 Since the Snowden movies, or movie and documentations, we know there were many really, really awesome people involved in the escape of Edward Snowden. Today we will hear a little bit more about the personal sacrifices and big risks these people took to shelter and protect Edward Snowden. So first, I will give you Zönke Iversen, an applause for him please. He will start the whole thing with a little bit of backstory. After that we will have Robert Thibault and live on the screen, Edward Snowden, I'm looking forward to it. First, a big applause again for Zönke Iversen. Good evening, my name is Zönke Iversen, I'm a journalist for the German Handelsblatt. And today the story I will tell you is you could put it on the motto, no deed, no good deed goes unpunished. In German, keine gute Trat bleibt ungestraft. It's about a hundred years old and it holds true for Mr. Snowden, who is now still in his exile in Moscow and who Mr. Trump would like to shoot, those are his words. And it also holds true for the people who helped Edward Snowden during a time when nobody else was able to help him and these people are still suffering under inhuman conditions. You can see them here, I will give you the names in a few seconds. To start, this is the most famous story that has been told of Edward Snowden, the movie Citizen Four by Laura Portres, a very good movie but there's a hole in the story. Let's see, let's go back for just a few seconds to June 10th, 2013, which is the first day all of us here have ever heard the name Edward Snowden, it was the day that his interview was streamed by the Guardian and he uncovered the massive surveillance of the US and the entire world by the US government and their intelligence systems. And while this is the Mirror Hotel, the interview took place at that hotel, he was hiding here in room 1014. This is a scene from the movie where you can see him just after he realizes that he doesn't know what to do next, he's just been interviewed, this is the morning after the interview and the journalists have left, Greenwald has left, he can't go back because people like me, other journalists have found him and they would follow him back to Snowden if he went back to the hotel. So Laura Portres is filming this but she can't help him and in the movie there's a skip, it just skips over 14 days. The next famous scene we have all seen is Edward Snowden at the Hong Kong International Airport, his back actually holding a ticket to Moscow in his hand and that's it, the next time we saw him again it was in Moscow, we saw pictures of him, it was in Moscow. And that was 14 years later. So I don't know about you but I was always, for a long time I've been wondering how did he do that, 14 days the most hunted man on the planet, the NSA, the CIA, the Hong Kong police, all my colleagues, we were all looking for him but nobody found him. So where did he go and who helped him? And I was lucky enough two years ago to meet the people who hid Edward Snowden. It's very, it was hard for me to believe at first that these people were actually able to do that but the next things that happened may be even harder to believe. I'll just introduce him quickly because we're coming to the main show in a few minutes. This is Ajit, he's a former Sri Lankan soldier. He has been stranded in Hong Kong, well he was his back story, he was captured by the military, he was tortured twice then he was smuggled into Hong Kong and his smuggler left him without his passport in the middle of Hong Kong and Ajit was stranded there and has been stranded there for I think things since 2005 now. And in 2013 he met by pure chance Edward Snowden who was a refugee at that time suddenly himself and Ajit became Snowden's bodyguard for those two weeks in Hong Kong. He had military training, there wasn't any shootouts but Ajit made sure that Snowden stayed safe and was not found and detected. This is Supoon, another refugee. He's also from Sri Lanka, he was also tortured, beaten by the police and fled to Hong Kong. His wife Nadeeka, she was tortured, raped, beaten, when she went to the police she was sent out and beaten in front of the police station again so she also fled and in Hong Kong she met Supoon and they had these children, Satumdi the daughter on the right and Dina he was just maybe six months when I met him two years ago. This is Vanessa, Vanessa is a Filipina, she was also raped at her home, the police wouldn't help her because her rapist had political connections and after trying several times she finally made it to Hong Kong where she applied for asylum and never got it. Asylum seekers in Hong Kong are not like asylum seekers here, they have no rights at all hardly any help, they're not allowed to work, they get food stamps but for example no stamps for diapers if you have children, small children. So what do you do if you don't get, you're not allowed to work, you're not allowed to steal. If you're caught working you can be jailed for 22 months which is longer than you can be jailed for drug trafficking, that's her daughter, Nadeeka Vanessa did a lot for Edward Snowden, she would, she hid his passport, she cooked for him, she brought him the newspaper and she and her daughter sang birthday songs for Edward Snowden's 30th birthday. So how did this all come out, why was I able to find this story? In 2016 this movie came out, another movie but this time a fictional part, fictional part documentary maybe by Oliver Stone and it was clear that the refugees would play a part in this movie so after a long time of thinking they were willing to talk to a journalist and have their story be told rather than rely on a Hollywood director. So here you have the two main actors, Joseph Gordon-Lewitt on the left and Shailene Woodley and of course director Oliver Stone on the right and now we come to the most important people of tonight, on the left Edward Snowden and on the right his lawyer in Hong Kong who made all this possible because of course four refugees in Hong Kong couldn't just meet Edward Snowden on the street, it was this man Robert Thibault who brought him together, it was a coincidence again he was called out of the blue on the morning of the 10th of June in 2013 because Edward Snowden didn't know what to do and nobody, neither Snowden or any of the guardian people had planned what to do on the next morning. So this lawyer was called up, a human rights lawyer who has been working with refugees and the cases of Ajit Nadeeka, Supoon and Vanessa for years and when he was suddenly tasked with finding a solution for this unbelievable problem hiding the most sought after, the most wanted man on the planet, he came up with this crazy idea, well let's hide them with other refugees, let's hide them, let's hide Mr. Snowden where nobody would ever look in the slums of Hong Kong and it worked. For two weeks Edward Snowden hid in the tiny apartments with sometimes no bathrooms and was undetected by the entire secret service force of several nations and well when I found this I do what most journalists would do, I wrote a very long story, this was in 2016 we named it Snowden's Geheimnis, Snowden's Secret and I detailed all the stories of Vanessa, Supoon, Ajit and Nadeeka and how they met and saved Edward Snowden. So the story was very well received, a lot of calls came in wanting to donate, people wanted to donate all over the world really because we also put out an English version of this and we were able to funnel a lot of money to the refugees, of course not enough but more than before and just briefly Rob told me to put this up here, it was awarded the Kurt Tucholsky Prize, Kurt Tucholsky Award this year and thank you. This is one year ago, not here but in Hamburg, same place at the time. Then Rob and I told the story to the CCC audience for the first time and things were actually looking up, we were getting money, we had connections to lawyers in Canada who wanted to bring them to Canada because these people cannot stay in Hong Kong but as I said before no good deed goes unpunished and it hasn't and I would like to now call Robert onto the stage because what happens next will show you that certain governments in this world do not want people to help those in need. On the contrary if you help somebody who's in danger for his life you will get punished yourself, I think that's the story, that's the lesson that is being taught right now and has been taught for the last two years ever since this story became public. Rob. Rob. Well thank you, thank you for being here tonight and thank you so much for the interest that you have in my clients, Mr. Snowden of course but also the seven refugees who acted to protect the world's most significant whistleblower. Now what I'd like to do is I'd like to start from where I left off last year and this slide that you have here was on the same day, the same date last year and what has not been disclosed is after this talk a year ago I had left the auditorium and I received phone calls from Hong Kong. This Sri Lankan police had flown into Hong Kong, the criminal investigation division setting the Snowden refugees, seeking to engage them, immediately we took action, the legal team and those people helping the Snowden refugees to move them to safe houses. So what I'd like to do is to go through what's happened to the Snowden refugees this last year because they've had a terrible time, they've been targeted by the Sri Lankan government and they've been targeted by the Hong Kong government and they've been punished by the Hong Kong government simply for their association with Mr. Snowden. Last September their seven cases were called up by the immigration department after the immigration department just ignored their cases for about five years and their cases had nothing in common in terms of the incidents in their home countries, the time that they were targeted for persecution or torturial treatment, the time they left Sri Lanka and the Philippines and even the time they were in Hong Kong when they raised their refugee and asylum claims. The only factor that they had in common was the kindness, humanity, empathy and compassion they showed Mr. Snowden and the Hong Kong government instead of recognizing the extraordinary deeds they did instead took the opposite approach and last September the Hong Kong government utilized different departments to punish the Snowden refugees. Vanessa Sapunadika went to the Social Welfare Department which uses a Swiss contractor International Social Services and when they went there to get the little financial support they're given which does not meet their basic needs, International Social Services on behalf of the Social Welfare Department started asking them about Mr. Snowden and private information about Mr. Snowden and these extraordinary people told the government that they're not going to breach Mr. Snowden's confidence so they were punished, they had their food taken away from them, they had their housing taken away from them, transport money, the little girl in the front on the right hand side is Sethamdi, she was denied access to education for one year, the little girl on the left Vanessa's daughter Kiana, she was denied education as well and fortunately there was an extraordinary group in Hong Kong who ran a private school who brought her in so through last September to December the only assistance they had from the government was stripped away simply because they refused to answer questions about Mr. Snowden. Now parallel to this time in Sri Lanka, the Sri Lankan local government, the Sri Lankan criminal investigation police criminal investigation division renowned for its use of torture as one of its standard investigative tools in Sri Lanka and the military went to Ajith the soldier's house, Ajith is standing in the middle on my right hand side. The Sri Lankan police CID also went to Sapoon's family's homes, they threatened the families, they harassed the families, they wanted the locations, telephone numbers of the families in Hong Kong and they wanted the names and telephone numbers and addresses of the friends or people they knew in Hong Kong but the Snowden refugees have extraordinary parents and they did not speak up, they refused to assist despite the threats. With the Sri Lankan government using oppressive means to get intelligence on my clients in September and October they then flew into Hong Kong in October and through to December and it was in December that a number of witnesses were able to find out the Sri Lankan criminal investigation division department were targeting my clients. Now I informed as their lawyer, I informed the immigration department, the immigration department did nothing, we tried making a complaint to the police, the Hong Kong police, they just told us the immigration department was conducting the investigations which wasn't true and finally by April the Hong Kong police agreed they would allow my clients to make a formal complaint to the police about the Sri Lankan police CID coming to Hong Kong and threatening their safety, their security and their lives. So for four months the Hong Kong government, the Hong Kong police, failed to provide state protection, they failed to investigate, they failed to act promptly. I brought my clients into the Hong Kong police to make their complaint. The police didn't want to take their complaint initially, they said they had a few questions and they had a list of questions on a A4 size paper. They asked my clients about Mr. Snowden, they asked about Mr. Snowden's movements in Hong Kong. The police's responsibilities were to address the threat from the Sri Lankan police, not asking questions about Mr. Snowden's movements in June 2013. Clearly the police as with the social welfare department, as with the contractor ISS, has no interests in protecting and providing support for my clients. Their interest was to gather intelligence on Mr. Snowden. I put a stop to that, my instructing solicitor Jonathan Manos with me and eventually police complaints were made. But the police weren't interested in investigating the Sri Lankan police. I had put it to the investigating officers. All you have to do is to go to the director of immigration's office in Hong Kong and ask for the files of all Sri Lankan police officers who traveled to Hong Kong between October and December 2016. That is because every Sri Lankan who travels to Hong Kong must obtain a visa from the Chinese Embassy in Colombo. They must provide a photograph and they must provide the nature of their employment or who they're employed by and the police did nothing. The Hong Kong government did nothing and it would have been a simple task. The Hong Kong government could have said there were no police officers coming to Hong Kong from Sri Lanka at that time because we have no records of such. And the fact that they didn't investigate that or at least disclose that they've checked their files indicates that there's only one sole inference to be made, that the Sri Lankan police were in fact in Hong Kong, aside from the fact that there were a number of witnesses. Then in August of this year the witnesses to the Sri Lankan police coming to Hong Kong and targeting the Snowden refugees were grabbed by the police. They had committed no crimes. They had done nothing wrong. They were simply grabbed by six officers, two immigration enforcement officers, four police officers from the criminal investigation department in Hong Kong. They were put into a van and they were held unlawfully on two days. And the first question the police asked the first detainee was about Mr. Snowden. And the police were trying to make a case that the Snowden refugees made up the story. In October I was informed that the Hong Kong police finished the investigation and there'd be no further investigation. But a few weeks later another witness was arrested by the Hong Kong police again targeting the Snowden refugees and those people acting for them. Now why would the Sri Lankan police be coming to Hong Kong? And Hong Kong has a history of allowing foreign agents to come into its jurisdiction and to target, engage, and even extraordinarily rendition in civilians in Hong Kong. Sami El-Sadi in 2003, Hong Kong assisted the U.K. and U.S. governments to have them renditioned in a private flight to Libya where he was tortured. The booksellers in Hong Kong a couple years ago were renditioned by the mainland Chinese security out of Hong Kong and Thailand. And in January this year a Chinese billionaire Xiao Zhenhua was taken out of the Four Seasons Hotel, a Canadian hotel in Hong Kong and renditioned across the border and he's disappeared. So my clients have had a very hard time. I've been targeted myself. The Hong Kong Director of Immigration has sought to have me removed from the cases, has made complaints to the Bar Association, and without merit. They've reactivated dozens of cases right before the Snowden refugee appeals. The Hong Kong government has simply acted egregiously and projecting its authority with impunity. The Sri Lankan police, I believe, came into Hong Kong simply because the Hong Kong government has created an environment where Hong Kong has not held any foreign agent accountable for their unlawful activities in Hong Kong. And by the way mainland China, the Chinese government is the biggest arms provider to the Sri Lankan government. So they have a very close military relationship there. Now a strategy was put into place where we found myself and the lawyers you can see in the photo. On the far right hand side is Jonathan Mann, beside him is Michael Simpkin from Canada, from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Myself, originally from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Mark Andre Seguin, the lead lawyer in Canada, and on the far left is Francis Turingy. They filed refugee claims with the Canadian government, with the Minister of Immigration, Ahmed Hussein, who himself is a former refugee from Somalia. In May the Canadian government communicated very clearly in writing that they would expedite the screening of our client's cases, aware that the situation for our clients was serious and urgent. In July of this year, the Canadian government made a turnabout and said they would assess the cases chronologically, which takes 52 months. So on one hand the Hong Kong government is simply trying to fast-track and rush the screening process for my clients in Hong Kong, for their asylum and refugee claims, to deport them. And in Hong Kong there's an effect of zero percent acceptance rate of refugees in Hong Kong, which is extraordinary. And the UN Committee against Torture has been very critical of the Hong Kong government. So at this stage these lawyers are pushing the Canadian government to have these cases decided in favor of our clients and to remind the Canadian government that if the clients are removed from Hong Kong because the Canadian government fails to act in time, the Canadian refugee claims will extinguish because the clients, once they return to their home soil, they have no more refugee claims. Under the refugee convention you must be outside of your home country. I'm going to come to this last because the clients need support and they need support for food, for rent, because the Hong Kong government is not providing any of that. And we foresee that we have a continued battle through to 2018. But at the same time either the clients will not be in Hong Kong by the end of 2018. We know that as a fact. They're either going to be in their home countries or hopefully they'll be in Canada. The one other thing I'd like to mention is that when the Hong Kong police grab the witnesses to the Snowden, for the Snowden refugees, Sri Lankan police, they took the cell phones from the clients, from the witnesses and they gained access to the data in there and they did that unlawfully. So this is the environment in Hong Kong. This is an environment where police have acted with impunity against the most vulnerable. Even to this day the Department of Justice in Hong Kong refuses to believe that Mr. Snowden had ever met the Snowden refugees, despite compelling evidence. And it's an extraordinary and bizarre situation in Hong Kong. But what it is is the government projecting its power and using it against the most vulnerable. I'm going to stop here. And what I would like to do now is I'd like to welcome my other client, Mr. Edward Snowden. So we have a limited time. Actually for the audio room, could you cut my feed from the room and I'll speak to some feedback. Thank you. So everything that you've heard so far is an indication of the kind of things that hackers have known about long before anybody else. We are familiar with the fact that governments abuse their power. We are familiar with the fact, the idea that the institutions and the processes that we're told to rely on don't always work as promised. And the question is, you know, why is that? What is a hacker? Why are you here? You know, first of all, I have to thank you, everyone for coming to this talk because I know it had to be a long line. And you're here to hear about the individual plight of these incredibly brave people, Sapoon, Nadika, Ajit, Dinesa and their children. Instead of one of a hundred other talks, which I'm sure, given this time slot, are incredibly compelling and nobody wanted to miss. But in this room, we have a thousand hackers for human rights. And I would argue the reason for that is because you care. And this is important, right? This is no small thing. This is not a platitude. This is not to be cute. This is not lip service, right? Because caring is the prerequisite of progress. I don't care how smart you are. I don't care how much talent you have. I don't care how connected you are, what your resources are, who your friends are, where you went to school. All of these capabilities are bottlenecked by a single thing. And that is concern. That is how much you care. And you're here. These families need our help. This is a problem that needs to be solved. And I can think of no better people to solve this than you, than hackers, right? Because it is that shared value that we all have where we look at these things, this common sentiment, this tribal value that defines all of us, regardless of how we feel about the politics, regardless of, you know, the one guy out there in the audience who's like, oh, I'm not going to clap. I don't like this guy. He's a Russian spy. You know, we all know that person. And that's okay, right? Because what is a hacker? One who doubts, right? That weirdo in the third row is that guy, just as the rest of us are. A hacker is one skeptical of claims that the system works as promised, or even designed, rather than how it operates as it's observed what we see. We take the risk every day in our work of being wrong in order to be right, in order to do right, in order to fix problems, in order to discover things people didn't know. Well, why? Why do people do that? Why risk wasting hours and euros and verifying some random API or running a fuzzer for weeks, just to see what happens? And this is going to sound like the most arrogant statement you'll hear, you know, all week, but it's because we know better. All of us have reasons for that doubt that are different. But in each one of us, we share a lived experience that planted a seed in us that grew into that skepticism, that we should trust the system, that we should rely upon the way the world is as it is, and accept that that's just the way things are, that what was promised is good enough. Employees, ladies and gentlemen, would I say that this year has proved the value of our skepticism? What you've heard so far about the families, what you've heard so far about the retaliation against Mr. Tibble, which I promise you based on personal knowledge goes far deeper than what he has said, because he's kind of a humble guy, but it is beyond injustice. And it's traveling into inhumanity, right? So we look to the other side, why? Why is the Hong Kong government acting like this, right? Why are these, you know, few people being dragged through coals when the government could very easily just say, okay, fine, you know, we know their names, they're in a movie, we're just gonna let them pass, we'll give them asylum, even though in Hong Kong, the asylum admittance rate is something less than 1%. In most countries, I think it's more than 30%. But in Hong Kong, it's less than 1%. Nobody gets asylum. And the reason why is because these people then become an example. They show that there are things that are wrong. They show that the system is broken. They show that things can work better when people understand it. When somebody shows the flaw, when these people become the proof of concept, suddenly there's pressure for change, suddenly that caring begins, and suddenly progress seems realistic. And just as in many other countries, immigration unfortunately is a politically contentious issue, regardless of whether these are, you know, economic migrants or whether these are people who are legitimately flaming or fleeing torture and violence, rape and threats to life. And this is why I think this is so important. This is why I think it's so important to talk about this, to be interested in this, even if you don't do anything about it, although I absolutely hope that you will do something about it, is because doubt is the first form of dissent. We like to think of protest, right? We like to think of, you know, people making arguments, constructing the writing, sharing the debate. And these things are important, but these all grow from that initial impulse, that initial skepticism, that initial doubt that just makes you go, this doesn't seem right. Because of that doubt is powerful. Doubt is valuable. Doubt is that motivator. But doubt makes enemies, right? And these people who doubted the legitimacy of the Hong Kong government's approaches to them, the threats, the coercion, the attempts at subversion to make them go against their initial decision, that has made them enemies. And now they face retaliation and now they need our help. So what do we do? You know, we are ultimately just people. We are technologists. We are technicians. And we are a community of so many others. And you know, this is a difficult case for some people who have deeply conservative political values. I would hope they are not the majority in the room. But I want you to put yourself just for a second in the shoes of these people. These families, my friends, live in desperate poverty. They did not have a toilet that you sat on. It was a hole in the floor. The kitchen sink was the bathroom sink. The stove was a camp stove in the bathroom. People rotated sleeping on the floor because there weren't enough beds. These are not people living in glamorous circumstances. These are not people exploiting the system, right? These are not people trying to get something for nothing. These are people trying to make the most of what they have, trying to eke out an existence in a difficult, competitive society that is not their own, in a place where the language is not their own, and trying to raise children in ultimately a hostile circumstance. And despite that, despite the precarious situation in which they found themselves, despite having nothing and having no one but Mr. Thibault to represent them and hope that one day they would be able to stay and have a right to actually just apply for a job, not even a guarantee of work. Somebody showed up on their doorstep and imagined that was you. And it's the most wanted man in the world. And he needs help, right? Maybe he's the worst person on earth. Maybe he's the best. You don't know. All you know is he's hunted. These families knew what that was like. They'd been there. They'd lived through that. And because of that, they helped me get off the X. They risked a lot. And I think, you know, so many people say so negative things about refugees today. They see them as the worst kind of people. But I know from my lived experience, right, my seed of doubt, that there are cases that they're wrong. And this is absolutely one of them. These are some of the best people that I've ever met who have nothing, but were willing to risk everything for someone that they didn't even know, just because they knew what it was like to need shelter. And so I ask you, you know, think about what you can do in a small way. Maybe you can help them, right? Maybe you can donate. We have a website for the refugees dot com to fundraise for the family. But it's more than that, right? Because this is not just about what happens in this room. This is not just about this individual case. These problems are going to persist. Other people are going to run into the same challenges. And it's going to be a question of who do they turn to when they don't have a movie to advocate for them, right? And that's why I would say something that frustrates me about what we have seen in the advance of technology just in these last few years. Is this used to be, unfortunately, a very clubby community, right? And it's broadened. We've got wider participation, and that's awesome. But with that, we've also seen a commoditization of our work of what we do. We see people looking to land their job at the Google to Facebook. And to do that, they sand down the sharp edges of their own beliefs, of their own seeds, of their own ideologies. We become more likely to agree rather than more likely to argue. And I think we need to think about what that means for the world when we and our occupation, our specialty in this moment of history, the atomic moment of computer science, our work has never been more important. You can't open a newspaper without people talking about cybersecurity, right? Cyber, cyber, cyber, because they don't know. You should just say computer security instead. They want to invent words, right? But the problem here is the world is relying upon us. At the same time, we are being pressured to be apolitical. And ladies and gentlemen, I think that is wrong. I think that is incorrect. I think we have some of the brightest minds in our communities in this room. And I think what you think, what you believe matters beyond what you can do behind the keyboard. And I think what you do behind the keyboard should be an expression, an extension of making that real. Right? Look around at the world. Look at the fact that we're having to come together in conferences and we're having to hold largely off-topic conversations to meet the basic needs of brave people. But can we make that system better? And can we do that on a broader stage than what we have here where we're not even talking about refugees. We're talking about the entire body of humanity. I think we can and I think we should. We've seen progress. We've seen where we have actually made constructive advances here. You see in the United States, there's always this constant talk about encryption and governments buying backdoors into it. The FBI is having to beg on both knees corporations not to use secure communications. It was not so very long ago, ladies and gentlemen, that that would have seemed like a joke. The governments would have simply presumed that they could have banned this easily. They could have made the rules, set the rules, and we would have to live by them without even having a chance to consider whether they were right or wrong simply because it was their sovereign decision. But we are now a part of that sovereign. This world is larger. Our ability to be involved in our societies, our democracies and more broadly across borders, our world is larger. And with this role, we need to be thinking about what we can do. Maybe you're not a lawyer, right? Maybe you have no influence in Hong Kong. God knows I don't, right? Maybe we can't guarantee the courts will be fair. Maybe we cannot guarantee that the police are going to be accurate. Maybe we cannot guarantee that the government is going to serve the people. But maybe we can ensure that we don't need them to. And that is a revolutionary idea. But it's a basic idea. It's an old idea. It's one that it's as old as hacking itself. We don't want to be told what to do. And that's not to say that all government is the enemy. That's not to say that we shouldn't do anything at all. That doesn't mean that all rules are bad. But all rules should be challenged. All rules should be proven. All implementations should be tested. And that goes beyond APIs, ladies and gentlemen. And I hope, based on this, you will help Ajit, Sapun, Nadeek and Vanessa and their kids. And I hope, ladies and gentlemen, you will not stop there. Thank you very much. Just to be clear, I have no audio, but I can't see you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I don't know if we have time for questions. I can't hear real well. Robert, if you want to take them or anyone else, or if we're behind schedule, I know CCC is always tight. We can move on to the next session. There's two things. I think probably there should be at least one question for you tonight. But the Snowden refugees are going to, they're going to come on screen right after Ed answers the question. So you're going to have an opportunity to meet all seven of Ed Snowden's guardians, guardian angels. So one question. And if I could ask the CCC technical team, if you could type this form, that would help, because I can't hear it all. Hi, so thank you. So Russian President Putin has said multiple times that you met with Russian officials in Hong Kong. At what point did that happen? And if it was during you staying with the refugees, how did that work? I'm sorry. I couldn't hear the question, but I think it was something about the Russians, right? And so I'm glad somebody asked, because this gets into the whole doubting thing, right? Of course, we're going to get the Russian question, right? But look, a lot of people are interested in this. And a lot of people wonder, because there's all of these conspiracy theories out here, it's a fabulous, wonderful thing that we have to skepticism. But it should also be reasonable, right? Whenever we look at argumentation, whenever we look at doubt, there's this ancient, ancient rule, which is that which is asserted without evidence, must be dismissed without evidence, because otherwise we're wasting our time, right? We don't just want to be engaged in speculation. There was a whole book written by some crazy guy that was this missing days theory, right? Where like before I was even at the mirror, I was secretly sneaking around with the Russians. And it simply didn't happen. They said I wasn't at the mirror hotel. I had like some handler or somebody like that in in Hong Kong. And I was staying with them. But the funny thing is we actually had hotel receipts, right? So this book comes out and then we publish them. And then they're like, oh, but you know, maybe we just got it wrong. Maybe it was a little bit whatever. But the reality is guys, look, what makes more sense when we talk about doubt? The idea that a guy who's making a hell of a lot of money without a high school degree in the United States, working at the NSA, working at the CIA in Hawaii, with a living with a beautiful woman that he loves very much, that he's been together for years, is going to set his life on fire to go run off to Russia, right? Particularly when his argument is primarily against surveillance. Does that make sense? Okay. And then go on beyond this. If that's the case, right? And he is a Russian spy. Why in the hell does he go to Hong Kong first, right? Why doesn't he just fly to Moscow? Right? But setting that aside, right? We got all these double games and these wheels within wheels where I didn't even choose to be in Russia. I had a transit ticket that was just supposed to be a layover for like 12 hours or something like that in Moscow en route to Latin America. And this is publicly known. This isn't like speculation. This isn't assertion. This is documented in fact. You can still go on Twitter and find pictures of the plane to Cuba that was packed full of journalists, taking pictures of my empty seat and airflot leaked the ticket, right? Where I was in it or whatever. But it just goes on and on. We got this continuing today where I just released a new app with the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Guardian Project. Maybe some of you guys have heard about it called Haven. It's an Android app, right? It's completely open source. It's free. It's not for pay. There's no profit motive in this. And we had like some former CIA guys out there going to the meeting and going, there's no way this is in a Russian government back door. First off, guys, it's open source. The program's not that big. It's in Java. Just go look at the code yourself. It's not there. But even if it were there, it could be there, whatever. Guess how many lines of code I wrote on Haven, guys? Zero, right? I'm not a developer. I'm not trying to be. The person you want to thank is Nate Freitas, who is, by the way, an American. He's not a Russian. I don't think he's even ever been to Russia. I don't even have access to the Git repo specifically to avoid people being able to make these arguments to try to undermine the application. So even if I were a Russian spy, right? Even if this were some sneaky trick, playing the long game to try to get into people's phones, how would that even work, right? So just to answer the question formally, I would say thank you for being doubtful. Thank you for being skeptical. But at the same time, don't be crazy. Thank you. All right. The next group of people will be the Snowden refugees. They're going to come on in about a minute. And there are a few things I also wanted to disclose to you and help you understand that the Hong Kong government has taken a view in all the cases I've done that the Philippines and Sri Lanka are safe countries that have rule of law and provide state protection. And that couldn't be further from the truth. So very quickly, under the President Duterte's, and I would call it an authoritarian regime in the Philippines, he's instituted martial law in Mindanao. He successfully in December had that extended for a year but without lawful basis. He broke off, he actually ordered emergency, a state of emergency across the country earlier this year. Over 10,000 people have lost their lives in the name of his drug war, which in fact is just a facade for basically creating fear in the Philippines. And he's expanded that war on drugs, targeting politicians, journalists and political activists. And only a few months ago, he threatened the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings and summary executions by telling her that if he sees her, he's going to slap her in the face. He's a self-confessed murderer. He broke off negotiations, peace talks with the new people's army. And this is the group that persecuted Vanessa and here are my clients. Vanessa, can you hear everybody? So what I'd like to do is I'd like to open this up to Q&A. So if you have any questions for my clients, they'd be more than happy to try to answer your questions. Don't be afraid. All right, so Vanessa's from the Philippines and the other three adults are from Sri Lanka. And so we've been doing everything to keep their cases alive in Hong Kong and also advocating to the Canadian government to act quickly, to act promptly. A couple of things I'll mention about the Snowden refugees is that I raised their asylum claims for the children under the United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child. And the Hong Kong government had signed that international convention but decided that they didn't have to follow it. They said because we didn't incorporate it into domestic legislation, these children don't have the benefit on the UN Convention on Rights of the Child and refuse to assess their asylum claims on that basis. So without the richest jurisdiction in the world, this is how they view the treatment of the vulnerable, but in particular vulnerable children. Vanessa, is there anything you'd like to say? Oh, are there questions? Yes, please. Yeah, okay. Yes, I think the German government should be, the German government should be ashamed that Edward Snowden cannot come here as a political refugee. Would it be helpful if we pressure the German government to give political refugee status to Edward Snowden's guardian angels? If the Canadian government is not moving fast enough, maybe we can get the German government to move fast enough? Vanessa Supun, the question is, if Canada doesn't act, would you like it if the German government is asked to act to provide asylum to you and the other families? Can you hear? Are you able to hear us? I think we've lost the sound. Yes, definitely, definitely. There are only seven Snowden refugees in the world who did the extraordinary. And as you learned tonight, their families in Sri Lanka did the extraordinary to protect Edward Snowden, because they knew it was the right thing to do, and without hesitation. It is extraordinary that in this world today that there's no room for seven refugees, no room. These specific extraordinary people. And it's just, it would be an easy one step forward by the German government to offer them asylum. There's another question, I think, from number seven. Yeah, hi. I just wanted to say thank you to the refugees for their privacy, bravery, for our privacy. And also ask, given the difficulties of your situation before you met this man, what compelled you to help him? Can you guys hear the question? Can you hear? Well, it looks like we've lost the sound again. Oh, there we go. The sound's working. All right. Can you hear? Can you hear? You can hear now, right? Why did you help Mr. Snowden? Vanessa, why did you help? Why did you all help Mr. Snowden? And after everything that's happened over the last five years, would you do it again? All right, we're going to leave you, leave you for the evening, Vanessa, Sapun, Nadika, Ajit, Satum, and Kiana. Thank you so much for showing up tonight. I need to get one more slide up. Oh, there we go. It's up. Thank you. If you go to a further refugee site, it's a new site that's been launched as of today. And it has a variety of options if you'd like to donate. And we ask you to help. These families need help. And the money goes to them. It doesn't go to the lawyers. It doesn't go to administrators. It all goes to the families, 100%. And there's Bitcoin credit card. There's different ways you can get the cash to the families, yes. There can be telegraph transfers and somebody here in Lipsi could accept the cash and send it on to for the refugees in Montreal. And so I'll leave it at that. I think we're over time. Thank you very much. Thank you.