 Okay guys welcome back to the r3s stage with a very interesting talk about ethical hackers and investigative journals The question is game over And besides the most prominent names like Julian Assange Edward Snowden There are hundreds of thousands of courageous journalists and hackers out there who are being arrested intimidated or even killed Simply because they expose the lies the corruption and the war crimes of the world Stefania Morizzi, John Goetz and Andy Muller-Magun will enter an open discussion in the form of a crossover Interview where they will talk about the hackers and journalists common history the current state of things and Hopefully's perspective by the dude by the future Welcome folks and thank you very much for joining us here and The stage is yours. Thank you, Patricia. Thanks so much Let me introduce myself and then we will my Andy and John will Introduce their themselves and their work. So I'm an Italian investigative journalist working for the Italian daily In fact a quotidiano and I was previously working for a lot of public and espresso And the reason why I'm here is that in the last 11 years I have worked on many releases of documents We clicks documents mainly but also the Snowden files and other documents which fortunately were Shared with from by ethical hackers by Activists and so on. So I have I have spent More than a decade on this kind of work and I'm here just to bring my experience on how important it is this This kind of partnership with the ethical hackers It was crucial and they still and is even more crucial. It was crucial 10 years ago Very new and is even more crucial in these days Because many things have changed and the the big tech and the importance of data and the importance of this Community is more and more More more so so let me let me explain you why I started doing this kind of work Everything started in for me at least back in 2008 when one of my sources stopped talking to me as a journalist She was convinced that we were under illegal interception and of course there is no way to know whether you are Under legal illegal interception as a journalist and source But my source was convinced that we were under illegal interception. So she stopped talking to me She suddenly disappeared and I have never known what she she had so Whether she wanted to discuss something very important and I never I have never known what Was the the matter she wanted to discuss with me anyway I was lucky to have this problem because I took it very seriously because It was at that point when my source stopped talking to me that I decided well, maybe I have to I Have to look for more Effective way to protect my sources because the traditional way the old-fashioned ways to protect sources Which even in these days the many newsrooms and many Journalists use are no longer suitable for For these age of mass surveillance where you have these powerful microphones So you believe you are meeting with the source in full secrecy and privacy But it's not it's not like this. And so I took very seriously my source And her concern and it was at that point back in 2008 that I I told myself well, maybe I should find a better way to protect my sources and As a mathematician because I'm a mathematician before Going to journalism. I took a degree mathematics for me was natural to look at Critography as a tool to protect sources. I mean, I suppose is if I was a lawyer, I could look at laws Kind of legal protection for sources, but I was a mathematician So for me it was natural to look at mathematics Critography as a tool to protect sources. So it was one of my sources inside the cryptography the expert of Photographies who put the WikiLeaks on my rather screen back in 2008 when very very few people had even heard the WikiLeaks because WikiLeaks have been established just two years before so very They had not published collateral murder or their big scoops So my source put WikiLeaks on my rather screen and for me It was very very interesting for two reasons. First of all Because they were using encryption and in those days no newsroom was protecting sources On large scale as WikiLeaks was doing using encryption not even the New York Times. I'm not sure I mean 10 years later many people don't remember how it was back then But in those days nothing in the New York Times had ever heard of things like Submission platform Encrypted communications with sources. So it was really new and really brilliant how they were using these advanced tools to protect journalistic sources and to try to To protect documents and to make them available to to the public So I was really attracted by their way of pioneering these skills And it was my language, you know, it was even if as Graduated maths. I just had the theoretical knowledge of these things. So I never had to use Encryption in practical terms. I just knew the concepts. I just knew the You know the theory behind encryption So I was not able to use it for practical reasons and that's why I wanted to establish contacts with them to learn from them And because I like to learn new things and I like to to learn how to use these tools So back then no one was using these tools And not even the New York Times and they spent years before they were they introduced full-scale encryption secure drops and so on But in addition to this there was another thing which Which made weak leaks very attractive for me and it was their courage So when I realized that they had told no to the Pentagon When they revealed basically the Guantanamo a standard procedure handbook their manual and I realized that there was an organization Uh saying no to the Pentagon for me. I mean it was really refreshing. It was really Something big because in those days it was the those were the dark days were You know, I'm not sure if you remember but the New York Times was basically In famous for publishing their stories about the Iraq war the New York Times was in famous for Uh calling torture as enhanced interrogations and so on Or the Washington Post did not publish the fully the Names of the countries where the CIA black sites were based The eastern european country. So for me it was something which was much needed. That was my first Approach to weak leaks back in 2008 and of course I started establishing the first contact for me. It was really You know, it was really difficult. First of all, I was really skeptical at the very beginning because I had concerns they might be You know linked to the secret services and I have I'm very paranoid when it comes to the intelligence people I realize I'm I I have um You know a very You know kind of uh skeptical Approach because I don't like the intelligence services. I don't I have seen How they enrolled people for example in the technical universities and mathematics physics Chemistry and so on. So I have always been hostile to that kind of world. So at the beginning they're um Their approach was uh quite You know, I was very cautious. I was very Careful about them and I was trying to contact everyone who was in touch or even heard the weak leaks And one night they called me in the middle of the night I still remember that first time they called me because I was sleeping and I could barely understand what what was going on They called me in the middle of the night that they said we are weak leaks And it was july july 2009 it was very very hot in italy something Terrible and I was sleeping there in the middle of the night and they said look we are weak leaks You should go to your computer and download the file We would like Some help in order to understand This audio file and try to understand whether it is genuine It was an audio file in italyan And it was about a well known scandal the garbage crisis in napal's And so I wake up. I was really I mean I was sleeping Basically, I was sleeping And I run to my computer and I downloaded the file And it was an important file actually it was an important file about the alleged role of the u.s Of the italian intelligence services And I I have done I did some Basic journalistic checks on this file in order to establish whether this file was genuine whether the facts were actually Correct and we published we published for the first time this This file the sixth of august 2009 which means well before the the Afghan war logs collateral murder and so on And you know since then I never stopped working on these files and for me it was really really important Because I I think I have learned so much from them. I have learned to deal with With sources with journalistic sources and I realized thanks to them how naive I was In dealing with sources how naive I was in In my communication through resources, so I learned a lot from them. I learned How to deal with these technologies? and More than that. I even learned how to make These documents relevant relevant for a large public Because they have a different approach with respect to the We journalists, so I learned a lot from them and More than this I learned even about technologies just to give you an example in these days We are all concerned about Corona and if you look at the at the uk at the united kingdom you can see how the Slowly this big tech is basically Is basically infiltrating I would say the health services. They want their data. They want the uk patients data And so you have this big tech you have googled you have Palantir you have these companies Which want to access the health data of the uk patients and Slow little by little. They are doing this getting contracts secretly And there is very little information about this and probably they will be able to infiltrate the health service and getting It privatized So the I hope I'm wrong But I my concern is that they Little by little that they will lose the uk Citizen will lose control of their public health system And one of the companies which is basically accessing the their data is Palantir And you have to realize that the first time I heard about Palantir was back in 2011 when The bank of america enrolled the Palantir company In order to neutralize Wikileaks because Julian Assange had Promise to publish data about the bank of america. So since then I This kind of work put Palantir on my other screen and I have seen how they Basically evolved Since then and how they got contracts with the CIA in afghanistan with the Migrants With the us authorities in order to stop migrants at the border So it was only thanks to this kind of work with Wikileaks on the snowden files and so on which I gained this experience in dealing with this tech company death analytics companies For which I'm very grateful and which I believe it makes a difference for our work And I believe that this work is more relevant than Than ever and I believe it will become more and more relevant as we go ahead because this day this the all matter is about Getting control of data Whether it is about health whether it is about wars. It's all about getting control Of data and so I believe this partnership will be More relevant than ever. So what they what we could establish 10 years ago and more 11 years ago in my case Would be more and more relevant and strategic for journalism. Of course, there are there have been problems and those sort of complexities in Dealing with I could tell you some anecdotes about whether When we were working on the files and john can add some anecdotes on this So how difficult it was to deal with people calling in the middle of the night With people telling you you have to fly to a city and then in two hours They called you know, you have to fly to another city and so on of course It was also complicated and complex work But I think it was crucial and it has been crucial and it will be even more crucial as we go ahead with this kind of landscape where these data companies governments and Military organization are more and more interconnected So we have to establish partnership with the atl Accurs and with the tech people who understand this who understand the data who understand technologies Because if we don't do it We are lost. I mean the the powerful are doing this the governments and the the financial institutions and the The military organization are completely interconnected and we need to this kind of work and partnership with the ethical occurs and the Geek community in order to be effective and to properly investigate this landscape. Otherwise We need their skills. We need their Their Way to see it things. We need their technical capabilities And we need their help to deal with this. I'm absolutely convinced about this. John. What do you think? Well, yeah, yeah, I mean Of course if you look if you compare 2010 when I first encountered wiki leaks and 2020 now and if you look at the differences in how journalism has changed, right, you know in terms of First of all, I actually don't think that That it's right to say wiki leaks is a hacker organization I mean like this whole dichotomy between journalists and hackers It doesn't really fit with the wiki leaks model because wiki leaks For me and what I saw was very innovative journalism, right? Yeah That that influence was influenced a lot by hackers and by kind of the technical community So I'll get to that in a second. I just wanted to just make a quick connection between 2010 2020 this whole notion Of collaborative journalism, right, you know, you know Panama papers and and you know, all of these different projects that have gone on which are great, you know, that was A striking innovation by wiki. Yes, right. Absolutely. You know, the submission system, right? Was, you know, which basically, you know, every newspaper in the world now has this idea of having a secure Submissionism that was a complete innovation. I remember back in 2010 and how irritating it was That these people kept on telling me that I needed to encrypt things and and you know, and I just found them Just it was just a complete pain in the ass and why were they bothering me? Why were they ruining my life? Do you know what I mean? you know And and so there were, you know Cryptophones and there was it was my first experience with jabber And you know and all of these kind of things which Didn't Really exist at least in in my experience in journalism at that point. I hadn't run into it Maybe others had I hadn't run into it at all I mean, there were people who were using pgp But they weren't that many And so those are all things that are, you know, but I just wanted to make kind of a couple of observations About how like the different communities You know, there's also Tension, there are also things that don't work very well, right between investigative journalists and And it would be kind of fun. I think to also talk about that a bit Because I see kind of two different trends coming after 2008 journalism got Financially a lot tighter. There was the financial crisis There was a lot left money for journalism And there was less money for investigative journalism, right? This is the time that the first kind of collaborations Began between wiki leaks and in my case their spiegel when I was at their spiegel back then and the guardian in the new york times What happened between 2010 and 2013 I I like to call it, you know, or 2014 maybe A kind of prog spring of journalism, right? Which was set off by wiki leaks and continued by snowden by the snow revelations where there was like a four-year period Where western Publications were reporting Continually and regularly critically about their own governments and about their own government's role in the kind of Surveillance international surveillance Consensus that these governments had Unknown to their publics, right? And so What we forget though because of that kind of prog spring is that that squeezing of journalism that was going on Was kind of overlooked in that period of 2010 to 2014 and I just wanted to describe I mean for a lot of people who came from Um What do you want to call it establishment media or whatever or mainstream media whatever expression you want to use for it People who were staff people who you know like myself. I was a full-time employee When you encounter the geek community and the technical community for the first time You see Often people Who are basically kind of Like a neoliberal wet dream. Do you know what I mean? They're entrepreneurs. They're willing to work through the night You know, they're against public television because public television is controlled by the state You know, um and have this kind of you know, they're kind of like what Milton freeman dreamed of You know this kind of entrepreneurial mindset, right Kind of a crude I mean and but again When you Experience journalism like I've experienced in germany and and in the united states and in canada where I've worked, you know There's also this kind of You know herd immunity, you know to thinking in a lot of journalism, right? Capital city journalists, you know, who you know often are rightfully called microphone stands. Do you know what I mean? And so in my encounter that with the hacking, you know, geek Community and then I you know, and then also wiki leaks, which I would say is a different thing There was of course Far greater willingness to be critical Of governments and stuff and I found that really exciting and really interesting and and fantastic again, but there was also this kind of Neoliberal values that were kind of incorporated by people that I also found strange and alienating Anyway, Andy, what was your experience? Who well, I mean, I'm coming from a different background as I'm coming from the ccc scene And um, well, um, I would say my personal history was um Also heavily influenced by trying that only to understand technology and playing with that and so on But also the incidents that where hackers got killed like the kgb story was karkoch in 1989 And then later the trans story here in bolin in 1998 That was latest for me the point where I really had to the impression I need to understand what is going on here in respect to intelligence services What role do they play? What's the inter-relationship with media? How can it be that the media environment that was friendly to us for a while? Then finally walks away if one policeman makes a comment Oh, it could have been suicide because he was afraid to go to the army Which like made no sense in that scenario, but that's just a stupid example of a complex world so when I started to work with journalist in a more professional way and maybe I would say the The experience with the edward snow materials So with the NSA material was when I really got deeply involved On a daily base working with journalists helping them to understand technology processing Stuff anonymizing it redacting stuff and so on and all the complexity I think there is a different mindset here to observe because journalists come not only from this established media There's also different journalists out there. There's journalists who um deliberately Want to help those in powers to stay like it is they actually want to do that nine to five job And the moment it gets critical like you're dealing with cia with NSA stuff and They make it dear. No, we don't want you to publish this and they make it very clear through the legal department and so on And then okay in spiegel. We had the luck. We had the chief editorial. We had everybody on board still We had you know, we had to be careful And listen to legal advice and played by the book and so on But there was obviously other journalists who um the straightforward thought this is a betray of whatever so and I think you you learn the different characters than while you walk um And not all journalists even not all those who call themselves investigative Are really that critical of of what they're doing and all these technology components when it comes to using encryption You could translate in the hacker scene. You would say, oh, that's bad op sec Bad operational security if you deal with a source and you forget to do the encryption Or you leak kind of like what happened to the intercept The intercept was was a project where julian assan she he used to say that's like an astroturfing thing So they stole the idea of what wiki leaks was doing like with a submission source to submit stuff and so on and they Somehow gave people the impression they're doing the same thing just maybe more specialized and even more professional And less character driven and so on And then this um reality winner This young Lady comes with some material censored by the post and they somehow Forget to destroy the envelope And like she's completely exposed. She still sits in jail And the question is was this a failure? Or was it maybe the liberality to destroy the idea that an organization could protect their sources? Like we could say okay, she'll see a manning that also didn't went well But um, that was a completely different story and that not had directly to do with julian's acting that was also partly that Um, she'll see I had confessed to the wrong people Um, or to the wrong guy. So however, I think there's many parameters here And I mean where we hopefully do agree a little bit is that something like wiki leaks is a good democracy test It's actually the best one I have seen because when um, really Stuff are exposed at a scale and governments can't deal with transparency Then obviously there's something wrong in the democratic concept Which in theory is the citizens know what happens in their name And are in charge of evaluating and voting the government out of dustings in their name that they don't want them to do But um, what I think what is missing Is a complete reflection from the journal side not only of you two guys. I'm more talking about at scale And unfortunately this atlas has led to a confrontation um, and julian has um Yeah, I don't know julian has sometimes been become very bitter Because he worked with like the guardian with the new york times and so on back then And he had the impression That at some point when he had brought them the stuff And they had the opportunity to again be the best body of the government They started to write about his dirty socks and disappearance Dialogues and the meetings instead of the war crimes that the material he brought up to And this this bitterness is of course bad and this has led to more escalation and fractions and so on um, so in an ideal world we could talk about how we Can combine the best of these worlds because today I see again many journalists who on the one hand side they all enjoy getting material On the other hand side, not everybody is really ready to see um Journalism as something that can also the price can also be get into trouble So, um a friend of mine michael son timer from speaker who used to say when he learned journalist, he's an older dude When he learned journalism, it was about to change the world when people became journalist And now these young people they they become jealous to win journalistic prizes and that's a completely different thing so that It's more about making a career And being in our indie established media and so on And well, of course now we have a completely different media scenario out there We have all this kind of funny websites to call themselves news websites with their own financing often also leading to yeah corporations and parties and whatever There is still a lot of values to to discuss here and that's I think what we should do a little bit Because that's where I'm coming from the idea of you know freedom of information and so on Just just one tiny point. I mean, I don't think it's fair to say Use the word instead because you know, I mean I'm very critical about a lot of what the guardian did but to say that they didn't report on war crimes and stuff Is not true. No, no, that's it. No, but at some point it changed, didn't it? well, and the other thing I just wanted to say is that We've also experienced in recent times kind of counter narrative journalism and counter narrative thinking You know in the trump era Very much like in a german context Basically has been like taken over by the afd And so when you come with You know and and the trump right right and you know and and kind of right wing populist kind of movements So traditionally in in that kind of pre-period when you came with counter narrative It was generally seen as kind of more pro enlightenment, you know exposing the government And often now I see You know again all leading from 2008 where things get tighter and tighter where politically things got even more tighter And where counter narrative is almost, you know, or not always but is often seen by Leadership people, you know, they're immediately suspicious, you know Is this, you know, right wing populism, right? On top of that came The incredible kind of conspiracy theories that the trump era brought along, you know, of course There were lots of right wing populist conspiracy theories But there were tons Of conspiracy theories that the liberal center also took on that the idea that that Russia was behind almost everything Wrong in the united states that we you know was the cause of hillary clinton losing the election It was the cause of brexit, you know the idea, you know this like kind of monocausal Russia thing that like went on. I'm just saying that made a lot of journalism less possible Anyway, sorry to blab on go ahead I'm with you just one second on conspiracy theories. I mean we both discussed it many times and my accusation To this point is that while it is true. There's completely stupid Conspiracy theories and I mean nazi germany is a Is a history lesson where the nazi simplified a lot of complexity that latin economic crash and gave people a very simple answer And created hate and so on. So i'm very well aware of the mechanics But holy fuck, there is conspiracies out there and if you look at what happens to julians today Julian Assange and what what's going on there in his Trying to get a legal You know, we are due process Treatment or whatever And what's going on surrounding it. Yes, there is conspiracies and there is people who conspire on high level And that needs to be exposed and I mean gavin mcphane tried to Inspire the young generation of journalists with stuff like, you know challenge power exposed corruption and so on And these are I think I think things that that's defania is very well connecting in her work Well, I I think I would not Use the word conspiracy in the case of julien assange. I think they Use it in a very instrumental For violence company that turned against him. How would you know? No, no, no, no, that's yes I mean in with the all legal case. I think they were I mean, you know that I have spent the last five years trying to get the documents about the case because You know without the The fact you cannot understand the case if you don't get the documents So if I look for example had how the swedish case has been used, you know, to keep him You know arbitrarily detained for Basically nine years inside the embassy. It's unbelievable. I mean and when I got the documents from sweden I couldn't believe they released me those documents say Basically just posing how the uk authorities were telling the swedish prosecutors don't come here Just question him only after extraditing him and when I got a copy of these documents I couldn't believe it and they said look They are providing me the smoking gun. I mean they are providing which probably they I don't know They probably didn't even realize that it was the smoking gun. I don't know why they released me Those documents, but in any case if you look at how they use this case In an instrumental way, it was not a conspiracy but it was rather using something in an instrumental way and so I think it's Again, I believe that without proper investigative journalism. This could have never surface because these people You know, these people want to keep all these kind of You know all these kind of things Secrets and they don't want to have these kind of things exposed and this is why I'm basically fighting since 2015 because they they just After releasing me these documents that they Absolutely don't want to release me anything. So I have spent five years litigating and litigating going up to the swedish supreme administrative court and spending Thousands of euros in order to To get these documents that they don't want to release it because they know that the documents contain crucial information about the case and the documents contain crucial information. Why because They still keep writing the documents As if the freedom of information doesn't exist. They they put they write down things I realized this even the uk authority They still are writing these documents as if there is no freedom of information. So when you have Journalists asking for this document They go out they panic They basically realize that they all things get exposed because they still write Down everything under documents. I mean, this is true for the Swedish prosecutors and the swedish authorities and it's also true for the uk authorities and probably also for the us authorities because They are trying they are doing all they can to stop access to this to the us document so investigative journalism is still very very relevant and it is What we really need I believe because no one needs the news anymore. I mean, we are drawing the news We need the proper investigative journalism and this alliance between the geek community Hacker call it as you want. So the hacker Hacker community or the geek community or the tech community is more relevant than ever And again, I want to I want to make you realize how crucial that we have Our difference the The weak leaks model by With respect to other models the fact that we have these documents published in full That's really crucial. That's that's really make a difference. You know, I'm sure you realize when we had that Cash out the case the first thing that washington boss did was to access The hacking team teammates where you could see evidence of the surveillance companies providing training to the Saudi People. So the first thing they did was to access the weak leaks documents, which were published five years Before and they are still relevant and the same with the cables. Please john No, no, I what I I just wanted just a short point. I don't want to interrupt you I just wanted to say that I mean that was one of the things I wanted to mention earlier It was also in terms of 2010 2020 innovations that have happened. I mean It's hard to imagine but back then It was hard to publish full documents. Yeah, I remember at spiegel There were a couple of colleagues and I you know, we were like really into like why can't we like, you know There's the internet. We can publish it online. There's enough space there to do that, right? You know And that wasn't you know, there were some people who liked the idea But you know, it was rarely done, right? There used to be a special thing in the farm for the Wouldn't show years ago where they would publish a document. That was a very unusual thing And that was one of the big innovations of that whole wiki leaks era, right? Was was the idea, you know this, you know idea of scientific journalism that you can actually Refer to the document that you're writing about But one of the I'm sorry. Maybe I shouldn't talk too much, but but one of the disadvantages Let's not forget is that a lot of investigative journalists became lazy, right? You know, redocument right story Right, you know this whole idea of going out and doing legwork and actually investigating things yourself Often got replaced By you know getting lots of documents that made great stories and big headlines I mean the whole The whole scale changed With the wiki leaks revelations and the snowden documents the scale on what was a big international story Like one of those snowden documents would have been, you know, or you know It would have been a huge international story and you had so many at the time, right? It was just the whole It was like an inflation of Of source material anyway Andy sorry I'm thinking I mean this um idea of investigative journalism Um, I think we need to redefine it. What I would love to see is investigative critical journalists Because I mean leaking documents has been maybe Julian did indeed with the platform and so on Like he modernized journalism in a way, but of course the challenging power aspect So the exposing of government documents that were kept secret and so on It's not that the government just saw it and disliked it and dealt with him They also have Created a counter model and that is like where they now leak documents in their favor To like get exactly the lazy journalist jump on it and say ha ha Yeah, you you are our best broadcaster And then you have i'm i'm not sure I should mention projects that I suspect to be working that way Which is like intelligence agency spin-off and just you know drop some documents and the journalist jump on it And that's a great story And I mean we both know John and I have Actually tried or had experience with journalists who were let's say in the hierarchy a little bit higher And they were all suspect to have made their career Because they always had the best documents and Even the speaker once wrote about one of these journalists when he left the journalist, you know, he always brought the best documents but somehow How he got them that remained a question And so there is of course journalists who make a career with the best intelligence Context they have and they are like a spin-off of the intelligence agencies. They make a great career. It's just that they can't Bite the hand that feeds them So they have a blind spot when it comes to reporting critical about, you know The stories of the documents or the specific entities that feeds them with information. So I think um Stefania is is for me. I mean, I really appreciate your courage and your German with us hot naked I don't know you really bite into things and stay on the line and that's very helpful But it's also helpful to see you when I've worked with you and we've done multiple times that I always appreciate that even when I give you something or whatever You're always critical and look at me to check it and so on and that's I think a very important part of of Investigative critical journalistic character how it should be That is not only about getting some fancy documents, but really checking out what's behind it And is it authentic and is it maybe the real is this document authentic? Okay, buzzer tell the whole story. Is there maybe something missing? Because often and the principle of this information is not lying. It's just giving a partial reality Yeah, I mean I would like to tell you what happened behind the scene for the snow the documents for example when we When we publish it was very interesting because Basically glen green world I published Thanks to glen green world. I have no problem to tell this and he was kind enough to share the documents some documents about italy and he requested to ask for comment Just for comment to the italian authorities before publishing the day before Publication so at the very last minute we were supposed to Ask for comment to the italian authorities and I did the day before or two days before I asked to the italian authorities and No, actually I asked to the nsa and after publication today italian authorities So the nsa was panicking They were trying to know what kind of documents we had and they said could you please tell the titles of the documents? I said no, we will won't provide it and so on so at the end they didn't provide anything any The comment or just irrelevant PR nothing at all after publishing I asked for comment to the italians To the italian government and it was very interesting because they said we will put you in touch with public affairs divisions of the italian intelligence So it was for me. It was the first time I was talking to the Public to the italian intelligence at all never in my life as a journalist. I thought I had talked to the Intelligence services because I think the worst about about the intelligence services. So I It was the very first time So I expected something like You know, not aggressive, but something adversarial. It was not like that. It was like they were Very warm and very friendly and very You know very welcome and and at the end I said We would like to work with you not to influence you your work But just to have an exchange and they said thank you and never contacted them again But just to let you understand how they approach the journalists. They are trying to be seductive They are not adversarial at all. So, I mean, I imagine that for some colleagues a quite an attractive, you know, quite It's quite an attractive Relationship because you are welcome. We will explain you. We don't want to influence you We just want to provide you some facts and of course, it's not like that They want to have influence and control on your work. So for me Yes, I could add a little a little detail because similar to what you experienced when in Spiegel was also that the legal department suggested We informed the NSA and asked for a statement They never gave a statement, but they always sent The list of questions back like the list of documents and also who is working on Inside Spiegel on this document or which external says give us all their living addresses their shoe sizes and so on it was like We had to tell them in very polite ways to, you know Back off, but um, it was interesting how they approached it There was one metaphor that I just wanted to I mean In terms of the the the tension and the conflicts that happened, which I think we've kind of like skirted around I mean In some ways When I experienced the geek community It it's and they look at kind of establishment media, right? It's like they're the uber drivers You know and we're the we're the staff taxi drivers of a company with a full-time job, right? You know and you know and there's this whole kind of you know Being convinced that we're the new technological wave and changing things and it's interesting because I don't include wiki leaks in that right I see wiki leaks is a different thing, but this is about hackers and journalism, right? And and this whole idea that you know Anyway, I You're not you you think I'm wrong any go. What do you think that's no, no, no, no, no, it's fine and I'll go ahead Because you excluded wiki leaks. I mean yes, of course there is some I mean the trouble is that state-owned media and mainstream media They all have something in common is the odd model and it used to be in a very hierarchical way Before I stopped Doing like commercial work in the security area. I once found myself in a funny country in Let's say it's still on the continent of europe, but not in the u europe and I met the staff of The prime minister there and they asked me to solve for them the twitter problem And I was like, what's the twitter problem? And he like yeah, well since twitter is now a country It seems to be just bringing up critical comments about our prime minister and he doesn't like us and he's used to You know, he can deal with the media with the journalist, you know He addresses a chief editor or with the radio stations or the tv that's all under control But this twitter there's somehow a mechanics missing to deal with it and I was like But maybe you know the trouble is not that they bring up critical voices The problems maybe that they are the first ones that allow the critical voices that are there to be like, you know appearing and so on Yeah, we know, but that's not what he wanted to hear There was like what the fuck what did he wanted to hear and then they Showed me their ideas if you know, they had gone around and found a company allowing them a tool Which is actually allowing you to place and kidnap hashtags And in this case it was completely stupid at the end of the presentation was night term shoes So you you come up with a political discussion and you kidnap it to night term shoes So why do I'm telling you all this because um, I think The the classical media model, of course It has a history, but it has a bottleneck and the bottleneck is that somewhere is a person that can be arrested and even julian Is facing a little bit of that problem today And the question is how can we truly decentralized media and make it let's say give it the freedom? It has in theory per constitution Um without getting into trouble exposing those being corrupt because in some countries That seems to not work by democratic standards, and I'm not sure I'm completely with you on that right. I'm completely with you on that But I really think it's important to remember that Just because a new technology like uber is there or arabi and b Right that, you know the latest neoliberal fad, right? It is not necessarily in journalism. It's not necessarily better journalism, right? um, and this idea that Just because you reorganize the way it's done Um in a more kneel because there's there's the free speech Aspect to it and critical voices, right? But then there's also the economic model Side of things and I think often the two get confused Now that's true And I mean especially I do still like to work with bigger because they have a fact checking department That's really a resource that's called the documentation So you come up with some names and some information and they bring you the company records and everything and everything is well Thought out and that type of resource you don't find in this little media spin-offs Which give you a little bit of money for some lines of funny reporting But they do not often have like the the lawyers or whatever So it's all up to you to to deal with the reputation damage that you create when you're based on um bullshit Or I mean on something that's inaccurate, which happens. So which needs to be that's why fact checking is important So I'm with you that there is a resource in the structural issue But um, yeah, there's different components I just want to say if anyone wants to ask a question they should ask a question. Yeah There's also I think time-wise that's But our moderator seems to have rushed away Yes, I mean they're left from where the rocket flies. There was this lady patriciana. She's still with us Can I just add one thing? I think this the the general message situation should be You know should make uh whistleblowers and sources think how Uh Who are the decent people who have not True juliana sanja under the bus. So they should think about it before contacting journalists and media organization because we have seen that people who had a huge huge, you know They had huge scoops and never publish a single line about The orifics treatment of juliana sanja. I mean, I'm completely upset about this. So I believe that the The sources and whistleblowers should think a lot about this kind of treatment by Some media organization and some individual journalists before Or before talking to a media organization. What do you think? well There's just one other thing I wanted to mention that I think Is really an amazing kind of new form of journalism that came out of that era and when I look at the digital library of American diplomacy, right, you know Because one of the amazing things that Journalistically that wiki leaks did with all of those diplomatic cables was not only getting the stuff from chelsea manning, right? You know, but actually they went and got stuff that had been kind of somewhat released on foyers Cleaned it up and put it into this public archive. And so it's really quite amazing. I don't know if you saw recently There was a podcast about the assassination of the Pakistani Former prime minister benizir buto who's a it was like an eight park bbc podcast, right? Did very well. It was on the world service. It was amazing. How often they went into the wiki leaks, you know archive of Diplomatic cables. I mean it it they've established kind of like a handbook of current history With that and that's a kind of a form of journalism that's never existed before patrice. He is back. I'll shut up But you chance do we have first questions or should we continue here? I think we're on for the first question. Did I hear that right? Just one second Okay, so the first question came in. How can we ensure journalists working in investigative space Are familiar with secure communications techniques like open pgp x mpp and others Who wants to reply? I can't tell how Well, it's hard. It's hard work. We have to ensure the software is usable Otherwise, we'll have to babysit the stefanias and john gutts. It's sorry to say it like this On their labs and help them to work with it where stefania is very good. She has a mathematical background But many journalists are Overwhelmed by the complexity of the technology on top of the complexity of the issues they're dealing with So we need to make things simple and secure Yeah, I mean it needs to be better designed, right? It needs to be easy, right? It and the idea that you're gonna You know go to all of these incredibly secure measures of talking and communicating with each other About something that you're going to put in the newspaper in a half an hour Uh is sometimes brain dead Yeah, I think I mean we could start a dispute here because the trouble is of course that sometimes you have highly critical information And even when talking to a journalist in the same room like you have to ask Would you please leave your fucking iphone or your android phone outside of the room and so on Because otherwise even starting to talk about anything is already a lost cause So I think unfortunately john it's not only about making technology simple and secure that would be beautiful But it's also about the mentality of okay. I got something to protect. I take my responsibility and that's often missing Approvable we could say Although I can say that in my world of journalism the use of encryption Between 2010 2020 when I look at that difference, you know, it it's very widespread You know discussion groups happen on encrypted chat systems. That didn't happen 10 years ago. That's really changed Of course, that's true. I mean that's absolutely true. I mean if I look back back in the In 2009 2010 we had nothing we have basically PGP and nothing Very little more than that. So I mean in these days we have Many chances at least but still the companies are risk adverse about using encryption because for example here There are laws which Make the the media company are responsible basically liable for Anything you can do using tar. So we never I took to my editors. They tell me tell me Well, we have as a company as a media company If you do if you commit any crime using the tar We are liable. So we have so they are very risk adverse. They are still risk adverse So most of the time I have to find other solutions And as as about sources as about sources or whistleblower Approaching journalists. I think they should be careful in understanding who has an experience in dealing with this Who has for example, who offers Some encryption tools to get contacted secure drops or PGP or things like that if a reporter if a journalist doesn't Offer this kind of solution. It's a very difficult because they just have to contact him by email So I think it's really important that they look At the journalists that they look what kind of tools the journalist offer in order to communicate securely safely That's really important. So they should Be careful about who they contact If patricio, is there another question? Otherwise, I'll say one other thing quickly Well, we have more questions, but I think we've also got enough time to so why don't you just carry on and then we continue with the next question I mean The the other side of that equation Is what I mentioned earlier is that journalists need to bring of course a desire to learn right and a desire You know, of course to protect their sources, but also a curiosity and And a respectful approach to you know, what is it that can be offered? Right, how can I be helped and I just want to say personally when I look over the last 10 years Actually, someone you first took me up with years ago. Andy when I look at the you know These people who I've dealt with over the years It's amazing how patient and how nice And how Thoughtful they have been with my Technological retardedness and I just want to this point want to say thank you. Anyway anything more to add Yeah, maybe just one little aspect of course the Security aspect and the whole aspect of the mentality And what we what we see that the CIA that Pompeo was not very pleased with the publications of their stuff and the state department Hamilton was not and so on and while Julian currently faces a shitty situation and others surrounding him as well Um, I think there we don't have to underestimate that the strongest signal the Pompeo's of this world try to send is to their own people So and so the reality winner that here's your men in treatment is also something very important to have a look on And the question is how can we so that's a huge responsibility to anyone involved? Technologists as well as hackers as well as Jonas sense one To ensure that we don't bring people into that kind of trouble And that's I think what what should be in our minds to like really is the goal to Do not get people into jail when they provide crucial information for a critical review of governmental actions and so on That's uh, I just want to add one thing and that's why it's important to For a source or a whistleblower to be very careful about who they contact It's not enough to contact the intercept because they have a good history of Working on the snodden files. They have to be careful about contacting the right journalists Because it makes a difference whether you contact a journalist who has An ethical approach and has killed I mean the intercept in the case of reality winner did very badly. They could have Done very easily or whatever check they had the snodden files. They had a lot of people with experience They didn't even contact their own security department as far as I can understand from From articles. So I mean it's all about contacting the right person. It's not about The organization the organization is not enough to contact the right organization You have to contact the right journalist someone who has an ethical approach We serious about protecting sources and who is willing to understand how Source protection work was an experience in dealing with these kind of situations Yeah, I mean just just one quick thing and then we should get to the next question But let's not forget that as far as I understand it. I may have this wrong But the journalist who did the reality winner story is the same journalist Who whose lack of operative security Played a role in the arrest of the cia whistleblower kiriyaku. Yeah Anyway, are there other questions? Absolutely So the next one is also an interesting one. How can we ensure investigative journalism continues to exist? It is very expensive. It is very niche in most media organizations. The intercept is good to have But the existence is based on the goodwill of a single entrepreneur if I'm not mistaken Oh, I'd like to say something quickly about that if I may In a country where you have public television Don't get lost in neoliberal libertarian nonsense about abolishing public television because the idea that public television and of course I work for public television You know, I should say that But is a a way of funding journalism, which is not Based on the profit motive and I think that's an important, you know I'm not saying it's perfect in all cases in all countries But it is a model that should be continued. Anyway, stefania and andy No, no, I agree. First of all, I agree with you that the We need public journalism. Absolutely But in addition to this, I think that the readers Listeners can do a lot. They can they can Just press on right to the media in order to keep the The journalists doing the right work So they should be interested rather than clicking in whatever get published. Whatever silly things get published They should stimulate people and press the media organization to do proper Investigative work rather than just publishing or relaunching Stories, so they they can do it. I mean, they should email to our editors They should email to our editors in chief in order to understand which directions which Kind of journalism they care most about, you know, because they can do a lot from this point of view Andy Yeah, I mean, I have some thoughts on this But it's very tricky because I mean investigative journalist often is based on legwork as john said It has to do with critical mindset and sometimes you need a huge amount of resources I mean, stefania you I don't know engage how many lawyers working on the fire stuff Um, and that's hardly because your publishers support you so well with financial resources That also has to do with that. There is foundations in the context of these works of critical journalism that supports Fifth information acts and other things and that unfortunately has become almost a Default or whatever a scenario So you cannot rely on thinking that you find any publisher or any news organization that will just support all the work that is necessary To get real shit done So I don't have a good solution on the other hand side. I should of course promote, you know I'm here as a member of board of our holland foundation We do support these kind of things we collect for money for weekly seen for other projects We for example support park team start that's like a german institution doing this fire request in an almost Automated way so that it's easy for people who do not help the legal and procedural knowledge Stuff like that. But of course, um, we german shouldn't you know Even simulate to have solutions for the rest of the planet. So these kind of things need to happen everywhere And as decentralized as possible Before we get to the next question real quick I just wanted to mention, you know that there is this whistleblower village You know In the rc3 world to discuss these kind of questions if anyone wants to you know, that's a good place to go to discuss these things Yes, absolutely Yeah, great hint. Thank you very much. So the next one is also a good one How to motivate ethical hackers and in capital letters Journals to go after illegal or corrupt state actions When the public cases like manning winner are sans snowden, etc Are basically worked over successfully by these governments. Isn't this game over? Well, well, that's an interesting question. It really is. I mean, um I think for A whistleblower to look and see the incredible impact That those stories had that kind of prog spring of journalism from 2010 to 2014 Kind of the wiki league snowden common era It's amazing the impact that that stuff had and it wasn't useless it wasn't Uh, you know, I mean and in the snowden endgame, you know, I think, you know, congratulations I think we recently just had a baby, you know a few days ago. I mean, um I'm yeah, what do you think savannah andy? I mean it was I think this journalism was Has been so important that we have Can you hear me? Okay, so I think this journalism has been so important and game changer that we cannot afford to To lose it. So, I mean, that's why we have to defend the whistleblowers and julienne assange for his terrible treatment We cannot afford to lose these people We cannot afford to have these people treated this way because this is precisely what the governments want to do and we have to We have to fight for them because we cannot we cannot get them in prison for life We cannot get them Get crushed because that is what the governments want and we we have to stay with them That's why I was telling we never a source or a whistleblower contact A journalist should consider how that journalist treated julienne assange because many of them Got huge scoops and then they are silent in these days, which is I mean I think it is completely unacceptable for me. It is a kind of You know, it is a kind of unacceptable behavior is both professionally and ethically I believe so It's it makes a difference whether they Spoke out for julienne assange or whether they have remained silent Yes, I would like to point out two aspects the one is um, I really think it is Totally fair to say that many mistakes happened within the context of julienne's work of wittig's work Of all the investigative rather than even looking back to my own work in the snowden context You know, I'm very open to sit with anyone together and to Like like us to say, okay, this is the shit we've done wrong This needs to be improved. I maybe don't have a solution, but I can tell you exactly how it went wrong So I'm I'm trying to be as self-critical as possible on the other hand side um, I'm I do not like The attitude of saying, okay, you know, it's all fucked up julienne will die in prison And everybody else will be arrested and that's end of the game and so on um Because of two things the one is exactly what stefania said that you know, that's exactly what the governments want They want to give you the impression That um, you're done Secondly, there is this huge group dynamics even in ccc And it's kind of a pleasure to today not sit in front of this huge auditorium with 3 000 people Because either you are on that hero track and you know, haha You don't the greatest work and blah blah blah and everybody's happy or you're on the loser track and you're like, um, no, okay, shit So and this group dynamics are really not helpful if it comes to sorting out in a very fine granularity way What went wrong? What can be done better? And how do we move on? And I mean It was not expected that governments would just be happy to lose their ability to keep things secret And that the cia would be happy to like have their secret tools published or that the nsa would be having their Secret message to survive all of us our telecommunications Published so it was kind of to be expected. Yes, that's right But on the other hand side it hasn't done in history before so how should do and have better prepared for it like live in a bunker Would that have saved him? You know, so yes, and also the The state repression makes it very difficult to have An honest public discussion about everything that went wrong. Do you know what I mean? It's because sure. There's some some legal things as well that are not helpful in some sociological things and human beings sometimes have behaviors and blah, blah, blah No, I'm with you. Okay, but I'm just saying I would like to have a constructive discussion And and I think it's fair to say that yes mistakes were made, of course But also things were a bit unique and have not done before and we needed to do that experience Maybe for others who will do better than we To not make the same mistakes again at least and I'm not giving up as far as as it goes But yeah, it has become a little tricky and What currently would be helpful again is to get a little bit more of the mainstream media understanding that this is also about them Because if you know Julian gets into 175 years for espionage act and so on of course, he'll not be the last one Yeah By the way Let's not forget that of course there were mistakes. Mistakes were done, but at the end of the day Julian and Wichlitz did extremely well. I mean they published documents And of course when you publish documents, you can make mistakes If you don't publish you don't make mistakes I mean, I don't want to I don't want to dismiss the Panama papers. They were incredibly important documents, but at the end of the day It's uh Wichlitz that published documents make them fully available So if you make documents fully available millions of documents, of course you make some mistakes It's uh, normal, but at the end of the day it was greatly exaggerated everything even the threats I mean 10 years later 10 years after publishing these documents We are still discussing the victims that never were I mean never were there was never ever a single victim No one died. No one was injured. No one ended up in jail And we I mean we spent a lot of time discussing that the victim That was not even the things I was meaning when I said mistakes. I was more talking about In the relationship with Established media for example. Oh sometimes people got a little impatient on the side of More technology and hacker-minded driven people was you know This kind of things I think there were too many fallouts that were not helpful That now play out to be not helpful, but there was also a lot of energy against things Broad how to get we only got 10 more minutes. Let's try to get Hold on. Sorry to interrupt you guys, but we are getting and this is why I ran away because I was getting direct feedback Obviously we have a lot of people in the audience who would love to hear your wiki leaks talk again so Two options so we we either we have we have a couple of more questions related to to this topic However, we can just expand your streaming time a little bit because we do not have an adjacent Talk, so we could give you actually An additional half an hour. So um half past half past eight If you don't want to do this talk totally up to you But again, so we're getting a lot of questions people asking you can you can you repeat Your wiki leaks talk What are you meaning me or are you talking here about this all around? I think any this is mainly this is mainly going to you this question Okay, I can do that But I would prefer that not to do it right away because I would need to get my slides and that was a technical fuck up This morning or this uh two o'clock thing and I think this is why so many people would like to hear it again Sure, but I would like to not do it right here and right now But um give me a time slot either tonight or tomorrow and I'll that's what I suggested also to the guys Who I was in technical contact from this other stage to do Yeah, I I can't continue But you're welcome to continue without me That that's absolutely fine. I mean we've got we've also got two more questions. Um here in this Related to this talk Yeah, let us sort my talk out maybe separately logistically when is a good time. Okay, you tell me how we do it Okay, what are the other two questions? So the next one is also have you thought about taking advantage of the security services interest in your journalist activities to actually catch them red-handed um, so for example Run down run your own hidden video surveillance of yourself to catch them when they place the bug in your Crypto phone or temper with your door lock. Um, et cetera, et cetera um, also, um the visitor would be interested to hear more about the incidents Andy briefly mentioned in his previous talk Okay I just want to say one thing An example that I thought was really amazing And it was from a very major newspaper a very important international newspaper I was contacting this journalist about A story he had done about a german general In afghanistan who had been In favor of kind of more bombings or whatever it was. I can't remember the actual content of the story And he was experiencing intense surveillance And he immediately said we should only communicate via pgp but then On the open line He kept on hinting He didn't say it But he kept on hinting that the person behind the surveillance And trying to suppress the story was his source. He didn't say it was his source, right? But he kind of you know, he He kind of played along and gave the impression That someone could come to a conclusion that he was the source and he kind of Reversed the game and I thought that was really clever and funny Yeah, did it work? I don't know we had fun doing it Yes, I think I will answer on that question separately. Of course. I mean when I got um First time in the embassy actually my first scene was uh, laura Portas who had been there the day before and she was still doing documentary filmmaking then And that was before snowed by the way um She like um led me to the the the last room there where julian had some little space And put her camera on and asked me to pull the curtain to the side and I was like, okay So I went in front of her pulled the curtain to the side and what happened then was completely unbelievable And it was like three policemen immediately jumping in front of me a second row building up A third row and it was like what I just touched the curtain like if she was filming it So we were like, okay, this is a bit intense and this is like in every hollywood movie you would say this You know fucking hollywood switch away This is too ridiculous, but that is how it started there. And of course we had many ideas on to make you know Understand the surveillance by triggering it and so on and it's not that it didn't happen But at some point you realize, you know what? Um should be maybe stop making jokes here. They might cut it out of context and Um bring it up against us because of course when you sit there over hours and have a drink you start to make funny Uh start to develop funny ideas and that's yeah, I'm I'm still that's a very tricky situation because especially with someone like julian Who was very long in there and of course you have this attitude to cheer him up once in a while But I'm not sure I made all the best jokes. Um, if that was wise and so on I don't know what what about your experience stefania john. You were also there well, I'm very I'm very interested in uh Checking what is going on with the spanish investigation about our targeting inside the embassy because You know, as I said The whole work my whole work about the the week leaks and later on about snowden was basically Due to the fact that my source back in 2008 that stopped talking to me because she was convinced She was under surveillance. So 11 years after of all this work learning to use encryption learning To use anti surveillance techniques and so on now. I want to discover how far I was How I was able to whether I was able to protect the sources because when I was inside the embassy I had very important information with me and they got access to my devices So I would like to understand whether they were able to access the encrypted data Whether they were able to decrypt it And I'm very You know, I'm very very happy that we have a an investigation a spanish criminal investigation because You know, not so many episodes like that happened to me, but for example back in 2015 I was heavily targeted and my Important data was stolen to me and I filed a criminal complaint in Rome and nothing happened Then Basically in 2008 I went to the hospital and my medical record disappeared into nothing Again, I filed a criminal Criminal complaint nothing happened Now I want to see what happened in spain. Maybe the spanish investigators will be more effective in investigating this This spanish story this this targeting inside the embassy and you know, I I think we are very lucky that we have a criminal investigation because in this case they cannot say we are paranoid There will be a criminal investigation. There will be a judge. There will be a prosecutor Looking into it and getting factual information and getting, you know, criminal Evidence. So I'm very I'm very curious to see what is going on And I was really upset why my four when my former newspaper said we want to assist you legally And and this is one of the reasons why I left la república basically when they said we want to assist you Okay, that's enough for me. I mean I was there for you. I was there for la república. I was Uh in the embassy for them and my contract my journalistic contract Required them to protect me and there was less completely alone. So I mean, it's one of the reasons why you left I wanted just one sentence and that is I just wanted to say How happy I am that no, deutsche wunfung ndr the broadcast or I work for actually You know did follow through and filed a complaint about the surveillance of ndr journalists when we went to the embassy Which is now part of the spanish investigation Was there one last question We've actually got three more questions for you to go Wow, okay. Let's quickly I have to go at at exactly half Well, then a quick one because this is addressed to all of you so What is the future of international investigative journalism empowered by hacking? Is it something that is going to vanish absorbed by the mainstream and confined in a niche or are you more optimistic about the future? I'm optimistic. I mean I'm optimistic and I think this kind of journalism is crucial and even if we have seen all sorts of Attempts to kill it I think this kind of journalism produces such important revelations such important stories That at the end of competition is competition and media will jump in this kind of Of work. So I I'm optimistic. I'm not so I don't want to be pessimistic about it because I think there is still room for this kind of important work I mean, I also think it can stay extremely relevant. I mean when The kind of you know, the data leaks that happen are about our own governments and about our own The the countries that we are responsible for Um, there's a lot of journalism and data leaks about countries You know that are doing bad things in other places and that's good journalism. That's fine journalism, but I find Like our our primary Duty is to report about the crimes and the misbehavior of our own governments and our own kind of western alliance um And when the when data leaks and whatever working together with hackers goes in that direction, then I remain very optimistic yep Yeah, it can be optimistic when I talk with christian sometimes see the icelandic constitutional court has Made clear that publication of material even if it was obtained illegal But it turned out to be in the public interest There's no liability for the journal that's dealing with it And that's of course very important for for christian isn't working as the chief editor of weeklies these days So and that's something that maybe is not clear in all jurisdictions yet But I have some hope for continental europe on that if i'm so optimistic about the country formally known as the united states And so on i'm not sure I have to sign off. I have to sign off I just wanted to say that in the whistleblower village. There's kind of like a quest adventure Game about how to deal with these questions that that uh, apparently very fun to work on. Thanks for having me I have to say goodbye. Yeah, thanks john. Thank you so much john for joining us. Okay So I I just want can I just start one thing? Sure, uh, I think andy said something very important about the fact that um, you know, finally we have this kind of, uh Consensus that publishing material which have been hacked And probably stolen in certain situation is perfectly is perfectly legal as far as You do proper journalistic work on it. You verify the documents as genuine and publicly relevant So this is another thing which basically Uh weak leaks was crucial about this because before there was no such consensus and now I mean is uh very very common and widely accepted as far as you do proper journalism as far as you Verify the documents are genuine and they are in the public interest You have the right to publish them and this is something which we You know, we have uh, we have thanks also thanks to WikiLeaks which pioneer this Stefania, I think we just lost your audio No, I'm here. Okay. You hear me? I hear as well. Okay. Then there must maybe latency Anything more to add? I've got two more questions for you Go ahead with the questions Where does the most relevant investigative journalism take place nowadays? So question is is it still the big media like spiegel new york times and so on? Or how about corrective reporter on the grenzen or even individuals making use of other platforms like Any platform you can think of And um, are they gaining importance? I think they do gain importance and I think the the smaller platforms have more innovative character however, um What is a little bit missing is the mashing I would say So what what WikiLeaks invented then was also a process which I use a very dangerous term that julian once invented for it. He called it impact maximization. He later asked me to you know after the elections and to not use it anymore He thought it would lead to misunderstanding But what it meant that back then was that WikiLeaks would give media partners access to the raw material Of course clean from source issues. So scrubbed as it was called And the journalist was helped with the contextualization to make really understand where does this document come from? What does describe what's the context of the proofs and so on and then the publication would happen at the same day On the same day So WikiLeaks would publish the raw material linking to the contextualization to the articles of the journalist Or the mainstream media or whatever you call it and the other way around the journalist would publish their Contextualization article and link to the raw documents and that was a beautiful game Of helping each other to like people get it And that is something that I think um the smaller platforms Yes, of course, they tried to do it all themselves and that's kind of okay I can understand that also who needs another Media when you have all the things But on the other hand side to reach out to more people You do need to kind of find out how to how to channel that and so on and there's I think more work to be done Without that you need to end up working for mainstream media or whatever, but maybe at least I find some Some some procedures some processes or maybe befriended journalists journalists who are interested To help you bridge the gap because often the trouble is you publish something on your very innovative thing No one realized it is two weeks later You you go maybe you are in this context of the mainstream media and the journalist there Wants to report about it and he goes to his chief editor and says hey look what I found He says yeah, but that's two weeks old. That's old chat. We can't report old chat And that's so weird because you lose the momentum and then you get accused That um it was already published And this has become a very weird attack channel to keep things out of the yeah normal media environment Yeah I mean there are some there are some situations where I really would like to work with Very big media organization like for example in the case of my freedom of information litigation about getting the full documentation of julian ascension And the weekly journalist you have to realize that I have spent five years And it has been so hard just to get the money and to be able to pay for seven or years Imagine if I had Done this supported by a big media organization probably I mean it would have been much much more easier and I would have Spend just one tenth of the effort And but at the same time I realized that no media was willing to do it So probably if I was working for the associated press or writers or bbc They would just not do it because they haven't they haven't done it So there are pros and cons of course, but at the same time There are pros which are Being able to pay for lawyers Which is really important when you do investigative journalism Because the first thing they do is to attack you legally So you have to be able to play for lawyers to pay for compensation in case you lose And you have to have these big legal department able to Support you So it's really important that when you work as an investigative journalist Even if you work for a small organization But you have to be Very careful about the fact that they have to Have a good legal department because that's crucial for an investigative Journalism they can be small they can be a small organization But they have to have a very good legal department Very good lawyers because that's crucial. Otherwise, you cannot do it to proper investigative journalism This is my experience. I have worked on the investigative journalism since 2006 which means 14 years and you know Stefania, maybe you should explain I mean, I know you very well. I know you don't love lawyers. It has to do with the threats that are coming I think you should explain that a little bit why you need the lawyers Well, let me mention one of my investigation back in 2009 So I had this garment factory Who which was an italian one, but it was operating In karachi in pakistan. So for example, I spent one year just investigating what they were doing to local poor and local workers employees or rific things and Of course, the low the local People didn't want to talk to me and they were not able to To talk to me because they were speaking a very local dialect Balochie and Cindy and so on so I basically Asked for help to local organizations working on workers, right? I asked for help to local organization working on Environmental problems and so on. I spent one year investigating this case And at the end the investigation was really really good. We published and I spent the Basically six years defending myself legally because they did all sorts of appeal they filed a libel against me and my editors and they We spent a lot money and just to bring witnesses from pakistan and just to have them in the court with the translators and You know, we spent six years just to defend ourselves and everything was properly done Uh, we won We won all the legal cases so But I was able to do this spending tens of thousands of euros just for the legal cost Because we had a very good legal department So even if you don't work for the new york times, so even if you don't work for the writers But you work for a smaller organization. You still need to be very Careful about having Very good legal department because that's crucial for an investigative journalist That's absolutely crucial and they know how to to Make this litigation more and more expensive for years filing the legal The criminal complaint the libel cases in the most expensive districts So that is very very expensive for the journalists. They know how to exploit Politically sensitive district for the litigation. So it's very very Heavy work and you have to be able to to pay Tens of thousands of euros in this work. That's why it's crucial to have a media organization With very with a very good legal department for my experience So would that then also in return mean that obviously if you if you operate a smaller platform Still doesn't mean that it's less quality But simply because of the investments that are especially related to legal cases What you are just referring to is much much harder for smaller platforms to Obviously support the investigative journalist I think based on my experience Yes, that the problem is not with the quality of journalism Sometimes they offer very good quality of journalism. The problem is Getting the resources to protect yourself legally speaking. I mean in my case With that investigation about the garment factory They intimidated every single blogger and the bloggers removed and the small Journalistic Um And it is just removed from the website My investigation whereas minus paper Which was basically able to sustain the legal cost didn't remove it at all And we won the case after seven years. We won the case. We never remove our investigation Whereas the small platform They just get got read as soon as they got the legal threats, you know It remains important to check out Even with a big the small or whatever platforms where the money is coming from Not all of the new platforms out there are really as neutral and maybe in the same line of interest As you would think as a critical journalist. So Some warnings to be spoken out here Yeah, so coming to the last question and that is Maybe a nice next step referred to or compared to the previous question And this one now is Do you think that the media today are not covering the assange case in a much more larger scale because they are afraid For example, is the treatment of assange in this sense already successful or are there any other reasons? What's your take? Okay, you want to start? Yes I don't think it is a matter of them being Uh, you know scared at all. I don't think they don't want to do it just because of It is not politically, you know, it doesn't pay well politically speaking. They They know that this kind of support for julian assange doesn't gain you powerful friends quite the opposite it It gained you powerful enemies and These people don't want to lose their good relationship don't want to damage the good relationships With the state department with the white house with the cia with all these establishment Which is really important. So I think this is one of the reasons that that's why I I Invite whistleblowers and sources to be careful about these dynamics. You know Just have a look on it and realize that if you rely on a journalist if you come to the journalist It should be a decent one. It should be one who Is siding with julian assange in this terrible situation? They are crashing him and they have been so doing so for the last 10 years And what they have done to him is completely unacceptable and we publish the very same documents And never got arrested never got Put in prison never got even questioned But they crash him. They put in prison. They Tortured him Psychologically and this is not my opinion. This is the Opinion of the un special rapporteur on torture. So it's not my judgment So you have to be very careful who you are contacting Because if you are contacting a journalist who just make a lot of profit out of these scoops and then kept silent about this horrific Treatment probably he will treat you in the same way as a source. He will get the scoops and then Just be silent and doing absolutely nothing about you, which is completely In decent, I believe completely unacceptable both professionally speaking and ethically speaking Andy Yes, um, I mean coming back to the question Of course, what happened to julian is that um as he Was like the key person building up wiki leaks that he has provided some attack surface That has been used in such a massive way that he has become Almost a non-person. I mean it was all about his, you know um, a let's drape thing it was about the His behavior it was about this and that it was no more about his role as a journalist and now People realize. Oh, he's not sitting in jail because of his behavior or whatever He's sitting there because of his work And that's what they were after but the De-solidarization has taken such an effect that it has taken quite a while and some policemen to Carry him out of an embassy for people to realize what this is about And of course the hundreds of pages that we're facing here in the lawsuit from the u.s side To respond to the defense and all that ongoing should show in that court case That the british government tries us to keep as intransparent as possible At least how they treat him so, um, I find this A very heavy struggle, but I do have some hopes that people get the memo and I think many people Do intuitively understand Uh, and that's also what they want. They want this intimidation. They want this, you know, we'll deal We'll we'll hang him at the highest tree and so on um, and I think journalists have two elements of struggling and the one element is really To say hey wait a moment. Um, this guy has been unfairly treated even by the media And secondly, this is about the future of journalism and the second point I think we're getting there the first point is also becoming slightly better but, um There is also this difficult transition period right now where everybody's talking trump versus biden For me the most dangerous man out there seems to be pompio And um, I'm not really sure that trump is driving force there Pompeo for sure is But I will talk about that in my talk when I finally can do it with the slides. Um at a later point I just want to add one thing What make me hopeful is the fact that more and more people realize that Julian he is in this situation because of his work And he has been so from the very beginning and even uh, the guardian and other newspaper could have easily Discovered this just filing their freedom of information request and discovering how their Their authorities were telling the the swedish that they could have done it, but they didn't do it Exactly they could have done it from the very beginning And they could have they they didn't of course why not Why not? Why not? Well, that's an interesting question That's an interesting question And I think this is what the last question refers to have they been too afraid But I don't think we are afraid to file a freedom of information request I mean But if you've seen the guardian guys going in the basement of their building taking this Grinders and dealing with their own hard disk being watched by UK government mi6 or whatever it was guys to destroy their snow their own snow material I mean, holy fuck. This is not how I imagine free journalism or free media to act There's something terribly wrong there in that scenario I agree at the same time they I agree. I would have never destroyed Really, I would have never accepted Anything like that. I if you ever I if I ever have such an experience of the Secret services threatening me and asking me to destroy that I would I would just say look, I will make you appear like Uh, you know china or beauty in russia or maybe north korea. I won't destroy them I will you can do whatever you want, but I will Make a fasa will make a big scandal. I would never destroy it but in the case of but you know in that case They were under kind of threat. I would say they would But in the case of the freedom of information request, they could have filed them Then it was no no legal risk. No risk whatsoever. I mean, it was very Didn't require a lot of resources. It's just it was just about filing a freedom of information requested Maybe they were threatened with things we don't know Of course, that's that's possible. I don't exclude such but I think I think there is much more. I mean, I think it's uh A more likely scenario is that they just I mean, it's uh about how journalism is in these days You know, I think it's uh something even more serious than the threats by the National security complex. It's all about these superficialities. It's all about this You have to realize for example that we have during the Julian Assange hearing One of the most important media Outlets the Columbia journalism review publish an article With some very reliable information about Julian saying that Julian was charged in sweden, which is I mean, which is one of the very Clear things is it never was. I mean, there are press releases by The swedish prosecutor's telling that that was that those were just allegations were never charges Well, I contacted them They refused to amend that article and this is why I think it's a much more about How journalism he's done is conducted in these days. It's all about superficiality and the sensationalistic approach That's why I think it's a much more dangerous because if you have threats from the national security Complex, well, at least I can understand you. You are scared But in this case, he's even more serious is Brain that journalism. I'm afraid to say it is uh, you know that journalism, you know, that's very something very serious I mean, how can you accept that the new journalists try to access the the documents about this case when hundreds of journalists have reported on it Hundreds of journalists have reported on this case. So why not to ask the documents? It's the very basic Very basic. I mean when I was asking about This case to the colleagues. It was a a real nightmare. I was asking look what it means Uh, these These Swedish case that they they were unable to to reply to very basic question. It was chaos No one had the facts right. So how can you work in this mess? I cannot work in this mess. You know, I cannot work. I need facts I need I need very clear logical, you know Very, you know rigorous approach to facts And to understand what is actually going on and to have solid Journalism and I wonder why these people haven't tried, you know, for me, it's uh Is a big failure huge failure of journalism. So I think it is even more serious that Getting threats from the national security complex because in that case you can we are human, you know, we have fear You know, it's pretty common We have fear of the mathias. We have fear of the intelligent services We are we fear the threats and so on but in this case it was even worse It was about superficiality lack of rigorous approach. I would say that journalism It's something I would call that way, you know, I have nothing to add that was very beautifully summarized. Thank you Wow, we've got five minutes left. Um, no more questions I can only say on behalf of the entire r3s team. Thank you so much for your time for the amazing information you shared sometimes a bit scary I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have a sleepless night tonight because my brain will keep spinning in a good sense Anyway, uh, as I said before in five minutes left any famous last words from you guys Well Well, I have I mean, we need a you of course need to come with a strategy. How how we deal with the brain that guys. I mean with the lazy, um You know, uh, journalists in the game, how do we get them back into thinking or at least, um Get them moved out to dealing with horses or sheep or whatever So that others can take over the journalistic, critical, um and investigative job Well, I think you have to force them to be Uh rigorous and precise. So when they publish on reliable false information, you should challenge them and say look You have to amend the article. I don't want to File a liable case against you because I don't I don't believe in these liable machine at the same time. I want to add you getting the Facts right straight So you should keep the record straight and I ask you to amend the article and you should do it Otherwise I go ahead with a liable case. I think that's an important thing to do because It will have them looking at the article and getting the facts right and But keeping all right. Well, but reliable information I like your ideas. They're fun. Yeah, but what I have experience with some journalists inside entities as they told me Yes, they wanted to include, you know, the facts, the sources, the names But their editor has said the policy is no more than three names per page because it confuses the people They can't deal with the complexity and so on Journalism has also changed with a Way media products are consumed. So my question is how can we bring back Also, the more fact-based or at least optional naming of sources, you know The the reference is how you would find it in any scientific word where you say This sentence is nothing without not the dimensioning of the source. So how can I check it and so on? so How do we deal with this, you know simplification for entertainment and for easy consumption reason versus A way to to really write things that you can verify and understand them This is a very important question, of course, and I cannot address in a few seconds because We have a little bit that's crucial question. How can we make How can we publish information which is verifiable by our readers? So the trust is established and you cannot trust And you can trust that publication at that article That's a huge fact and I think we have to address it because in these days It's I mean we are far from those days where the journal is published and nothing happened in these days You have people on the social network telling you you wrote Bad things is completely wrong. You've got the story completely wrong And unless you are able to keep your reporting and your investigative journalism credible and solid You lose your reputation, which is everything for a journalist. So that's a very important Matters to discuss but we cannot do it in a few minutes, of course Well, if you can do it in 10 we've still got some more time left until the next talk is on Fortunately, our technology is running stable and does not kind of give us a headache So if you want to add a few more words to do this important question, please go ahead Stefania, I think I mean technology wise Of course in the internet you can easily link to sources and so on It's much more easy than in print. And there's also not the argument of the space or whatever The argument often seems to be the simplification of the message versus the complexity of the whole story or whatever And so this is maybe this does require also An attitude change in the chief editors of this planet to always think oh, you know, we can't Bring all this complexity to our readers. They need a simple and slight And as easy to eat up like a sandwich and the anti-advertisement break that goes hand in hand with it So I'm wondering what's the mentality that that provides someone trying out to bring out a media format doing some some Outlets and some Entities some media projects do that they do link more sources and so on But it seems to be also the fear to be Appearing not like the unique great source and the only place of the universe where the truth is written But just one place that is well network. I don't know what's the fear there, but there must be Maybe you can talk about that that Mentality that seems to be also an issue not only with the journalist itself, but the Environment they work in Yeah, I mean that's I agree with you. I mean they don't want to address this complexity They want as much as possible and then there are the legal concern and all sorts of problems I know at the same time we have to find a way to make this I mean this information completely verifiable and You know you I think one of the important things is to be open to the feedback So in this case when I was contacting the columbia journalism Review and they were not accepting to amend that article when in fact they got The the story wrong about the swedish case. That was an completely unacceptable to me I mean i'm telling you that i'm qualified. I have worked five years. I'm bringing you original sources I'm bringing you the press releases by the swedish prosecutors tell Mentioning allegations rather than charges Do you believe that the swedish prosecutors are telling lies about the the fact that they were They had no charges, but rather allegation. It's unbelievable if you believe so. I mean that's completely unacceptable. So Sometimes you have these editors who are you know open To criticism they are smart enough to address people challenging them And that's good other times. You have these editors which are completely You know hostile to this kind of approach and they They don't want to deal with it. They don't want to address Criticism or any kind of feedback. That's very annoying. That's completely unacceptable because and I believe it's a very stupid approach because if you You know if you are happy about you have if you are convinced you have done a good job You are verified. You have a solid fact Fact checking you should be willing to engage with people challenging you that's kind of corroboration process So it's I really cannot tolerate such approach And they they should realize that in these days this will happen more and more because as I said You have people challenging Challenging you on platforms on social networks and so on. So you should engage with them Of course, if they criticize you respectfully, I'm not saying you should engage with people Offending you and so on but you should engage with people who politely and respectfully challenge you and brings you facts I mean, that's that's crucial. I mean, that's the difference between real journalism honest journalism and propaganda and bad faith in journalism, you know Makes sense to me and obviously an audience who is reading Your articles who's reading your content who's listening to what you have to say And then supporting all those journals who really take their job seriously, obviously Well The only thing I can say is glad to me Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. It was really great to have you. Thank you for the super valuable information you shared really excited and Looking forward to hearing more Thank you so much for being with us Buona serato