que
trabalha com Julian Assange y muitas outras aventuras. Muito obrigado y ate ja.

Page 74 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de

masse
avec
Eben Moglen, Jennifer Robinson, Eric Sadin et Rui Tavares
animé par Philippe Aigrain

Philippe Agrain : Welcome to the third session of the symposium « Fiction and Reality :
Beyond Big Brother ». I am very excited to be the host and moderator of this session, with
distinguished guests and first and foremost with my old friend Eben Moglen. It was
absolutely necessary to bring Eben to this symposium, for a reason that many people
probably don’t know, but Eben was the first whistleblower on these topics, or at least the
one who promoted the most advanced understanding of what was going on. During 2005
and 2006 there was a silent counter-revolution in the world of the internet and digital
technologies. Hosting videos, music and photographs, which was something that people
were doing by themselves or on a wild variety of platforms, suddenly became impossible
outside of a few centralized platforms. Even word processing became centralized, for
some minor benefits, within platforms such as Google Docs. Blogs and personal sites
which were the basic expression of individuals on the internet and which were initially self-
hosted, or were hosted by a wide variety of platform, suddenly were buried, hidden behind
the extraordinary growth of social networks that were connecting users and bringing them
together as a mass that could be more easily commercially exploited. These changes
happened without us, and by us I mean the communities of people who were promoting
the internet as a tool for human development and emancipation. Without us protesting,
noticing, even, at the start. Then sometimes in July or August 2007, there was a debate
between Eben and Tim O’Reilly at the OSCON conference. Eben, with his usual
dynamism, gave to Tim O’Reilly what Tim himself described as a tongue lashing. Eben
was stressing the fact that we were heading for disaster. Two and a half years later, Eben
gave a talk at the ISOC-NY, « freedom in the cloud » where he gave the whole explanation
behind his initial anger. Today he is going to share, I hope, some thoughts about where we
are in regard to centralization, mass surveillance and the immense dangers it has brought,
which I am sure will open a thought provoking discussion about the future we are heading
into.

Page 75 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

05m13

Eben Moglen :
I am very, very happy to be here. I want to thank the organizers for their very flattering
invitation, and for their extraordinary hospitality. Philip is as always a very generous
comrade and friend, and I am very grateful to him for his introduction : to be reminded of
one of the worst moments in my public life is a very good way to begin speaking now.
Let us start if we might with the biggest of the ideas, and we’ll get smaller as we go, until
such time as we are ready for the movie industry.
The human race is building an external nervous system which will embrace within one
generation every human being on the planet, and we will become a species connected
rather than disconnected, for the first time in the history of the human race. That network,
that nervous system has as its anatomy the thing we call the internet. And its physiology,
how it functions, is made by software. What we are now engaged in is a single generation
long struggle to determine the nature of the species we are becoming. For our comrade
Philip and Jérémy and others who have been working their long or short lifetimes on this
problem, our hope was and remains, that this network can be the bow arc of a new and
even more extraordinary form of human freedom, in which every brain on earth can learn,
and in which we accelerate human intelligence, not by improving its quality a little bit, but
by improving its quantity immensely. The network should provide us with the opportunity to
allow every mind to learn whatever it wants whatever it can hold, regardless of how rich or
poor it is. And in such a world, we would create Einsteins and Van Gogh and philosophers
and dramatists and poets and physicists without number. And by doing so we would save
the planet and the human race. And instead we are building a machine that will make
totalitarianism immortal. We are preparing to destroy the autonomy of human individuality.
We are building a network that flattens what we have most cared about for the last
precious five hundred years in human history since we invented humanism and freed
ourselves from the idea that each individual human being is captive to something larger
than herself and beyond her control. How are we doing that?
As Philip says, we have made a crucial error in the anatomy of our neuro system. Rather
than using the technology to empower each individual human being to create, express,
learn and know in a free and individualist fashion, we are creating an anatomy of the
nervous system which centralizes,understanding of human behavior, too far. And in the
wrong hands.

Page 76 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

09m34

It is conventional and proper to understand the problem now, thanks to Mister Snowden,
as primarily about spying, mostly by governments. And of course, in the end, this is the
thing to be concerned about : power will marry knowledge beyond the ability to control
power and it will know us too well and it will control us completely. In a modern society
technologically well endowed, let’s take the one in Europe I know best the Netherlands, it
now takes six seconds to find any human being in the Netherlands. Six seconds. Because
you swipe on and off the tram, because you carry mobile devices that track you, because if
you are using an apple Mac OS laptop as you would have learned last week if you were
paying close attention to the news, overtime you do a spotlight search, whether on the
network or on your own desktop, your precise physical location is being transmitted to
Apple every single time. Consider what it would have been like, here, in this place, if the
Salazar regime had been able to find every human being all the time thought the state in
six seconds. Now it isn’t nearly a problem of control, not in that sense, not nearly a
problem of listening and controlling. Because of those of my comrades who are here this
week-end, who are very radio-active, from the point of view of the largest and most
powerful empire in the world, this, this room, here, where we are right now, is amongst the
most surveilled places on earth. More surveillance is concentrated on this conference this
week-end than it is presently being used to surveil the nuclear submarines of the Russian
federation, because some human beings are here, and this human beings are provocative
to power. That’s control.

12m00

But I am more concerned with matters that stretch a little bit beyond that question of
control : it is obvious that governments, for reasons of national security have decided to
eliminate anonymity of action. The conflict between antiterrorism, which we could just call
« government control », and the freedom to act anonymously in the network is a conflict
upon which governments, particularly that of my own empire, have decided there should
be no relenting. Attribution of every action, and ability to determine « who » has done
« what » is crucial in their judgement to the preservation of their power. Hence the war on
Wikileaks. Hence the war against M. Snowden’s revelations and M. Snowden himself. I
had a piece from the Guardian about 36 hours ago responding to the behavior of the

Page 77 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

British government, whose chief listener, M. Hannigan, had been saying in the Financial
Times a week ago that the large american companies are facilitating terrorism. So, ten
days ago I wrote to Alan Rusbridger, I said « Alan, are you interested in my answering M.
Hannigan? ». And Alan said yes within a few hours. But by the time I had written a piece,
the Culture Secretary of the U.K had said that the right of privacy is merely a power for
some well paid lawyers to conceal the misbehaviors of rich businessmen and the sexual
indiscretions of sport celebrities. And the former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, who is in
no position to talk about anybody’s sexual indiscretions, said instead that any american
company offering encryption is merely assisting terrorists to commit genocide. And by the
time I got the piece out in the Guardian I was attacking not just m. Hannigan but the entire
Tory government. That determination to eliminate anonymity and secrecy in order to
attribute every human action to its doer is the root of autocratic and despotic government.
But its is secondary to the real problem, which is the end of the anonymity of reading.
When Philipp talks about the centralization, the fact that our pages and ur tweets and out
thesis and out thats and our spreadsheets and our documents are all held in centralized
places, what he really menas is, every time you read something, somebody’s watching you
do it.

14m55

And every time you use those centralized social networks, you are helping them do it to
other people. Every time you tweet a URL it gets automatically shortened by twitter, and
they get the traffic on the shortened URL. So you say to other people « you know, you
should read this », and twitter watches them read it. That’s why tweet is their. Every time
you send a piece of mail to some correspondant of yours through gmail, google gets a
copy. Every time you put a thing on a Google calendar you’re disclosing to Google the
activities you and other people are planning to undertake. There was a meeting of four
very important business people in Silicon Valley a couple of weeks ago that one of them
described to me. And which four people from three company, none of them Google, sat
down for a crucial business meeting. And one of the CEOs in the room began the meeting
by saying, « you know, my calendar is on Google. Google knows we are having this
meeting. » And two of the other people on the room congratulated themselves immediately
and paddled themselves on the back : « Oh, they thought, it’s ok. We carry iPhones »,
apparently never having read the Snowden revelations in Der Spiegel about the
relationship between the NSA and the iPhones. We poison other people’s privacy by using

Page 78 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

these systems. We create an ecological difficulty. The companies like to think that what we
are doing is making what they want us to think, that what we are doing is making a
bilateral agreement with them. For convenience we give up our privacy a little bit, and
everybody thinks « ok, well, that’s very convenient for me, no big deal ». But we’re not. We
are giving up other people’s privacy. And the most important privacy we are giving up is
the freedom to read anonymously. Without the ability to read anonymously there is no
freedom of the mind. Without the ability to read in private, the thing we call «  the
Reformation » could not have happened, and the continuing attempt by centralized
organization to control thought in Europe would have lived forever. The ability to read and
the ability to read in a space that belongs to us none else is in mortal danger. A,d overtime
you help someone else read something you consider valuable by pointing at it through
some centralized facility, you are further degrading the ability to read alone. Not for
yourself, not as a matter of convenience to you, but for other people, in pure,environmental
indifference to the freedom that their minds seek. This is what Philipp means when he
says that we have tried to blow a whistle sine the middle of the last decade about what
was happening. And before that, my comrades and I were busy trying to create the
physiology of a free network using free software that is software everyone can read and
understand and modify, change for themselves and for one another, thus ensuring that the
physiology of the nervous system embracing humanity would not be centrally controlled.
The most efficient despotisms of the 20th century collected vast amounts of information
with which to control their people. And none of those despotisms - I lived in the Soviet
Union when it was a Brejnev’s place - none of those despotisms ever collected anything
like the information now collected about you. Everyday. By a system of centralized
information collection and understanding which is growing smarter and more
comprehensive all the time. Intelligence services have a single purpose : they collect
information about the capabilities and intentions of other things or people. The 20th
century despotisms worked hard to understand people’s capabilities. To understand what
people knew, who they knew, what they might be able to do if they got together. But the
possession of the Google search box enables the discovery of what you wish for. dream
about. Are thinking of. Might risk. And in that box the dreams and aspirations of human
beings are collected on a scale of which totalitarian despotism could only dream before.

20m13
We could fix all this. But it is getting harder with every passing day, because people’s
habits are more and more engrained. Why does this work? It isn’t merely that the services

Page 79 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

are convenient. It’s true that the services are convenient. Though, with the right software
we can make services that do not hurt you or the people around you, as convenient as the
services that you now use.
The real reason that this is happening is that human beings love spying on one another.
The real reason that this works is that the very systems which are spying on you and
eliminating the anonymity of your reading are offering you tiny little opportunities to spy on
others. And the dirty secret is that what’s human being really love. So the services are
giving you back a little bit of spying power, keeping track of people you would otherwise
not keep track of. Knowing about the love lives of people who might otherwise not be
leading their love lives in your view. All the little bits and pieces of gossip that since
primate beginning we have loved so dearly, are the real currency with which your
complacency in the face of this system is bought.
Regrettably, i say regrettably only because in this audience it will be regretted, regrettably
there is no industry on earth that has been more deeply complicit in the creation of this
nightmare than the thing we call the movie business.
This also has at its root, a psychological rather than an economic reason : the very nature
of the movie business is to offer you the opportunity to watch stories unseen while sitting in
the dark. primates are visual animals, we love to watch, we always have, we always will.
But the possibility of telling stories that immerse you deeply in shall i say the lives of others
while leaving you the disembodied invisible watcher, the eye in the fourth wall, is an
irresistible experience for human beings. And therefore, from the very beginning of the
thing, the relationship between telling stories immersively for people sitting in the dark,
watchers unseen, and the spying and controlling business, are psychologically too closely
related to be taken easily apart. But it isn’t just that, of course. No business on earth has
been more determined to control the neuro-anatomy of the network for its own advantage
at the expanses of the ordinary human beings than the movie business. We have been
fighting since before the end of the 20th century, the movie business recurrent desire to
get inside every computer and every screen and ultimately every cable connecting a
screen and a computer in the world in order to prevent the leakage of the product. In
Republic of South Korea, at the moment, due to diplomatic pressure put on by the movie
business through the United States government, every single large file transfer in Korea is
watched in real time b the Korean Copyright Commission. I have stood in a control room
and watched them do it. Every single large file transfer in the entire South Korean internet
is being looked at in real time by the South Korean Copyright Commission in order to
understand whether some child is sharing a movie. And almost 10 thousands young

Page 80 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

people a year are pulled in for what is known literally as copyright re-education school. On
threat of criminal prosecution for sharing culture. I am unable to find a nice thing to say
about the industry that has accomplished that. Perhaps you can. I will say of course about
that industry that it has depicted the problem, told stories about the problem. Francis Ford
Coppola in 1974 in the conversation began the exploration of what it means to be a
listener. Florian von Donnersmarck completed the activity in 2006 at just about the same
moment that Steven Spielberg after great and persistent research gave us in Minority
Report one of the most important facts about the system within which we live which is that
commercial surveillance come first. And government surveillance comes a long behind. M.
Spielberg was extremely acute in his depiction of that fact. After which he went back to
making money, and it wasn’t his problem. because of course that’s the other thing about
the movie business, right?

26m00

It’s the story arc. In which no matter how close we get to understanding the nature of
power and surveillance and the ability to use human beings’ desire to watch against them,
that’s never what makes a good fifth act in a carefully crafted well-arced after-the-story
conferences and all the rewrites way of making the movie.
And in the end, we are usually asked to sympathize with the listener, aren’t we. Oh yes, of
course, all sort of terrible things have happened, blood has come up out of the toilet, or
there’s been a hit and run accident, or…but in the end, it’s the listener with whom we are
to sympathize, because who else would the movie make us sympathize with, but the spy?
This is a crisis for cultural icon, the thing we call Hollywood, Bollywood, this words of the
state movie making that characterizes the European Peninsula, but it’s minor compared to
the recognition that all this, again, goes along with spying on you while you watch. Netflix
is better than the theater, it’s even better than Windows XP which used to tell Microsoft
every time you put a dvd in the slop which one it was. It’s even better than the iPhone with
watches you as you watch whatever you’re watching on it. Because what we do is to get
you fully engaged in the idea that every piece of cultural consumption you undertake is
monitored as you start and watches you watch it all the way through. At the end of the 19th
century we learned the most important thing we’ve learned abut the human race since the
Renaissance : we learned, in the form of thinking we call Freud, that the majority of human
mental activity is unconscious. We have spent a hundred years try to come to grips with
that reality and we’ve done so far an incomplete job of it. But one of the great problems

Page 81 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

presented by the discovery that the majority of human mental activity is unconscious was
to make a science out of that discovery. We argued for much of the 20th century about
whether Freud had accomplished scientifically investigating that phenomenon, that truth,
because the only available evidence that could be gained if this was a science, was by
personal introspection, and therapeutic dialogue between subjectively engaged parties.
And the idea that this created a science of the unconscious was not uniformly accepted to
sy the least. Big data revolutionizes human social science. When you capture all of human
behavior, all the time, everything, what you do, what you wish, what you think, what you
share, how you travel, where you go, how long you stay, how you read, when all of that is
daily captured and stored in memory forever, nothing is lost, nothing goes away, nothing is
forgotten, then of course the majority of what you’re capturing is unconscious activity made
flesh. Big Data observation doesn’t distinguish between your conscious activity and your
unconscious activity, it gets it all. And it compares it all with everybody else’s. We are
about to find out quite a lot about the human species in an undeniably scientific way. And
what we are about to find out is what no one has any business knowing, ever. Because the
consequences for power and the consequences for the order of culture, of a world in which
all of our unconscious activity is fully captured, is a world in which there is no such thing as
freedom, none. This is not any longer a debate about whether God gave us free will or
determined our behavior. This is about whether the machine knows us better than we
know ourselves, and who the machine works for. And the answer isn’t us.

30m39s

Of course the Wachowskis have made a movie about this too. I mean they made one good
one and two bad ones, but they made movies about this. But once again, the story arc is
towards the love stories and the heroes’ journey from innocence to experience by blowing
things up and the usual metaphorical mess which is the movie business view of the human
condition, but it’s there. And by being there like a Scheherazade stories it prevents us from
coming to grips with reality for yet another day. It’s a sham. It wouldn’t be a good sham if
there weren’t some truth in it. But it wouldn’t be a sham at all if it told the truth and if it did
tell the truth there would be no tomorrow like today. And we would do something. And
most of us aren’t M. Snowden and we would prefer not to risk it. And so we don’t.

I said spying and the movie business are inseparable. But i just wanted you to come and
be ready for a fight. What i really mean of course is that we are becoming a species whose

Page 82 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

integration into spying on ourselves has taken a quantum leap in an evil direction. And we
have a very short time in which to fix it, before we bequeath to our progeny a world in
which we would not live. Tens of millions of people died here in the course of the 20th
century in order to prevent a world in which the state listens to every phone call and paid
attention to what every troublemaker thought. It is glorious to stand in a society which has
known unfreedom and made itself free. Ad it is horrible to watch that process reversed by
an insidious thing that people can touch and feel and smell but not understand. We are
there now. And whether we get ourselves out or not depends upon the commitment that
we all have. Technologists have special roles, lawyers have special roles, culture makers,
storytellers too. And we’re not any of us doing very well at it. We have a great deal more to
yearn for, by way of reversal of the mistakes that we have made. But trillions of dollars
now depend upon the continuants of those errors and the consolidation of that power. I will
confess, I hoped, deeply I hoped, in the beginning of my career in doing this that we would
come to a stage at which the network was powerful and the state began to wither away. I
will confess my dream. But that’s not what happened. The state has not withered away.
The power of the people to share and learn and grow has been reversed. Since 2001, for
reasons essentially trivial, the Reichstag burned or something like that, we have equipped
the states to penetrate the net at levels that are beyond human safety in every way. My
government, essentially romantic, essentially amnesiac, essentially determined upon the
exercise of righteous power for human good - because no government on earth watches
movies with the same degree of heartfelt vigor than my government does - my government
has made this worse, because it has exploited the procedures of totalitarianism around the
world, because it has empowered not just itself but every other state, to some extend, to
play this nasty game at a higher level than it could ever be played before.
When the now ex-Indian government announced about 20 months ago that they would
create a content monitoring system which would take the content fo every telephone call
and sms in India, Indians by large laughed, they said, « well, you would love to but this is
India, you can’t do it. You’re not strong enough». Fourteen months later it was finished.
Because the Americans no longer build dams and air bases in countries, they build
surveillance infrastructure. Booz Allen Hamilton, the actual employer of, or last
employment for M. Snowden, Booz Allen Hamilton is now Bechtel. We build around the
world the empirical products, and in the 21st century it’s not concrete, it’s optical stealing.
But it isn’t just my state, of course, it isn’t just my state. The importance of M. Snowden’s
revelations were that the Americans had stopped applying the rule of law to listening; but
no government in Europe has ever applied the rule of law to listening. Ever. And as my

Page 83 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

dust-up with the UK government last week suggests, even the one most likely to talk about
the rule of law won’t actually implement it. They will instead announce that it is obsolete, or
even evil for companies to say that « we will do as the law requires but otherwise we will
shield our customers from you ».
So, it is true that the great problem right now is the public power. But below the public
power lies the private centralization of data, the centralization of knowing, the complete
corporate control of what you wish for. From an economic point of view this is just a bad
advertising. But from a sociological point of view this is about reversing the Renaissance,
eliminating humanism, replacing the idea of the individuals sacred and indefinably precise
right to read and think as one saoul alone with a perfect system of connection which
knows what you mean by what you want before you do. Next time you type something in
the search bow and it offers you a drop down of the things you likely mean, consider what
that implies. If you have stopped going to confession, the search box is where you
confess. And there is no absolution for what you say there. It will be good to make movies
about that. Don't bet on it.
Thank you very much.

38m09

Philippe Aigrain : Thank you Eben for this dense and thought-provoking talk. We are going
to take questions and comments, but first I would like to do what I should have done
before, and introduce the other panelists. To my left is Jennifer Robinson, she is one of the
lawyers of Julian Assange. As you have just noticed, lawyers like to think in depth about
the universe in which they are defending their clients, and she does too, and I hope she
will share some views about the eco-system of whistleblowing that we have, versus the
one that we need, and the various roles of people and organizations in it.
Further on the left is Eric Sadin, author and non-fiction writer. He has written three books
on surveillance. He will talk about the one he is now completing, and share ideas about
next-generation surveillance.
And, if you may introduce yourself …

Rui Tavares : My name is Rui Tavares, I am Portuguese, from Lisbon, I am an historian

and I was a member of the European Parliament working in the LIBE committee, which is
the civil liberties committee of the Parliament. I have worked on the swift case, on the PNR
case (passenger names record) and at the end of my mandate I was appointed rapporteur

Page 84 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

on fundamental rights and the rule of law in Hungary, which is actually one of the countries
where the rule of law, fundamental rights and democratic values have deteriorated the
most in Europe, especially in the last 5 years. Professionally I am an historian who worked
on 18th century issues, mainly censorship and enlightenment.

Philippe Aigrain : We will now take questions and comments on Eben’s talk.

Public : Sobre o seu discurso, penso que hoje não e muito diferente das ditaduras do
passado. Penso en uma situação, que e quando a policia deixa de ser so policia y passa a
ser também política. O que esta acontecendo hoje ja aconteceu no passado e foi
derrotado.

45m10s

Eben Moglen : Quantitative change becomes qualitative change. So let me respond to

what you said by saying that the difference between the information collection and
retention powers of despotism in the past and the present is in the beginning a difference
of scale. In the world of 20th century totalitarianism they had to be targets. You could know
who you were spying on. In the world of 21st century technology, targets no longer have to
exist, the entire country, the entire society, the entire human race can be surveilled at
once. Consider what makes Facebook useful to secret police. Secret police are «  people-
people ». They just want to meet a lot of people. They have categories of people that they
want to meet : sources, adversaries, and influencables, that is the loved ones of
adversaries you can torture and people to whom you can apply pressure to create
sources. They know what they want, but they don’t know who. The beauty of a thing like
Facebook is you have data on a billion people and it can be mined. The relationship
amongst the data points can be discovered without knowing where you are looking.
« Where » identifies itself. The utility of Facebook to the secret police of the world is not
that you can get data out, it is that you can put code in. And so you run in what a
technologist would call a business intelligence layer, a top to Facebook data warehouse.
You watch in real time the lives of a billion people. You are no longer in the attic listening
to the man downstairs who you know you are investigating, pressuring his influencables to
get closer to him. You are in the attic of the human race watching everybody, the lives of
all others to find what you are looking for wherever it may be. This is not the behavior of
despotism in the past. This is not even the behavior of the largest thought control

Page 85 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

organizations in the history of the world like the catholic church. The is a behavior which
goes beyond that in every direction. It begins as a quantitative change, and so for us
historians we begin by saying « yes, we’ve seen this before ». But our role as historical
sociologist is to explain that what we have seen before is not the same as what we now
have. And if we can get other people to see the difference, we can make them active,
rather than passive, in their fate.

Philippe Aigrain : We will take another question, then we will let every member of the panel
also have their say on what Eben has mentioned.

Public : First of all I’d like to react a little bit on the movie business part : I think there is a
big difference between the television and the cinema. The television is monitoring us. As
for the cinema, rather than exciting our desire to spy on others, I think it is generating
empathy for the characters.
I wanted to ask you, at what level do you think all this information is being use? At what
level do you think the corporations or the government are able to crush and direct society
niches, or society as a whole?

Eben Moglen : Let me begin by saying that I spoke not about cinema but about the movie
business. We could address the difference between cinema and the movie business this
way : when I can share the video, we have cinema. When I can’t, we have the movie
business. So that’s easy. We can get rid of the whole problem, let’s just allow sharing of
the video. And then we will be much closer to the world you’re talking about. Let me point
very briefly to you a second question only : after 2001, a bad man, Rupert Merdoch,
decided to make it easier for the US Government to torture people. He created 24. It was.

Philippe Aigrain : I suggest to have now each person in the panel react to Eben’s talk, of
course, based on their personal thinking and experiences. I see Eric Sadin being quite
impatient about it, so please, give it a start.

Eric Sadin : Merci Philippe, merci Eben, je préfère m’exprimer en français, je pense que ce
sera plus fluide. Hier je parlais avec le camarade Jérémy Zimmerman qui disait qu’il fallait
« ouvrir des perspectives » et ne pas avoir une narration trop sinistre ou dramatique sur ce
qui se passe actuellement. Certes, tu as raison, Jérémy. Mais ce matin en prenant mon
petit déjeuner j’ai noté quelques points, j’en ai six ou sept, qui synthétisent quinze années

Page 86 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

de réflexion. Donc je vais essayer d’être bon, de bien synthétiser les choses, et de dire
qu’à la fois je suis 100% d’accord avec Eben, et en même temps je suis tenu de marquer
une distance parce qu’il me semble qu’ici, et à juste titre, nous parlons de surveillance de
gouvernements, de surveillance étatique. Nous savions depuis un moment, depuis
Duncan Campbell à la fin des années 80, nous connaissions l’importance du réseau
Echelon. Ce même Duncan Campbell, qui était lui aussi un whistleblower, à la fin des
années 90 a établit un rapport à la demande de l’union européenne sur la surveillance de
masse, principalement américaine avec le réseau du Common Wealth. Donc nous savions
parfaitement, nous avions les moyens de le savoir. Il y a même un livre paru en 2001 en
France, traduit dans beaucoup de pays. Nous avons été plusieurs, et certains d’entre nous
sont présents ici, à avoir signalé les choses massivement au cours de la première
décennie du 21è siècle : le fait qu’il y avait une sophistication de la capacité des agences
de renseignement à s’adosser aux companies privées, premières instances de récolte de
données, qui, à la différence de ce qu’on voit dans le film de Coppola par exemple, n’ont
plus besoin de dépêcher des agents : les agents des services de renseignement sont en
pantoufles, ils n’ont plus qu’à s’adosser aux cables et aux tuyaux et à récupérer les
données. Mais d’où viennent les données? De notre comportement, de notre assentiment,
de notre agrément; et cet agrément, cet assentiment, il est récupéré d’abord par les
compagnies privées et ensuite par les agences de sécurité. Parfois dans le cadre du droit,
parfois sans un cadre légal. C’est ce que nous a montré de façon emblématique un héros
des temps modernes, Edward Snowden.
Et là, je vais marquer un tout petit distinguo. Je me permets de parler de moi une seconde,
ça sera la première et la dernière fois je l’espère. Les révélations de Snowden ont eu lieu
le 5 ou 6 juin 2013 : Greenwald, Poitras, Snowden, tremblement de terre. Dès le 18 juin
j’ai proposé au Monde de publier une tribune dans laquelle j’ai expliqué qu’on pouvait
s’offusquer de ces pratiques hautement répréhensibles, dont nous découvrions la
puissance de profondeur et de collecte ; mais que nous aurions dû nous en offusquer plus
tôt, et que finalement, ce qu’a révélé Snowden et ses quelques compères qui ont relayé
l’information n’était qu’une forme de banalité sous une forme intensifiée, hyper-structurée,
d’instance étatique.
Or, actuellement il se passe qu’à mon sens - et je m’explique sur cela dans mon procain
livre qui va paraître en mars - la surveillance numérique gouvernementale a connu son
page d’or de 1995 à 2015. La surveillance telle que nous l’entendons ici, c’est-à-dire la
surveillance numérique comme captation d’information relativement aux individus, à des
structures collectives, interceptées par des instances étatiques, désormais devient

Page 87 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

marginale. Et là, j’entre dans la deuxième partie de ce que je comptais exposer aujourd’hui
: aujourd’hui, nous passons un seuil. Ce seuil, Eben l’a évoqué, je dirai le nom des Big
Data mais je dirai plus précisément le fait que notre environnement quotidien est de plus
en plus imprégné de capteurs, d’objets connectés; qui hors nos navigations, hors de nos
communications qui témoignent de nos pratiques, vont témoigner de nos gestes, bon gré
mal gré, à l’intérieur d’une continuité spatio-temporelle de l’expérience. Et cela va induire
une captation des informations à l‘égard des individus et des organisations par quantité
d’organismes privés pour lesquels l’enjeu de la surveillance n’est pas tant de savoir qui fait
quoi, mais d’exploiter la connaissance des comportements à des fins commerciales.
D’ailleurs, personne ne regarde précisément qui fait quoi, ce n’est pas l’enjeu, il ne faudrait
pas se tromper sur le nouveau paradigme de la collecte de données. On peut espérer qu’il
va y avoir des digues, je vais terminer sur les digues juridiques qui ont été ô combien
défaillantes au cours des quinze dernières années.
Je pense que nous passons aujourd’hui de la surveillance numérique à ce que je nomme
le data-panoptism. Les groupes économiques qui sont les premiers à collecter les
informations concernant les individus ne s’intéressent absolument pas à savoir qui fait
quoi, la seule chose qui compte est la revente d’informations hyper-personnalisées à des
fins commerciales. Je suis tenu d’en appeler à la notion foucaldienne de
gouvernementalité, c’est-à-dire de pouvoir. Si nous entendons les gouvernements comme
les instances premières de pouvoir, eh bien j’ose ici me permettre de dire que peut-être
nous nous trompons et nous manquons la cible : c’est le monde technico-industriel, au
sens de gouvernementalité de Foucault (la gouvernementalité en un mot, est la capacité
de certaines personnes à agir sur le comportement d’autres personnes), où s’opèrent
quantité de jeux de pouvoirs dans le quotidien. Le monde numérico-industriel est devenu
une instance majeure de pouvoir dans sa capacité à influer sur les comportements et aller
jusqu’à déterminer le cadre de la perception.
Je pense à cette abomination : je viens d’écrire une tribune parue il y a deux jours dans Le
Monde sur les Google Glass. Avec mes google glass, j’en saurai beaucoup plus sur vous,
sur moi-même et sur mon environnement; cependant ce que je saurai ne correspondra
pas à une réalité objective, mais aux informations hyper-individualisées que mes Google
Glass auront choisit de faire revenir vers moi, en fonction de mes comportements. Voilà ce
que je nomme dans mon jargon (c’est le chapitre de mon prochain livre), « la vérité NSA
du monde ».
Or ce monde numérico-industriel, qui ne cesse de gagner en pouvoir, agit à l’abris de tous
les discours enthousiastes sur l’internet. Sans théorie du complot, ces compagnies ont

Page 88 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

une capacité de structurer des choses qui vont de plus en plus déterminer nos actions et
nos perceptions, sans que nous n’en ayons aucune connaissance.
Pour terminer sur ce rapide balayage sur notre temps présent et ce qui point et qui ne va
que s’intensifier, il me semble difficile d’être porteur de bonne nouvelle, surtout parce qu’il
s’opère une troublante et problématique collusion entre le monde politique et le monde
numérico-industriel. Je fais référence aux mouvements actuels de « smart cities » et de
l’open data où c’est par l’accord du politique, et parfois avec des budgets publics, avec
l’agrément des élus que s’opère la servicisation du monde, c’est-à-dire la mise sous
service de tous les champs de la vie par des applications. La marchandisation de la vie
publique ne fait par ailleurs l’objet d’aucune controverse ni de débat public à la hauteur
des enjeux.
J’ai écouté horrifié la collusion politico-numérico-industrielle. Le Président de la
République Française a annoncé la semaine dernière, le fait du prince, sans aucune
concertation, sans aucune controverse, qu’à partir de la 5ème (donc à l’âge de 12 ans) les
écoliers allaient tous être dotés de tablettes numériques, sans qu’il n’y ait d’évaluation ou
d’étude d’impact. Vous imaginez, en parlant de connaissance des personnes, les
nouvelles modalités de connaissance des élèves et des professeurs qui vont s’instituer !
Alors comme je suis un peu hyperactif en ce moment, j’ai encore écrit une tribune, un
texte qui va paraître dans Libération mardi.
Et je terminerai : face à la démission du politique, face à l’inertie de la société, face au
rapport de gadgétisation que nous entretenons aux technologie numériques qui sont des
technologies cognitives, c’est à une nécessaire repolitisation de notre rapport aux
technologies à laquelle nous devons en appeler. C’est-à-dire que nous devons évaluer la
portée politique, sociale, anthropologique du rapport que nous entretenons avec les
technologies numériques. Quand je dis « face à la démission du pouvoir politique », je dis
aussi, face à la démission du pouvoir juridico-poltique, ou une forme de démission, ou une
forme d’inertie des législateurs.

1h05m50s

La connaissance de plus en plus approfondie des comportements individuels et collectifs

(la prochaine étape sera évidemment les implants sous la peau) à l’intérieur d’une
continuité spatio temporelle de l’expérience, mais aussi la profondeur de connaissance de
l’humain (pas seulement détenue par la NSA, mais prioritairement en vue de l’exploitation
commerciale) - ne peut être contrebalancée que par une réappropriation des technologies

Page 89 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

par les citoyens, via le free software et bien d’autres formes, par une repolitisation de ces
enjeux et une prise de conscience de leur portée éminemment cognitive, politique et
sociale.

Philippe Aigrain : Merci Eric. En réalité nous aurons l’occasion, je l’espère, d’explorer à
fond dans nos échanges ce que tu as présenté comme de possibles désaccords, dont je
ne suis pas si sûr qu’ils soient des désaccords. Ce qui nous réunit probablement tous les
cinq ici est le soucis de la politisation des choix techniques, et l’absence de confiance
dans le fait que les industriels ou les gouvernements auraient spontanément les bons
choix en la matière. Nous reviendrons à cette question mais je suis sincèrement
reconnaissant du fait que tu nous aies obligés à une pensée projective et non
rétrospective. Je voudrais rebondir sur ta conclusion en demandant d’abord à Rui
Tavares, puis à Jennifer Robinson, qui ne sont évidement pas les prototypes, ni l’un ni
l’autre, d’une confiance aveugle dans le politique qu’il soit législatif ou juridique, de nous
dire quelques mots de comment ils voient les rôles respectifs de l’action citoyenne
distribuée. Noam Chomsky, dans ce que nous avons écouté hier, parlait beaucoup de la
gouvernementalité (et pas seulement de celle des Etats) et disait d’abord « it is in our
hands ». Mais il disait également que seule l’action diffuse pouvait transformer les choses.
Donc, je propose que Rui Tavares commence : avec votre expérience de législateur (entre
parenthèse, j’ai une sorte d’expérience de législateur moi-même, comme membre de la
commission parlementaire numérique de l’Assemblée Nationale qui me conduit plutôt à
partager le diagnostic d’Eric Sadin), que pouvez vous nous dire là-dessus?

1h10m30s

Rui Tavares : Eu tenho como hobby ler jornais e revistas antigas. Não ha provavelmente
nenhum momento tao fascinante numa cultura mediática que ja era próxima da nossa, de
seguir do que aquele momento entre mayo, junho, julho e agosto de 1914. Porque a
transição de uma Europa muito parecida com a nossa, feita dos escândalos cotidianos
con celebridades - França na altura do atentado de Sarajevo estava preocupada con o
assasinado do diretor do Figaro por uma mulher de politico do partido radical y não
pensava em mas nada, pensava naquele julgamento de celebridade, y nem deu pela
noticia do que o arquiduque tenha sido morto em Sarajevo. Em Portugal as primeiras
noticias acerca do era um assunto seria são do 25 de Julho. E poucos dias antes, o que
se dizia nos jornais em Portugal era, agora que a situação orçamental esta controlada,

Page 90 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

vamos construir uma marinha. O 26 de Julho começou a partir as primeiras noticia do que
a Austria y a Serbia estavam a fazer exigências demasiado outorgantes uma outra, e que
Russia no ia a ficara para atras. 27, 28 de Julho, a situação esta delicada, aproxima esta
grande conflagração europeia. 31 de Julho aparece em Portugal a noticia do assasinado
do Jean Jaures. Um dos últimos homens en que se confiança em Europa para convencer
os trabalhadores de Europa não fazer a guerra, fazer uma greva geral y não participar na
guerra dos imperadores e dos bancários, o seja, deste complexo que e estatal e e privado
ao mesmo tempo. 1 de agosto de manha - o jornal tinha muitas vezes duas edições -
edição da manha : a situação esta calma. Na edição de 1 de agosto a tarde : a situação
esta perigosíssima. Bem. Y depois sabemos todo o resto. Por tanto, em poucos dias
aquele ao que se assistiu foi o colapso da promessa europeia. Uma promessa europeia,
que, ao contrario do sonho americano que estava muito bem formulado e explicitado e
todos os politicos, cineastas, escritores, publicitários se referiam a ele, esta promessa
europeia esta muito implícita y pouco formulada. Mais eu gostaria de explicitar um pouco,
porque, ela repose em três factores. O primeiro, prosperidade partilhada, que era a
grande demanda do movimento socialista sindicalista e do movimento liberal em Europa.
Em segundo lugar, direitos fundamentais para todos, que era a grande demanda do
movimento sufragista e das minorias étnicas que veiam em todo lado el Europa. Em torcer
lugar : soberania popular que chamamos democracia. Y em poucos dias eu diria, colapso
en cima do mundo que tinha um aspeto do mundo normal tanto que os generais das
potências beligerantes foram a passar ferias nos países inimigos. Haviam generais
austríacos que estavam na França, generais franceses que estavam na Alemanha, y
tiveram, ao abrigo daquele cavalheirismo europeu da altura, voltar rapidamente aos seus
países para começar a fazer a guerra.
Eu creio que a grande ameaça que nos temos, a liberdade em Europa e também no
mundi, e in de esta grande ameaça clássica. Não negando a importância das duas outras
grades ameaças das liberdades que tentaria resumir agora, para depois voltar a clássica.
A primeira e aquela que podemos chamar a vigilância de baixa intensidade e baixo foco, o
sea toda a gente e vigiada todo o tempo e peso e absolutamente generalizado, blanket
surveillance.

1h15m10s

Com o caso SWIFT no parlamento europeu nos identificamos que 90 milhões de

transações bancarias que passam por la rede SWIFT em europa todos meses são

Page 91 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

partilhadas com los Estados Unidos. Agora ha um tratado europeu que conseguimos
derrotar uma vez, não conseguimos derrotar a segunda vez, porque ouve uma aliança
entre socialistas, liberais e conservadores no parlamento europeu para fazer passar esta
vigilância : 90 milhões : são as pequenas transferencias que o pai faz pelo filho que esta
fazendo erasmus num outro pais da Europa, são cidades inteiras, regiões inteiras,
transações financiarias, todos os dias são enviadas pelo departamento do Tesoro em
Washington - embora os Estados Unidos neguem que faz um data mining de aquelas
dados - e evidentemente que fazem. Bem.
Os dados de passageiros de avião (PNR). E somos vigiados exactamente como no film
do Spielberg, e em pre-crime. Com o PNR, se a gente vai passar o fin de semana em
Nova York, mais leva mas peso do que seria natural, porque o namorada esta fazendo um
doutoramento e levamos uma mala de livros, iso e suficiente para ser vigiado de outra
forma do que se não va com tanto peso porque e estranho levar tanto peso por um fin de
semana. Na Australia, o sevicio de vigilância nos aeroportos da Australia disseram uma
vez que faziam uma vigilância reforçada a toda gente que não tinha um nome no cartão
do credito que condissesse com o nome do bilhete de avião, que fizesse mudanças de
planos na ultima ora, e que tivesse estado em países perigosos. Eu via que eu claro que
estaria vigiado, porque como todos os Portugueses eu tenho cinco nomes, o portanto o
nome nunca condisse no cartão de credito, no documento, no bilhete de avião, e sempre
diferente, a contar de outros países onde as pessoas tem solo dois nomes e isso não um
problema não.

1h17m30

A primeira vez que foi aos Estados Unidos a pergunta foi « why the fuck don’t you have
two names like everybody else ». Os portugueses tem cinco nomes, os portugueses, os
brasileiros, etc etc. En segundo lugar faço mudanças de planos na ultima ora y tinha
estado na Syria. E portanto toda esta gente e vigiada. So que, e na verdade e o nosso
drama, ninguém se incomoda, ninguém se importa. Porque acontece com todos nossos,
acontece todos os dias, acontece com coisas que todos nossos fazemos todos os dias, e
algumas pessoas vão estar muito preocupadas com isso mais 100% da populaça
dificilmente estará. 100% e vigiado mais e vigiado naquilo que a pessoa sente,
erradamente talvez, como sendo 1% o 2% da sua vida e que ainda e uma vida pratica :
nos queremos viajar, queremos consumir, etc. Ok, e portanto, e difícil embora, se tenha
tentado muito, os piratas tenham tentado muito, o Anonymous tenha tentado muito, casos

Page 92 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

como do Snowden, jornalistas como o Greenwald tenham tentado muito, e difícil que
minha mãe que tem 83 anos, se levanta para lutar contra isso.

1h18m42

Depois existe o outro tipo de ameaça a liberdade que são de alta intensidade, mas
também um foco muito alto. O que quer dizer, que ao contrario da primeira, que prejudica
uma porção que nos julgamos razoável porque convivemos com ela, a vida de toda gente
que tem uma vida comportável e burguesa nos países desenvolvidos, prejudica
totalmente 100% da vida de um numero muito reduzido de indivíduos. Um tipo que se
chama Mohammed-qualquer-coisa e que tem um nome parecido com um terrorista y que
e apanhado e enviado por uma prisão segreda e que e torturado e depois e largado no
meio dum pais qualquer quando finalmente descobrem que era o tipo errado. Bem, la no
parlamento europeu também trabalhamos neste caso. Estas pessoas tem toda sua vida
completamente danificada a partir daquele momento e por o resto da vida, para sempre. E
completamente diferente do primeiro tip de ameaça que e uma ameaça de baixa
intensidade e toda gente que tem uma vida mas o menos urbana e burguesa.

1h19m45

So que, estas pessoas so 0,0001% da população. Por tanto alguns activistas dos direitos
humanos vão se preocupar muito, mas também 100% da população não se vai preocupar
tanto, vai se preocupar quando ouve a estória.
As pessoas que eu foi visitar em Syria : na altura Syria recebia refugiados, agora Syria
produce refugiados. Esto foi em 2010. Estavam li crianças que estavam a anos nos
campos de refugiados, não iam poder estudar, não iam ver mas nada do que deserto, e
tendas, e que justiça seja feita os Estados Unidos recebem 80,000 dessas pessoas por
ano, e a Europa recebe 5000. 5000. EM toda Europa. 28 países europeus recebem 5000
refugiados. E existem 100 000 por anos nesta situação. As vidas deles são destruídas.
Mais são 100 000 pessoas num planeta de 7 000 milhões. Ok? Os que tentam, vem por o
Mediterrâneo, morem no Mediterrâneo, são umas centenas por ano, em faz a um
continente de 500 milhões, que acham isto terrível , acham isto um escândalo moral, mais
são 500 milhões de pessoas que todos os dias seguem com sua vida. E aqui e uma coisa
em que eu discordo com o Eben. Na Europa nos não lutamos na segunda guerra mundial
contra estados que vigiavam tudo.

Page 93 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

1h21m06

Incidentalmente nos lutamos contra estados que vigiavam tudo o que as pessoas faziam,
mas a guerra luto pelas velhas razoes clássicas das guerras, quer dizer, a guerra
começou porque Alemanha tinha invadido a Polona. Quando finalmente os vários países
de Europa e do mundo puseram sus maquinas de guerra em confronto, não foi por causa
da vigilância. Depois usaram isso como argumento para destruir o totalitarismo, mas a
guerra começou pelas velhas razoes clássicas : conquista territorial, guerra, chacinas,
fome, repressão ao trabalhador, etc. Pronto. E aqui, eu chego ao que, a terceira ameaça
para liberdade tal que eu acho que e clássica : vou usar uma imagem que pessoas do
mundo da cultura e das artes se entenderam. E a imagem do falsificador. O falsificador de
pinturas.

1h22m05

Hoje em dia dificilmente nos teremos ditadores no mundo desenvolvido como tinhamos
durante as grandes tragédias do século. O por lo menos, eu não os antevejo nos proximo
cinco anos, digamos assim. O talvez ate os proximo 10 anos. Mas teremos pessoas que
sabem muito bem imitar os indicadors da democracia, imitar os indicadores da
normalidade e não entanto deteriorar o estado direito. Então este e o caso do Senhor
Orban na Hungria. A União Europeia invento uma check list para os tribunais para
entender quem e que tem um bom sistema judicial o um mal sistema judicial. Dinamarca
tinha tribunais que funcionam muito rapidamente por um caso normal de direitos privados,
em um mes esta resolvido, fico no inicio da tabela. Portugal tem um tribunal que funciona
muito mal, demora três anos para decidir um caso privado normal entre dois individuos, e
ficamos no top da tabela como um pais que funciona muito mal deste ponto de vista. O
senhor Orban garantiu que a Hungria ficasse exatamente no meio da tabela. Porque se
demorasse muito tempo, as pessoas iam desconfiar e dizer « ah, ha um problema de
estado direito ». Se demorasse tao pouco tempo como na Dinamarca, as pessoas iam
dizer « hmm, casos no tribunal que demoram pouco temo na Hungria, quer dizer
interferência política ». E por tanto, fez o esforço de por no meio ta tabela, exatamente
como um falsificador de pintura, que vai fazer como que todo naquela pintura esteja
correcto. Tudo vai ser muito semelhante a un estado de normalidade democrática, numa
sociedade onde ha consumo, liberdade, numa sociedade onde quando as pessoas estão

Page 94 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

despedidas nunca e por censura, e por simplesmente a ditadura de baixa intensidade

neoliberal. Estes tipos vão continuar assim nos próximos anos, e vão sempre obter as
regras do estado direito enquanto isso les der jeito. Vão fazer como fazem os nossos
burocratas : pegam o livro de instruções e seguem as instruções, esta tudo certo.
O que e que falta neste mundo - e ahi eu discordo também do Eben : o que falta neste
mundo e um discurso unificado que possa juntar as nossas varias lutas. Eu acho que a
gente não vai conseguir fazer nada faz, e estados e estas empresas, enquanto tiver
segmentados entre gente que esta obcecada com privacidade, gente que esta obcecada
com a ecologia, gente que esta obcecada com direitos com direitos laborais, culturais, etc.
Aprendamos com a lição dos nos antepassados, de gente como Jean Jaures e outros,
que o que fizeram na altura 100 anos atras foi em vez de ter lutas que são segmentadas,
de especialistas, um discurso democrático mas o menos unificado que permite se
mobilizar - não ali os activistas da ecologia, ali os activistas do anonymous, ali os
activistas da precariedade - mas juntar toda a gente pela conquista desta tripla promessa
que não e so europeia, e mundial : prosperidade partilhada para que ninguém viva na
miséria, direitos fundamentais para todos, especialmente para as minorias e em cada um
de nossos territórios, sexuais, étnicas, etc; e em terceira democracia e soberania popular.
esto precisa de um discurso unificador e ali eu tenho algumas esperanças que a arte, e o
cinema em particular, possa fazer este discurso unificador. porque todo o que eu vejo no
mundo da política, da ciencias sociais o das ONGs e especialização : ha especialistas em
direitos humanos, em privacidade, ha especialistas especialistas especialistas. E a
democracia não sobrevive com os specialistas, a democracia precisa de generalistas, e
en tanto preciso de reencontrar sua unificação de discursos segmentados que ideologias
como socialismo o liberalismo tinham; e que hoje em dia ideologias da privacidade por se-
so e mas nada, da ecologia por se so e mas nada, não ??? (1h26m44). Muito obrigado.

1h26m55

Philippe Aigrain : We will come back later to the issue of what’s the next step in
surveillance and how much it matters to seriously consider this new stage in which
surveillance is encapsulated in our bodies. Eben explained that surveillance was building
up using our taste for spying on others. Now, new forms of surveillance are building up on
our taste for spying on ourselves : we have to deliver a counter discourse before it is too
late, we have failed many other times before.

Page 95 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

We have been very rude, there is only one woman in this panel and we have not let her
speak until now. Before it is Jennifer’s turn, just a quick reaction on your Hungarian
example : after the complete failure of the European Commission and the inefficiency of
the Parliament to fight against the offense against fundamental rights in the Orban regime,
it is in the end, a very minor attack of the internet by the Orban regime that has created a
mass movement inside Hungary. Why? Because this was considered as a wish to destroy
the last tool of coordination and collective action that was still available in Hungary.

1h29m20

Rui Tavares : Just a quick point on that : I think Orban overstepped there, just like
governments often overstep. In Portugal it was because of a minor change in the social
security tax that we had 1 million people on the street. In Hungary it was an internet tax,
but it could have been another tax. (They had much worse than that, for instance when
they were drafting their new constitution, they made this social consultation that really
looked like democracy. Everybody received a survey at home where they could put on
ideas for the new constitution, and with that data one can speculate - and I am fairly
convinced that it was used too -, one can redistrict the electoral circles in Hungary,
because you have lost of data about what people think everywhere in the country and then
you change the way the electoral constituencies are made and then you ensure the
second two third majorities. With that 2/3 majority you can then again change the
constitution, etc. But I don’t think that there was a failure on that. I think it’s ongoing. You’re
not going to win a fight with Orban in one single step, you are going to have a long war
that is being fought everyday, that the European Institutions are also fighting and
sometimes you win it by telling the fundamental rights agency of the Union or telling not to
go for those indicators because they are meaningless, they won’t tell you anything about
Orban, what we need in Europe is a constitutional court for the Union that will make the
State behave. We need what we call a Copenhagen commission which will be a place
where you would have independent people, it could be Robert Badinter from France,
Robinson from Ireland, who cares. You need one thing no win this battle : you need
wisdom. Indicators don’t give you wisdom, it’s just outsourcing. You need classical tools,
constitutional courts, prestigious, that will say « now it’s too serious, we are pressing the
button and the politicians will have to act ». But I think Orban also overstepped in
something else : now he is M. Putin’s allie, and that is putting him in a very bad position

Page 96 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

inside the European Union, and now he is weak inside the European Union. So ultimately
he will loose => A COUPER)

1h33m16

Philippe Aigrain : Thank you. Jennifer, not only have you waited too long to speak, but I
am going to put forward a question which is not an easy one. Legal fighting always serves
the interest of a client, but there is always another agenda behind it, which is winning
something for the future. So, could you say a few words about what it means for you to
conduct a legal fight such as the defense of Julian Assange?

Jennifer Robinson : I am very pleased that Eben mentioned the war on Wikileaks in his
rousing talk earlier, because it is a war. But you have to ask a question about why is it a
war, why is there a war against Wikileaks. And having been in the forefront of it I’ll talk
about it a little bit. I think you can answer that question in the same way you would answer
the question « why is there mass surveillance », « why are governments collecting this
much information on us ». And that’s because information is power. And the reason
Wikileaks is so threatening : why is a group of activists, why is Julian Assange, who was
travelling around the world with a couple of laptops in his backpack, sleeping on people’s
couches, so challenging to governments? Because he threatens their control over power :
Wikileaks threatens their control over information, which is power. Jeremy Zimmerman put
it beautifully in a panel earlier today saying that Wikilileaks rights the imbalance of power
about information by making information available to us. Because while governments
control information they control the narrative. And that’s why Wikileaks is so important.
People forget, going back to 2010 - and this explains why I feel so strongly about
continuing to defend Julian and continuing of being a member of his legal team pro bono -
people forget because of the reaction to Snowden, what happened to Wikileaks. But back
in 2010, just before Wikileaks was about to release cable-gate with their media partners,
before it was the global story that it became, we went through a period of three weeks
where his personal bank accounts were shut-down; an interpol red notice was issued for
his arrest for allegations in Sweden for which he still has not been charged, and for which
he remained in Sweden for more than 5 weeks to answer. On the eve of the publication of
cable-gate, they cut off all access to funds to Wikileaks, an extra-judicial financial
blockade, mastercard, visa, paypal, it was a wholehearted attempt to shut down this
organization. And it wasn’t just about this case in Sweden : you had the US government,

Page 97 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

the US attorney general Eric Holder come out and say that they had opened a criminal
investigation into Wikileaks and if they couldn’t find a law under which to prosecute him,
they would create one. Retrospective application of criminal law doesn’t seem to be a
problem ! And that criminal investigation is ongoing into Wikileaks. There is a grand jury,
we know that it’s ongoing, and we think Julian is a target and it is seeking to prosecute him
for his publication of material and his actions as a publisher.
I think it is really important that we make this distinction between Wikileaks as a publisher
and Julian as an editor, and sources, whistleblowers like Snowden and Chelsea Manning.
It is important to understand that distinction because it gets unladen in quite dangerous
ways that affect the fundamental free press protections. One of the most fundamental free
press protection we have around the protection of journalists, is that journalists must be
able to protect their sources. It is the only way to ensure that people keep coming forward
to give journalists the information that we need to understand what’s going on in the world.
Now, why is that so important? Because we don’t have protection for whistleblowers to
make public interest disclosures. It is important that we make that distinction because
someone like Snowden or Manning had an obligation to the government to protect that
information. Now, of course there is a huge public interest in them disclosing that
information, and they ought to be protected for disclosing that information. But the
journalists and the publishers who receive that material and publish it have not previously
been subjected to criminal investigation for publishing that material. And by eliding that
distinction and trying to somehow say that Wikileaks is not a publisher, that it is somehow
not protected by the First amendment in the same way that mainstream media
organizations are, is a watershed and a very dangerous precedent for the press around
the world.
Julian is still in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, having been grounded a political
asylum because of the concerns that we have, and his real fear, about what would happen
to him should he be extradited to United States to face prosecution.
The danger that we see with the use of the Espionage Act in relation to these cases is that
legislation that was originally designed to capture people giving information to foreign
governments is now being used against both whistleblowers (and this is one of the
previsions under which the Wikileaks grand jury is operating) and people who are giving
information to the press, in the public interest. What is very concerning about that is that it
is effectively a strict liability offense. This is why Snowden should remain in Russia and
should not return to the US to face charge. The fact that he gave this information in the
public interest, even if he can prove that no damming was done to the United States, even

Page 98 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

if he can prove that he did not intend to harm the United States, and he did not intend to
communicate this information to foreign governments, that it was specifically for US
citizens to understand the illegality of their government’s actions, none of that matters:
effectively, it is strict liability offense. I think that’s a great concern, and one that people
ought to think more carefully about when we talk about Snowden and his legal position.
Just a couple of points about surveillance and the law… Mass surveillance means that
effectively, each of you, all of us are being treated like criminals. Once upon a time, in a
not so far distant past, governments required reasonable suspicion before they could
access that kind of information about you. Now they are doing it without a warrant, without
any suspicion, they are treating all of us like criminal suspects. And for me to sit up here
and to say, « they ought to be getting a warrant for that information, they ought to show
individualized reasonable suspicion of criminal activity before they can capture that
information », that’s considered now a radical position. While that was, and still is, the legal
position under domestic law in most jurisdictions, and it has been a fundamental civil right.
That position is now considered radical, and I think we have to think very carefully about
the ramifications of that.

1h40m30s

So, how do we hold these people to account for the surveillance that’s going on? Not only
are we seeing that the oversight mechanisms, for example the FISA court in the US or the
Investigative Powers Tribunal (IPT) in the UK, are fundamentally incapable bodies : they
don’t have the powers, and the IPT in the UK has never found against the secret services
in any complaint that has been brought before them for the surveillances being undertaken
; but worse than that, what we learned from Snowden is that through information sharing
and the ability of governments to surveil foreigners without warrant, they can completely
undermine domestic protection and the laws that we have to protect us against
unwarranted surveillance.
What this requires is an international agreement, an international reaction in order to
answer that kind of information sharing and that kind of completely unaccountable
surveillance. For example : as an Australian representing Assange, if I’m in the United
States, they can capture everything, even when I am not in the United States. The United
States’ government can take anything they want about me, everything about me, without a
warrant, and then they can go and share it with the Australian government, or the country

Page 99 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

of which I am a resident, the United Kingdom, and they have all that information without
ever having to get a warrant on me.
We now know that GCHQ surveils correspondance of lawyers. What does client-attorney
privilege mean if they can access all of that information? What does it mean to be able to
protect your source as a journalist if they have access to all that information? And
fundamentally, we don’t have legal responses to this. There are cases before the
European Court right now about the illegality of GCHQs surveilling journalists in particular,
and their ability to communicate with sources, but I am not sure what the outcome is and I
am not sure what the response should be. I believe these are the bigger questions we
should be talking about.

1h42m30s

Philippe Aigrain : Thank you. Now we have about 45 minutes left in this session, I am
going to give the floor to the public. However we should not leave without giving some
consideration to two questions : if really there is a new age of surveillance that is building
up, bootstrapping itself on the present one to do something worse, like Eric has explained,
and I saw Eben moving his head in ways that suggest that he agrees, what do we need as
a narrative to prevent it or limit the way it is happening? Eben, and I believe you too,
explained that this next forms of surveillance build up on some things that are deeply
inscribed in our behaviors. But then, is it possible to develop a narrative that brings forward
things that build on the same base but with good effects? For instance, about spying on
others : we could be encouraged to pay attention to others, it’s not the same thing as
spying, but it builds on the same resources. Spying on yourself or being constantly
preoccupied with the quantification of yourself sounds really bad, but building yourself as
an individual trying to improve its life sounds much better. So, which way should we go?
Should we just say « don’t do it, it’s evil », or… No, I am actually wording the question in a
biased manner here, I will stop.
And the second question is : when will it be enough?

Public : Eu vivia na Hungaria, estive na Hungaria en 2002, e vi as campanhas electorais

do Orban e vi o que eram capaz de fazer, e vi as bandeiras, então eu conheço mas o
menos e o que paso nestas ultimas semanas em Budapest ha sido realmente
preocupante. Eu nao sei si entendi mal mas o que eu entendo de la e que realmente e
uma situação complicada, e esta situação na internet a mais um punto. E um pais de 10

Page 100 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

milhões de habitantes, com uma estrema direita fortissima, amigo do chineses, amigo dos
russos, do Putin, que querem acabar com a internet.
A segunda questão tinha a ver com o Eben : eu sou estudante de sociologia, a base dos
meus estudios vou tentar explicar um pouquinho : quero falar do piano moral em
sociologia. Quando tengo panico de algo, vejo a minha sociedad como un riesgo e tudo
me gaz medo. Este panico moral a difundido pelos media e pelos politicos. E a minha
questão e : não deveriam os políticas e os mídia e o cinema ter um papel mas
responsável no cinema que faz, cinema mas consciente?

Jérémy : I’ll try to be short I spoke too much today already. My question is not half as
interesting as yours, Philipp. In what we plan to do to take that control of the situation, we
feel the urgent need to get those intelligence organizations under democratic control. I
don’t really know if there ever were, or ever will be. Do you think there might be a way to
achieve this objective? We know that for targeted surveillance we can think of ways to
include the supervision of the judicial authority, retroactive control etc. Can we do the
same for the general spectrum of action of secret services or intelligence communities?

Eben Moglen : The restauration of the rule of law over listening in the United States is
possible. I don’t think at the moment it is likely, I think that both presidential candidates in
2016 will be pro-surveillance politicians. I don’t think we are in the near term going to
restaure the rule of law over US listening but I do think it is possible. By the time we have
succeeded in restoring the rule of law over US listening, the listening conducted by the
Chinese communist party will be at approximately the same level of sophistication around
the world. And the problems, political dimension, will have moved. By that time I think
there is a final probability that the French 5th republic will have collapsed, and that another
form of despotism will be seeking its way in Europe. So I am not convinced that there is a
simple answer to this question; I do not think that the re-empowerment of the European
elite is a successful solution to the problem. The problem of the democracy deficit is why
European Republicanism is already in substantial danger. I think that the danger as you
and I would be inclined to see it would be : can we use technology, so as to force the
democratization of politics through the democratization of technology? This is the path that
we were on before 2001. What happened was that organs of power, like we would have
said in Russia in the old days, organs of power realized that the democratization of
technology threatened them in every direction. The security services of the world used to
consider one another to be their primary adversary. Now they consider their primary

Page 101 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

adversaries to be you, and me, and Julian, and Edward Snowden. In other worlds, the
democratization of technology presented them with the difficulty that they had to be
prepared to withstand us. At the present moment they are doing it very well but they will
not succeed in continuing to do it. All the fuss that was being made in the UK last week
about how American companies offering encryption are facilitating terrorism is, as I said in
the Guardian, actually carefully orchestrated kabuki. They need those companies. If those
companies were replaced by decentralized technologies, they would have a much harder
job listening than they have now. So they are at one and the same time beating up on the
great data-minors in North America in order to force them, blackmail them into
cooperating; at the same time that they must allow trust in those companies to be
maintained, so they can continue to use them as their immense data repositories that they
are. This is the primary weakness of current French foreign policy for example. The French
come to Washington and they say two things : « first of all, we need to be protected
against the GAFA conspiracy (Google Amazon and Facebook), your companies are bad ».
The second thing they say is : « you’re giving people too many rights, every terrorist in the
world carries an apple computer because it’s safe, and everybody has first amendment
right to do terrorism at Google ». This reflects both the pitiful nature of the French
government’s unsophistication, but it also reflects the difficulty we are moving to, in which
the companies are identified as American tools, not tools for all the secret polices of the
world, undemocratizing technology. So where you and I have been going for all hour at our
lives together is where we still need to go. We need to democratize technology further. We
need to decentralize further. We need to teach people how they can use a safe set of
technologies that are really really good instead of an unsafe set of technologies that are
really really good. That would be nice in Budapest, that would be nice in Washington, that
would be nice in Australia. The nice thing aout technology is that it is culture neutral to that
extend. If we democratize the technology enough, we will force them to democratize their
responses. At least that’s my work in principal. I think it’s yours. I think it’s ours. We’re
doing OK with it, but we’re late. We worked for 30 years to make free software so that we
could secure free society. By the time everybody in the world heard M. Snowden on why
that was important we were already behind the score because people had moved to their
devices.

1h55m25

Page 102 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

I need to be responsive to Philipp’s question. I can’t in friendship leave it alone. One of the
things which is happening now is that people are learning to put fitness monitors on their
wrist which report their body state to a centralized incumbent. We had an earthquake in
northern California six weeks ago and one of the fitness bracelet company began
releasing the results of their data-mining post the earthquake. How many people in the
EarthQuake zone woke up when the earthQuake happened? How long did it take each of
them to go back to sleep after the EarthQuake happened? Whose physiological behavior
the following day showed they were still frightened or worried about the earthquake? If you
take that body data and you let a third party have it, you are basically wearing a lie
detector everywhere you go for your whole life. Your pulse, your heartbeat, your body
temperature, your sweating, all of that stuff. The people who think the polygraphs aren’t
good for lie detecting are correct. But the reason polygraphs make poor lie detectors is the
sample is always so small, and it’s too controlled. Once you start wiring-up people’s bodies
to the net, you are doing a whole lot more then you think you are. In the 20th century Andy
Warhol said and he was right given the centralized media technology that everybody
would get 15 minutes of fame. That’s not enough. What a thing like twitter allows you to do
is to have 15 millisecond of fame every 15 minutes. And that’s a much more powerful drug
to drop into the system of the human being. This is what Philipp means when he talks
about our desire to spy on ourselves. We can’t walk by a mirror without looking there to
see our reflexion in it, and we keep hoping that we look better in there than we think we
really do. Those of us who are un-dead and cast no shadow in the mirror, we are lucky we
don’t see ourselves there no matter how hard we look. But everybody else is very worried
about whether we appear good enough. And what the network is doing is asking you to
wire yourself up more and more to it so that you will occasionally catch a favorable view of
yourself in the mirror that is watching you. This is the real meaning of selfie culture. The
NSA documents release by M. Snowden on the subject of the iPhone come from a
presentation inside NSA called « so your target carries a smartphone » in which the point
was, when you are trying to follow a human being, look at that smartphone first. A lot was
said there about Blackberry but the real payload was about iPhone. The first slide at NSA
about iPhone showed M. Jobs’ face and said « who ever thought Big Brother would look
like this? ». And the second slide in the NSA presentation was taken from above through
the glass roof of an Apple store and all the customers down below and it said « and who
would have thought the victims could be made to pay for it? »
The third slide was a slide which Der Spiegel redacted which was a picture taken by a
world leader sitting in his own living room on his own couch with his iPhone. They didn’t

Page 103 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

want to say it was M. Blair but it was. What happens after all in selfie culture is we are
rewarded with an occasional positive snapshot for tracking everything we do for someone
else. And this, the urge to spy on ourselves, as Philipp put it, is where the big data moment
at which we cross into giving our unconscious way without ever understanding it
ourselves, comes from.

1h59m16s

Philipp Aigrain : I want to give the floor to Eric first if you allow, because he raised
questions about the issue that we are trying to address. I want to add an inch of a question
which is : is fear the only narrative to prevent it from happening?

Eric Sadin : c’est exactement à cette question que je comptais répondre, Philippe. Je ne
pense pas que ce soit du tout une question de narration. Peut être certains d’entre vous
connaissent cette assertion de Gilles Deleuze qui disait que le droit était l’un des honneurs
de la condition humaine. Mais il y a la jurisprudence aussi, c’est-à-dire de ne pas avoir
prévu en amont, le fait qu’il y ait des cas de figure qui obligent, soit par des requêtes de
citoyens, soit par des décisions de juges qui ne sont pas des législateurs, qui n’écrivent
pas des lois mais qui au quotidien se disent qu’il y a des vides, des creux. Je renvoie par
exemple à la question que tu posais, Jérémy, et la question que tu poses Philippe
exactement, au 14 mai 2014, à la cour Européenne de Luxembourg. Un espagnol dont j’ai
oublié le nom avait été condamné pour quelque chose et se plaignait du fait que lorsqu’on
tapait son nom sur Google les requêtes faisaient référence à une affaire qui avait été
réglée et pour laquelle il avait payé sa dette à l’égard de la justice.
Je reviens sur une nouvelle classe, la classe des ingénieurs qui s’arrogent un pouvoir et
qui piétinent le droit avec leurs rêves d’adolescents de vouloir changer le monde, l’esprit
libertarien de la silicon valley qui a dévoré le monde entier et qui piétine les acquis
démocratiques historiques, les entreprises qui ne paient pas les impôts là où leur activité
s’exerce, qui veulent construire des îles dans le pacifique pour s’affranchir des lois
nationales et qui développent leur protocole à l’abris des regards parce que c’est
structurel, ce n’est pas la théorie du complot, parce que le computationnel : les
algorithmes sont invisibles à la vision humaine dans toute leur étendue et dans tout ce
qu’ils règlent.
A propos des ingénieurs, je reviens très rapidement aux individus. Car nous individus, non
seulement nous sommes surveillés par la NSA et consorts, mais en plus nous nous

Page 104 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

quantifions. La quantification quotidienne de notre sommeil, de nos donnée physiologiques

induit non seulement une privatisation de la santé mais un autre régime de connaissance
des individus. Et en plus, nous partageons ces informations, cette idéologie du showing :
on ne peut plus maintenant faire un geste sans que la subjectivité ait besoin de le rendre
public. Et ça, ce n’est pas le fait de la NSA (mais c’est peut-être un peu favorisé par les
ingénieurs). Et je parlais des tablettes de Hollande : il est question aussi de l’éducation et
du rapport que nous entretenons nous-mêmes aux technologies, car nous sommes, il faut
bien le dire, totalement schyzophrènes. D’un côté nous entretenons un rapport de gadget
tout à fait heureux avec nos technologies, et d’un autre, nous nous offusquons de grandes
figures encore quasi paternelles oedipiennes de la NSA dans quelques symposiums - et à
juste titre.
Et je terminerai avec ce que tu viens de dire sur « unifier les discours ». Moi, je ne crois
pas à ça. Je crois qu’on peut unifier les exigences, mais ce sont des contre-pouvoirs
desquels nous avons besoin et les contre-pouvoirs sont multiples : il y a des enjeux de
surveillance, il y a des enjeux d’éducation, mais ce sont des exigences communes.
C’est une petite conclusion, j’ai réfléchi et je me disais que ce sont des grandes exigences
communes dont nous avons besoin, c’est-à-dire l’humain, est-ce qu’il y a des choses qui
lui appartiennent, est-ce que c’est la temporalité qui a raison d’acquis des choses, ou est-
ce que c’est uniquement les développements technologiques, la flexibilité qui perturbe
l’anthropologie fondamentale? Il y a de l’anthropologie fondamentale, il y a un rapport aux
autres, un rapport d’être ensemble, du droit, de mettre des limites à l’action humaine, de
défendre ces exigences là… Et après je pense qu’au contraire c’est aux multitudes, avec
leurs connaissances, leur curiosité, leur capacité de s’associer, de marquer, de témoigner
des contre-pouvoirs (= COUPER ?)

Philippe Aigrain : Je vais passer la parole à Rui. Mais juste avant je voudrais mentionner
une chose : nous parlons sans arrêt de l’individu, de son intimité, de ses pulsions et de
l’exploitation de ses pulsions, mais il y a toute une série de chercheurs qui ont mis en
avant le fait que le principal effet de la surveillance n’était pas seulement atteinte aux
individus, mais bien plus la destruction de l’espace public. Or si nous prenons au sérieux
la protection de l’espace public, alors je crois qu’il ne faudrait pas trop rapidement
considérer avec cynisme, ou avec une espèce de rejet bourdieusien de l’hypocrisie des
moments comme celui que nous vivons ici, parce que les moments comme celui que nous
vivons ici sont ceux de la reconstruction d’une space public, certes très fragile, très
incomplet qui aurait besoin d’un temps beaucoup plus considérable pour produire ses

Page 105 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

résultats, mais qui est quand même essentiel à nous rendre un tout petit peu moins
impuissants face aux problèmes que nous rencontrons.

Rui Tavares :
Tout d’abord je vais commencer par ce que tu as dit, Eric. Je crois que je suis d’accord,
mais je crois que toi même tu as fait un discours unificateur et un bon discours unificateur
quand tu as dit que nous sommes en face d’un complexe étatique, numérique et industriel,
donc qu’il faut combattre dans ce qu’il a de mauvais sous tous ses angles. Et pour cela, on
a besoin d’une multitude d’exigences. Il y a 100 ans, on demandait 8 heures de travail, le
vote pour les femmes, des droits culturels pour les minorités ethniques, c’étaient des
exigences multiples qui allaient tous dans un sens que j’ai essayé de décrire comme
prospérité partagée, droits fondamentaux pour tout le monde et souveraineté populaire.
Un rêve qui reste à accomplir, une promesse qui n’est pas accomplie. Il faut se demander
dans chacun e nos domaine,s dans chacun de nos mouvements, si on n’est pas en train
de faire une conversation qui est entre techno-optimistes - il y a dix ou vingt ans on
pensait que le net allait changer le monde et maintenant on est tous techno-pessimistes -
mais en tout cas c’est toujours la techno-élite qui s’oublie parfois quand elle parle des
questions de surveillance de parler du chômeur, du réfugié, de ce qui se passe en Afrique
ou dans les autres parties du monde (=> COUPER ?)

2h08m15s

Et ici je m’adresse à ce qu’a dit Eben. I didn’t much enjoy your caricature about
empowering the European elite. It has nothing to do with that. What we are talking about is
building transnational rule of law, and transnational democracy.

Eben Moglen : With Robert Badinter?

Rui Tavares : With everybody ! When you have the Supreme Court in the United States
saying, « get a warrant », you do enjoy that, and you like that, and you file cases that go all
the way up to the US Supreme Court, but we don’t have a European Supreme Court that
works like the US Supreme Court, so we would very much like to have something like that.

Eben Moglen : That works like the US Supreme court ?! I am not convinced !

Page 106 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

Rui Tavares : Well, you know, we would like to have one better if we can get one better.
You know if you’re demanding that, and I think it’s actually as I just said to Eric, all of us
here, sometimes it’s very un-selfreflexive from the anti-surveillance, from the techno-elite
movement that I was talking about, to not address issues that are being felt by everybody
that is not on the network ; and then when you talk about all the mechanisms of
democracy and rule of law, the innovative ones, the classical ones, courts with judges that
have studied for decades or people on the streets demanding for those courts, i don’t care
if it comes from above or if it comes from below, it will come from above and below but I
need my rights to be enforced. So it’s not about empowering the European elite : either
we have European Democracy or we will loose in Hungary, in Portugal, in France etc.
You’re right when you say that la 5e République has a risk of falling. And when that
happens, that puts me to risk in Lisbon.

Eben Moglen : Sure. Let us make our difference precise.

Rui Tavares : What’s the problem? Voltaire was European elite.

Eben Moglen : Good. Great. Let’s make our difference precise. You spoke of the power of
this European constitutional court as resting in the prestige of its membership. And had
that not been here, we would not now be having this dispute.

Rui Tavares : Eben, Eben, I will tell you in a few seconds why. We have three institutions
in the European Union. One is unelected, the European Commission. (it’s elected by the
governments). The European Council is formed by 28 governments thinking « will i be next
if they go after Hungary now? ». The Lithuanian ambassador tells us « but we would like to
shut down some Polish language schools, are you going to go after me as well?  ». So
these 28 governments will be ineffective. And then, you have the European Parliament
where, at best, political groups engage in a mud fights, and at worst, the European popular
party and the European socialist party settle gentleman’s agreements and blocking the
system. So, a European judiciary seems like the only alternative. If you have a better idea,
I would like to hear it !

Eben Moglen : Elect it ! Don’t depend upon the prestige of the individuals.

Page 107 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

Rui Tavares : I am sorry, you have an American elected Congress, during the 50s, that
was ineffective regarding the Civil Rights issues in the South of the US. So you will always
need to have a plurality of powers and a separation of powers. We do have a hint of
elected powers in Europe that can very well do gentleman’s agreements. And although
being a former MP myself, I don’t want to rely only upon the European Parliament, and I
want to give more power to the European Court of Human Rights. I would like to have an
International Court of Human Rights. This is not about being on the side of the elite or
being on the side of the masses, it’s being on the side of fundamental rights. So I think it’s
a caricature that you’ve done there.

Philippe Aigrain : I think in a way, all of us here we have been spending half of our lives
addressing the legal and political system to try to make a better one, and the rest of our life
addressing the citizens to get them moving in directions that would empower the search
for these fundamental rights. I would like to have Jennifer’s view point.
How does in practice the defense of Wikileaks work? It walks on this two legs , you
explained us how all the financial means of support were cut : it’s not the legal action that
has restored them, it is the societal action that has formed alternative paths. How do you
think legal and societal actions work together? Are they contradictions between the two, or
diversion of strategies?

2h15m08

Jennifer Robinson : I think they work together, whether we talk about Wikileaks or whether
we talk about the push back against mass surveillance. Filing legal actions and appealing
to the European Court has its place, but as we’ve seen in the UK, the UK government just
implemented new legislation to basically make legal what previously wasn’t. And if you
don’t have citizens’ movements, if you are not reaching out to people and engaging people
in the push back, then you are not going to see change, because you have to see it from
both ends, you have to have legal actions to hold people to account, and without a mass
movement of people opposing surveillance, parliament will continue to make laws that
make it possible. So, I don’t think they are oppositional, and in fact, they alway work
together.

Philippe Aigrain : We will leave the last word to people in the audience and take three
questions or comments.

Page 108 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

2h16m20s

Public : Boa tarde, são duas perguntas para Rui Tavares. Ontem falei do acordo entre os
Estados unidos e Portugal sobre incidência dos dados genéticos e biométricos
portugueses. Encontrei precisamente una das poucas citação que e do Rui Tavares
pronunciando sobre os perigos de este acordo que e supuestamente por causa de uma
questão de prevenir o terrorismo. Gostaria de ouvir falar sobre isto porque realmente eu
tenho muita pouca informação.
E uma outra questão também para o Rui: e natural ouvi-lo falar mas sobre passado visto
que e um historiador, mais sobre o presente e o futuro : o novo partido « livre » em
Portugal tenho ouvido nas ultimas declarações que pondera uma coligação post-eletoral
com o partido socialista. Como e que, conhecendo o secretario geral do partido socialista,
que foi responsável enquanto ministro da administração interna pela possibilidade de la
instauração de cameras de segurança por todo o pais e pela facilitação de isto, por outro
lado o partido socialista foi responsável por essa negociação com os Estados Unidos
sobre incidência dos dados biométricos, como e que isto se compatibiliza. Muito obrigado.

2h19m20

Public : A mina pergunta vai pelo facto que hoje por exemplo uma grande parte da
população portuguesa, espanhola, italiana, grega, vive en uma situação de desemprego
tremendo, a população não tem como prioridade o sistemas de vigilância como e o caso
na Alemanha onde os medias falam muito exatamente dos sistemas de vigilância. Nos
mídias portugueses, italianos, espanholes, no existe grande espaço por este tipo de
debate, porque existe uma prioridade do emprego. O seja : como e que nos conseguimos
ter um discurso que possa ser de massas quando as pessoas peguem quasi por comida?
Como e que nos conseguimos aliar estas necessidades básicas de muitos cidadoas
europeus com esta exigência de democratização e contra este estado de vigilancia total?
Por exemplo, que a prioridade dos jovens aqui no portugal o na espanha e : como
resolver o desemprego, como resolver a miséria destes países? Como resolver a
desigualdade?
Como podemos ter um movimento de massas se estas pessoas, a única coisa que
pensam, ao chegar a casa, e sera que vou ter emprego amanha, o não? Como podemos

Page 109 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

sensibilizar para este discurso sobre a vigilancia, quando eles passam a vida exatamente
a garantir para sobreviver? Como e que se pode fazer este ponto?

2h21m35s

Public : Comment peut on lutter contre cette surveillance pour la transparence de manière
légale, si le simple fait de la dénoncer est illégal, parce que les informations dénoncées
sont classées confidentielles?

2h23m

Philippe Aigrain : I will take the freedom of answering myself to the question on « how can
we deal with surveillance when people care about jobs? ». And I think there was one
question that was directly addressed to Rui, which was a question of accountability : « can
we trust policy promises when they are contradicted by acts ».
In every country, we try to address issues of democratization, not just issues of
technology. We face this urgency of the fight for employment, that serves to justify policies
that are actually responsible for the lack of employment and the increase in inequalities.
There, sorry for Eric, but I think changing the narrative is really a powerful solution,
because we have to go back to the sources: why is no European politician today in a
position to even speak about sharing work? It is something about freeing time? The
cultural rights were not just the rights of the minorities 100 years ago, but the rights for
every human being to contribute to culture at its best level and in particular the laboring
class. If we manage to bring back these issues on top of the agenda, and show what an
era of brainwashing people and making them completely siderated by television has done
for our supposed democracies, and how much we live in a post-democratic and oligarchic
situation of governments, which is what in Spain and I hope a number of political
movements have been able to put successfully on the table, then we will start to see that it
is not lost time for jobs and for food, to be working for the democratization.

2h26m17

Rui Tavares : Eu chamei o Orban um falsificador da democracia e eu acho que e o pior

perigo que nos afrentamos hoje em dia em Europa. Tem varias democracias de fachada

Page 110 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

que não são democracias reais, e que mas tarde podem desenvolver em algo mais
perigoso ainda, por tanto acho que e muito serio.
En relação ao caso dos vistos, o que os Estados Unidos fazem com países como Portugal
e outros e muito simple : « vocês não precisam tirar vistos pelos Estados Unidos », nos
respondemos « sim » e eles perguntam « querem manter? », « então se querem manter
agora ha mas estas quantas coisas que a gente vai querer receber direitamente  ». E o
nosso governo dice de sim, passa rapidamente pelo nosso parlamento no meio de agosto
quando a assembleia esta so com a comissão permanente, e passa. Alem disso o
governo português estava violando o artigo 4 do tratado da união europeia, porque a
negociação de transferencia de dados com os Estados Unidos estava infringindo a
posição europeia. Por isso que eu digo que essa posição pode ser mas forte porque e a
posição de 15 milhões de cidadãos, com qual os USA não podem mesmo su industria
turística dizer « vamos suspender os vistos ». E precisamente a razão porque eu acho
que e importante qualquer movimento emancipador pensar estar no governo e porque
queremos ministros que ao deixam isto acontecer. Y porque queremos ministros também,
nos países do sul particularmente, eu acho que nos temos a obrigação parente aos
nossos irmãos espanhóis, italianos, e gregos de ter um governo anti-austeridade em
Portugal o mas cedo possível. E quero que os gregos tenham um governo anti
austeridade o mas rapidamente possível. Não temos nenhum agora no conselho europeu.
Por tanto queremos por menos u, dois, três, quantos mais melhor.
And very quickly to answer Philipp’s question : i do think undoubtedly we are in a new era
of surveillance. Jennifer has said it quite rightly, now we are all suspects before crime and
that has happened without the kind of debate the democratic societies should have. Your
second question is if we need a positive narrative in order to turn this around. I think this is
absolutely crucial, we are not going to get there with tens of different reactive movements,
we need to have a global idea of how democratic developed societies should behave.

2h31m15

Jennifer Robinson : I am really glad someone asked about protection whistleblowers. As I

said before, Wikileaks was designed to protect whistleblowers. And why did Julian create
Wikileaks : because we have protections world-over to protect journalists from having to
reveal their sources, but even journalists can be found in contempt of court and sent to
prison if they refuse tor reveal their sources. That’s in order to protect whistleblowers and
sources like Snowden who bring this material forward. So, Wikileaks was designed to

Page 111 sur 160

Conférence n°3 : Dépasser le choc, comprendre la surveillance de masse

provide a technological protection so that you can submit material anonymously : if the
journalist doesn’t know who the source is, he cannot be held in contempt. If you received
the material from Wikileaks, you cannot be held in contempt. But also, it provides that
protection to whistleblowers; so the whole system around protection has been based upon
anonymity of sources. Now, what Snowden has done by going very public, and very
quickly, about his identity turned that on its head. It is forcing a conversation that we need
to have about the fact that the Espionage Act has no public interest defense, and that
there is no public interest defense for national security whistleblowers. All of the legislative
proposals that are being put forward, whether in the US or elsewhere, have an exclusion
on national security grounds. Snowden did something that was very brave, and if you go to
see CitizenFour tonight you’ll see that whole process, and how and why he came out as
publicly as he did, and it does shift the paradigme around how we talk about protection of
sources and is forcing a conversation about law reform. because at the moment, no
legislative proposal on the table would protect him or protect people like him. And it takes
people with the courage that he had to put themselves in that level of risk, in the way of he
presumed he would be in prison and he is right he would have been, had he not be given
asylum in Russia. And so we have to start having that conversation

Philipp : Thanks a lot, please give a round of applause to the panelists. I hope to see you
tonight and tomorrow.

Page 112 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

Conférence n°4 : Réagir contre la surveillance de masse, place à la

société
avec
Jacob Appelbaum, Julian Assange, Jérémy Zimmermann
animé par Juan Branco

Jérémy Zimmermann : Hi, I am Jeremy. I would define myself as a hacker, in the

etymological sense of the term. A hacker is somebody who is passionately curious about
technology, who wants to understand how it works in order not to be captured by it and
hopefully improve it. As long as I can remember, I always tried to tear machines apart (with
very little success in the beginning, when I was three).
I am the cofounder of La Quadrature du Net, an organization defending freedoms online.
We support Wikileaks, we advocate for citizens’ empowerment through technology so that
they can participate in society and try to make the world a better place. I believe this is
fundamentally what Wikileaks is doing.
As many hackers I have been shaken by the Snowden revelations, but at the same time I
expected something of this order of magnitude. As many others, I’ve been thinking about it
a lot.

Juan Branco : You both have, in the literal sense of the term, extraordinary technical
abilities. I would like to know if it was natural for you to take a step from a purely technical
relationship with computers and internet, to a political and societal engagement? Is there a
close link between the two?

Jacob Applebaum : I don’t think so. First I would say I don’t think I have extraordinary
technical abilities. I know people who do. People like Julian, who really started the
cypherpunk movement. He really is extraordinary, he is a space alien, I am not sure what
planet he is actually from. Something called Australia, but some « other Australia » that we
are not familiar with. In all seriousness, about the political component : all computers that
we use are political. So the question of whether or not I took this as a step… I would say
that one day I realized that fact : all of the computers that I used were politically inclined in

Page 113 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

a particular direction. When I used non-free proprietary softwares like a MacIntosh or a

Windows machine, I didn’t realize it, but by going along with the status-quo I was implicitly
endorsing this political world view about paying for a software, about not being empowered
with that software, and essentially being behold to these companies. Having that
realization came because I met Richard Stallman and a number of other important voices.
I met them in casual situations and I didn’t realize they were important people, I just
listened to what they had to say about, for example, the morality of the free software. And
then I realized that all along I had been making choices that were political, I just hadn’t had
the consciousness to realize that fact. So, it’s not that I necessarily made a choice, but it’s
that all along I had been making choices that I didn’t really actually understand. Now I
maybe understand them a little bit better.

Juan Branco : So, in a way the tools were politicized before you started reacting to that?

03m40

Jacob Applebaum : I had no actual critic or real thought process about choosing a market
based solution or trusting a company. I was 12, so that’s fair. It took some time to develop
a consciousness about, not only free software, but also the politics of authoritarianism, for
example. I had to read quite a lot and meet a number of people who lived in authoritarian
regime before I could really understand that.

Jérémy Zimmerman : First of all, I have even less extraordinary technical abilities than
Jacob. I started playing with computers like toys. I played video games for a very long
time. I was just privileged enough to have access to a computer earlier than other people.
Then I started connecting my computer to other people’s computers, then there was the
internet and it blew my mind. I remember flirting with this Singaporean-maybe-girl, I still
don’t know, while downloading two files from two serves on two different continents and
thinking « wow, this is something ».
A few years later, a tech website that I was reading a lot, Slashdot, seriously condemned a
US piece of legislation, and I started asking myself : « What are they doing? Why would
they legislate our toys? » At the time, I was playing with Linux, which looked like a very
dense, more complicated version of Microsoft Dose. And then I met with Richard Stallman,
and it’s funny that you mentioned him. I met him for the first time in 1998. Richard Stallman

Page 114 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

is the founding father of Software-Libre, and I saw him speak for the first time, and I
understood, « why, this is political. » I didn’t have quite a political mind at the time, but I
understood that this was deeply connected to our individuality and the way we want to
shape society, that software in relationship with technology could define the world we live
in. And from then on I felt I had something to do about it. Looking at things from that time it
is now obvious that the architecture of our information system is political, which can be
quite hard to understand : you have to understand what a computer is, what a network of
computer is, what a client and a server is, and then map those structures to the structures
of power, to the structures of society to understand that there is a direct link between the
technological architecture and the political architecture of this world. And therefore, with
what Mr. Snowden revealed to the world, with his immense courage, we see that the
whole architecture of the technologies that everybody here is using and trusting has been
turned against us. And this is what we are dealing with today. This is probably one of the
most important challenges that humanity faces today, the one with the most impact on
what we will or will not be able to do with our individual or collective destinies.

07m55

Juan Branco : You currently use TOR as a tool to empower people, to give them access to
freedom. And LQDNT is more focused on dissemination of information and policies, and
mobilization of broader communities who don’t feel directly that they need these tools. Do
you see a philosophical difference or just a difference in means in between these
approaches? Or are they both part of a larger strategy?

Jacob : I would say Tor is also a political entity although many of my co-workers would
disagree with that. I think that’s hilarious. For example, if you take funding from the US
State department to fight a literal proxy war in Iran and China, socks5 proxy, that is Tor as
a piece of software that acts as a proxy for a web browser, I think that’s an intensely
political thing. Americans, who generally have the social consciousness of an ant, don’t
understand that this is a political thing simply because it sometimes aligns with the
government. I find that a little bit frustrating in terms of internal dialogue. But there are
some people inside who do understand and find it intensely scary. They don’t want to be in
Jeremy’s shoes, for example, and they certainly don’t want to be in Julian’ shoes. So I
think we have different tactics and in some cases different strategies, but the goals are
basically the same. The goal of the Tor project is to create a practical way for people to

Page 115 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

have anonymity. It is not enough to have an abstract right; you have to have a way to
exercise that right. So we’re trying to help people gain the practical right to anonymity, so
that if they were to decide that they didn't want anonymity in society, they would say,
« Make this tool illegal, no one should have access to it, » which is very different then if the
tool doesn’t exist at all.
And what I see Jeremy doing, especially in his political advocacy work, is a similar form of
empowerment, focused instead on knowledge and awareness, so that people could
hypothetically say, «I know this thing; I don’t want to know this thing. Please censor me;
please don't give me access.» But usually when people hear these things, when they have
access to these tools that enable them, you don’t hear them saying «please take my rights
away, please censor this information.» it is quite the opposite. So I think they are
extremely complementary. It’s necessary to have political and technical discussions and
tools just the same way that we also need cultural tools as well.

10m50

Jérémy : You said it, it’s about empowerment and the sharing of knowledge. And to blur
the line even a bit more, I would say that when you talk about it is Tor political and that all
the rest of your work with Der Spiegel and Snowden’s revelations is probably even more
political than the most political work I’ve done. At the same time when we, as LQDNT, try
to empower citizens to participate in debates in the European Parliament, we develop
softwares such as the Piphone that enables peoples to call the European Parliament for
free, tools such as Political Memory, which is a bit stuck at the moment, but which enabled
us to score members of the European Parliament according to their votes, and so forth.
But as you said I am afraid we’ll have to agree a lot during these discussions.
The differences are tactical, and when we get to the core of the topic, namely, what can
we do as citizens to address and fix surveillance, I think we’ll come to talk about some
technological aspects, such as: we need more software, we need more crypto, we need
more audit of the softwares that already exist, we need algorithms for discovery of things
we don’t know already and so on. And we can talk about this in great detail. So we need
the technological work, of course.
We need to pressure elected representatives and governments so they uphold their
obligation to protect our fundamental freedoms rather than destroy them. The freedom of
the internet is in danger of coming under control of intelligence institutions. So of course
we need the political work. But I think there is a third tactic that is maybe even more

Page 116 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

important because we haven’t thought much about it yet: the cultural tactic. A majority of
people still think that computers are too complicated, that they can’t understand them, and
that therefore they can’t do anything about the situation. Moreover, they still think that they
can trust Apple and Google, because they are user friendly. Even when we see that they
are in fact « user-enemy, » we continue using them. The explanation is simple: marketing.
In order to combat both the marketing and the perceived helplessness, we need to make
people understand that a computer is like a pen, a guitar, a screwdriver: anyone can learn
to use it and by doing so you may improve yourself, you may even find business
opportunities, you may help fix the world. These cultural aspects have not been deeply
explored yet, but it is what we — Jacob, Julian and so many others — are doing when we
talk about it, when we are manipulate images of cats doing videos, organize crypto-parties,
create hacker spaces like the Chaos Communication Congress. But we haven’t put as
much energy into this cultural aspect yet.

14m50

Juan Branco : How do you reach people who don’t have the technical abilities, time or
social capacities?

Jérémy : We all have the ability. We see seven-year-old kids who start programming. We
see literature students who spend two hours learning to encrypt their email. If we talk
about ability then we inevitably have people with it and people without it. We all have the
ability, and his needs to be made clear. We aim both to empower technology and to
empower through technology. Can you imagine somebody today telling you, « Oh, I have
no time to learn how to read. I have a job, a wife and kids, a mortgage to pay. I don’t have
time to learn to read.» « But you’re about to sign a contract!» «Yes, but I don’t have time.
Let’s just sign it.» This sounds like an absurd scenario, but what happens when you sign a
contract with Facebook, when you click «I accept» and by doing so implicitly accept an
architecture that is built for control? You are accepting a centralized architecture that will
know everything about all you do, all you read, and all you know. Using these platforms
without understanding that architecture is like signing a contract without reading.
Therefore, understanding that architecture — I am not talking about becoming the Mozart
of computer programming but just understanding the architecture —is as necessary today
as knowing how to read and write.

Page 117 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

16m50

Jacob : I think we have a debate.

Jérémy : Aaahh !

Jacob : I don’t think you should blame people for their illiteracy.

Jérémy : No, no, I am not blaming them !

Jacob : When you say that we would judge someone who is illiterate as stupid you are
implying it.

Jérémy : No, I was talking about someone who says he has no time to be literate.

Jacob : Well I think that’s also a lie. And I think that your reaction to the lie should be to
deconstruct the lie and not blame someone. So let me rephrase that.

Jérémy : Point taken.

Jacob : There are great class and educational differences. The reason people don’t
understand these things is that they are told one narrative and are ignorant of the
completely separate narrative that exists behind it. For example I think it’s very funny that
we use the term Snowden « revelations, » as if he were a saint, and here we are on
Sunday in something that resembles a Church. He is apparently dead to everyone
because no country other than Russia has given him asylum. That said, I still don’t think
we should blame users. What Snowden revealed when he blew the whistle is that there is
a separate narrative, that all of these companies are complicit and are often secret agents
of the State. We cannot blame a user who clicks through a license for Facebook and says,
« Well, there is one little clause in the subsection that says that they may share information
with other parties. » I am not saying that this is the case post-Snowden: if you’re going to
sign up for Facebook today, you’d have to be living under a rock not to understand what
you’re signing up for. So, if there is something to be said about the mendacious nature of
the contracts it is that the laws themselves promote injustice and a lack of understanding.
The companies are not allowed to tell you that they do these things. That right there is one

Page 118 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

of the first problems. The State has unilaterally constrained corporations and made them
agents of the state. We cannot blame anyone for that other than ourselves and our
democracies. It’s not technical. There is no relationship to technology there. In fact, it’s
completely political.
Let’s compare the Internet to biology. There are very few people here who can explain the
intricacies of RNA and DNA. I am guessing almost no one here understands retroviruses,
and most likely no one here has made interesting « Biology 101 » experiments. But even
though most of us are ignorant about the intricacies of bacteria, we all know how to wash
our hands, and we generally understand why. We know how to be biologically safe. Thus, I
don’t think we should shame people about their technological ignorance; instead we
should come up with solutions that are both political and technical and disseminate them
throughout the cultural spectrum. I think that’s what Laura has done with her film
CitizenFour. Trevor Paglen, whose art is about taking the invisible and making it visible,
creates a striking parallel to elements of the surveillance state that are secret but can be
made visible. Let’s say we discover a CIA black site, what are you going to do about it?
Oh, turns out it’s in Poland. That means the European Court of Human Rights has
jurisdiction, what do we do? Well we have processes for that once we see and understand
it. We need to open people’s eyes, but at no point should we blame them for being fooled
by these structures.

20m40s

Jérémy : The use of the conditional and the term « stupid » was unfortunate, I agree. My
main point is that understanding the underlying concept of technology is maybe even more
important than trying to understand everything about one piece of technology itself.

Jacob : But don’t you think it’s just capitalist oppression? I am not sure that it has anything
at all to do with technology, but rather with the structure of modern capitalist society.
Corporations are essentially privatized agents of the state that work in secret. That’s not
about the internet at all, that’s about how capitalism extracts value from workers, and
workers in the 21st century don’t know how to organize themselves anymore.

(Applause form the public)

Page 119 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

Jérémy : Understanding the architecture means understanding the political nature of the
architecture, this is what we are talking about. I don’t know if there should be technological
courses in school or whether it should be part of civic education.

21m40

Juan Branco : Do you have to go through the state? A measure I would expect to hear
from you is changing the educational system in order to raise awareness about it, but to do
that you have to go through politics.

Jérémy : We may have a point of disagreement, but let me clarify: I am not saying that
centralized public educational system is the way or the place.

Juan Branco : But it could be one of them.

Jérémy : It could be. But in Portugal and in France things move at a tectonic pace, so it
would take at least 20 years before we got anything done. Through the empowerment of
technology and through the internet, we invented new and more horizontal ways of sharing
knowledge. In educational systems you have a much more vertical structure: one person
speaks, the others have to either shut up or request permission before they can express
themselves. This hierarchical way of diffusing knowledge is the antithesis of the internet,
where forums and chats and mailing lists allow 12-year-old kids to address honorary
academics or lawyers in a peer to peer way. It is this sharing of knowledge that is so
incredibly powerful, that makes us able to win major political fights, to spread the use of
certain technologies, and that is key, one of the keys of course. We should not throw away
the centralized public education system, but we can have more immediate impact by
sharing knowledge. The question boils down to whether we want to focus people’s
attention on computer literacy or understanding the political nature of technological
architecture.

24m00

Juan Branco : What do you think, Jacob, do you think we can go through the State, or
have you lost faith in it?

Page 120 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

Jacob : I am not a person of faith, as you can read in the bottom of my shoe (it is a good
joke that no one else needs to get). But I don’t know that I have a contrary opinion about
this. I am not much of a statist. Someone recently told me that he recognized that Julian
and I were post-nationalists. And I think that’s true. I live in exile in Germany now, I have
lived in Berlin for about a year and a half because I was harassed for years as part of
Wikileaks. Sometimes it was legal harassment, I have had many cases USA v.
Applebaum. If you never had an entire government versus yourself on legal documents,
you just haven’t lived! (laughs in the audience)
And my experience with this is that I really have become post-national, that is, I don’t think
just in terms of national solutions. But I also recognize that this might also be an
unfortunate consequence of where I am right now. It is clear to me that we need to have
fundamental educational systems in any place, whether there are in states or in your
private home. You need to have certain fundamental educational unions that are
completed by people. For example, it is a necessity to know how to read. How that may be
done, there is probably more than one way to do it. Personally, I have thought myself how
to read : my parents gave me some books, explained some very basic things and I went
off and started to read. My experience with the American centralized education system, if
you can call it that, was not the world’s greatest experience, or even America’s greatest
experience. I think that there is something to be said about things that can come. Maybe
we will not be so contrary here. Living in Europe, I am convinced that the State is not the
only problem. It is only one of many problems. My view on State oppression in the
American context is pretty different than it is in the European context. And I don’t know
anything about Portugal so I won’t even pretend to say that I have a solution, but one thing
is clear : the internet gives us all an option. Or at least it did. And it still can give us all an
option, no matter where we are from, and no matter what class we start in. We can rise
above our stations in terms of informational knowledge, access to information and the
ability to cross borders, without access to capital, beyond the initial capital outlay of having
a computer and having access to the internet. So it follows from that : having your
computer, that runs free software, that is your computer, your autonomous space, inside of
your home or on your person, and having access to the internet needs to be a part of that
educational system. It needs to be treated as a fundamental human right as the Finnish
have done. It should be done for the betterment of a person. It can complement the
educational system. And I think it will necessarily ensure that people who are interested
can in fact learn about the things that they are interested in, even if there is no teacher in
their school to teach it. That is in fact how I learned everything there is to know, that I do

Page 121 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

now, and it is not because of teachers. It was because of self exploration, because of
mailing lists, because of websites. Fundamentally all I needed was having access to the
internet and having curiosity. Schools, and especially good teachers can inspire to have
curiosity, and they can also advocate, organize for internet access, for all people without
exception, without surveillance and without censorship.

28m30

Jérémy : When I think about it, I had this teacher about the same year I had my first
computer who just thought me curiosity. It was all he was doing. You mentioned autonomy
: I think this is really key, because it is one of the essential components without which one
cannot have freedom of thought. This universal promise of autonomy is precisely what
« software libre » is about. It is exactly that. Software Libre, Free Software is a software
that belongs to humanity as a whole, where the whole of humanity has the very same right
and the very same freedoms as the initial author, which means that everybody can run it,
use the software, copy it, those basic things everybody does with software; but also
everybody can study how it works and can make it work better and modify it.
Some of you may think « i am not an engineer, I can’t understand those things so I don’t
really care about reading the software, having the ability to understand how it works, let
aside even making it work better ». But still, having the potentiality to do so is completely
different from having no option at all. You may not become a computer programer some
day and read free software code and modify free software code anytime soon, but still,
your kid, your sister, your nephew, your neighbor, somebody in your company, in your
public administration will be able to do so. Maybe you will pay somebody on your street
corner 50 euros so he or she will add a functionality to your piece of free software. This
universality of potentiality for making things better is the key element, and is one of the key
components of anything we can build around technology that will make us more free. By
opposition to all this crap that we are being sold, and that is now being designed to put us
under control.

31m

Juan Branco : Jacob, do you also believe that free software, such as TOR, can one day
replace or become a viable alternative to Microsoft, Apple and others?

Page 122 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

Jacob : Yes

Juan Branco : In what time frame?

Jacob : Well, we live in interesting times. We have, I would say, many different universes
of possibilities all happening at once. That’s one of the really interesting things about the
internet ; if you ever get really caught up in your own life and if you think everything is
really important, whatever thing that is happening in your life is the most important thing,
first of all Bertrand Russel said these people are the most likely to have a nervous
breakdown, and second of all, you can look at the internet and you can see quite clearly
that that’s probably juts not true. And it is the case that there are people who use entirely
free operating systems with entirely free tools that route all their trafic over the Tor
network, and they do that 100% of the time. While simultaneously there are people that
are using entirely proprietary softwares and they don’t use any privacy protections at all,
pay for everything with credit cards, and both of those realities exist at the same time. And
they have different drawbacks. The drawbacks for the free software side often are that it
isn’t polished, it doesn’t look as nice, it doesn’t have a marketing department as Apple
does. You know, Apple modeled some of their marketing department after scientology. Are
there any scientologists in the room? Scientology is a cult, it is very scary, and Apple
designed its marketing department that way. And I am not kidding, scientology really is a
dangerous cult, actually. The free software movement is a cult too, but it is not a
dangerous cult, I think, and it is certainly not marketed in the same way that Apple is, in
trying to entrap you and to convince you to take a part of it. That is not to say that Apple’s
products are bad. From a security perspective for example, using an iPhone makes it
much more difficult for someone to break into the telephone, than if you are using another
type of telephone. It is in fact the case that Apple has spent a lot of money on securing it,
and they have done that precisely because if they have the security checkbox and the
usability checkbox, then they don’t have to check other boxes, they don’t have to give you
autonomy, and that’s their trade-off.
I think that you can choose to live in one of those worlds, or you can choose to live in a
hybrid of the two. Of course, it is not obvious how to do that. But there is no reason why
you could not install the new Linux or another free software operating system and use it,
buy an android phone and not add a google account. The components of that, however,
are not free; for example, the cellphone is usually composed by two computers : one is
called the application processor, that’s the android side of the phone, that’s where you

Page 123 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

interact with it, add phone numbers, dial things, etc; and the other side is called the base
band, and that’s a proprietary software operating system which may have backdoors, or
other harmful components. You cannot change the base band, it is not free in any sense of
the word. Interestingly enough, architecturally in the technical documents they talk about
components in terms of « master » and « slave ». I think is really great, I love the technical
people, they are so transparent in their non-political nature! So, in this case the base band
processor, the non-free processor that controls your access to the network is usually the
master. And the free software part is usually the slave. This tells you something about how
they view your autonomy. It tells you something about cellphones - that’s why they are
called a cell-phone, actually. It is striking to me to think how we accomplished this, and
part of it has to do with government regulations, or lack of regulation. Cellphones are
designed to be wiretapped, to be tracking devices, that’s their goal, and in certain
countries the government mandates that it is the case. In fact, I don’t think there is a
government in the world that doesn’t have a mandate for being wiretap-ready, essentially
for voice calls. In Spain, for instance, there is a company doing voice print analysis, I
believe in most of the Spanish telephone network. On a website called buggedplanet.info
you can actually read about it and see country by country the breakdown of surveillance
companies. Now, they do voice printing, so there are actually companies that exploit the
vulnerabilities of these telephone networks. And that vulnerability exists because of law.
We could make it so that such a company would not exist, so that it could not do voice
printing by making it end-to-end. This example shows that technologically, many things are
possible, but politically we have gone overboard, and we know that for sure thanks to the
fantastic revelations of Saint Snowden.
A scary consequence of not using free software, not having autonomy, is the centralization
of solution that flows from it. There is a guy in the front row over there, who is a great
journalist, but he is using an Apple computer. He is from France. Ok. But what is that,
really? That’s a colony fo America, right? Why is it a colony of America? Ok, it is also a
NATO colony, but that’s because of Apple. If the United States government wants to target
him, they can almost certainly go to Apple and get data from him. They can potentially
even force Apple to make a specific update just for him. And there is no culture that
encourages Apple users to be defended. And that’s not to single you out. We all have this
problem. Every piece of hardware, or software we have, has the same problem. So we
need to start to build alternative structures in order to defend against those insidious
attacks. And to build a free software ecosystem that works, we need to first understand

Page 124 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

what we need to do with that free software, and that is in fact a thing that is not really
explored at all.

38m50

Jérémy : I wish we would disagree a bit more but that’s difficult. What I think is the key
issue here, is the political nature of the architecture of technology. You just described this
Mac computer that is probably opened to the US government to do whatever they want to
do with it. As hackers with engineering backgrounds, we sometimes think of design
patterns. So I’d like to think about what are the design patterns, what are the inherent
characteristics of technology that control us. When I was a kid, you may not even have
been born, you brat. I had my Amstrad in 1985, you’re from 84 right? No. Ok. When you
had an 8-bit machine, from the 80 and the 90s, you would open them with a standard
screw and look at the circuit and you could understand everything that was happening in
there. You could also look at the manual of the computer. And in the annexes were
diagrams of all the circuits, chips, with all the references. So you could, if you were nerdy
enough, understand everything about that computer, its limits, and play passionately,
joyfully in order to try to push those limits forward. And this is how a whole generation, few
generations, learned how to use computers. Those were the friendly machines for us to
play with. It took 20 years, maybe less than that, from that era of friendly machines, to the
era of enemy machines. Machines that almost everyone has in their pockets, that are
designed in such a way that you cannot even remove the battery ! Machines designed so
that you will not be the administrator of it, you will not be able to read and write every file
on it, that incorporate those black box chips that by essence are made to be remote-
controlled.
What turned technology into our enemy? One can think of the closed software and
hardware that you just described. There is also this hyper-centralization of
communications and data : everybody connects to the same Google, Facebook, Apple,
making those entities super powerful, because information is power. The more information
is concentrated, the more power is given to those entities. Thirdly, it is about the illusion of
security. You close your eyes, you think of the marketing, you trust Apple, Google… You
look for a little icon in the shape of a padlock in your web browser, and you feel safe. If you
look at those in the mirror, you will see that on the other side, for each of those
characteristics, all the characteristics for technology that make us more free in the mirror of
closed software, is free software. In the mirror of closed hardware will be, someday

Page 125 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

maybe, hardware we can trust and this is a key industrial and political challenge today. In
the mirror of centralization, is the decentralization of services and communication, which is
the original nature of the internet and which would give us back our autonomy in the
network. And in the mirror of this illusion of security, is security in our hands, where by
using end-to-end encryption we all become the actors of our security. You generate your
cryptographic key, I generate my cryptographic key, we exchange public keys and we do
not need to trust Google or Apple before we can establish a reasonable level of trust in our
communications. What fascinates me is that technologies that control and design patterns
are all based on subverting from the user knowledge about how it works. It is because you
have those 100 pages contracts hiding things from you, because you are made to believe
that things work in a way they don’t, and because you can’t understand how they really
work, that they become instruments of control. On the other hand, technologies that
liberate us all rely on the fact that we appropriate it, that we learn it, through the sharing of
knowledge. And it is all there on the table for us to learn and share. It sounds so obvious.

44m40s

Jacob : (laughs) You are amazing, you are amazing, you are a free software machine.

Jérémy : I am not a machine ! I am a human being.

Juan Branco : Thank you guys. I am glad to discover that we have all become Wikileaks
members from one day to the other, just now.

Jérémy : We are all under surveillance now !

Juan Branco : If you were planning a trip to the US you should cancel it now. Julian,
welcome and thank you for being with us.

Jacob : Hey Julian !

(Long Applause)

Julian : It’s going to be hard to follow these two, Jeremy and Jacob, who are really quite
fine speakers.

Page 126 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

Juan Branco : Thank you. I was saying in the beginning that we were really ashamed, at
least I was ashamed, that we cannot have you here in person, because of our
governments, and maybe also because of a lack of mobilization of some people. We can’t
have you physically, but at least you are here, and thank you for this effort. So, the idea is
to give you the floor to speak directly with people in the room who want to know about your
struggles, your fight. We have been talking for three days about the importance of
Wikileaks, Edward Snowden and Jacob and Jeremy. So people have now quite a
knowledge of your activities. I would like to start with a short, but not so easy question :
why wikileaks ?

Julian : It is a good question. I have often received this question and I am always at loss to
give the answer because there are so many causes that go into Wikileaks, because its
goals I suppose are so ambitious and connected to so many things in human life, and
that’s really the interesting question : why is it that that question is so difficult to answer?
Why is it that something like Wikileaks is connected to so many different things? I
sometimes say that, actually, I am a really boring person. I am just an extremely rigid
librarian. A librarian that is very good at saying « no » when someone wants to take a book
from the library and destroy it. When someone wants to raid the library and remove that
information. And I think we can go back and look at this sort of notion of these classical
libraries, like the library of Alexandria, and see that these are repositories of wisdom with
the fruits or ur best and our worst stored so we may learn from each other and so future
generations can learn from us, and so we can also learn from the past. So in that sense,
Wikileaks is about history, it is about history circa now, and history is not without critical
effect, history has an effect, its effect is to teach us about how our world actually works.
How human institutions actually behave. And it’s only with this understanding that any
political theory has some hope. So before we understand our human institutions in a
modern era, circa now, and how they actually behave, all political theories are bankrupt, all
political prescriptions are bankrupt, because they don’t have the ingredients they need to
understand the problem we have to face. So in that sense, I think Wikileaks is a
continuation of a long struggle to prevent the real history of our world being subjugated.
And it is from the real history of our world and our time that we are able to derive all the
benefits and fruits of civilization.

49m

Page 127 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

Juan Branco : Important powers have been deranged by Wikileaks. They have tried to
stop it by detaining you without charges for more than two years in the Embassy of
Ecuador, where you had sought asylum mainly because of a grand jury secret
proceedings in the US. So the question is, first : how are you? We have to ask you this
question because you are the visible face of this organization, and the one through which it
is still alive. And second : how do you do it for it to be still alive? Can you tell us about the
activities of Wikileaks today, and how you maintain them ?

Julian : Human beings somewhat sadly are very adaptable do the difficult situations that
they find themselves in. Prisoners and children are extremely adaptable, and in fact that
adaptability is often a cause for real concern. For example, about the revelations that have
come out over the last year, are we adapting to the reality of those revelations? Are we
slowly being cooked as a civilization like a frog in a slowly boiling pot? Are we adapting to
the new temperature? Ok, so… Of course, I am in a positon where I have been detained
for the last four years, I am adapting to it. It is the new normal for me. But a lot of people
are in a similar situation. Let’s not forget that Chelsea Manning has been detained for 4,5
years, charged, yes, but unjustly sentenced to 35 years in United States for simply and
only communicating with the press. So, as for what Wikileaks is doing and what I am doing
with it, in some way being in an Embassy has some advantages. For example, I can’t be
raided in the day, or in the night, it’s a no man’s land, in some ways it is a place without a
State. This British Police are not permitted to enter, and the Ecuadorian Police are not
permitted to enter. It is a situation which is purely controlled by the human dynamics,
which of course is connected to political and legal circumstances outside the Embassy,
and UN and Ecuadorian Domestic Politics. But it is a space that also has the immediate
potentiality for the use of force. Ad that’s quite interesting; it is like that anarchic
environment that in the international relations theory is said to exist between states and
their interactions, but there is no superior law to call upon, and states have found a way,
most of the time, to deal with each other, to act diplomatically with each other, to try and
act in a way that is mutually benefitting rather than mutually destructive. Although
sometimes they do not achieve that purpose. It is a very interesting situation being in a
stateless region and having to create internally that sort of interstate diplomatic
environment.
Wikileaks is a pretty big organization, we have had a lot of attacks and I am extremely
proud to say that we have survived that. We went head to head with the Pentagon, when

Page 128 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

the Pentagon publicly declared that they were going to attack us, that they would destroy
all our publications - the State department following a similar angle, demanding we
destroyed, or as they put it, « returned », the materials, the cables from the State
department, SIS, dealing with people from the US government. They were not successful
at all. Not in a single point. Not a single publication, not a single document were they
successful in destroying. Similarly, in the recent Snowden affair, there was a clear match
between two parties, the National Security Agency on one hand, and the rest of the US
government state apparatuses on the other hand, that were pulling support. We came
together with other supporters and publishers for the physical destiny of Edward
Snowden : who was going to get that guy ? Were we going to get him into asylum, or was
the United States going to get him into prison? There was a race on, the largest
intelligence man hunt the world has ever seen for that period of time, and the result of that
conflict is the United State government lost ! It completely lost ! It didn’t win in any respect.
And that points out, yes, ok, that we have an interesting network and we have some
extremely capable staff. But really it points to something else, that I think you can all learn
from : that is, people maintain their authority through the use of fear and all it is necessary
to maintain fear is to create the perception of fear. These agencies, while we have all been
discussing the extraordinary technical abilities and infiltration abilities, are, in the end, the
real soviet part of the United States : they are large, bureaucratic, secretive, government
funded. The result is, they are not places where the best and the brightest shine, they are
not places where people genuinely, enthusiastically live personally and compassionately in
their mission. The result is, when they go head to head with organizations that do, they
can loose. And we have seen that in multiple situations. Ok, I am in a difficult situation, but
I am not in prison, our organization is still functioning. While some of our staff are being
harassed and Jeremy yesterday gave an example of the FBI trying to recruit him while
exiting the United States, trying to make him become an informant, as far, all of our
people, all of our staff and immediate supporters are not in prison. So I think you should
take that on board and see that these organizations are not omnipotent, it is very important
for them to try and present themselves omnipotent, and Hollywood, and TV and even
NGOs, and even us sometimes, contribute to that phenomenon, because people that are
trying to resists these organizations or draw attention to their injustices also pump them
up, to say « look how much damage they are doing, look how powerful they are, look how
authoritarian they are, look at how they are infiltrating all your lives », and this makes
people unreasonably - it needs to be done - but it makes people unreasonably scared,

Page 129 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

because in the end, these are organizations run by bureaucracies, and bureaucracies are
incompetent.

(Long Applause)

Juan Branco : Jacob wants to ask you a question.

57m10

Jacob : Hey Julian, it’s great to see you ! You look a little bit like Santa Claus.

Julian : Thank you. Christmas is coming !

Jacob : I am hopeful that you’ll give this audience quite an amazing gift… I tend to think in
three waves, we have protest, resistance and alternative building. And part of the reason
that Wikileaks was able to successfully rescue Snowden is because Wikileaks did in fact
build a network of people around the world that understood international law, that
understood asylum law and so, this alternative structure is I think the core lesson from
Wikileaks. I wonder if you could tell the story of Evo Morales’ airplane, because if there’s
one inspiring story that shows how you can use the surveillance machine against itself, it is
that story. I personally think that it’s the best Wikileaks action that I have ever taken part
of. I wonder if you could tell the story to this audience because it would really inspire a lot
of people.

Julian : Well, I would love to, but you put me on tricky ground, Jacob, because I
understand there is a documentary coming out rather soon that is going to exploit that
story in some details and I don’t want to ruin the scoop.

Jacob : Is there any way that you could just talk for a moment about how, as an example,
you…

Julian : Without saying anything that might ruin an important and well constructed story as
being put together by German State TV, Danish TV and a few others, just after we got
Edward Snowden out of Hong King and he was in Moscow airport, and US canceled his
passport at some stage and the result was that he couldn't take his onwards ticket from

Page 130 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

Moscow. Once again, speaking about bureaucracy, what an amazing, what an incredible
own goal for the United States State Department to trap Edward Snowden in Russia.
Incredible situation. And then there was an oil summit in Moscow and several different
presidential jets were coming in, including presidential jets from Latin America, including
Evo Morales, and including Maduro from Venezuela. And somehow the US Government
got it into their head that Edward Snowden was going to be spirited out of Moscow to
Bolivia, on President Evo Morales’ jet. And as a result, they called up through their
intelligence contacts their intelligence contacts in Spain, Portugal, France, and I am trying
to recall what the fourth country was, anyway at least those three, and got them to close
the airspace to Evo Morales’ jet. Close down the airspace to a presidential jet returning to
its home country. So they burnt incredible diplomatic favors to do this. And Evo Morales
was forced to land in Austria because they would simply run out of fuel if they didn’t land,
because they couldn’t continue on their path to the Canary Islands and then to South
America. And, lo and behold, Edward Snowden was not on that jet, and so there is an
interesting question as to how is it that the US government came to believe that Edward
Snowden was on a jet that he wasn’t on, and as a result, showed the true relationship
between the United States and several significant Western European countries.

1h01m08s

Jacob : And so we’ll have to watch RD in January to find out the answer to that question?

Julian : Right.

Juan Branco : That’s a fail ! Jeremy wanted to ask a question.

Jérémy : It is a pleasure to see you in good shape and smiling. I hope you find time to
sleep and relax. I really hope so. You are here smiling and you show us what looks like
this inner joy of somebody who knows he or she is doing what is right to do. And this is
something we discussed yesterday with Jacob and Laura, this is something that helps you
overcome fear. Of course, I am not saying that you are not afraid or that you should not be
afraid of what is going on and this London Police being everywhere around you right now,
but you have what some of us have as well, that helps us not be overcome by fear, i call
this inner joy . I have the impression when we hackers, specialized journalists, or lawyers,
talk about surveillance in all its crude reality, we have a discourse that may generate fear,

Page 131 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

anxiety. And we know that people who are guided by fear speak less, act less. How do you
think we could try to solve that? You gave a bit of answer already. But how do you think
we could address the public when speaking about surveillance in a way that would
generate hope, and the joy to share and to rebuild something?

1h03m18

Julian : That is a very interesting question, Jeremy. I am quite worried about it. I am quite
worried about this cause because the phenomenon that you are speaking about is exactly
right. If you tell people that they are being watched by secretive agencies that you say very
powerful, the rest is they start to self censor. Of course people have done this for a long
time in their communications in public, but now they are even doing it when sms-ing their
wives because they think - and they are often correct - that the National Security Agency is
bulk collecting that information and giving it to its pals nationally and internationally. I am
not sure of the correct response. I gave you part of the one that these agencies are
incredibly bureaucratic and hopeless, often hopeless. And when you’ve got a decent team
of strong-willed people, not necessarily that well-resourced, you are able to out maneuver
these organizations because they are so bureaucratic. I guess we need to look back to
people involved in Tchad in 77, and people interacting with the Stasi, to see how they
understood their own surveillance oppression. So, in classical marxists terms you might
think about class consciousness. And I was thinking just before I came on, that we have to
establish a consciousness about oppression, in particular consciousness about
surveillance oppression, and part of that consciousness about surveillance oppression,
which is necessary to act upon it, is also a consciousness about not becoming paralyzed
as a result of your own consciousness, and moving forward with the situation to
communicate in various ways, which is still effective, or to understand the risks in a better
way. I am not completely clear on what the solution is because at the moment people have
still just been exploring what the realities of this surveillance are. We have got to develop
then a consciousness about how to push past those realities, and I think part of that is a
cultural understanding of what human beings must be as human beings. That is we cannot
consider ourselves to be surveilled cogs in a powerful machine. We cannot do that. That is
not the place of a human being to think that they are something out of, say, Terry Gilliam’s
« Brazil ». That they are in that type of human culture. And even if they are in that type of
culture, they must realize that this is not the culture for human beings to be in, it’s not a
civilization that is fit for human consumption, and therefore human beings in order to be

Page 132 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

human beings must change that reality either by tearing it down or by changing the way in
which human beings interact to make the results of that surveillance less detrimental not
only to human plans and actions, but to human character.

Juan Branco : I give now the floor to the public because that was what we meant to do
first. So, questions?

1h07m10

Public : Hello, my name is Maria, do you think that it is possible to go back to a world
without technology?

Julian : I don’t think it is possible easily, in the sense that very few post-colonialist
movements, for example, had the goal of everyone having an M16 or a K47, but
nonetheless, because the other side had tanks or K47, they felt the need to understand
these tools and make use of them, even if their goal was to remove the use of violence.
Somehow, you have to understand violence in order to remove violence. Now, that said,
this old saying in politics, the tools used to obtain power will be the tools used to retain
power, reminds us that we also need a consciousness about the construct we want for
human beings. If we look back to one fo the great ideological advances, which is the
invention of human rights as a concept - now of course I know its background: the concept
of human rights really took on its power because of the cold war, it was a moral stick for
the West to beat the Soviet Union, and for the Soviet Union in terms of civil rights as
opposed to human rights, to beat the West. And in this conflagration between the two we
developed institutions and standards of human rights, and we even created an industry
with professionals that could seek their own career advancement in the course of
promoting human rights, and that then became a lobby to push human rights forward. It
detached itself from its originators as an intellectual construct.
I think we are going to need a similar movement to deal with a new totalitarian, in a sense
of total surveillance world. Both individual rights for human beings and collective rights
must impede total surveillance to happen. It is not that these rights are enforceable, it is
almost impossible to enforce a right against a very complex intelligence agency.
Intelligence agencies, by definition, are engaged in work that is about the secret collection
of information, and in most countries, unfortunately, they are engaged in secretive work
also because they break the law ad work outside the law. So the notion that we are going

Page 133 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

to stop the behavior of organizations like the NSA with laws or with rights is completely
fanciful. But nonetheless, for human beings to have that concept within themselves, that
this is something that human beings should not be susceptible to, I think is something that
we can work with and build upon. I want to harken back to surveillance in Czech Republic
under the Stasi. Of course, initially you had technical people and if you like, political nerds
of surveillance who understood what were the ways of recruiting informers, how coud one
tell if someone was an informer, what sort of hidden microphones were there, how to
check for tails, etc. And based on that technical understanding, then, political
understandings of the nature of the surveillance society developed.
At the moment, we are at an early stage, we are at this stage where the nerds of
surveillance, the people operating on our side, on the public side, are trying to understand
what is the technical reality, or simply what is the reality of the mass surveillance that is
occurring. And then we need to transition from this into some cultural understanding of the
dangers of heading towards an international mass surveillance society.

1h12m18

Public : Would you say that mass surveillance is a way for the US to reaffirm itself as the
world greatest super-power?

Julian : I don’t know about « reaffirm ». It has been affirming that for quite a long time. If
you know the history of the NSA you can go back to an article that we re-published from
Ramparts Magazine, originally printed in 1973. Just go to Wikileaks and search for «  NSA
Ramparts ». The NSA has been involved in this sort of business for a long time. There was
a massive scandal in the 70s, it came out from inquiries for the Church Committee in
Congress : the NSA had been scanning emails and engaged in domestic spying, including
of activists. And that history is now being quasi forgotten, because there were vested
interests in the United States that didn’t want to keep retelling and repeating that history.
And also, that original whistleblower in 1973 was so far ahead of his time that many people
didn’t believe what was going on.
Today, the difference is that the internet has pulled every society into that surveillance
matrix, and nearly every single human being, and every single human being who has any
ability to influence anything, because they are all on the internet. So there is an

Page 134 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

exponential increase in the grasp of the national security agency, and thereby of the
United States, and more broadly speaking the Anglo-Saxon powers. But I think it’s a long
hungry development for power combined with this phenomenon of all the other societies
entering into a system where they can be easily surveilled.

Juan Branco : It is interesting. You haven’t seen the Chomsky Interview we showed a few
days ago, but he has the same perspective. He goes back to a hundred years ago, to the
Philippines occupation by the US and says that today’s surveillance is merely the result of
a progressive extension of the means and techniques that were put in place at the time,
and that there is nothing new about it. So, as you might guess, you are a contemporary
hero for him, and in a way, your status of public enemy reminds him a little bit of himself,
40 years ago. And by the way, it’s on tape, so you’ll see it, but his first question when we
met him was: « How is Julian? Is he holding on? We have to help him ». That was just a
side point. Can we have another question?

1h15m40

Public : Hi Julian, I am Ana Gomez, I am a member of the European Parliament, one of

the people who welcomed Wikileaks and the revelations about what we are trying to
establish, the complicity of European Governments with the US Government on the torture
program, so called « extraordinary rendition ». Of course, I am one of the people who
thinks that you are not a criminal, and who also welcomes the revelations that Edward
Snowden has brought to us. At the same time, as a member of the European parliament, I
have to indeed consider all that is at stake, I have to consider the security concerns of our
societies as well. Unfortunately, we do not live in a beautiful world, where one can clearly
distinguish a lion between the criminals and the non-criminals, and sometimes, as we have
seen, the criminals are inside governments, inside security agencies.

Jacob : Many !

Public : Exactly. So, my question is : the privacy rights have never been absolute rights.
When it comes to fighting criminality, there are, according to certain rules, lawful
intrusions. A tool like TOR, for instance, provides free software to people who want to
defend themselves against the criminality of security agencies, governments, etc. But how

Page 135 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

can we know that the privacy allowed by TOR will not be abused and put at the service of
organized crime, terrorists networks and so on?

Julian : I have two answers for this. First of all, when you are talking about security, what is
the really big threat to security? The really big threat to security is intelligence agencies
getting too much power. And as a result, creating a state or collaborating with another
state in order to subjugate the domestic population in one way or another. It doesn’t have
to be this classical form of subjugation, like Russian tanks rolling to Czech republic, it can
be a more sophisticated, modern form of subjugation which is about which industry gets
what amount of money, about trade deals, foreign investments buying up your industries
and your land. We are in a much more fluid form of subjugation than we used to be.
Actually, the biggest security threat for any society is that the society goes bad. And then
nearly every single member in this society is affected, sometimes even the elite in the
society are affected because it seems like there is no escaping it. Secondly, it is true, Tor
can be used for all sort of bad things. I think the majority use of Tor is probably for people
in Iran and China to read the BBC or some propaganda websites in the West, or actual
dissident websites. The second use case is probably people wanting to look at perfectly
harmless pornography, being concerned that their work might have a problem with it. And
then of course, there is plenty of criminal uses, as well. But… I answered this question not
by saying « states and governments are inherently completely illegitimate », they have a
role to protect people form victimization and it’s an important problem. I answered by going
« well, did we have mass surveillance twenty years go? No. And were there criminals,
running amok, destroying, tearing up society 20 years ago? No ». So, in setting this
threshold, answering this question « do we need mass surveillance in order to have a civil
society where criminals aren’t tearing up the streets? » we have the answer, the answer is
« No ». And therefore, we are pushing over that, we are pushing over that into more
controlling regimes, and these controlling regimes will lead to conformity, and people being
scared to speak, and at its worse, can lead to subjugation of the democratic apparatus
within the estate.

(Applause)

Juan Branco : Jacob wants to react, also

1h20m58

Page 136 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

Jacob : That’s a tough act to follow, Julian. As a Tor person I would like to extend another
point. You say that the right to privacy is not absolute. I think that this framing is not the
correct framing, and I would suggest something here which is that the right for someone,
that is to say an intelligence agency to interfere in my life, is actually not an absolute right.
We specifically say that for someone to interfere, for example to violate your right in some
way, or to limit your right in some way, that there needs to be, in the United States or in
Europe, a specific reason. Now the notion of mass surveillance is that the reason is not
specific, but rather general. And in fact, that right to absolutely resist a general warrant is
encoded in the American and in certain parts of the European system. It is not in the
British art of the European system for obvious historical reasons but it is important to
understand that we do have a right in fact to send each other letters where these spies
cannot, and should not, be able to, and where law enforcement agencies should not be
able to, open without a particularized suspicion. Mass surveillance goes against this and it
says that we no longer need particularized suspicion. And furthermore, this notion of
framing it as « privacy » is incorrect. What we are speaking about is liberty itself, and what
we are saying is that spies get to subvert our liberty at their desire, without particularized
suspicion, and then they say it is to protect us. So, finally, to follow up with that, the Irak
war is an example of what happens with mass surveillance. We killed somewhere between
100 thousands and a million people and we did that with the NSA’s help. We spied on that
country, we bombed that country, we targeted people, we killed them. This happened with
the help of surveillance : mass surveillance and targeted surveillance. When people say
that surveillance reduces terrorism, they forget to tell you that it also increases the
efficiency of war, but it doesn’t necessarily ensure that it will be a perfect war. So if we look
at the total number of bodies, mass surveillance seems to pile them up even higher than
terrorism, in my mind. And as we look through our time, what we will see is that
surveillance is control, and sometimes that control is asserted through violence, and it is
states that do it, not just so called asymmetric terrorists. General Alexander definitely has
waged more violence on the world - that is the former director on the world - that Al Qaida
ever has. Because he waged wars against entire nations using mass surveillance. So this
question, « do you have a right? » : you have a right to be autonomous, you have a right to
have the European Union that is not under surveillance, that is not captured, and I have a
right as an individual to be free from that kind of control from the very start, especially
when I am not a criminal to begin with. And in fact, in a network society without anonymity,
you will not have whistleblowing, you will not have the ability to securely communicate in a

Page 137 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

way that is not tempered with, and as a result you will not be free. So to choose
anonymity, to choose things like Tor, even though the police officers that commit acts of
police brutality may also use it, is to choose to be free by default and to know that it will be
hard for those spies to do their job, which is exactly how it should be.

1h24m40

Jérémy : I want to add a little something. It is even harder to go after Julian and Jacob on
the issue. When you talk about security you talk about risk analysis. Julian said it earlier,
we know that mass surveillance was used to spy upon all the employees of Petrobras in
Brazil. So, this capacity gives the US the ability to destabilize major economic operators,
which means destabilizing whole economies. And we know, particularly here, what it
means when the whole economy of a country is destabilized, and opened for auctioning to
private interests. So this power is probably a much bigger risk for Brazil, than any type of
terrorists’ attacks. But what it means inherently is two different security models, or rather
one security and one anti-security model. To enable this mass surveillance in the name of
fighting terrorism, technology got subverted in the hands of very few actors. The result is
this total imbalance of power, concentration of power and potential for control in the hands
of very few actors. This is what I call the anti-security model of the technology for control.

1h26m38

Public : It is very inspiring to hear your conviction that we can continue to live without fear
in a surveilled world. Can you comment on how you are able to continue working in the
constraints of the Embassy and how you are facing the constraints on your own freedom
and your own rights? How do you practically continue to do your work?

Julian : We are speaking about the cultural changes that must come about in relation to
our own self perception of how we, as human beings, as cultures, deal with mass
surveillance. We can look at the double-entendres, or dog-whistling or subversion of
cultural products in the former East (this phenomenon also happens in the West quite
often now). Where people are surveilled, with cultural products that are made for the public
consumption, you encode cultural messages in them, you encode things in such a way
that the audience that you want to speak to can understand it, but grunts that work for that

Page 138 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

National Security Agency can’t understand it. It is a cultural adaptation to mass

surveillance.
How do I deal with it? I am in a different position to other people. While I have surveillance
up close and personal, Edward Snowden’s documents showed that GCHQ has been
spying on us and that I was put on to an NSA man-hunting list, that’s what the NSA called
it since 2010. 10 million dollars has been spent in the last 2 years, according to the London
Police’s own records, on the police outside the embassy, just for the policing operation. 15
thousand dollars everyday is spent surveilling me here. And there are surveillance
operations against my guests who come in and out, of course. So it is really, very,
extremely personal for me. But I have the luxury, unlike most people, of having a
background in cryptography and how to deal with surveillance. So I wouldn’t like to say
that my experience is directly transferable on to other people. I have, yes, much greater
interest than the average person. On the other hand, with mass surveillance, everyone is
sucked up into it. But I also have a lot of training about how to actually deal with it. How I
do actually deal with it, well, unfortunately I can’t tell you exactly how we deal with it
because perhaps it wouldn’t work anymore. But as a sort of simple description, the key is
understanding what is important and what is not important. And if you like to confuse the
opponent with what is not important and spend the effort on those things which are truly
important, than that’s a hard thing to do. It needs a lot fo work.

1h30m37s

Public : Are you preparing another spy files release and, if yes, can you tell us a little bit
about it?

(Laughs)

Julian : We are ! I can’t tell you much because, well, I would like to say « because it’s all
super secret » ! But the real answer is because I have delegated that to someone else in
the organization. But I understand yes, another spy file release is being prepared.

Public : Do you think we can win this fight, and enter this political struggle, without first
having an inner change, an ethical change inside us?

1h33m30

Page 139 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

Julian : It’s an old question in politics. If suddenly we all just became Buddhas, would that
fix the problem that we have? Well, I think you can look at Hirohito’s Japan to find the
answer to that question. Japan in the lead up to World War II. You can have everyone
being Buddhas and you can also have a perfectly fascist state. Human beings in politics
are very adaptable, they can decontextualize anything. So right thinking and right action
principles from Buddhism can be adapted to « you should become a kamikaze pilot », be
brave enough to do it, and to do it. So I think that the answer is no, it is not a spiritual
change form within. Rather, the answer is both of these phenomenons together. Spiritual
change or change in character must be based on something; it is worthless if it comes
form nothing at all, if it comes from just a few words. It has to be based on an
understanding of what the environment actually is, and seeing other people in that
environment, and learning to be compassionate about their suffering. But then also
experiencing it yourself, going out of your way to act in what some people would call a
courageous manner. It’s really just checking your understanding of the environment. As I
said before, that all it is necessary for empirical domination or the domination of an
intelligence agency or some nasty little fascist company is just that other people are
scared of it. It is the perception of fear, it is all that is necessary. It can be completely
illusory, the actual ability to do anything.
You have Hollywood, for example, constantly pumping out absurd movies showing the US
military as this incredibly competent machine - or the CIA agents as these extremely
competent people. But they are extremely incompetent people ! Why are they so
incompetent? Because secrecy breeds incompetence : when mistakes go wrong, they
can’t be fixed. Security contractors, for example : there is a privatization of intelligence
now, which could actually mean that one could expect the same efficiency and
competence from those companies feeding the government apparatuses than any private
industry - and that would be a problem ! But the reality is, those security companies are
also incredibly incompetent, because the fruits of their labor, of their contracts, are secret.
When people look at the history of companies (i.e if they produced quality intelligence
products, how robust they are, etc), a lot of that is obscured by secrecy. They simply take
money from the government and give it to their friends, which is what most of these
defense contractors do. Look at what happened to General Alexander, what has he done?
He has gone and become a military contractor. All these people become military
contractors. Why do they become military contractors? Because they are good at starting
businesses? They have never started businesses! Because they are good at running

Page 140 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

businesses? They have never run a business ! They do it because they have personal
contacts inside government. And with those personal contacts is how they get their
contracts. So they get their contracts not as a result of producing powerful quality
products, but as a result of personal connections. And that’s great ! That’s fantastic !
Because it’s the built-in incompetence of secrecy ! And we can really use that !

(Applause and laughs)

1h37m50s

Juan Branco : We will take two last questions if you have 5 more minutes.

Julian : Sure !

Public : Hello, my name is Anna. I am just a concerned citizen, I am not an expert in

anything. I tried to give a smartphone to my teenage son, but he is smarter than me and
he refused it, so I decided to keep the smartphone for myself and was very happy with it,
until I realized I was really a fly in the web. When I discussed it with some friends, they
were not concerned, they thought it was just how targeted marketing worked. I think some
paradigme has to change in order for each of us to decide not to be a pond in this system.
Could you comment on this, on the fact that each of us is willing to be a pond in the
system? Thank you.

Julian : I agree. First of all, you should read an essay, that’s on Wikileaks, called « Google
is not what it seems ». You can even google for that, if you would like.

(loud laughs in the audience)

« Google is not what it seems ». And get your friends to read that, and they will understand
that when they are interacting with an organization like Google it is not simply about better
targeting of ads. In relation with better targeting of ads, that’s fine, I agree, I am not
bothered about the advertisers too much, and the targeting of advertising. But Google is a
company that has grown up and become very interconnected with US foreign policy, the
US state department. The last 3/4 of this year it has become also the number one spin top
in Washington, for a company, in terms of government lobbying. More than Northrop

Page 141 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

Grumann, more than Lockheed, more than Raytheon, more than Apple, and it is very
ambitious. Its ambitions are not just what it sees as a useful relationship with the US
government, but it wants to invade every corner of the world, suck up every single person
into its mesh, understand where every person is, what everything looks like, what
everyone is doing, at anyone point in time, and of course it says it wants to know all these
things so it can better target advertisings. Even if that was true, even if that was the only
reason Google was doing this stuff, the fact is that its model, its basic model is exactly the
same as the National Security Agency : collect as much information about the whole world,
and every single person in it, and what they are doing, store it, index it, produce a
predictive model of each person and each organization and then, if you believe their
rhetoric, use that to target advertising. But the reality is Google is in the United States, and
it has relationships with the US government. So what happens is, the US intelligence
agencies just stick their things into Google. Google is the greatest intelligence coup that
has ever happened at all in the world. People have voluntarily entered into that system.
Now, this reminds me that the basic argument people say is, « well, I am not an important
person, I have got nothing to hide ». And your response to that should be two things : first
of all: what’s wrong with you, that you have nothing to hide?! You must be an incredibly
boring person ! You are not contributing to the development of our civilization, why would I
ever want to talk to you again, if you have nothing to hide? Please ! Immediately go out
and get something to hide !

(Loud applause and laughs)

1h42m50s

The other aspect is that we are all connected together. Our communications travel through
each other, we are all friends of each other, directly or indirectly. Everyone is being
targeted with mass surveillance, everyone is actually a target, no one escapes this if they
use the internet. People reporting on Facebook about you, or stuffing search terms into
Google, or using gmail to receive your email, are being informants on you, being
informants on their relatives, on their husbands, on their wives. And even if they think they
are not very interesting at the moment, their friends may well be, or they may become so,
or they may become embroiled into some administrative injustice soon enough. The reality
is, as intelligence agencies become more powerful and more secretive, and as the
organizations connected to them also become more powerful, they become more arbitrary.

Page 142 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

They become more arbitrary because they are more powerful. And there is no ability for
anyone to escape arbitrary injustice. It comes down like lighting, on any person. It doesn’t
matter if you are boring. It doesn’t matter if you have kept a clean nose. Look at General
Petraeus, the had of the CIA - the head of the CIA ! - the ultimate insider, thought he was
immune from all of this because he is so much in the system. But the consolation of
random circumstances meant that he was destroyed. That lightning can strike anyone
when you have a system of arbitrary injustice.

Juan Branco : Thank you very much Julian. Maybe a last question?

Public : Considering our current situation, where secrecy and control seem to be
pervasive, if you can project yourself 60 years ahead, how do you see the devolution of
our western civilization? Thank you.

1h45m28

Julian : Unfortunately I would like to say « we need to look 60 years ahead », but this
phenomenon I think will solidify in about 20 years, maybe even 15. Here is the really
interesting philosophical question : is the advancement of civilization in terms of more and
more complex technology, inherently leading to totalitarianism, as a result of inherently
leading to centralization? That’s the real question that has to be answered. Because when
you’re dealing with things like semi-conductive manufacturers, there’s only two that are
making most of the big chips inside your computers and they are both in the Unites States.
And why are there only two? Because it’s extremely sophisticated, complex process, and
once you make a chip, you can ship it around the world, it doesn’t go off like an apple or
like milk. You can sell it in one country just as well as you can sell it in another country,
and so globalization for those things that don’t tend to decay, tends to result in there being
one market leader, one secondary company and then some bespoke operators, people
who make custom solutions for those two. We can see that happening in operating
systems where you have Microsoft, Apple, and maybe a few others taking nearly all the
markets. Search engines : Google taking in the West about 80% of the market, and in
some countries like Sweden, it is as high as 97%. There are very few other operators.
Why? Because it is a global market as a result of the internet. Centralization increases
efficiency in the case of something like Google, so are we heading into a situation, as a
result of technology advancement, of worldwide centralization? And if so, how are we

Page 143 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

going to stop that equaling totalitarianism? Once you have a centralization of key features,
including the interaction of people over the internet, once individuals in all sort of different
states are meshed in that system, then whoever can physically or financially dominate it,
can control it.
On the other hand, is there some tendency, about the advancement of technology, that is
moving into decentralization? Technology goes through phases of inventions, some
spread centralization, and then democratization: as normal people know how to make the
technology, it becomes more copyable, etc. Now, that traditional world of technology,
which has its totalitarian phases and its democratic phases, may be undone by the
internet. Because now we have something called software service. Previously software
was something you got on your machine, different manufacturers could make it, different
software producers could make it. As more and more became understood about it, more
and more people could make it, that’s the democratization phase of technology. What we
have now, thanks to the internet, is software service, which means that you don’t buy the
software but you use servers run by Google, Amazon , Apple or whoever, and you never
control it yourself, as Jeremy was speaking about. The result of that means that just one
company can serve the whole world very easily.
So I am not sure. I think we should look to see whether we can find processes that have to
do with the globalization of telecommunications that are moving in a different direction.
They are just a few that we see. Cryptography for example, allows you to use the internet
but somehow not use the internet, to create your own network on top of the internet. So
the internet may be surveilled, you can create another network on top, you can create a
mini-state, if you consider a state as something which is able to control itself and others
are not permitted to control it, it has the monopoly on the use of coercive force.
Cryptography is like the ultimate air defense system. It is like a S300 or S400 air defense
system, it keeps coercive force out. It doesn’t matter how powerful the state, it cannot
break a math problem. Superpowers cannot break a math problem, cannot break
cryptography. You can create, even if the internet gets completely owned and dominated,
your own little internet, or state, within a state on the internet. Bitcoins is a decentralized
technology, but still globalized. It created relationships or rules of interaction between
people which are enforced without using traditional notions of coercive force.
There are few, but there are not many. That’s why I think we really have to try and find
these other mechanisms. Because if we don’t find these other mechanisms, and
technology advances in the direction that it has been advancing, then it seems somehow

Page 144 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

inevitable, that we’ll end up in a globalized civilization with very few power centers, and as
a result we will in essence be living in a digital totalitarian world.

Juan Branco : Thank you very much, Julian.

Thank you very much everyone for attending. These three days were important for us, and
I hope they were for you too. I hope the information we shared helped you to better
understand the threats we are under and the ways to protect yourself. I hope it will
encourage you to react, and then, to act.
I would like to briefly thank a lot of people that I will not name specifically but who have
participated in the organization of this symposium that I co-organized with Philipp Aigrain:
Jean, Charleyne, or Jérémy who have helped us a lot, and all of our guests who deserve a
warm applause. And of course I would like to thank the Lisbon and Estoril Film festival and
all his partners, and his director Paulo Branco who has given us the floor here.
As I said the first day, at the very beginning of this symposium, the people that we’ve seen
here now have become media figures who have more and more visibility, but we have to
remember - and I think that’s very important - that these people have been implicated in
these subjects and fighting for them for years and years just because they felt it was
needed, without having any kind of special visibility, nor looking for it. That means that they
can be any of us. There are actually people in this room who are already taking this path
and will be following it. It is very important for us to remember, when we see Julian, Jacob,
Jeremy now, who have achieved something with huge visibility, who have become
symbols, that they were and still are any of us. If you want to, you can become one of
them, if you make the effort for it. I hope you will keep that in mind. Thank you very much
for everything.

Jeremy : Short announcement. If you want to be nice to Julian, if you love him the way we
love him, you can very easily find the address of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, send
him a letter, books, music in mp3. He loves it and that’s a very nice thing to do.

Juan Branco : Don’t send him your teeth as some did, please. That’s all.

Page 145 sur 160

Conférence n°4 : réagir contre la surveillance de masse

Page 146 sur 160

 Conférence n°5 : Conversation with Laura Poitras and Jacob
Applebaum

Juan Branco: We have the immense honor to host Citizenfour by Laura Poitras.
It is a very special moment for us, because it is the premier of the documentary here in Portugal,
and because it is the last event of our symposium on mass surveillance before tomorrow’s
conclusion with Julian Assange.
During this symposium we tried to build bridges between activism, politics and fiction, and see how
they can dialogue. We tried to find channels of interaction between activism, politics and works of
art, that would enable us to better understand mass surveillance and better react to it.
In that sense, and having seen Laura’s previous movies, I am sure that Citizenfour will be very
important for us.

I will leave you the floor and then we will have a Q&A with the audience. These dialogues with the
public are the main reason why we decided to hold this symposium: we wanted to have citizens
asking questions and conversing with people like you. So, I will let you tell them how you made this
movie, and why you decided to fight this fight.

Laura : Thank you so much, Juan, for having me.

I would like to thank the festival for inviting the film here and for focusing on the issue of
surveillance; obviously it is incredibly important. I have just met one of my heroes in the art world
and it is very humbling to have her in the audience tonight: Nan Goldin is here. Her work is so
spectacular. So, I am nervous !
I am not going to talk about the movie, I will let the movie talk for itself and answer questions after.
But I am here with one of the people who inspired the film, and who made the film possible. Jacob
Applebaum has been fighting for privacy, and organizing both technically, artistically and
journalistically for us to maintain that privacy, and it is wonderful that he is here. I will give the
microphone to him just for a minute to say « hello », and we will be back after the screening.

Jacob : Making this film wouldn’t have been possible without some of the people who are in the
audience, such as Jeremy Zimmermann in the back of the room there, and a lot of people around
the world who wrote free softwares. But the reason why I am on this stage is to talk about Laura.
She doesn’t like to be in the film and so on, but she is a courageous person who, during the
making of this film really wondered, every day, if we would be murdered. It is not a joke. And the
reason that has not happened is because of the overwhelmingly positive response from people like
you, hopefully. So, enjoy the film.

Page 147 sur 160

*screening*

Juan : One of the strongest point of the movie is the materialization of surveillance. It is something
that has been discussed a lot during the symposium, the fact that surveillance is difficult to grasp. I
wanted to know if it was a conscious move of yours, to try to materialize that surveillance, not only
by filming Edward Snowden, but by showing the physical places, and the violence that comes out
of those places, the bunkers, etc.

Laura : It is the first time I have heard the word « violence » used in relation to it, but I don’t
disagree with it.
What I’ve been trying to do in documenting the US war on terror is to translate it in a different way.
We have a lot of information about what is happening and what the US has been doing, but it had
to be translated in human terms, in human consequences. Sometimes, that means speaking more
at an emotional level than it is just giving information. For me, it is about the issue of surveillance,
but it is also about trying to communicate something that is dark, that we don’t quite understand
and that feels dangerous and threatening. There is a lot of information in the film, but it is also
unsettling at another level, on a more emotional level. It is certainly translating my own personal
experience of what I think is happening, and of what I think people who are targeted may feel
about this ominous growing surveillance state.
Most of the photographs and images of the surveillance sites used in the film are from a renown
photographer Trevor Paglen who’s been trying to document black sites for years.
So, hopefully, the film is operating at different levels, both giving information at an intellectual level
and also conveying a sense of dread about the context and the situation.

07m00

Juan: At the beginning of the movie, the audience, including myself, started laughing when the
officials denied Snowden’s first revelations… but the laughter gradually decreased, while
conversely the awareness grew and we got the feeling that not only this was real, but it was really
affecting people…
Jacob, what was your reaction when you saw the movie for the first time, how did you relate to it?

Jacob: The first time that I saw this cut of the movie, I would say that it was profoundly disturbing.
The first time that I saw it open, I would say that it was a relief in a very strange way.
I didn’t travel to the United States for the opening, I haven’t travelled to the United States for over a
year and a half, and during that period of time, working with Laura and Glenn and other people on
some of the Snowden related disclosures and similar things with Julian Assange, it built a lot of
tension. So to see the film, finished, in Berlin, it was a relief.

Page 148 sur 160

I mentioned that there were tensions earlier. Laura doesn’t like to talk about it but there was a lot of
stress and paranoia, I was exceptionally worried someone might try to harm Laura during that
period of time. So seeing her film in Berlin I thought « finally ! we are going to be alright ». I also felt
relief that people would finally see what Snowden had gone through, what real stress that is not
paranoia looks like, and that what is paranoia for someone who is watching it is actually prudence
for the people who are living it. And to see that it was done in a very good film was a relief. And it
definitely was a relief that we all lived to see the film.

10m20

Juan: Every story needs editing. Having the possibility to edit one’s own history and to create a
counter narrative is rare. You were filming history, were you aware of it?

Laura : I was very conscious when I was in Hong Kong that I was filming history. The type of film-
making I do comes out in a context where you try to be as things are happening in real time,
unfolding, and you don’t know what the future is going to bring. And if you are in those moments
you can get a sense of what the human stakes are when it is happening, so you can see the
anxiety and all those things.
I knew that the meeting between Snowden, Glenn and me was going to be an extraordinary
encounter in terms of journalism. Usually a source is trying to remain anonymous in a situation like
this. I felt my job in Hong-Kong was not to report on the documents, I was documenting Snowden
and I was interested in why somebody would take such enormous risk in their personal life to
reveal this information. To me that seemed really vital to understand.
When I returned back to Berlin I shifted and started working more on the archives, on reporting and
collaborating with journalists, including Jacob. I felt it was my obligation to do that, because he had
taken those risks not so that I could make a movie, but so that the information would get out into
the world.

15m
Juan : Going back to what you said about the tension you experienced, there is this extraordinary
scene when the fire alarm goes off. The only one that seems to be feeling that tension is Glenn, we
see him panicking, physically; while Edward Snowden seems colder than death ! He knows this
might be the end of his journey and he is completely in control, it is very troubling.

Laura : I met him in HongKong and he had already reached the point in his life where he was
taking extraordinary risks, so I can’t judge what his personality was before. It was clear that he had
already made peace with his decision and with the fact that there were a lot of risks, he had
crossed that line. I also think he is a very focused person, he compartments, so he was probably

Page 149 sur 160

thinking « I am here to do this, I am not going to think about the impact it will have on other people
now ». You see it coming here and there, but he really tried to stay focused. But you did feel that
there was this sub-current of tension, I certainly felt it. I mean, I worked in conflict zones where
bombs were falling all the time but this really felt more dangerous. Being in Hong-Kong felt scary.

Juan : I was wondering if you identified yourself to Snowden, at this moment of extreme tension,
when he was on the phone with his Hong-Kong lawyer, figuring out that he had to leave but didn’t
have any car… Did you also feel that, at some point in your life?

Laura : In that situation he was the one at maximum risk, and I was very aware of that. I was not
thinking that what I was experiencing was anywhere near what he was experiencing. But I have
been in situations that were dangerous, and this probably felt like the most dangerous reporting
that I had ever done, because of the levels of power that are going to be put in motion as a
response to the reporting coming out. And I think we saw it with what happened in the aftermath,
with Evo Morales’ plane, with David Miranda being detained in London, with the Guardian that was
forced to destroy drives. We really had some angry governments responding to the revelations.

18m10
Jérémy : Congratulations Laura ! I admire your work as much as I love you, that’s really something.
I have two difficult questions for both of you. We were all very much impressed by Edward
Snowden’s courage. At some point he said « I am not afraid of them ». I feel that you are not afraid
of the NSA, that Jacob is not afraid of the NSA. Still, when we unravel the cold brutality of these
violations of our fundamental rights, people tend to get afraid. So my first question is : what do you
think it takes not to be afraid of the NSA?
And also: I think none of you had been trained as a journalist, not even Glenn Greenwald was
trained as a journalist, he was trained as a lawyer. Yet you are doing some of the most important
journalistic work of these times. At some point in the movie we see the Guardian bending under the
pressure of GCHQ and destroying documents. So my second question is : what does this tell us
about how journalism is done today?

(Laura and Jacob laugh)

Jacob : Thanks Jeremy for these two very easy questions ! First of all it is a total lie to suggest,
even for a moment, that there isn’t fear. Julian Assange whom I very much respect and who taught
me pretty much everything that I know about journalism, suggests that courage is acting not with
the absence of fear but doing what you believe is important even if you have this fear.

Page 150 sur 160

I absolutely have a lot of fear about the NSA, but I don’t use fear as a motivator. I look at history
and what previous surveillance systems have done in the past: most of the data privacy laws in
Europe come from data misuse during the middle of the twentieth century, mostly by the Germans.
It is a very old charade to bring the Holocaust but it is true. Die Deutsche Hollerith punched card
machines were in fact used to organize the mass seizure of wealth and mass executions, to
ensure that trains ran on time, and so on. So it is not fear that motivates me, but rather the intensity
of understanding how each individual person can contribute to that world happening merely by
doing nothing. Hanna Arendt talks about this in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem.

To answer your second question : many journalists are captured by their establishment ties and
their complete lack of principles and devotion to capital, and the State. The State is the new God,
right after capital. It is clear to me that the Guardian cares about its British establishment ties more
than it cares about basic human right and more than honoring their sources. The Guardian did not
want to help me, to have a letter to say that I was working with Glenn Greenwald, so they actually
left me in the cold after I possessed classified documents while I was working with Glenn as a
journalist. The reason why they refused to write a letter to me was they didn’t want to, I quote,
« delete their legal authority » to protect me. They left me out on the limb. They did that because
the things that I am willing to do to make sure that everyone in this audience can know what is
going on is far more than the Guardian is willing to do.

(applause)

Laura : There is some other connection between your two questions. When I started documenting
what was happening in the US post 9/11 the first film I made was about the war in Irak. I didn’t
think I would be sitting here ten years later also working on basically the same theme, the war on
terror. When I first started I thought « the country has drifted, it responded in a sort of emergency, it
will get bac on track ». I was a bit naive. But I got trained out of being naive. Being put on a watch
list and detained every time i returned to the US for six years certainly helped. I had two choices :
one was to stop working and one was to keep working. And it became an easy decision, I decided
to keep working and it trained me against this idea of being intimidated. It doesn’t mean that there
is no fear. Of course there is fear, but I won’t let he fear rule me.
Snowden is a smart person and when he reached out to Glenn and then to me, he knew the work
that we had done, that we had been consistent critical voices against the US policy post 9/11. He
knew he was engaging with journalists who were not going to capitulate to whatever the
government line was. You are right though, I was not the usual candidate. I am a visual journalist, I
am interested in reporting information plus « other things » which include telling narratives or
reaching people on a human scale that is more universal than the particulars of the issue I am
reporting. Part of my surprise when I started receiving the emails was that I wondered « Why

Page 151 sur 160

me? ». He could have gone to lots of other journalists, but as you mentioned mainstream medias
have failed us in this era. Certainly US mainstream media. There are great journalists, James
Rison, Dana Priest, there are people who have been pointing towards these issues for a long time
but there also are institutions with bad track records : how do you know if you go to the New York
Times, if you are going to get James Risen and the story will be published or if it is going to be held
for a year? I have reported with the Times in video and I never had any problem with anything
being censured or held back, but obviously we know that there are cases when that happened, or
cases when the word « torture » is not printed when we know there has been torture.
Snowden was aware of what had happened in the mainstream media and it was not such a
surprise that after Glenn didn’t have encryption, I was somebody he reached out to.
It is wrong to assume that there wasn’t fear. There was a whole lot a fear. There were times where
there was a lot of uncertainty, while we were reporting. And I don’t know that those times are over.

Jacob : Whatever happens, it was murder.

Laura : And about who is trained a a journalist and who is not, I have worked with Jacob on this
reporting, and there is nobody better trained to report on this information than he is. Sometimes the
mainstream media don’t have the capacity to report on technical information. The strongest
reporting on a technical level that the Washington Post has done was when Ashkan Soltani came
on board and started working on the stories. he was working both as a technologist and a
journalist. The lesson from these revelations is the need to have more technologists and people
who can look at this information and report on it. Certainly for me, I needed to partner with people
to report, because there was many things that were beyond what my expertise was.

Public : Why do you think the CIA didn’t send some special agents to Snowden’s room? They used
to do that. My hypothesis is that maybe Barack Obama didn’t know the extend of the NSA’s
activities and decided not to arrest you in Hong-Kong.

30m00
Laura : We arrived in Hong-Kong on a Monday and Glenn was publishing two days later. The
government maybe had a clue that Snowden maybe had left the country and that a bunch of
journalists got in a plane, they were probably putting the pieces together and I think they didn’t
expect it to happen at such an accelerated pace. And they didn’t expect that a source would be
willing to come forward with her identity. The pace of the reporting and the fact that Snowden came
public put the government on their heels. In other words, they probably thought they had more time
to respond. Jacob, would you like to respond about the question on Obama?

Jacob : You saw the end of the movie, right? You were in the theater?

Page 152 sur 160

Juan : Maybe people don’t know that the acronym POTUS stands for President of the United-
States…

Jacob : Yes, so, at the end of the movies, it says « POTUS ». When he is writing POTUS, it means
« President of the United States ». At the very end of the film, when he is describing the reality
about drones and the chain of command, the exact guy that you think would give her mercy, is the
person they are discussing, is the executioner for thousands of people.
I don’t think it was mercy that they didn’t get into trouble in Hong-Kong. If anything, it was a little bit
of good planing, and some luck.
If the government thought that the balance would have paid off to do something, they would have
done it ! We are talking about a President who literally assassinated an american child in Yemen
with a flying robot !

32m30

Public : Congratulations for an extraordinary film and most of all, congratulations for your courage.
I have two questions : first, we hear a lot about the deep web, is it beyond the access of the data
collection that is going on? And my second question : how do you go on with your life knowing
everything that you know? How do you protect yourselves? How does anyone protect themselves?

Jacob : First of all there is no such thing as the deep web, it is a framing made up by sensational
journalism. Now, when it comes to targeted access, if they want to access something, there is
nothing that they won’t get, on a long enough timeframe.
The second question is a little hard to answer. Ten years ago, Julian Assange, Jeremy
Zimmermann and I wrote a book called cypherpunks. We talked about these issues, entire
populations under surveillance, freedom of movements, financial tracking… It is heavy to realize
you live in that world and to sleep well, but both realities exist at the same time.
How do I protect myself electronically? I use the Tail operating system, but it only protect me in
certain ways, not in all ways. If they want to get into my computer, there is not much I can do to
stop them. I try to make it as difficult and as expensive as possible, so that if someone tries I can
catch them and embarrass them.
In general though, the way that I deal with it is to make sure that everybody else, especially in
America, never say in the future that they didn’t know. After the second world war a lot of Germans
said « oh, I didn’t know ». My promise to myself is that there will never be an America that I meet,
as long as I live, who doesn’t understand their culpability in the drone war and in the surveillance of
the whole planet. I want everyone to know that. That’s how I deal with it. Knowing that I alone won’t
make this difference, we together won’t make this difference, but all of us together can make a

Page 153 sur 160

difference. And the people who didn’t work to stop it will be held accountable later just as the
people who perpetrated it directly.

Laura : There is a lot of bad news in the film, but there is some good news : the good news is that
encryption works !
I am careful, I compartment. I know I can’t work under the radar anymore. We don’t know to what
extend my life, Jacob’s life is really surveilled. Hopefully someday someone will leak that
information and we will get to see our files !

37m30

Public : The US government has perpetuated these practices with the complicity of the Congress,
the Court, and foreign governments. How can foreign societies deter their leaders and
governments from supporting the US and these practices?
Jacob : The European Parliament started an investigation into these practices to try to understand
what they mean. There are other governments like the United Kingdom, who, even though they are
part of the European Union, have doubled down on spying. I like to think about it as a pyramid. On
top of the pyramid you have the NSA, then GCHQ, then the Australians, the Kiwis, the
Canadians… The governments that are at the bottom of that pyramid tend to recognize that the
bottom of the pyramid is a very bad place to be. Ecuador, Brazil, Germany for instance, are starting
to discuss new ways to regulate that surveillance and make it lawful. But there is not one country in
the world who has said « enough, we want out of the pyramid completely».
Some countries are making a huge mistake, they think that they can partially be in that pyramid :
wrong, the NSA does not care at all about Portuguese law. When you ensure that only a
Portuguese authority can wiretap you, you ensure that NSA can wiretap you with any kind of
judicial authority at all.
The big irony is that when all of these people talk about terrorism and how to prevent it, you will
note that they don’t. That’s a key part of the discussion. Everybody talks about the Boston bombing
: what caught those guys was the people that were there taking photographs and videos before
and after the bombing, not part of a spying apparatus. They are at best building a system that
helps them putting the pieces together after the fact, but not before hand.

Public : Freedom of speech in Portugal is only 40 years old. We achieved it through clandestine
organizations. Do you feel part of that revolutionary work?

42m30

Page 154 sur 160

Laura : I don’t think that I have gone underground, but I did make the decision to work outside of
the United-States in order to protect source material, as a result of being detained at the border so
many times. My work is founded by foundations in the US and there is still a tradition for defending
the first amendment and freedom of speech in the US that supports my work. Of course I had to
take some extreme measures to protect my work, and it is not a good sign if journalists have to
leave their country in order to protect source material, and it is not a good sign that James Risen,
my friend and colleague at the New York Times might end up in jail to protect a source. It is a dark
time, it is a scary landscape, but it is still a landscape where I can speak my mind and report and
have support for that work, enough support so I can keep working.

Jacob : I think that if you watch this film, one of the things that you see is that Wikileaks saved
Snowden’s life, when the Guardian and the Washington Post did not. And the way they did that is
of course by studying clandestine organizations, understanding how to securely compartmentalize,
how to use cryptography, understanding liberation movements across the world. That’s what I
spent the last several years of my life studying. In order to have a free society you have to have
clandestine organizations as well as mass movements. It is a necessity for free society. That is wy
Snowden is now alive in Russia and not in an American prison.
Laura is very much an above-board person, but it is good that Julian Assange also exists in this
world. You need to have people that are as absolutely squeaky clean as Laura and people who are
willing to be thrown under the bus like Julian to make sure that people like Snowden survive.

(Long applause)

Public : Thank you both for being so brave. Someone asked how you were going on with your
lives. I want to go beyond that and ask you what we should do to fight back that surveillance. I just
sent my first encrypted email to a friend (applause in the audience) and I am translating a
documentary called the Dark Web where Jacob is featured so that my parents can watch it too. But
I still feel powerless, and I still feel that I should be doing more.

Jacob : I don’t have an answer for you, but I have questions about how serious you are. Not every
person can be a Julian Assange or a Laura Poitras, not everyone can be a Glenn Greenwald, but
everybody can be aware of these things and there are many things that can be done, like running a
Tor relay, teaching history of resistance to military dictatorship for instance, adopt an american and
teach them about where they are headed, there are a lot of americans who could use that help,
overtime you hear someone saying they have nothing to hide, engaging in that very frustrating
conversation is very useful. We need to have politicians understanding that they will not be free if
they communications can be captured.

Page 155 sur 160

The goal for me is not to create a society where every single thing is encrypted or anonymized, the
goal for me is to create a just society… I am sounding like a motivational speaker here…
Anyway, there was a guy yesterday in Copenhagen who said that he was a computer engineer and
he wanted to help and work on free software. I answered that he was welcome to do so, but that
he could also walk out of this room and say that he hated the talk, get a job at Europol and become
the next Edward Snowden.

(applause)

50m30

Public: Security and privacy takes a lot of proactive effort, while the world has succeeded in having
people adopting all types of insecure technologies. Most people live happily and cluelessly with
these technologies. How are we going to make these people more aware of the issues related to
technology, aware that they need to know more than they are prepared to?

Laura : I filmed the conversation between Jacob, Andy, Jeremy and Julian that became the
foundation for this book Cypherpunks. Jeremy said something that I often think about, he said
there was going to be a day when there would be a market for privacy. People are not going to
figure out how to use GPG, I can tell you there is a bit of a learning curve, but what we can scale is
clients that provide that in a way that makes it much more user friendly.

Jacob : I have a question for you: are you a biologist?

Public : No.

Jacob : Do you wash your hands?

Public : Yes.

Jacob : If you ever have sex with someone, you probably do, you’re a good looking guy, you use
protection, right?

Public : Yes, ask me more !

Jacob : But you don’t know anything about retroviruses. At a technical level you don’t know
anything about biology the way a biologist does, right?

Page 156 sur 160

Public : No.

Jacob : So maybe the solution to understanding mass surveillance issues is similar to the way that
we have come to understand biological issues, which are serious, they kill people if you don’t get it
right. With something as simple as washing your hands. I don’t take a market-based capitalist
approach to solving this, I don’t think the market will solve it because it is far more profitable to
enslave you than to protect you. This is capitalism, actually, that’s how it works.
What I mean is that by taking those basic biological precautions you don’t actually stop it but you
reduce the risk. Like in biology there will be a natural selection where people who don’t understand
how crypto works will be much more likely to be surveilled and to have their data sold. We are just
in the beginning of this period of time. Think if the early 80s, a lot of people did not understand HIV,
by the late 90s a lot of those people were gone. The people who are in that situation now, the San
Francisco of today, are the people in the drone countries. The people who don’t understand meta-
data being used for targeting are the people who are going to be eradicated from the face of the
globe by a drone strike.
So how will people change? It won’t be through market-based capitalism alone, that’s for sure, it
will be by each individual person stopping with the arrogance of thinking they won’t be targeted and
understanding that they need to have a harm-reduction based approach towards using these
systems, especially if they might be targets of the CIA drone programs as many muslims in Yemen
and Pakistan.

Public : This is a film-making question for Laura : Iwas really taken by how emotional the film was,
even though it is a field I don’t know very much about. It seems like the filmmaker was very much
reflecting their own fears, like their was a strong relationship between the filmmakers and their
subject, the whistleblowing. I wonder if you had a discussion with your collaborators in discussing
your own part in the movie, in how you approach the story. I could feel the filmmaker’s fears along
with Snowden’s. I felt on edge for both the filmmaker and the subject throughout the whole film.

Laura : I appreciate that comment. I certainly agree. This is very much a subjective film. Obviously
I participated in what is happening, so it’s in there. For me, the cameras, the way I articulate the
world that I see is a mean of expression the same way that a writer uses language. For sure I was
trying to communicate exactly the sense of fear and danger that I felt was very palpable throughout
this correspondance and the meeting. If I am successful the audience will not only know new
things but feel new things differently.

Nan Goldin : Hello, I am very very impressed, I want to join you and work with you. But I don’t
know how to use a computer. I know a little about the use of drugs by the government, I know quite
a bit about the aids conspiracies, I know a lot of things without knowing the hardcore facts, without

Page 157 sur 160

knowing how to encrypt, and I am not sure I will ever learn to encrypt. So I am asking what role do
you see for the people like in Occupy Wall Street who are not all computer geniuses, and for
people like myself who have direct experience without facts, just watched all my friends die, and
the fact that the government didn’t mention it for 12 years, and the way drugs ended up in the
streets of New York and LA when the Black revolution started. My knowledge goes way back to
when I was a little kid and Kennedy was shot I said « Johnson did it », and I have no idea how I
knew. I think I was born a conspiracy theorist. And I really appreciate the film, and I appreciate the
work. Snowden is my hero and you two are part of the Snowden team for me. So I just wondered,
what about people like us, who are not involved and who will never learn to encrypt.

Jacob : I can’t believe Laura wants me to answer your question, she really appreciates your work !
You are an amazing artist. I can’t believe I am really saying this to you but you are an amazing
artist ! You really inspired me ! I was telling Laura tonight, when I first saw your photography I said
« no, that is strange, that’s not really so special, it just reminds me a lot of my life! », because I
grew up in a place with a lot of really strange people around. But then I looked around and I saw all
the other art, and I realized that none of it really spoke to me in the same way. You were
documenting things that I was experiencing that just didn’t even exist in straight white american
culture. I grew up in San Francisco in the 80s and the 90s and then Northern Bay area, and so a
lots of queer culture, a lots of drugs culture around that. You already are helping through the
cultural struggle, through documenting differences that exist by showing how people are living their
lives. I think continuing to do that is the way hat you can contribute. The contribution you can make
is to help with the cultural struggle, which is what you have been doing. It is hugely powerful and it
will inspire generations of people to continue to resist and to be themselves, despite of the State.

Nan Goldin: Thank you so much, but when I talk about underground prisons for political prisoners
for FALN that I know about from the 80s people don’t believe me, when I talk about the aids
conspiracy theory that I have, people don’t believe me. I don’t have facts, and that’s what people
respect. And I am also asking you about the Occupy Wall Street movement, these are people on
the street, they are not going to learn crypto or whatever it is called. It is very hard to protest in
New York now, there was a protest against the Israeli bombing in Palestine, and the police blocked
it. The ability to have free demonstrations now in New York is blocked. So what do you say to
Occupy Wall Street now?

Jacob : I would say what I already said to them before: resist. There is protest and there is
resistance, and those both have their places in society. The next thing that has to be done for that
to be solidified is to build alternatives. Part of what we tried to do with the Tor project is to build an
anonymity system that every person in this room can use. It is not meaningful to tell someone to
choose when they don’t have any practical choice. We cannot say « you don’t care about privacy

Page 158 sur 160

because you use Facebook » if we haven’t build a decentralized safe version of Facebook.
Facebook or nothing is not really much of a choice for most people.

Nan Goldin : I would never go on Facebook, I think it is so dangerous !

Jacob : Of course you would not. So Occupy Wall Street has to build alternatives structures of
resistance. Many people that I know inside of Occupy Wall Street are completely dialed-in with
cryptography, they have the survival advantage I was talking about earlier. Occupy Wall Street
members are being harassed all over the United States, they are all being targeted: it is imperative
that they internalize what is being talked about in Laura’s film, and help us not just for wealth
inequalities issues, for social security related issues but also for understanding the meta issue of
surveillance that will eventually ensure that their other issues will never be dealt with before the
government will always be one step ahead to crush their protest, their resistance and their
alternative building movement.

Laura : I would like to add one thing. As an artist, my goal is to say something about the world that
I see, to express something. And in that sense, the film that I made is not any different from the
work that you do, expressing something about a community of people. I am trying to say something
about a historic moment when people are coming forward, standing up, and taking personal
sacrifice to stand up against power to expose something that they perceive to be wrong. That’s the
culture that I am moving in right now.

Nan Goldin : Thank you very much

Public : I was wondering why you didn’t include in the movie the Evo Morales’ episode. For me as
a French citizen it was a turning point, it was when I understood how complicit my government
was. Also, do you think your movie will encourage new leaks?

Laura : We thought about it but decided to stay focused on where the protagonists were, we didn’t
want to do a « big picture », to be a chronicle of all the stories that happened around that time. It
was a choice to base the film exclusively on what I was able to document. For instance, I tried to
film in the Moscow airport but it didn’t work out. If I had been able to film Snowden in Moscow, the
Evo Morales’ episode would probably have been in.
The note that I want the film to leave on is a sense that things are still dangerous, that these
programs are still ongoing, and that we are living in times when individuals are taking risks ti
expose wrongdoings rather than governments being transparent. I don’t want the film to be ending
on any note of closure. It is a call for why is the US government still engaging in these policies and
why is there so little transparency.

Page 159 sur 160

Public : Don’t you think that using encryption can raise suspicions about you?

Jacob : Of course in some cases it does. But if encryption ensures that the worst that can happen if
that you are suspected of some other things being done, it is good news that they only find
suspicion of something but they don’t know of what. Imagine that you are an Iranian man and you
go to a gay dating site. If you don’t use encryption, they will know that you are going to a gay
dating site and they will hang you. If you use Tor to go to that gay dating site, they merely know
that you are one of the 60 000 people using Tor in Iran. Encryption will always make sure that they
are not able to confirm any f their suspicion.

Page 160 sur 160