 So the next talk is about Ecuador as an authoritarian regime that leads the world to another, and Bethany Horn and her co-author are writing about how Ecuador is really interested in free speech or they don't think so and they will know why they think that's a fact. Good evening, thank you very much for allowing us to come here and support us. I am Pedro Noel, I am Brazilian journalist. Since 2010 I have worked in various leagues. I work in a non-profit organization that deals with whistleblowers and platforms that want to make the local available in Iceland, Spain, Peru, hopefully soon. We also have an Ecuadorian platform called Ecuador Transparent and we will talk about it later. I am Bethany Horn, I grew up in Ecuador and I started working as a journalist in Canada. I went back to Ecuador and worked at the state newspaper El Telegrafo for a short time. Then I worked for an academic scientific organization that deals with whistleblowers and other topics that the government advises. The first thing I want to say is that I recognize that Ecuador has to be applauded and be thanked that they have become Julian Assange Azul and that they stand against the USA. That they defend WikiLeaks is a human rights issue. I think Julian Assange is in danger of the delivery, but Ecuador is his only protector. Unfortunately, it is a pressure that it would have to do with the local government and local rights. In the Ecuadorian region there is an internal struggle between factions. The government has been in power for eight years and they want to stay in power for much longer. President Rafael Correa and the party that he founded want to stay in power and change the rules so that they can stay in power. This has been going on for a while, but they wrote a new constitution in 2008 that set the limits. Rafael Correa wanted to change the constitution, but Rafael Correa did not want to change the constitution. Rafael Correa wanted to change the constitution, but Rafael Correa did not want to change the constitution. I would like to talk about some of the laws that have been done with communication and how that influences socialist freedoms and freedom of opinion. There are still illegal practices in the future. Pedro published documents that show that the law protects the right of the citizens to privacy. That is illegal to spy on the public. There are threats, but we still talk about it. The secret services of Ecuador, for example, are Ecuador's biggest problem. The other institutions of the government, for example the very powerful communication directorate. So laws need to change in Ecuador, but also institutions need to be made. I know that I have a certain amount of attention. We also know that he listens because he answers. He is very loud, very obvious, but he has his own twitter feed. When I wrote the last time about Ecuador, he reacted directly to it in a state television. That was also interesting for 40 minutes. But no, we will come back. First of all, I would like to give you a background. The key to understand him is to understand that he creates control. We have a video that we actually wanted to show, but unfortunately it did not work. I believe I linked it on my blog, babyhorn.com. I hope that you will see it later. I will definitely do it there. He creates control. He had very long, very high vote rates, because in a certain way, in a certain way, Ecuadorians vote for him. They wanted to keep things under control. And that is a key word that we have here. I would like to give you a brief summary of the 10 years before Korea came into power. The first important person in this story is this guy. He was elected in 1996. Despite the Hitler-Barthstein, he was populist, a bit unpredictable. His nickname was Loco, the crazy one. He was really crazy. He would just go to the TV and sing songs there. And he had a whole lot of money to spend. The parliament didn't manage to make him a congressman. He explained to be a president. The congressman was his political enemy. They had to go against the law to take him away from his office. In the end, after two million Ecuadorians had demonstrated in the streets for weeks, he had to close the country. He was the first of three light coups. His presidency was very short. In 1997, the congress was elected by a new president. The next person to be elected is this guy. He is the opposite of Abdullah I. He was very intelligent. He was very well-known as a politician. He was the mayor of the Ecuadorian capital. He was very predictable as a politician. During his presidency, Ecuador was facing the worst financial crisis of generations. 70% of the Ecuadorian banks have closed at this time. Thousands of families have lost their savings. Families have been separated because people had to migrate to Italy, to Spain, to the USA to find work. He has polarized the economy. The inflation was so bad that the dollar was introduced as a currency. Again, people started demonstrating. They completely blocked the highways and demonstrated everywhere. A general of the army rejected the fact that he had to take over the president's palace. Again, a president had to leave his office. Someone else took over the presidency. That was the next soft coup. When was that? In 2001. Anyway, as always. Next, we have this guy. He was the general of the army who didn't want to stop the demonstrators. When they took over the president's palace, his name was Luis Yogi de Cicero. He is also a populist. At the beginning, he lost a lot of left-wing and indigenous movements. But they quickly lost support because he reacted very neoliberal. At that point, people knew that they could start again. They demonstrated again in the streets. And suddenly he was gone. At the end of the whole thing. Ecuador had a very young democracy. They had a military democracy for a whole while. People were very frustrated. All these coups were bad for the economy. People were ready for something else. 2006, Rafael Correa had a campaign. He was there with a completely new party. He promised to dissolve the congress. He wanted to lead new elections after he won. He got a lot of support by promising to change the constitution. He got a lot of support to promise that he would be different. He started everything very well. Many of us were very excited. We found the constitutional proposal very good. But in 2010 he lost control. Maybe you remember, control is very important to him. There was a protest at the police station. The police closed several streets. People remembered him again in 1997, 2001 and 2003. The police drove him into a corner. He needed the military to save him from a hospital. There was a shooting. People were injured. It was a coup attempt. I wouldn't call it a coup attempt. It was a debate we could talk about. But what was really true was that he got scared. And after 2010 there was a conflict between the control he wanted and the politics he wanted to lead. I would like to talk about the laws. The legal side of all these things that happened in Ecuador. The pressure on freedom. The first was the 2008 constitution. As I said, it had progressive and good innovation. It had the media affected. It had the separation of people who heard the media and people who had other things. These things were separated. One of them couldn't be owned by the government anymore. People supported it because they didn't want the bank to have power over the media. The government never sold the media outlet. At the beginning it was the new media outlet. Now it's 442. The monopoly is getting worse and worse. It's getting worse and worse. The second law is the communication law of 2013. It was a wish of Korea. He wanted to pass it on but he didn't have any support in the national assembly. In this law, the crime of media lynching is called a co-ordinated spread of information. That sounds like journalism. But it's illegal to hurt someone for so long. It doesn't say that these information must be false. These information can also be true. This law makes media outlets responsible for this. For comments and all sorts of things. They can be closed. Then corrections can be made, for example. Even if the facts are not true. It's a cartoon about a police attack on a demonstration. The government didn't want to do it. They wanted to show a correction. Then he drew a correction where the police didn't like it. They asked if they could take the computer with them. We closed a deal not to disturb the white chain. Merry Christmas. I like that. They asked this magazine to draw a correction because they thought that the logo of the press that destroyed the social media wasn't nice. That was the correction without the press. But they were allowed to get a fine. It was over $200,000. Journalists don't want to get a fine. They think about what they can say without getting a fine. The third law is the last month. They changed the law after a public service. You don't know what they mean. It means that communication is a task of the state like water and electricity. Journalists don't know what it means. They are afraid because they think it's going in the right direction. There are other threats. I got a few. They asked me later. Others experienced other things. Then the illegal structures that work with the legal structures. Ecuador was the star of the hacking team. Infodum was released. They were published by WikiLeaks. They were published by a friendly hacker. I think it's the receptionist. The contractor Criola. He is from Belize. The government didn't say that they had a contract with them. They didn't have a contract with them, but with the hacking team. Pedro is going to talk about the documents. Can you hear me? I'll give you a practical example. There were two publications about illegal espionage in Ecuador. Ecuador Transparency is a local platform for whistleblowing. They used the global software. The first publication was from August. There are 31 Ecuadorian intelligence information. It's about journalists, human rights activists, environmental activists and politicians. They did it in a physical and digital way. They collected data about the government. They built profiles about people. For example, about the cartoon. About the journalists in the cartoon. The cartoon writer. His profile. Where he traveled. How long he was there. What kind of data. How much money he had. How many cards he had. How many houses he had. And all that. You could say it's illegal because it's government information. But there's the digital surveillance. Based on metadata and active surveillance. Based on metadata surveillance. We don't know exactly how they got it. We think they worked with internet service providers. Then we know who called. Who wrote emails to them. And then they built detailed reports. And that was a reporter from a big TV channel. That's the proof that they really... People here, for example, the mayor of the biggest city are really involved in their lives. And have actively monitored them. Then they wrote a letter to our German media partner. Internet politics in this case. And said that they should take down the documents. And that internet politics wouldn't be a good journalism. They wrote to our internet service provider. That said that we would do various criminal acts. For example, copyright violations. Because in the public documents there were documents of the government. And that we would have been punished against 5 articles. So thanks for both Greenhost and NetsPolitik for sticking with the materials online and telling us that they received this material and for publishing the materials. Yes, thanks to NetsPolitik and Greenhost that they didn't give up and left things online. I think we don't have that much time left. So short announcement. You are the first to see these things. I uploaded it 15 minutes ago. It's an analysis of the risk factors for the Ecuadorian democracy. And here you can see what they see as risk factors for democratic stability. And what they see as evidence. In the middle are the media. So for them what is most important to them and the most dangerous is that they have media that report the most important things in society. Then they have graphics that describe the most important media reports. And that's a risk event that they described or analyzed where it's about the law changes. And they thought that the law changes and maybe the citizens would lie and if the media would report it right then it could be very dangerous for the government. I'm sorry, I don't have that much time. And it's ES, but it should be IS. I don't have much time to develop on this now. I don't have that much time to develop on this now. We have some complex problems, some complex solutions. So for example, there are complex problems and complex criticism. Of course it's great that Ecuador has helped me so much, but is Ecuador really interested to leave my free market space within the country? No. That's why Ecuador can really, really criticize well and still criticize WikiLeaks. And if you don't do that, then you have exactly the arguments that the Ecuadorian government just wants because they just want to avoid external criticism. I want to give you two contributions. The first is for you, the international community. So please support this information and distribute it because it's not spread enough and it's often fed by anti-Wikileaks' feelings when it's reported about the information. So please share the information with your organization or personally. And if you can send us WikiLeaks, we will continue to publish it and come to the end. We can't tweet right now because Bethany is blocked. She had a somewhat annoying Twitter conversation but later you know how. The second contribution is to him, Mr. Rafael Correa, the president of the Republic of Ecuador. We ask him, please, to keep the secret from Bethany so that they can be responsible for what they're doing. We don't have to go to the national parliament to give an answer. They can just say no or argue that they have time and there is no overview about anything. We also want to tell the president that he should re-create the mechanisms in the secret service in order to create transparency and transparency. And until that happens, we will continue to publish and we won't be afraid of threats, espionage or other dangers. That's what he has to know. The last thing we want to tell him, the president of the Ecuadorian Republic, is that the citizens and all foreigners who work in Ecuador have the right to freedom of expression and survival. That's fundamental. We still have time for questions. As you can see, we have a little overtime, so if you want to leave the room, you can go if you want to, but we've already moved a little. So I'll add Pedro and answer him. So we've got the first question at mic number two. Hi. So we host Pedro's website. We host Pedro's website and we want to say we didn't get any punishment or anything, but we didn't continue because it was an illegal request to delete it. So thank you for that. Another question from mic number two. I wanted to ask if there has been any reaction from the government on a legal path or further threats? I mean, against us. It's not like we can prove it. Bethany just told you about legal things that you did against others. We just said there is pressure against possible sources and it's always terrible if you have to leave Ecuador in the airport. But more than that, there is pressure on these letters. But maybe there are some attempts against us, but it's really just fear and pressure. Next question, mic number six. Hello. Thank you for the talk. I just wanted to know I think on the president, the president has said my power through the Constitution my power through the Constitution that has changed. Okay. Next question, mic number three. Hello. What other types of digital tools or digital technology and tools could be useful or to journalists in Ecuador? Yes. So all the you would recommend to journalists you have more experience than I do to train journalists. It's a bit like you're fighting a fight on a steep hill so you have a bad position. There are a lot of tools that you know about in the world not only in Ecuador but you can look for a goal. I wish journalists in Ecuador would use a goal. I wish they would use an OTR. I wish journalists in Ecuador would use a signal. I wish it would be best if they would end up with their Twitter and the person tweeted about the Ministry and was sent to the prison for two weeks. The person didn't have the correct information published. It was considered libelous but it was not wrong. Normal people are also there. They should protect their communication and their platforms. It's getting worse. Next question of microphone number one. I have two questions. The first is how did the right system react to these new laws about freedom of opinion and the second question is what is the status of internet freedom or internet censorship in Ecuador? I think the first one could answer better than the best. There was a whole renewal of the system and the second one was the condition of internet freedom. We wanted to publish something else and we have evidence that they blocked twitter and google for a few days because an anonymous group published these documents two years ago. We have evidence that they blocked youtube and google. I think the internet freedom is a bad situation. I think it's really interesting what's happening in Ecuador because you see how easier tactics will be used. The MCA demands that some things will be taken down on facebook or youtube. Where it's about counts, where videos will disappear and their government invests a lot in propaganda. There were a lot of publications that said that the government pays for a true army of trolls that just sends certain messages to the social media to link the conversations in a certain direction. It's really interesting I don't see many of these shutdowns or many blogs but there are definitely attempts to influence what is said on the internet. Did you have another question now? Do you have another question? Thank you. Microphone number three. Hi. I agree completely that there are a lot of problems and I think it's great that Pedro answered these questions. I have two small questions. The use of the word authoritarian. Why am I asking this question? If it's not about Rafael Correa but also about his party and they still have a high vote. It's a election system and it seems to work. I haven't read any reports about elections and even if there are bad things it's really authoritarian because it still has democracy and you work with these flocks and they were paid by the government. It seems that it's a complicated thing and a big government that goes in many different directions and there seems to be good sides of the government that go in different directions. I think there are less and less and the government leaves because they understand and see how difficult it is to have progress. The first question is about the question of the word authoritarian. What is democracy? The party actually lost the last elections in Ecuador. They lost the elections for the mayor and it was the last elections that existed and most of them were seen as a reflection of their leadership and the next elections are in two years and it doesn't really look good for them and I wouldn't vote for them. But no, you're right, it's a democracy. So do you think it's going to be better if the party loses? Do you think the right opposition is better? Who is there? Who will come next? It's not a democracy. Just because people vote doesn't mean that you have a democracy. But if the people don't have the information to decide for someone who is supposed to be imprisoned then it's not a democracy. If they can't really decide who they are that's why we have the word authoritarian. Because people don't have enough information to make these decisions. Well, we all know the answer to that. Another question from microphone number three. Thank you for the talk. I've talked a lot with Bacini and I thought it was great that the idea of the separation between the state and the secret services and I think there are elements of the Ecuadorian government that are really important to the WikiLeaks. For example, they offered to protect me from the USA and I was already on the Essex Ecuador and when I was there I also had bad bad experiences with the secret services and the president then protected me from the secret services and sorry that it takes so long but my question they protected me they told me that the secret services are dangerous when the secret services don't like you even if you are a guest of the president then you have a problem and you wake up in the ditch with a bullet in your head and they don't even have the chance to protect their guests and if you call that a state and if you say that the politicians and the secret services are the same then I think that's an simplification and it's just too little information about how the combination is that where you see that the secret services and the states just don't work together well and totally you can't protect yourself because they have total power of information and the fact that there are your criticism is really against the secret services especially not against the state I have the defense minister the former defense minister and when I met her she said there are elements in the Ecuadorian government especially the secret services that really want to kill us the presidents and you can't say that it's the same and there are a lot of people who risk their lives and and and yes there are CIA elements in the country for example I met I met and yes it was a great conversation you can confirm that the secret service is a real problem and the secret service controls the political class yes I think that's definitely so the secret service is a problem I personally think that the secret service is part of a bigger problem and that's like Bethenny already said and there are a lot of other legal ways to limit the press freedom and yes the secret service is a little different than the government and in a certain sense they don't respect what North Korea actually wants so we have proof that they are also playing the Korean Party although I think that Korea has enough power and that he has enough power to change this secret service and completely restructure it maybe he doesn't want to and maybe it doesn't make any sense for him right now especially because the elections are coming but I think that's what we are trying to say we don't just want to criticize the region but we are trying we have these little challenges in Korea at least to create a certain control mechanism for the secret service and for a certain transparency for the secret service and what he will say after this talk is Korea will go to the TV and say that the secret service is already being checked and there are judges who have to and Korea has founded the secret service and he will say we have written this new plan for national security we have all the old heads out we have a new agency and now I defend it and he is very bad and it's very bad to accept criticism and to perform reforms and this is probably one of his biggest weaknesses so I don't know but at a certain point you have to make him responsible for how he has dealt with the secret service if you want to believe that the secret service is so bad that the president of the country can't reform them can't change them I will simply have a different opinion that that the secret service is the biggest problem one more question from microphone number 2 I wonder Pino is wondering about the secret service how do you see it in the bigger context who is the bulldog or who is the bad guy is it the secret service that Korea created or is it the opposite or is the secret service really the bad guy it's more complicated than that we can't just break it down for me it's part of a big problem like but I think that the secret service really has the control of the president and if he can't do anything or if he doesn't want to do anything then he is a complice to what they are doing but I think he has a certain control but on the other side there are things that the secret service does and he can't stop it there is another question from microphone number 3 I mean I'm glad that you said that I'm glad that you said that I could have just sat down but I wanted to say the secret service is the biggest problem but my question is how how do we get the secret service and I come from the from the technological how do we do that how do we make it safer and maybe with a revolution better and maybe with a small revolution how do you get the secret service out for example Obama is responsible for every bad thing that happens in America every time a we really have to look at what is the political class what can they do and what can we do as an international community and that is the question that we should ask so we can translate the question but the question is what do we do and what can we do and hello to our friends at the secret service at the secret service and if we want to keep it responsible what is the thing we want to do let's tackle the building that might not be a good idea they can they can just move they'll find all of our bodies the next time we're in Tito but hey maybe we'll find a pool next time we're all there but they asked me to build a mass surveillance system thank you I knew that but I couldn't say it I said it's a good thing I explained to the president that they asked me they really asked the judges and the politicians and they said it's a translation problem and it's not a translation problem but you just want then I wanted to have your name but what do we do against the secret service what do we really want from Korea when I was there what do we do you can't go against a military or against a secret service because otherwise they'll kill you and they really would have followed me to Ecuador and they would have brought him back I don't want to go back to Ecuador but for people in Ecuador there's no way what's our action plan I have I can't believe that you told us all these things I can't believe it I have a headache the coffee here is good first of all I really think very last question sorry for the last question but we can't say so much thank you very much for the talk and for the questions and the discussions