 Our next speaker is someone who has endured a huge amount of stress, difficulty, hardship as a result of being somebody who has always championed the oppressed. He has used his incredible information technology skills, his intelligence and importantly his character to stand up for what is right and I'm really honoured to welcome to our panel Lauri Love. Hello everybody, can you hear me? So firstly apologies for being somewhat delayed. Traffic and other things conspired to be later than I planned to be. I'm thankful to be invited and honoured to be sitting amongst such distinguished individuals and may I say comrades and to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, aka Hacker, I am a Hacker, I do not deny it. I clave it with pride, so I define Hacker to be someone who sees technology not just as a product that is given to them in a way that was designed by another to serve some other purpose but has an open possibility to be taken apart, put back together, new and interesting ways to change the world, hopefully for good. It was in that spirit of the Hacker as one who can forge a path in the frontiers of a world that is ever changing because of technology that I joined the internet at a tender early age in the 90s and was inspired by the likes of Julian Sange, by the likes of John Perrivale who wrote the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. She's too long, I'd love to read it before but we don't have time. The basic thesis was that there is a new world, a new digital world where everyone is brought together, everyone has in potential an equal footing, an equal ability to associate to exercise freedom of speech, to enrich themselves through access of information and to dream, and by dreaming bring about a different world. This new space, this new cyberspace must be free from the anchors that have weighed down societies, the agenda, the limitations of region, factionalism, divisions of ethnicity, language, religion, and mundane politics and greed. So these people, these pioneers, some called cypherpunks, called cypherpunks because they used the science of cryptology, cryptography, cyphers and beyond cyphers the ability to design systems so that there isn't a need to trust, there isn't a need to depend on powers and authorities being benevolent and being in our best interest that we can take the power into our own hands to communicate one with another securely, to create our own infrastructure for the collection and dissemination of information. And so Julian Assange inspired me through his early work in cryptography but obviously through WikiLeaks when, as we all know, they broke through the mould, the restrictions of the press that has unfortunately become suborned and secondary and subverted and corrupted by power and influence, you know, Fausti impact for access or to have a comfortable life or because of the group thing that comes out of them being a very specialised class, shall we say, that is exclusive of many different people, but you've heard of that much better people than me. I will salute my comrade Chris Williamson who I met at the rebel tent at the Beautiful Days Festival before he had been drummed out of the Labour Party for standing up for the rights of the Palestinian people. And so he knows firsthand what it's like for media to be complicit in a campaign of bad faith in New Endo and in a taboo. This is what we see against Julian Assange. My personal story in this connection began with the tragic event that we are trying to prevent here, which is the avoidable loss of life of a courageous truth-teller by the name of Aaron Swartz, who was a young internet vendor king in the United States who helped design some of the protocols that we still use on the web today, RSS, but then went into activism not maybe out of predilection or because he wanted to be involved in politics but out of a sense of necessity because he wanted to, again, bring about this better world through the internet. And he helped stand up against some bad legislation that the United States Congress was bringing in to curtail internet freedoms and to empower the copyright cartel and the security industries to undermine users' rights. Because he was so successful, because he had been associated with creating technologies to enable whistle-blowing, to enable the conveying of information securely to outlets such as WikiLeaks, technology we now call SecureDrop that is used all over the world. They had a pretext to arrest him for downloading scientific journal articles from a library computer system at MIT. And he was hounded to death by an overzealous prosecutor and because he was in the bad books of people in power that wanted to make an example of someone so that others would not be so courageous because he had been an inspiration to others. So it was after Aaron Schwartz's death that there was a campaign on the internet, a hacktivist campaign, shall we say, under the banner and branding of Anonymous trying to make, shall we say, a faucet point through the exercise of political speech through means and methods considered outside of the acceptable ones, but non-destructively, but certainly getting a message out there on various government computer websites, saying that something has to change and just to summarize it, the reason why Aaron was able to be forced into the tragic decision he made to end his own life was because the United States federal justice system, I have to put the air quotes around justice in my head, operates under a coercive plea bargaining system where by 97% of federal criminal defendants do not even see their day in court, do not stand before a jury of their peers to be judged by their peers after an adversarial system of evidence, an argument and contention and findings of fact. Instead, they take the plea bargain, they take an offer they can't refuse to quote a film about gangsters because this is a story about gangsters and the reason they take this offer they can't refuse is because the leeway of the federal criminal sentencing guidelines and the freedom of prosecutors to pile on charges so that they can say you cooperate with us, you sacrifice your rights with free trial, you turn and you inform upon your comrades, become part of our system of oppression, and we will give you five years or ten years and if you don't, you'll face 75 years as Aaron faced for accessing science. Ninety-nine years as I faced for allegedly speaking up about this and then over 100 years as Julian Assange faces for giving world evidence of war crimes, of torture and horrific things done in their name with their tax money ostensibly in the interest of safeguarding freedom and democracy. And so it was delightfully ironic, as we say, having a British understatement when I found myself subject to that same, potentially subject to that same American injustice system when after they failed to bring charges against me in the United Kingdom because I didn't agree to subvert my own use of cryptography because I believe that people have a right, not only a right but a responsibility to store data securely against robbers, against abusive partners and against an abusive state. So having not helped our lovely national crime agency put me in prison here, I had the three remarkably similarly dressed people in trainers and short back-and-sides turn up to my door and say that they were taking me back to America as they didn't seem to appreciate. This was the Metropolitan Police's extradition squad. I didn't seem to appreciate that I hadn't been to America and then likely never will. But regardless of the fact that I hadn't been to America and as such under the common sense understanding of how criminal justice should work could not have broken their laws, which if they have validity anywhere, that validity must surely end up their borders and not extend across the world. But somehow I was, regardless, taken to the police station, taken to Westminster Manchurates Court. My parents had to cough up significant for them, some of money less significant than the amount that had to be coughed up for our friend Julian. But regardless, I had to go to prison for a short time until the bail was secured. And I had the privilege of being able to prepare for the five-year process as it ultimately took to fight the sex tradition with some limited freedom, just having to travel to a police station quite often to sign bits of paper and give up my passports. But at least I was able to access my lawyers to access the press, to access the internet. Although they did try to ban me from the internet, didn't quite work. And so I had to go through the process that Julian has gone through and is now, we hope, and confidently have faith is coming to the right conclusion. And so I'll just speak briefly as to why that process is harrowing in ways that hopefully are not too redundant with what our other comrades have said. So firstly, we might have this naive expectation from watching so much propaganda we see on the television of law and order programs and other attempts to whitewash and romanticize how justice is run by the state. But when you go to a court, there will be some effort at objectivity and there will be some attempt to have fairness. There will be a judge whose job is to ensure that there is no foul play, there is no systematic attempts to distort the truth and that the process shall be fair, that justice should be vile and that all should be equal before the law. Unfortunately, this is not the case at the best of times. Certainly not for people that don't have the privilege that I have of being white and sort of middle-class, out-league and male. But in the case of extradition against the United States, there is not even the pretense of a fair process because the treaty was renegotiated in the wake of the war on terror, the war on terror or the war on terror, the plan in Earth that was engaged upon by George W. Bush and Tony Blair and the other lackeys in the Coalition of the Willing had been the agenda of the people behind those convenience. Representatives for some time and continues to be their agenda. And it was renegotiated such that there is no requirement for the United States to prove even the lowest definition of there being an answerable case, which is the legal term of a prima facie case, on the face of it that there is evidence to believe that this person has committed a crime in this jurisdiction that should be answerable in this jurisdiction and therefore the court should have faith that they will receive a fair trial on the other side of that process. Because this requirement was taken away, it meant that I had to sit in that goldfish bowl at Westminster Magistrate Court as Julian has had to sit and observe a long sequence of lies and distortions and dissimulations be trotted out and be unable to stand up in frustration. As I saw Julian do and felt very much how I felt in that situation, the need to say, hold on a minute. It's not even false. It doesn't even make sense what you're saying here. It's not even conceptually cogent, et cetera. Instead, you have to let the process unfold and you have to let the arguments be argued that are able to be argued because the court will not entertain such obvious arguments already mentioned as they're the matter of jurisdiction. The jurisdiction in the case of America attempting to try people in their corrupted, unjust criminal courts for actions undertaken while not in their country is called exorbitant jurisdiction or extraterritorial jurisdiction. It should be an easy reason to throw the case out. The disparity in sentences to be extradited has to be what's called dual criminality. It has to be equally an offence in the requesting country as the requested country. But they do not take into consideration an equal crime if in this country, for example, for the offences I was accused of, one might receive a custodial sentence of 36 months, whereas in the requesting country one might expect to spend the rest of their life in a concrete box. This is not equivalent in any way. But that argument could not be argued. It could not be argued, as was mentioned, that this is clearly a political offence. There's a good punk song from the 90s by Skunk and Nancy that says, I won't use the swear word, but yes, it's freaking political. Everything's political. There is not an act of truth-telling that isn't political, especially when that truth-telling is about the ways in which politics has perpetrated horrific abuses and the so-called measures that are supposed to hold them in check. The cherished Fourth Estate has not just failed to provide that necessary check and balance to power, but has become complicit in its exercise. Again, as we've heard so eloquently. So, in the absence of any of these quite reasonable arguments, it had to come down to the question of an incredibly relevant and important question whether someone might survive incarceration in that system, survive even the process before they are sentenced under colour of law, which involves sitting in the jails, going through protracted trials designed to wear you down and to destroy you. In my case, the place that I would be expected to go and the place where Julian would be expected to go if he were to be extradited is a horrific institution in New York called the Metropolitan Corrections and Detention Centre, where people who watch the news may know that someone recently did commit suicide. The infamous Jeffrey Epstein was certainly killed in that institution despite in my extradition there being great pains taken to suggest that this is a safe place to put someone that if you are suicidal quite understandably because you've been taken away from your country and your family to a place you've never been to be torn down and tortured by strangers for trying to do the right thing that you might find yourself lacking any more in any hope knowing that your life has been reduced from all its possible value, all its possible capacity to being an example to others to scare them out of similar acts of courage that you might then want to take that way out and not sit through that for the rest of your life. And so it was found in my case that despite the great efforts made by the prosecutors to suggest that it's all hunky dory and it's a ring-a-ring of roses, not ring-a-ring roses, but nursery rhymes and kumbaya in this detention system that actually, you know, it is horrific that when somebody is deemed to be suicidal quite understandably many are, most will actually attempt to cover this up because the so-called treatment to make you safe is to put you on suicide watch. And suicide watch is unfortunately just a euphemism for another kind of solitary confinement where you are taken away from society, taken away from any group activities and you are kept in another small cell not allowed outside and watched night and day until you find this so torturous that you will make out that you are feeling much better and go back into the general company of the prison and it is at that point that people sadly affect their suicides and they do so in numbers that would make you sigh if you would have had to look into it as I have had to. And so in my case, I lost in the first instance at Westminster Magistrate's Court as was to be expected because until the case of Gary McKinnon another person who was accused of hacking not out of any criminal or malicious intent but to seek after truth before his case which had to be stopped by a political intervention by Theresa May and perhaps the one good thing that she didn't occur in but opinions made of her. There had been an expectation that the United States would win it was just the default presumption. After Gary McKinnon's case they took away the discretion of the Home Secretary to consider the human rights implications and I have to spell this out and I'm sorry I won't be much longer but I have to spell this out because of how calf-esque it is. So whereas before it is and remains both a judicial and a political decision to render up a citizen or a subject of one nation-state, of one sovereign territory to another judicial because it requires an assessment or should require an assessment of facts and evidence and political because it's necessarily a transaction between states and so the final check was that the Home Secretary would be obliged to make that final decision to underwrite that final decision to put their signature or their stamp on it and they would be required under human rights law in this country stemming from the European Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and stemming from case law that says that all decisions of the executive must act in accordance with human rights. They had to consider whether somebody's right to life and dignity and other human rights would be infringed by this extradition and the government took away this requirement and so we had to write a letter to the Home Secretary and we received a reply saying I'm very much aware of the circumstances and unfortunately my hands are tied and I cannot consider whether the likelihood of you dying as a result of me signing this paper is a reason not to do so. So that just baffles me that this is somehow considered to be in line with our even our unwritten constitution. But we lost and it went to an appeal and the only reason we really managed to get it to an appeal I should say is because I was supported and I owe a great debt to not just many people such as yourselves I mean many of you sit with the same people I recognise and I'm thankful to see again but also because an organisation that was set up by Julian and WikiLeaks in the wake of Edward Snowden's flight and his flight and being rendered stateless in Moscow after they tried to or they successfully took down a plane of a president of another sovereign country in Latin America to try and get him. The fund was raised for him and an organisation called the Courage Foundation was created to stand up for whistleblowers and people involved in truth telling and it was through their support that we managed to organise a campaign similar to the campaign that I'm seeing in front of me whereby it was brought to impress upon the courts that this is not just a matter that they can rule with unscrupulously and expect to get away with because people are watching and people care and people stand up for what is right and demand not free violence but not passively either but forcibly through their voices and their physical presence and their ability to speak as people here are speaking about what is right and to make others listen and to have them see. And so after another few more years of powering process before a panel of judges on the Court of Appeals Mr Justice Uesley, Kentankaris, old gentleman who was so far in the prime of his years that he didn't care about upsetting the whatever special relationship politics might require deference to the United States and the newly elected Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales or Judge E. McJugg's face as I enduringly call him and I was happy to see this week that he is also on the panel that we'll be hearing the case tomorrow and Thursday and if they let me into that courtroom I will look him in the eyes and remind him subliminally the decision that he and Mr Justice Uesley came to which was and I will quote that it would be unjust and oppressive unjust and oppressive being precise judicial jurisprudential precise legal language be unjust and oppressive in light of our obligations under human rights to send someone such as myself and someone as is now argued such as Julian to face such dehumanizing and torturous conditions as to make it in light of our character our disposition history of mental health or mental uniqueness shall we say that there could not be a reasonable assurance of the preservation of their life and and so I hope that this will hold in this appeal that the grounds by which this extradition was refused in the magistrates court that it would be unsafe to send Julian assigned to this horrific regime to render him onto the same regime whose war crimes he reported something that would be beyond the ability of anyone to consider for any other country in the United States that they will be found that this cannot be done and so I hope to be with you when we see that outcome.