 Digital online action and the research that we are doing and we would like to share it with you So first some introductions My name is Marlene. I Have been involved in the activist movement for about 12 years now And been involved in different movements from squatting movement to climate movements feminist groups And I mean in the end it's about system change. It's about movements that are connected Intersectionality if some of you know so if you start with activism you end up from here to there to everywhere Yeah, I've been involved in different social spaces. I love to cook vegan food I'm a vegan myself, and I love to share that with people Yeah, I'm school as a graphic designer have been working as a graphic designer not for commercial work, but often for the movement and for different organizations and The last three years. I am working at Greenpeace as an action coordinator Yeah, so we thought for the introduction it's nice to show An image of an action that both of us have been or me in this case have been involved in This was an action one of my first climbing actions at Greenpeace This is was me. I was on a on the roof of Shell HQ in The Hague where we were protesting against Arctic drilling and I was sitting there for some hours at some point you get arrested the police take you down So we were going through the building of Shell and I was wearing still this Big suit as a polar bear and it's walking like really big and heavy because it's big And then when I came down and I took off this Polar bear head the police was a bit shocked that there was a blonde lady in it And it was like the perfect picture that the photographer took and it's always nice to share So About Martin. Yeah, I'm Martin. I also work at Greenpeace, but I started after high school. I did study artificial intelligence And I yeah, I was always talking about left-right activists things But then I got into doing some privacy workshops and then I rolled into the student movement and from there It all went really fast and now I'm Well, very deep into the climate movement and the nature movement. I sometimes play guitar, but Yeah, it's it's it's a process and I also took a picture This is in the Steadibos last year where we occupy the forest And Yeah, and in this photo, I just got in food so there was really One of the highlights of the one of the 12 days So and yeah, this is not a talk about Greenpeace but just to give a little bit of background info because Maybe not everyone knows but Greenpeace is quite old for the organization that the type of organization that it is 50 years and we're all around the world and there's many offices in different countries and regions and We've been fighting to preserve nature and for peace For 50 years and we have a lot of experience in that so we do a lot of actions, but we also do Research we go to the nature areas and we fight court cases And this is why we think we're like uniquely uniquely It makes it possible for us to try to bring civil disobedience into the online world And if you know if you have Questions about Greenpeace then we can talk about it completely after the talk if you have questions about the talk itself We can do it There's room for that still Yes, so First we want to talk a bit more about how we get to this topic So in 2014 I I was a volunteer at Greenpeace and I also did some internship work I also came to Greenpeace and said like isn't it interesting to look at if we can do digital actions And that's already quite some time ago The year after I organized a hackathon Where we where the challenge was to look into the data or fishing vessels that go around the whole world And at some point they can take off their tracking system or turn it off and we basically don't know what they're doing in areas So the during this weekend there were more than 30 people We looked into the topic. We got a lot of data from AIS systems and we Learned a lot about what we can do if they turn off their system So that was for Greenpeace and for us a really valuable moment But also for the people who joined because they really liked it to be working together with Greenpeace and to Do something that would preserve nature preserve the oceans So after that we wanted to continue with like what can we do with data with online activism? And so together with a colleague with Bob I set up an e-activist team at Greenpeace and this is basically a team that does More innocent online actions So they write Google reviews. They put pictures At a bad company about their destruction And all kinds of actions we did they were very useful. They were it still exists this team So we're still doing these kind of actions often to support offline actions And it's it's really a nice extra new tool in our in our way of extra activism So yeah next Now or the last year. I've been looking into like how can we do digital disobedient actions? But before we really get into that we want to give you a bit more context about what disobedience means But also how Greenpeace does that and how we Have court cases how we win court cases because this is really important to understand why we believe it It could be possible Yeah, so first about What is civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action? because there's this concept in our society civil disobedience and it's meant to To fight things that are greater cost than yourself and you need to Well uphold a certain number of criteria in order to for it to match that civil disobedience definition For example, you need to have a lawful excuse, which is Let's say your neighbor's house is on fire and you break down the door or the window to save the baby sleeping inside Then you're breaking the law because you cannot break windows But you have a lawful excuse because the fire the house is on fire and for the same way It's like the planet is on fire. So sometimes it might be justified to block shell for example You have to be really careful about safety of everyone involved that's for our activists But also for the police people and for the workers at the sites that you do actions at and you have to Subsidiarity is when you First exhaust all other possible means to fight for your cause. So if you Start with petitions and then you do demonstrations and it still doesn't work then that might then you almost have to Take the next step. Then you're justified for that. But you also have to be proportional. So if you're fighting a very big thing then It's it's Proportional to for example with the Steadibus We have a big major crisis going on and then you sleep in a tree in the forest. That's that's a small thing See if I forgot anything with green peas were very and also for civil disobedience non-violent so Violence is a very vague concept We're very strict never violence against people and if you have to do violence against object Objects rather not but sometimes you need to maybe Break through a fence or for example, but non-violent as much as possible and as I said, there's no Personal gain to be had from doing civil disobedience. So it's really for the bigger cause and All this together makes it so that judges think like, okay, this is they're Changing the world. They're fighting for a bigger cause and that's just nice and NVDA is a Subset of civil disobedience where you directly go to the To the activity that's that's doing harm. For example, you shut down the coal fired power station It's a direct action and you directly stop the activity and So one example I can just play right? Yeah This is in Germany sound it would be nice if there's sounds So every year there are big actions in Germany called and the galena and they are really nice example of people power people doing action to stop fossil fuel industry in this case lignite mining And they're very Terrain a thousand fifteen hundred have come from all over Europe We're here to stop the trains from coming across the tracks because we believe in climate justice and we want the cold to stay in the ground I feel it's an honor to be here. So yeah, I'm I'm very happy We know that you're lying We act in every way we can and civil disobedience is one of this So yeah, that's that's pretty nice where thousands of people come together And if you want you can go again this summer there. They're organizing in August But one another example, this is Amsterdam. It's a really nice field of grass in the city center But what I didn't know at this is that it used to be a highway right through the through Amsterdam and People really didn't like this actually because they really didn't like cars And they thought yeah, we just should take the bike. So they got on the highway. They did like a die-in and They took their bikes as you can see and this is civil disobedience that changed the highway to a nice field of grass and I think that's important part of civil disobedience is has shaped the world around us for the better From you say implying to voting rights for women to the eight-hour workday to abortion rights It yeah, it has shaped the world around us. So We think it's important Yes, so Now we would like to talk a bit about how we do these actions at Greenpeace like Martha said Greenpeace has been doing actions for around the world for more than for 50 years now and There's a lot of experience and knowledge here in the Netherlands, but also in of course many other places in the world So when preparing an action at Greenpeace That's my work Basically every detail counts. So the moment we depart from our warehouse till the second we go on to Gas rig as we see here in a picture That we already prepare what happens if we get a court case We already do everything in advance. We know everything that could possibly go wrong or what could happen? And that's super important to be prepared especially in court So what happened in this case? I'm gonna take you to one action that happened in 2018 because it's just a very interesting example so There was a company called Hansa and they were planning to start drilling for gas In Schiemannik oog in the water say which is a nature area even a nature 2000 area The Dutch government has been working for years on it to get it flourished as a nature reserve And then suddenly there's this company saying so we're gonna get some gas there. It's gonna destroy the nature Besides destroying nature the people who live there. They didn't want any of this happening in their backyards They didn't want anything of this happening in this beautiful nature reserve so The people they contacted Greenpeace beforehand Greenpeace was already in touch with Hansa the company that was planning to drill for the gas To say hey if you're gonna do something let us know they said okay We will let you know if we're gonna start drilling because We need to tell that in advance Because we're preparing it because the government needs to know that's how it works But they didn't they just announced we're gonna start drilling next week So in a week time Greenpeace prepared this action often we take months to prepare but here was one week where we took off from Amsterdam all the way to Schiemannik oog and In preparation of this action like I said we think about every single detail so we think about How are we gonna contact the owner Hansa? But also we need to contact the authorities that we're doing an action So when you're doing an action in the area of oil rig, this is important for the legal case after There is a mining law and this means you cannot be in the area of this mining Activity in 500 meters so we had to stay out of this 500 meters And that's what we did with our big ship. We had a beluga with us. It's a sailing vessel And it was outside of this 500 meter border But we had also had our ribs with us and Those could go into this 500 meter area because The rig is supplied Also with small ribs that there's no danger of any anything Collapsing into the rig so we knew that and that's why we took the ribs to bring it to bring the activists to the rig and What also happened at the same time is the moment we start this action. We called the owner We called the authorities. We're gonna do an action. We weren't even on the rig yet, but we prevented Already that in the court case they would say you're there was dangerous. We didn't know we were planning to mine blah blah blah blah So we already knew we need to let them know in advance and we are so fast that they're unable to stop us before we're already on the rig before they're there so Um, this is very important in the legal process So here the activists go onto the rib. They go into the onto the the rig After 24 hours the activists were taken off the oil rig and that already Took care of a lot of media attention And it made the discussion Really start in the Netherlands about drilling for gas in a nature reserve So that's basically the goal For that action and it really worked but then after There is always the public prosecutor saying hey, I want to have those activists being punished because they did something that is not allowed um So what the public prosecutor said is that the mining law is more important than the right to protest that the action was totally unsafe And that there are less invasive ways of making your points So they say we shouldn't have gone on the onto the rig. We should have just talked to them. But of course it doesn't that doesn't work Um, this is a lot of text, but it's uh, it's just very interesting. This is What the uh, this is the verdict of the judge in the end all the charges were dropped the judge the judges basically said That the right to protest is more important than the mining law Which is already really exceptional. That's really really quite amazing that they said that because often Economy and money goes before ideological and activism um But what they also said and here I wrote it down a bit more concise um Is that again that the mining law is not absolute it's um The right to protest is more important um The mining company started to test unexpected That's why greenpeace couldn't do anything else To had like we said the subsidiarity. So we couldn't get into touch with them They were just on their way and we were too late to basically go into a discussion Uh, there was no safety risk. So this is all what the judge said, huh? Um, the action was well prepared and well documented And they even said greenpeace was it is a large and professional organization That should really address these kind of topics Uh, there was open communication with the authorities. Um, the action was limited Um, yeah, they had a clear target So in the end it was also for us It was really special that they really set this mining law aside and they said the right to protest is more important And that was really a big victory So again in this like I said essential is the subsidiarity and the proportionality because that's where The judge really looks at So why I'm telling all of this is Because basically what we're doing Uh Is if you think about it like if I am myself if I just go take a boat and I'm gonna row to a rick and I'm gonna climb on it I will probably be prosecuted. I will probably get a fine or a jail time because it's so Unclear what I'm doing there. I'm one person. They don't understand it But if you're doing that with a big organization if you have a clear story And if you have a clear goal it can change So the question now is the one I wrote down here Anyhow, so when we talk about digital action digital disobedient action, um, we think Digital action equals high fines and jail time Because that's basically what you hear a lot when people do something online That's not allowed that there are a lot of media attention and that people get high fines if they're found because often you're anonymous Um, yeah If it works, let me know Yeah, so the last year year and a half, uh, we've been doing really extensive research where we talk to Lawyers who are specialized in the right to protest but also, uh cyber cyber crime lawyers Who have advised us and we've been talking about like how Does that work and how do you could you move like a right to protest the european Right into a digital area and they say it's it should be possible. It should be It's very interesting to quest as this question because it hasn't been done like this before Of course, we know actions that are done, uh, anonymously by example anonymous But no one knows who they are But if you would do a digital action and say hey, we're green peas We've done that and we are standing for what we're doing and we can explain to you how we did it And how and what we done and why we did it Like copy what we did what we do offline And we often win and we always win those court cases offline How come you can't copy that to an online place? So again, we said We're still researching. We want to know everything about this If we can't guarantee safety if we can't guarantee the safety of the activist of Of uh, of anyone who's involved of even the companies that we might hack, uh, then we won't do it Um So basically what I'm saying is that I or we think that the risk Isn't as high as I expected before There are laws already made on this topic cyber crime crime and we've seen that of course in the news But there's also a part in this law that talks about ideological action Um So that means that there's already chapter a chapter written In it wet book from strafrecht. I don't know how to say that in english Saying that it's That they already thought about like what if you hack something with an ideological Stance with an ideological view and then of course we look into a jurisprudence So what has been done before have there been court cases? Done against activists who do digital actions And of course we look at the european context You can can look into money places in the world u.s. And there's often these things happened with Snowden and we're we are in europe so we look at european law And one action we did find was A ditos attack on lyft hanza Done by activists who didn't want Undocumented refugees to be deported And luft hanza was taking them and taking them to another location So they did us openly Hey, we did this. This is my name As a form of demonstration And they won this court case So they were not prosecuted for anything and that's the one case we can find in it was in germany That happened where activists said we did this It was a direct action But the judge said it is it is okay to do it because it was a demonstration And that's really interesting Yeah, so screens are not on yet So if we really want to start with doing actions, we really need to prepare Because how would you copy these? The things we prepare when we do a physical actions for an offline online action Like we say the subsidiarity and proportionality Proportionality nullity are very important Subsidiarity depends on the target Yes, that talks a bit easier because it's a lot of text Yeah, so the subsidiarity it depends on the targets for example if we want to do a digital action on shell Um, I mean we have we've got a history with shell We've done many actions on shell So we don't really need to explain why we're doing more heavy actions for example or digital actions on shell Because we have been doing that for years Um, so that depends on the targets, but if you want to do a proportional action That's a bit of a difficult one. That's something that we that I've been thinking about like what is a small action online What is something big? What is something that's really disruptive and how would a judge look at that? Um, and how can we track every every step we take online? So for example, if we climb a building you can basically say yeah, we went to the fence Then we went there we went to take that ladder and we're up the building But how would you do that online? How can you track that? How can you show that you haven't been looking into places where you find credit card data or anything else? Um Yeah, so again the thorough legal advice. We don't want any risk We want to make sure that no one gets in jail and if they are not Possible then we don't do it Uh, also something I was thinking about can someone experienced Um an experienced hacker prepare an action and that a green piece prominent for example the director presses a button And he does it. He does the hack Um, because that you know in the in the discussion that could really help Um and as always a risk assessment Yeah, so Now we're uh in the process of um All the technical stuff, but it's also Um, what are we actually going to do? Um We are very good at uh doing uh banner drops with what would the digital banner drop look like and um, we it's quite obvious if you block the entrance to uh shell But can we also do a direct action online and how would it look like and maybe the Most interesting one, uh, or challenging one at least is the mass action where you have uh, You saw the video of and the glen with thousands of people Can we do it online in a disruptive manner? um, and then Yeah, make it make it happen because, um The world is warming and nowadays, um, you have This is From the global south, but on the right side of the screen. It's it's in europe now and even in the netherlands where we have floods so there's no Escaping it anymore and something uh, yeah needs to be done and then We're the question part How much time do we have 15? Okay, so we have time for questions Um, and we would love to hear anything if you have any remarks or questions or Also, uh later. We have more time. You can also come to us. We will be here the whole day also on monday, so any questions Oh, yeah This oh, yeah, it's also like what you described is how can you prove that you're not hacking the company or not Accessing the database or accessing confidential information. Can you talk a bit closer? I can yeah, of course Yeah, um The most important thing with it is like what you described with a d-dOS attack. It's impossible to hack anything with it. It's just Disrupting their services, but it's not hacking it. You're not accessing the database You can prove this to everyone that there are certain types of cyber attacks which Which are impossible to Lead to an actional hack And that's the the most powerful thing of it also what you said like how can I have many people? Attack shell for example like take the most Busy page of cell the the page which takes the most time to load Maybe they're log in page to their oil platform or take some page which is very slow to load and speak of time Globally and everyone refresh the page constantly everyone everyone on the at the team Start refreshing the page and eventually it will stop working And then the oil consumers cannot log in but you can prove that you did not hack anything and if you Say like hey, we're green priests. We're gonna we're gonna use we're gonna like If you're gonna do a real hack you must Say i'm gonna use it from this ip address I'm gonna use this method And you can check this logs to make sure that's no database has been hacked But if you're using a DDoS attack you should not disclose your ip because then they can block it very easily But it's technically impossible to To access private information. So you're always in that site legal DDoS is not legal by the way, but it's at least a gray area. Yeah Nice. Thanks. It's very interesting Yeah, can we respond because uh on monday we have Uh a workshop where we are gonna try to really make the translation move for these kind of actions And really try to look like okay, maybe we can even find the page that you were talking about and let's let's find it on monday Now with the slides can you make them available online for download and with for instance all the cases you've mentioned Could you cite them and like tweet them or master done them or something that would be nice Is there a way we can see? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, we can also discuss with the organization How or where we can share it that should be fine. Cool. Thanks. Yeah I have one remark and one question a remark for the gentleman about DDoS in the website. It will not work I'm working I've been working in marketing for 10 years and I know how these sites are being built up So best case you would get one edge note You could maybe get down But everything is protected by like cdn or akamai or without any real Hacking you would just not get a result that's that's that you would like But I would like to talk more on monday about that Yes, yeah But Let's talk. Come on. Let's go after this talk also fine. My question is If if you do an action who gets sued is that green piece or are that the people performing the action If green piece acts as a protection for people doing the action That could attract a lot more people be willing to do civil disobedience If you're shielded by an organization Yeah, it's uh Actually all I think almost all cases. It's the activists And but it's also a combination because the activists do the action in the name to have for together with green piece So that means that they have an organization like green piece behind them supporting them also being there in court with the lawyers So it's green piece supporting them and green piece helping running the court cases But in the end they want to prosecute the activists Okay But we yeah, we don't have any Cases where the activists were heavenly prosecutors because of those preparations And that's where it starts it starts when we are at home in our drawing tables drawing down this action or at work And saying hey, we really need to take care of all these points because of a court case So that's already prepared in advance. Okay, thanks. Yeah Hey, so first of all cool talk. Thanks for sharing I do have a question regarding this preparation phase that you mentioned I would expect it's kind of easy when you're a dutch person Doing something on dutch mainland like taking an action But then when he gets online it gets much more difficult to grasp How do you make sure that it's actually dutch law that will be available that will be applicable How do you make sure that you do not fall under like foreign jurisdiction? And is it part of the technical analysis that that you have to conduct before Go taking such actions or is it part of like a more legal approach For the first question I think you're mentioned You mean that if you hack a company that has servers in the us for example Yeah, sometimes you just don't know you may have some hkc's where it has some impact on other companies on other Jurisdiction for example. Yeah. Yeah, we we also talked about that with the cybercrime lawyer for example, and he said That's a very difficult one, of course And, you know, if you would start doing these actions It would be smart to look into where our servers placed for the first times and see, you know To make sure you're on european area or european law and if not That's the next step, I would say because there is a chance that the us will say Hey, the activists need to come here because we want to prosecute them and that's a very tricky one, but Uh, I think what we said now we would try to focus on european law and everything that's on european ground Okay, cool. Thank you. And the second question. Uh, sorry. I missed I'm not sure there was a second question. No, okay. Sorry. I thought you had the second one. Sorry. Yeah Hello Think about that formulated properly So there's of course the tension between if you do something in public, it's nice But then people know who you are and we know that maybe sometimes Uh, like people that don't necessarily follow the law people disappear or stuff like this um I don't know if you could maybe comment on the difference between like doing something privately or like, uh securely, let's say so you don't know who's behind it so nobody can be specifically targeted because usually it's just A few people that know the very specifics and so like you just make their life horrible and there won't be More of these attacks, let's say So I think there's a bit of a tension between like doing something privately or like, uh, Anonymously versus publicly. I don't know if you thought about this It was partially on answered a little bit by the preparation stage. Yeah I think it's probably best to do everything out in the open. Uh, as as let's say in the light as possible Yeah, but maybe you can comment on this Yeah, we we um, we're still talking about this, but um, like I said before Um This form of action like what we're doing offline We can get away with it like we do it for 50 years. Um And I believe you can really copy that to an online place and if you do it anonymously online I think if they find you in the end, uh, I think the repercussions are harder and are um Because we're open and because Greenpeace is always saying this is the activist. This is the organization The judge is also more willing to be Hey that you're doing it for such a night such an important topic you're fighting climate change or whatever Um, it really helps So I I I know what you're saying that there's like not maybe not so many people who can do a really difficult hack for example Maybe there are I don't know or or even activists like fighting for the amazon I don't know what is like the highest number of activists disappear over there Yeah, no, that's true But that's also it depends on what action you're also doing right and what what targets and but with Greenpeace It's it's really like that that we always show who we are. Um, but we do um I personally think it's important that you can do anonymous actions, of course, but that's not how Greenpeace works Thanks Okay, so the last two questions and then we need to continue so, uh to me it feels that the goal with the Physical protest is to disrupt the companies to get their attention for a cause, right yeah On Monday, we're going to go into four tactics and sometimes it's also making public aware that something is happening Or direct communications towards the people who can influence decisions But we now we focused a lot on yeah Because the example is given people boarding a drilling platform You being in the trees all that is preventing people Their work right you being disruptive to that process because the money Time effort whatever If you translate that to online You will not accomplish that with a wiki leaks or ever snowed in You will not get there if you go with the DDoS. You want to get there? So that means that you're you're promoting to destroy Or disrupt their infrastructure And you feel that you can do that with your previous offline case in the physical space. So is that what you're advocating? No, um, this is what we want to dive into on Monday to see like hey Uh, if we do a better drop, uh, can we do a better drop online? Like I said, is it is it translated? I don't know. I think that I think that there's a lot of creative people maybe here Maybe on the camp maybe in the world who can translate it into different things Maybe it's true what you're saying. Maybe it's one of the tactics But I think that also civil disobedience comes in many ways, right? So I think there's ways to We have to hurry up To to look into that Destroying things is not non-violent and it's also not civil disobedience more sabotage And that's the point you made so so I'm I guess confused The room you give yourself what you are able to do so online Yeah, that's right digital processes, which I get. Yeah, but I think it's hard to accomplish with the Rules you give yourself. Yeah, but it's uh, it's not easy. Yes Thanks Hi, have you heard of the activist group distributed denial of secrets and some of the environmental data says that they release like mining secrets No, no, but that's a good tip. Okay. We um, maybe later you can say it again after the talk and we can write it down Yeah, okay. We have two more minutes. So one minute. Okay, so Uh, attempt to check a ratio hand if you agree with the statement and it's okay if you disagree But just to get a feel of the room What oh one question Um Can we first do this? Please and then we can do it afterwards Um, direct digital action should be normalized like offline direct actions Nice, that's also why you came to the talk maybe So, uh, what's next? Um, we're uh, we're gonna continue with legal research and we're gonna do it out in the open so we will uh, publish a position paper and we will host public events And uh, then we're gonna set up a team of people who can actually do this stuff And uh, we're gonna design the first low risk action. So we're not just gonna encrypt all the servers of some, uh, oil company Maybe we're gonna start it easy or we are going to start it easy And then on monday where like we said, we're gonna try to really see if we can find Ways to make this translation step um But hopefully all of y'all and your expertise That would be really nice Yeah, so we'll be back Yeah, and if you're um, if you want to contact, um Send me an email Greenpeace email is on google. So sorry for that. Uh, I have my other email, which is riseup, which is much Better. We also believe that um And uh, yeah signal me or to send the telegram Like I said, we will be here today and we will be definitely be there on monday the whole day So also just come come to us and talk to us Uh, and we had one last question. Is that still okay? I'm looking at Oh, when is the next hackathon? Um, I don't know. I didn't plan one. We can organize one. Yes We would like to join a hackathon if we organize one Some hands Okay, I think that's uh, that's it. Wait, who's going to be here on monday actually? Nice, it will be fun Cool. Okay. Thanks. That was uh, that was it So before you all leave I have another announcement to make uh, first of all Everyone who has merged pre-ordered can now pick it up at the merge stand. It has come in. It was a bit late But it's hit there now Um, I'd also like you to ask to pick up the trash To leave everything cleaner than it was Be excellent to each other drink water use sunscreen and yet again give it up for the amazing talk of martin and martin