 Ecuador how an authoritarian government is fooling the entire world We have two speakers Pedro Noel who is a co editor at the associated whistle-blowing press and Bethany Horn Who is an activist and a writer? So their question is is Ecuador really interested in free speech? They don't think so and they will let you know why so please welcome with me on stage Bethany Horn and Pedro Noel So hi all good night. Thanks first for the ccc for bringing us here accepting our talk and Supporting us being here. I'm Pedro Noel. I'm a Brazilian journalist. I've been since 2010 working with leaks means restricted materials of public relevance both publishing leaks and Analyzing currently I work as a co editor at the in the associated whistle-blowing press which is an NGO working in implementing running and Operating whistle-blowing platforms always in a local way among other platforms. We run in Iceland in Spain in Soon in Peru, I hope We also have a platform in Ecuador, which is called Ecuador transparent. I'll talk more about this platform later on So now let Bethany introduce herself So I'm Bethany Horn. I Grew up in Ecuador But I started working as a journalist in Canada. I Then moved back to Ecuador and worked at the state newspaper there at the leg of home For a little bit very short little bit and then I went to work for a academic research group at a university The academic research group was run by hackers and we were researching Copyright and other policy issues to advise the Ecuadorian government The first thing that I want to say and that I need to say is That I recognize that Ecuador has to has to be praised and thanked for the very brave act of giving Asylum to Julian Assange I'm glad that my adopted country has taken on this role in the world and Stands up to the United States on this one issue Defending WikiLeaks's right to publish and exist is a human rights issue I Think that Julian Assange is in danger of extradition and The Ecuadorian embassy in London is the only thing keeping him safe But it would be a mistake to assume that this portion of Ecuador's foreign policy has any effect on their domestic policy It doesn't governments are made up of people And inside the Ecuadorian government like inside many governments there is a war between factions Some good some bad This is a government that has been in power for eight years now and they intend to stay in power for many more President Rafael Correa and the political party that he started Are concerned with power? They'll change the rules that they themselves created in order to keep power an example of this Is a recent well, this has been going on for a while But in 2008 they wrote a new constitution that set Limits term limits Recently they've grown so worried about whether they can win another election without Rafael Correa That there was two years of discussion about changing the constitution so that they could re-elect Rafael Correa for a third or maybe fourth term indefinitely They didn't end up doing that. They did change the Constitution But Rafael Correa decided he didn't want to run anyway, so they didn't change it to make it friendly to him But this is just an example that I wanted to give of of One of the tactics that the Ecuadorian government has for maintaining control and that is the laws and I want to talk about some of the laws that they've brought in that deal with communications Especially and how it this affects democratic freedoms journalism and free speech But there's a second more worrying way that the current government in Ecuador is exercising control and that's through illegal means Pedro has published documents via his whistleblowing platform that illustrate this and he'll talk about them Ecuador's constitution protects citizens right to intimacy So we consider certain kind like the spying that is revealed in the documents to be illegal There are other illegal tactics popping up in Ecuador stuff like threats of violence censorship Not all of it can be linked directly to the government, but we'll talk about it, too Ecuador's intelligence services are heavily implicated, especially in the illegal stuff that we see going on The intelligence agency in Ecuador is called the Senaín the Secretaria Nacional de Inteligencia. It also has another short-form scene and It's it's Ecuador's biggest problem but The government's other institutions the presidency the National Assembly and the super powerful communications Secretariat they all benefit from the intelligence that's gathered by by the Senaín They're benefiting benefiting from it, and they're not challenging it So laws need to change in Ecuador, but also its institutions need to be made to follow the law International pressure helps, which is why we are here So after at the end of our talk we'll deliver a message to Correa because we know that he listens and we know that he listens because Well, I found my picture in the Senaín leaks. So I know I have a certain amount of Cash, eh We know he listens because he responds he He's very vocal He does his own Twitter feed last time I wrote about Ecuador He responded to me on national television for 14 minutes, which was fun His account will get there I Want to I want to first give like a picture The key to understanding him is is Understanding that he craves control. We had a video that we were gonna play now, but it didn't work. I Believe that I linked to it on my blog bbhorn.com if you want to see the video later, I will I will put it up there He craves control he had such high approval ratings for a really long time because to a certain degree Ecuadorians agreed that keeping stuff under control was important to understand why control is the key word I want to give a brief outline of the ten years in Ecuador before Correa came to power so The first character in this story oops is this guy He was elected in 1996. His name is Abdullah Bukaram. He was elected despite the Hitler mustache He was a populist Kind of unpredictable his nickname was a local the crazy guy and he really Was insane. He would go on TV and sing songs And He embezzled a whole lot of money Congress declared him mentally unfit to Serve as president. It was a Congress made up of his political enemies They had to go against the Constitution in order to do this in order to name his replacement but he was he was kicked out of office after two million Ecuadorians took to the streets for weeks and shut down the country basically So this is the first of three Soft coups in the ten years that came before Correa His presidency was very short it ended in 1997 Congress appointed an interim leader And then the next guy that's elected is Jamil Mawad He's sort of the opposite of Abdullah. He was very smart and He was a known political actor. He'd been the mayor of the capital city. He was right wing and And Governed pretty predictably he during his presidency Ecuador was hit with the worst financial Crisis in generations 70% of the banks in the country closed Thousands of families lost their savings Families were split up because people had to migrate to Italy in Spain and the US in order to find work he Dolarized the economy because inflation got so bad that Ecuador lost its currency during his presidency and Again people took to the streets shut down keto shut down the highways protested And an army general Refused to stop the protesters from taking over the presidential palace and again. He had to leave His vice president took over finished finished up his presidency. This is the second soft coup and this was in When was it? 2001 yeah Anyway So next is this guy. He was actually the army general who didn't stop the Protests from taking over the presidential palace. This is Lucio Gutierrez. He's another populist who was close to Left and indigenous movements at the beginning when he ran similar to Abdullah But he quickly lost that support because he governed like a neoliberal And By this point people just knew like okay We can get rid of him so they took to the streets protested and He was gone So by the end of this I mean Ecuador has a young democracy they had a military to take dictatorship for a while by the end of this People were pretty demoralized about it was bad for business all the coups were bad for business. Oops. I skipped a slide and and People were ready for something else. So 2006 Rafael Correa runs a campaign with a totally new party He promises that he's gonna disband Congress and Call new elections to rewrite the Constitution after he wins and he wins He got a lot of support by promising to be different And he started out really well and a lot of us myself included were excited by his first years in office And we liked his we liked his Constitution but in 2010 he lost control and As you remember control is very important to him There was a protest by the police union that shut down streets and people were getting flashbacks to To 1997 2001 and and 2003 The police Cornered him he needed the military to rescue him from a hospital. There was a shootout people died he calls it a coup attempt and I don't call it a coup attempt. I think it's debatable and that's a debate we can Talk about another time but what was true is that it really scared him and After 2010 The need for control started to clash with his original promise of democracy And it's this clash with democracy that is my problem and our problem as people interested in universal human rights So I want to talk about the laws the legal stuff that's been going on in Ecuador that's threatening speech and publishing and Descent so the first one was the Constitution of 2008 Which as I said had a lot of progressive and good innovations in it it affected the media because it It legislated the separation between People owning media and other businesses so a lot of Bankers got their newspapers and TV stations expropriated by the government Which people supported they didn't want bankers having that much power over the media But it led to concentration of a different sort the state never sold those media outlets and The state went from owning nine Public media outlets to owning 42 and this concentration trend is continuing as papers Fold and get one just recently got bought by the state newspaper and Another one closed last year. The second law is the communications law in 2013 Which was really Which was sort of a wish of Korea to bring in earlier, but he didn't have support in the Assembly and In it There it creates the crime of media lynching which it describes as a Coordinated dissemination of information which sounds a lot like journalism With the purpose of discrediting or harming the reputation of a natural or legal person It doesn't say if that information is false as if it harms the reputation of a natural legal person And it's a coordinated publication then You could be in trouble This law also makes media outlets responsible for online comments a lot of newspapers shut down their comment sections after it And it creates regulatory agencies to enforce the murky law. The biggest one is the super comb Which Forces corrections and I want to show so this is a cartoon of a police raid on a journalist's house two years ago It was done by Javier Bonilla who's one of the country's biggest cartoonist the government didn't like it They said that he had to issue a correction on his cartoon Because it showed the police being too violent I guess so he drew a correction what shows the police knocking very politely and Asking kindly to take the journalists computer with them and We'll keep it in a closed envelope to preserve chain of custody and Have a happy Christmas so Cartoonists have a little bit of fun with it. This is another one that I like They asked this magazine to issue a correction of its front page image because they thought that the wrecking ball destroying the logo of the social service agency was not accurate and they just That was their correction. So it's a little it's a little boring There's a lot of fines that come along with this communication law They've now issued $200,000 in fines at least in the past two years to journalists and Self-censorship because journalists don't want to get fines So there's the kind of way how much they can say and not go against the communications law And the third law is just within the past month They changed the Constitution as I said and they made communication a public service and nobody really knows what they mean by this Whether it means that communication passes to be a responsibility of the state like Water and electricity, but this is what journalists are afraid of and they don't really see the trend going in a good way So they were opposed to this To this there are other difficulties doing journalism in Ecuador. I experienced some and Others have experienced others you can ask me about it later and then so the illegal framework for control that that That goes hand-in-hand with this legal one Ecuador sort of was a star of the hacking team info dump there was a lot of evidence in the documents released by WikiLeaks Published by WikiLeaks released by some friendly hacker That Ecuador is a client of hacking team this was the receipt I believe with a with the contractor Theola in Belize Based in Belize. Yeah So The government denied after this information came out they denied that they had any relationship with hacking team Of course, they don't have a contractual relationship with hacking team. They have a contractual relationship with the intermediaries and I'm gonna let Peter talk about What his documents show about the about Sanayn Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah So I would just make a very practical example Regarding to two publications my organization did related to illegal surveillance in Ecuador the platform who did that was Ecuador transparent, which is a local platform for whistleblowing use free software global leaks and Yeah, first publication it's from August It's we published 31 pieces of the Ecuador intelligence which were stating that they Constantly surveyed journalists Human right actors Ecology ecological ecological groups and politicians, right? They did it in two ways first They did it in a physical way in a digital way this for example is as a collection of Of records like inner records of the government. It's not in public information But it's information that the government can get her so they they were building profiles over people So this profile for example is a profile of the cartonist that Bethany just mentioned it that Sorry the journalist in the cartoon exactly the journalist in the cartoon or no, it is the cartoonist. Yeah, it's the cartoon is So it's a profile made up of him based it on like all his travels like which countries the For which countries he was going and which date and time how much money he has on his accounts how many cars he have how many Houses he have all this This is you can you could say that it's legal Because they are using a public right like inner records of the government Then you have also digital surveillance based it on active surveillance, which is Surveillance based it on metadata collection. We don't know how yet they got this these things We suspect that it was in compliance with Internet service providers and communication service providers. So they are building these graphs Based it on for whom people were calling for whom people were sending mails from whom they were receiving calls from whom they were Receiving mails and then building this like detailed reports like this woman for example Is a journalist for the one of the biggest television channels in Ecuador? Physical surveillance, this is even more like this is a Proof that they were really following and infiltrating in events and life events of the major of the capital city keto So after publishing it we were really asking an answer from the government, but the answer they did actually was This the embassy sent a letter to our media partner for this publication in Germany next politic for example saying that the the documents should be Taken out this the website and that they they would the journalist that next politic was was performing was not good quality journalism Then they sent a letter to our ISP Saying that The accusing us of four things first of it first of them Copywriting infringement because actually in the documents we published it. There were logos from the government Then they also accused it which is more serious That we were infreaging five articles from the panel code One of them passive of indefinite detention So thanks for both greenhouse and next politic for sticking with the materials online and telling us that they received this This material and for publishing this material. I think actually that's politic published at the letter. They received So now I will make a Very I don't think we have too much time. So make a very fast publication You are the first ones to see these files. Actually. I'm just we just upload the 15 minutes ago. It's an analysis of the risk factors for Ecuadorian democracy Made up by the intelligence service, okay So you can see what what they consider risk factors for? Democratic stability and what they consider to be? Events of risk for Democratic stability so you can see in the middle of everything is it's Media mediatization of factors of critical factors So for them what is most important and one of the most dangerous things is that they have media covering critical points in their society Then for example, they have graphics like relating events with media coverage Then here they have an analysis of an event of risk So they were this event of risks is concerned to the change of laws that Betten is said So they were preventing that changing the laws would make that civil society and citizens would be Enraged and feel that their basic rights were harmed and if media would cover this like big protest cute outcome So I don't have too much time so you can search this in data. That's awp.ie is that she put e s, but it's is So you can just check it I don't have too much time to develop on this now So we have some conclusions, which is Like complex problems demand complex solutions So for example, is Ecuador helping the cause of free speech by providing a zealon to Julian Assange Of course it is of course But is Ecuador really interested on providing freedom of speech inside the country? No So you can perfectly criticize Ecuadorian policies Regarding surveillance, but and also support WikiLeaks Actually, if you fall in these arguments that you can't criticize Ecuador because they are providing a zealon to WikiLeaks You're exactly following the argument that the Ecuadorian government wants you will be up to which is to avoid external criticism Then I Want to address? Actually two messages first of all is one is for you like international community Which is please help support and spread all this information because we don't have enough coverage About it like most of the coverage which criticizes Ecuador Unfortunately is biased that by an anti-wikileaks feeling But actually this is like trilly truly something that both me and Bethany we saw and experimented as journalists in Ecuador So if you can spread this message share this information in your channels or being in person or in an institutional way We are very welcome You can also keep sending us leaks. We are we promise we're going to keep publishing it Then to finish we I have just Well, actually this is we can't tweet The present because Bethany is is blocked because they were after a pretty harsh conversation on Twitter So she can't access the presence profile, but you can't read it him. It's my share of file So So that the second message is exactly to him which is this address said to the mr. Rafael Correa The president of the Republic of Ecuador So we are kindly asking him to implement oversight Mechanisms in his intelligence service which could allow Senein to be accountable for what they do because so far they've been acting with total impunity They are not even obligated to go to the national assembly to ask questions from the assemblies They can just deny or miss the appointment as they did the last time They said they were going then I said, oh, no, we could not go and nothing happened So so far Senein is working in total impunity second thing we are going to ask to mr. Rafael Correa president of the Republic of Ecuador is To refactor the inner mechanisms of Senein in order to establish really basic Standards of transparency and accountability inside Senein Until he does he doesn't do it. We will continue leaking and we continue exposing and we will not be afraid of harassment We will not be afraid of legal paralegal or illegal Surveillance or pressure He must know that then Then this like last thing we asked to mr. Rafael Correa present of the Republic of Ecuador is To grant its citizens and all the foreigners which are working or living in Ecuador With one of the most basic rights of the people which is the right to communicate freely without any interference by any means Thank you What do you think? Okay, so thanks very much for the talk as you can see we have a little over time So if you want to leave the room, please do so but quietly So if you have any questions, please line up at the microphones so that Pedro and Can answer them. Yeah, so we've got the first question at Mike number two. Hi So I actually refer greenhouse with this so we host Pedro's website And we wanted to say that we didn't get a warrant so we didn't actually remove any data We actually forwarded the request because it was illegal. So I just wanted to make that clear. Yeah, thank you for sticking Okay, another question from Mike number two. I wanted to ask if there has been Reaction by the government in a legal means or I don't know with Blackmailing or something similar. I mean us Like it's nothing that we can prove like it better. I just told about legal things they did with other people with us We just not said that they were really pressuring our potential sources and Yes in the airports is always is always shit to leave a quarter or enter a quarter Yeah, but more than more than that like nothing and then these letters of pressure and stuff But so far we think that maybe there is some investigations going on but so far It's just pure fear and pressure Okay, next question Mike number six, please Hi Thanks for the talk. I just wanted to know I think on the president's Thing here. It's at me poder my power. What is that about me put it in a constitution? Okay, so my power through the Constitution which which he changed it Okay, so next question will be Mike number three Hi, I was just wondering what other types of digital tools or technologies besides global leaks or green-host services might be helpful to Journalists and Ecuador Well all the ones that you would recommend to journalists in general You have more experience than I do trying to train journalists in Ecuador how to use secure technologies. It's an uphill battle What do you think well, I mean there are a lot of tools That's not only in Ecuador, but in now over the globe journalists can use But I think I'm not the best person to talk about it But you can search for like any like star or I wish I wish the journalists in Ecuador used tour I wish that journalists in Ecuador used OTR I wish that journalists in Ecuador used signal and I wish that they encrypted their hard drives because as we see there are raids There's danger It's not just journalists a tweeter who tweeted What was he tweeting she or he was tweeting about? Nepotism in the ministry in one of the ministries and he got sent to jail for two weeks not for publishing any incorrect information just because It was considered libelous that he accused the minister of of nepotism so regular people are vulnerable to and people should be protecting their Their home drives and their their communications because there's a lot that's going on and it's only getting worse Okay, next question from Mike number one, please So I have actually two questions. The first is how has the judicial system responded to these new Laws that regard the freedom of expression as you put it and the second question is according to your point of view What is the state of internet freedom? Especially of internet censorship in Ecuador. Thank you. Well, I think that's the first one Bethany can reply. Maybe because also there was a whole Renewal of the rejection system second one is that the state of international freedom is actually we were going to publish another thing today Maybe I can publish tomorrow. So the which is this like they can they really we have evidence that they have Blocked both Twitter and Google During some days Because an anonymous group had anonymous. Yeah group had published documents of the Sena in two years ago So we have evidence that they actually block it Twitter and YouTube. No, sorry YouTube and Google So I think the the state of internet freedom is very poor. Well, I Am I think it's actually really interesting what's going on in Ecuador because you see the use of of tactics of softer tactics like DMCA takedown notices through YouTube and Twitter and Facebook to Get accounts shut down to get videos taken down And there's a massive investment in propaganda There has been there have been publications Saying that the government hires armies of trolls and puts them in an office and they flood social media with with messages to sort of Move the conversation in in the direction that They're that they want and so it's it's kind of interesting I don't see a lot of those shutdowns or blockages, but but definitely attempts to Influence what what what is said and what is read? Did you did you have another question now? Thank you. You're welcome. So Mike number three, please. Hi So first of all, I Agree completely that there is a bunch of really problematic stuff going on and I really especially Appreciate Pedro's list of actions and questions. I think Sunain is extremely problematic I have two small questions. The first one is The use of your word the word in the title authoritarian The the reason why I'm asking about is because focusing on Alianza pay is not not Raphael Korea I mean, they still have an approval rating of between 60 and 80 percent depending on how you look today When was the last time you read that? Half a year ago, so but it doesn't really matter. I mean at the end of the day, it's still a Popular like it's an election system that seems to work I haven't heard any allegations of voter fraud of any kind, right? So I guess like for democracy Even though there are these bad things going on is that actually authoritarian and the second question comes with your specific history? Because you work with the flock society, right? Which was funded by the government in order to investigate issues of copyright and intellectual property and freedom of speech and many of these things in order to actually Make for better regulation So it seems to me. I mean from my perspective This is a complicated issue, but we have a big government that is pulling in a lot of different directions It's very clear that the Sunain and some parts of the presidency are pulling in bad directions But there also seems to be a lot of areas of the government that are trying really hard to a lot in other directions I Think that there are less and less And I think that there were a lot of people pulling in good directions and you sort of you see them leaving as it becomes More clear how hard it is to have a progressive agenda your first question About the word authoritarian. Yeah, I can Regarding democracy the party actually lost the last election that happened in Ecuador They lost the mayor Elections and and prefect elections in a lot of cities and that that was the last election and it was widely considered to be a rebuke of their leadership and The next elections are in two years, and it's not really looking good for them. I I wouldn't bet on them But you're right. It is a democracy and I don't Answer pays loses. Do you think the right-wing opposition is going to be better for the country? It depends who the opposition who is I think next it's it's not a democracy It's not just because people vote that it's a democracy like if people don't have information enough to choose For whom they're voting and who are their leaders and what their leaders are doing. It's not a democracy So it's that's why I put on the title authoritarian because people they don't have information enough to judge by themselves What their leaders are doing? Are there any democracies down? Well, we all know the answer Okay, so another question from Mike number three. Hi, so I really appreciated your talk and as Peter we've never talked but I talked with Bethany a lot before the talk and I was really actually glad to see that there was a separation between the idea of a uniform state and the intelligence service and I think the only mistake in your talk is The idea that there's a uniform state. So when you say Ecuador is fooled the world I think that there are elements of the Ecuadorian government who actually do care about WikiLeaks For example, the Ecuadorian government has offered to protect me from the US government And I feel very strongly that they would actually back that up and I've been to Ecuador a number of times and well I've been there. I've had very bad experiences with the Senate and the presidency and the vice presidency actually protected me from the Senate until I left the country. So my experience is this I'm sorry to follow in the leftist tradition of giving a five-minute speech and then ask Asking a self-answering question, but I'm gonna do that and you're gonna love it. So They protected me and they let me know that the Senine is dangerous and that even if you're a guest of the presidency If the Senine doesn't like you you're gonna end up in a ditch with a bullet in your head So if you can imagine these are the political class of Ecuador that are explaining to me that they don't have the ability to Protect even their guests who they in theory want to protect so to call that one country and to say that the Senine and the Ecuadorian political class are the same is a Hmm, I feel like it's a simplification that betrays Your lack of information about how these power structures actually exist And I and I feel like the Senine are extremely dangerous and it follows a pattern We see all around the world which is that the intelligence services of the world are out of control They have total capture of telecommunications systems and they actually capture the political class inside and out I mean the presidency is very worried about the Senine tapping his phone calls for example And there's no way that you can protect against an intelligence service of your own Service and so I think all your criticisms here are actually pretty much centered around the Senine and The fact that there are external forces that are trying to empower the Senine and to overthrow the Ecuadorian state And I mean I've met the Department of Defense the the the Minister of Defense I've met a former the former Minister of Defense the former That's one of those who has left the government recently absolutely But listen when I met her one of the things that she was very clear about was that There are elements in the Ecuadorian government, especially the Senine who are fucking scary And they want to kill people like Korea and her and I think you can't say that that's the same there's an internal political struggle and there are really good people who put their life on the line some of whom have Actually been killed some people who have died and there's also elements of the CIA in that country I met the head of counterintelligence. I had dinner with him. That was fucking awkward. Let me tell you Do you want to talk about pressing for end-to-end encryption and not getting anywhere? That was a conversation like that and Didn't give him any drugs and I would have just didn't have the opportunity but But the point is to to say this as one thing is the mistake And so I wonder if you can acknowledge this is my question Can you acknowledge that the Senein is the big big problem and that they actually control the political class and the political class Is afraid of them and not the other way around Yeah, exactly like I think Bethany also told that Senein was a problem. We also like I personally think that Senein Is part of a bigger problem, which is like as Bethany told there are a bunch of other kind of of legal measures Which are a restricting freedom of speech I agree with that Senein in a certain way is a different thing from from government and some some ways They don't respect actually Korea's intentions for example, we have evidence that They spy even alias a place which is the which is the Korea's party even though I Think that Korea has power enough but to change these policies and try to change Senein from Yes, from the beginning, let's say restructure Senein I mean, maybe he doesn't want or it's not political worthy for him to try to do it now, especially because elections are coming But I think then that's that that social Actually the the purpose of this talk we said we're not going to just criticize the government But in the end we will try to demand some small two things to Korea Which is to implement an oversight Mechanism for Senein and restructure Senein in order for it to have basic standards of a bit transparency And and he has the power to do that and what he's gonna say after this talk is he's Korea is gonna go on television and say Senein is accountable. There are Prosecutors in their office that approve every intercept We Korea founded Senein. It was his baby in 2009 And he's gonna say we wrote this new plan for national security. We got rid of all the old cops and we Formed our new agency. He defends them in public and he's very bad at accepting criticism and and and Taking Making reforms and it's one of his biggest his biggest downfalls So I don't know. I mean you can at some point you have to lay some blame on him for his handling of them if You want to believe that the Senein is so evil that the president of the country can't Reform them or challenge them or make any changes. I will hold a different view, but I agree with you that they are The biggest problem Okay, got one more question from Mike number two I was just wondering in terms of the discussion about Senein I think that well, I was wondering actually how you view it in an overall context. I mean is I guess Who's the bulldog is it Senein who sort of has been raised and bred by Korea Who then says well, we're even afraid of this thing or Is it the opposite sort of Senein really is in control able to to do it at once with Korea scared of it and really unable to move. It's more complex You cannot simplify in this way, but I think what met Senein for example for me It's it's part of a global problem. No, which is a problem of the intelligence complex as is as Jacob said but and my my feelings at Senein really got out of his control and If he can't do anything now, or if he was doesn't want to do anything He he's still accomplice But I think yeah, it's the two things like he Exercise some control on it, but in the other hand, there are some things that Senein does without his Without asking him and he cannot really stop it anymore There's another question from Mike number three again So I mean I'm glad that you said that because I could have just sat down But I'll take this opportunity to say one other thing which is that The Senein being the primary problem the question that's open to me is how do we deconstruct the intelligence service? I mean, I'm of the eliminate the state crypto world You know you want to get rid of the state the state's dangerous You know, you know when you do cryptographic signatures for example or when you build laptops or something and in general Maybe we want to also take that tactic also for states real states And so maybe Ecuador would be better off if you had a revolution I'm not sure but maybe but then the question is what about a limited revolution So what are the actual practical things that you can do to get rid of this and I mean like for example? The way that people think about states with a person in charge of them for example Obama Is he really responsible for every bad thing that happens in America every time a cop shoots a black person? Which is every single day, right? I feel like we have to think about states differently than we think about people, right? And and so in this case the question is what does the political class of Ecuador and what can we as an international community do to? Destroy the intelligence service of Ecuador and I feel like that's the question We should be asking because that's a thing we can turn into a political action plan and a subversive Counter-revolution area action plan frankly. Yeah to actually do that, but the question is what do we do? How do we do that and to all of our friends in San Ena? Whoops you got us But what do we do to take that down? How do you get rid of an intelligence service because if we're gonna hold him responsible? What is the actual thing we need to do like go burn the building down? Probably don't do that that seems like a bad idea because you know they can just move so You know they have a really nice building. They have a pool. I yeah, I Probably where they'll find all of our bodies the next time we're in but But hey, you know you got to die someday so but but what do we actually what do we actually do? How do we do this like for example it? We know they do mass surveillance They asked me actually to build a mass surveillance system to wiretap the entire country of Ecuador and I told you said that I know that And I couldn't add it to my talk, but there you go Let's go for my dad and so so check it out so I told them to go fuck themselves and I reported them to the presidency and Explained to the presidency that they had asked me to do this specifically to bypass the judicial review Because they wanted to wiretap judges in the political class and I said well You want to wiretap the democratically elected leaders and they said no no it's a translation problem And I said I you know I speak enough Spanish and the president's translator actually translated it so I don't think it's a problem I think you were proposing a coup and yeah like I have your names and so I just cure fucked and So the thing is what do we do to stop that? I think the answer is we deploy crypto and we have political responses to that What do we really ask from Korea because when I went to them? They said you know what do we do and I think it's a big open question because you don't take on a military or an intelligence service Lightly and when you do you lose they kill you and these guys I mean these guys actually told me the CIA followed me to Ecuador and they ejected a CIA agent Which was very awkward by the way And so you know what a fucking complex situation so what do we actually do about that for me? I just don't go back to Ecuador, but for people in Ecuador. That's not really an option So what action plan do we actually have now? I can't believe it told you all those things, but fuck it light it on fire. I Can't believe you told us all those things either. I have a headache now Yeah, well, you know enjoy you know the coffee here is great, but the dexan feather means even better I Mean first I think first of all I think like Korea must be must feel responsible Okay, I'm sorry for a last question, but we can't do an answer to that. So I don't think anybody can answer that Thanks a lot for the talk questions for the conversations and