[00:03.300 --> 00:04.940]  Thank you very much.
[00:05.140 --> 00:07.500]  I'm Count Zero from the Cult of the Dead Cow.
[00:09.220 --> 00:19.700]  1984, 20 years ago, Cult of the Dead Cow got together and started releasing all of our T-files, all of our crazy text files.
[00:20.200 --> 00:25.400]  Not just about hacking, but also just kind of celebrating creative writing in general.
[00:25.660 --> 00:28.360]  Writing crazy shit that you'd never read anywhere else.
[00:30.060 --> 00:33.540]  But over the years, we've done a lot of different things, and we've been pretty crazy.
[00:34.180 --> 00:36.100]  We've been kind of, well, a little crazy.
[00:36.440 --> 00:43.000]  I don't know if you remember the HOPE where we had the cows and the skulls and the naked wrestling going on.
[00:43.160 --> 00:45.380]  Yeah, that was pretty intense.
[00:46.920 --> 01:00.420]  But we like to, sort of, we have a large spectrum of interests, and, you know, we're interested in having a good time getting crazy, getting a little nuts, but we're also interested in, you know, trying to change the world a little bit, making it more interesting,
[01:00.840 --> 01:02.080]  maybe making it a little bit better.
[01:02.080 --> 01:16.020]  So, a few years ago, we started getting involved in hacktivism, and as most people probably know now, hacktivism is using, you know, the idea of using hacking techniques applied to activism.
[01:16.740 --> 01:21.420]  And actually, we did invent the name hacktivism, yeah.
[01:21.720 --> 01:24.960]  Yeah, Omega, in CDC, invented the term hacktivism.
[01:25.080 --> 01:28.260]  So, every time you say the word hacktivism, we get a quarter.
[01:28.460 --> 01:28.980]  It's awesome.
[01:29.960 --> 01:30.920]  It's really great.
[01:32.080 --> 01:52.300]  So, what we have up here now is, we don't have any naked wrestling, unless these guys want to get into it later, but what we actually have is a fantastic panel of people to talk about hacktivism, and this is a really fantastic opportunity, and the guy in the CDC who's been really spearheading all of this and being the,
[01:52.300 --> 01:58.480]  you know, the binding force behind all of our efforts in hacktivism is Oxblood over here.
[01:58.480 --> 02:04.880]  So, what I'm going to do is turn it over to him, and he's going to turn it over to them, and they're going to turn it over to you.
[02:05.320 --> 02:06.040]  So, that's it.
[02:11.770 --> 02:12.410]  Thank you.
[02:13.430 --> 02:15.410]  Just one announcement before we get going.
[02:16.890 --> 02:28.730]  I'm not pleased to make this announcement, but Eric Grimm, who is sitting on our panel, is an attorney, and he's been representing a lot of hackers, 2600, I believe, also.
[02:29.330 --> 02:30.710]  He's staying in the hotel here.
[02:30.850 --> 02:32.250]  He left his door slightly ajar.
[02:32.250 --> 02:36.210]  and turned his back, and moments later, somebody lifted his computer out of his room.
[02:36.810 --> 02:41.330]  I'm really hoping it's not somebody here or somebody associated with the conference.
[02:41.690 --> 02:43.730]  I also fully realize...
[02:43.730 --> 02:44.510]  Certain it isn't.
[02:44.750 --> 02:45.250]  Yeah.
[02:46.390 --> 02:52.410]  But it's possible that somebody might know something about this or might have seen something or heard something, whatever.
[02:53.430 --> 03:00.130]  It is a Dell laptop in an aluminum Halliburton case.
[03:00.530 --> 03:09.710]  So, if anybody does have any information about this or anything that might help Eric get his computer back, that would be fabulous.
[03:09.930 --> 03:14.390]  So, you could speak with an organizer or Eric directly, and that's great.
[03:15.630 --> 03:21.570]  On a more pleasant note, it is, in fact, our 20th anniversary.
[03:22.510 --> 03:26.850]  And we've seen a lot of groups come and go in the hacking scene.
[03:27.530 --> 03:32.210]  One group consistently has been there, fellow travelers, friends.
[03:32.210 --> 03:43.950]  And at a time when the current administration of this country is exporting a lot of fear into the world, this group has consistently exported hope.
[03:44.230 --> 03:46.890]  And we'd like to thank 2600 and Emmanuel.
[03:55.590 --> 04:05.890]  As Zero said, we've been working with hacktivism mostly because we invented it, but it has, in fact, gone out and there are many flavors.
[04:06.850 --> 04:13.490]  Some people claim to be hacktivists or doing hacktivist things or developing hacktivist apps.
[04:14.130 --> 04:18.350]  But we have a very clear definition of what we believe hacktivism to be.
[04:18.350 --> 04:25.070]  For us, it is using technology to improve human rights across electronic media.
[04:26.330 --> 04:45.950]  Hacktivismo, the subgroup within the CDC that's been doing a lot of work in hacktivism, has been primarily interested in opening up the Internet in these so-called firewalled countries through developing applications or working with grassroots organizations and the human rights community.
[04:46.850 --> 04:50.190]  For us, technology and human rights go together.
[04:50.650 --> 04:52.090]  That is hacktivism in our view.
[04:53.050 --> 04:59.630]  If other people are doing other things, then I'm not really sure what to call it.
[04:59.730 --> 05:05.090]  It could be cyber activism or digital dissidence or whatever it is.
[05:05.250 --> 05:07.550]  But in our view, it isn't hacktivism.
[05:07.550 --> 05:13.210]  There are certain even tactics that we think are appropriate.
[05:14.730 --> 05:21.990]  For instance, Zero is mentioning that we started off by writing a lot of T-files.
[05:22.170 --> 05:26.990]  And that was really the first sort of incarnation or mandate of the CDC.
[05:27.250 --> 05:29.110]  And it was really all about free speech.
[05:29.350 --> 05:36.170]  And then when we started working with hacktivism and trying to get past all of these firewalls, a lot of people couldn't figure it out.
[05:36.390 --> 05:45.290]  You know, we're supposed to be a bunch of goofy guys who write files like Sex with Satan and Bunny Lust and the Gerbil Feed Bomb is my particular favorite, the first file.
[05:46.330 --> 05:49.330]  And so what does that have to do with opening up the Internet?
[05:49.570 --> 05:55.590]  Well, there really is a straight line from free speech to somebody being able to hear your free speech.
[05:55.590 --> 06:02.630]  So the T-files and the application development or the other work we're doing in hacktivism does go very clearly together.
[06:04.810 --> 06:12.890]  And it's interesting that we never really knew where this was going to go, like so many things, when it was started.
[06:13.550 --> 06:17.450]  It was about eight years ago we started wrestling around with these ideas.
[06:17.450 --> 06:20.930]  And for six years, very actively working.
[06:20.930 --> 06:25.250]  It started out with a few people in the CDC, a few friends.
[06:25.910 --> 06:39.410]  Increasingly, Hacktivismo has grown to be an international hacking organization with members in North America, South America, People's Republic of China, India, Australia, Iran, Japan, Russia.
[06:39.750 --> 06:51.310]  It truly is an international organization and we set out to make it that way because the Internet is an international communications medium that everybody should have access to.
[06:53.430 --> 07:02.010]  One interesting thing I think that the CDC has done is to try to bring hackers and the human rights community together.
[07:02.370 --> 07:06.890]  I don't know if anybody here made it to DEFCON about three years ago.
[07:07.250 --> 07:25.450]  We had Dr. Patrick Ball, then the Deputy Director of Human Rights for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, came to DEFCON and we were up on a sweltering hot roof with as many people for about two hours.
[07:25.750 --> 07:27.810]  And the place was just like a hothouse.
[07:27.970 --> 07:29.630]  It was brutal to sit up there.
[07:29.850 --> 07:33.170]  And hardly anybody left because Patrick just held the audience.
[07:33.330 --> 07:40.550]  It was just like so incredible to have a speaker like that come and to talk to hackers in their own language.
[07:40.550 --> 07:46.210]  And a very bizarre and amusing incident came out of that.
[07:46.950 --> 07:55.430]  As some of you know, Patrick essentially gathered the forensic evidence that brought Slobodan Milošević to trial.
[07:56.130 --> 07:58.390]  He tied all the threads together.
[07:58.690 --> 08:05.370]  He's a statistician and he managed to find all of the points that pointed the finger to Milošević.
[08:05.370 --> 08:12.890]  And as a result of that, Milosevic was arrested and is currently... his trial has been ongoing for a couple of years.
[08:15.070 --> 08:22.070]  Patrick went and testified against Milosevic after he appeared at DEFCON as a guest of the Cult of the Dead Cow.
[08:22.410 --> 08:25.610]  And of course, Milosevic was representing himself.
[08:26.910 --> 08:32.570]  And Patrick testified against Milosevic and then Milosevic had the right to cross-examine him.
[08:32.570 --> 08:39.990]  And his first question was, So, Dr. Ball, what can you tell me about this dead cow cult?
[08:40.890 --> 08:42.670]  So, you guys may be unforeseen.
[08:42.730 --> 08:44.890]  You never know what's going to happen in your future as a result.
[08:44.890 --> 08:46.590]  The video is floating around on the Internet somewhere.
[08:46.930 --> 08:48.930]  Yes, you can actually see it.
[08:49.010 --> 08:50.050]  This dead cow cult.
[08:53.750 --> 08:57.210]  So, I've been talking about hacktivism for quite a few years now.
[08:57.210 --> 09:12.250]  And rather than have me spew on and many people hear many of the things I've said before, I wanted to bring together a distinguished panel of experts, all from different fields and all looking at this phenomenon from different perspectives.
[09:14.170 --> 09:18.190]  It is my great pleasure and high honor to introduce this panel.
[09:18.670 --> 09:23.250]  Sharon Hom, who is the Executive Director of Human Rights in China.
[09:25.610 --> 09:30.490]  Eric Grimm, who was in private practice, but is now with...
[09:30.870 --> 09:31.650]  I hope I pronounce...
[09:31.650 --> 09:33.090]  It's still private practice.
[09:33.270 --> 09:33.510]  Okay.
[09:33.770 --> 09:34.870]  Just not solo practice.
[09:34.970 --> 09:36.350]  So, he's not solo practice now.
[09:37.070 --> 09:41.150]  Caligaro and Myring, PC, I believe, in Taylor, Michigan.
[09:42.230 --> 09:48.250]  Jagdish Parikh, who is an Internet strategist with Human Rights Watch.
[09:49.110 --> 09:57.690]  And Nart Villeneuve, Director of Technology for the Citizen Lab, Munk Centre for International Relations at the University of Toronto.
[09:59.310 --> 10:03.430]  Each panelist will speak for about 20 minutes or so.
[10:03.430 --> 10:07.610]  So, at the end, we'll have a QA and it's going to be great.
[10:07.910 --> 10:09.030]  So, Sharon, please.
[10:21.030 --> 10:22.690]  Oxblood, I'm a little shorter than you.
[10:23.610 --> 10:23.990]  Okay.
[10:24.830 --> 10:25.510]  Thank you.
[10:26.370 --> 10:31.290]  I want to especially thank you for including us on this panel.
[10:31.530 --> 10:36.690]  And I'd like to publicly thank you for the support you've been giving to our work for a number of years now.
[10:36.850 --> 10:38.950]  And we really look forward to working together.
[10:40.430 --> 10:41.510]  Can we...is it up?
[10:41.510 --> 10:42.070]  Yeah.
[10:42.610 --> 10:43.170]  No?
[10:45.910 --> 10:46.470]  No.
[10:46.710 --> 10:47.070]  Okay.
[10:47.310 --> 10:47.610]  Thank you.
[10:47.930 --> 10:48.230]  Okay.
[10:49.430 --> 10:49.990]  Okay.
[10:50.170 --> 10:52.630]  I originally had a different title for the talk.
[10:53.150 --> 10:58.830]  And it was really the rise of the Internet in China, a cautionary tale, comma, a narrative of hope.
[11:00.050 --> 11:04.570]  But I think I'm going to focus more on the theme of technology and human rights.
[11:10.150 --> 11:10.590]  Okay.
[11:11.610 --> 11:13.750]  I want to start with communication technologies.
[11:14.470 --> 11:18.110]  And printing press, telephone, Internet, radio, cell phone, fax machines.
[11:18.290 --> 11:22.010]  All of these communication technologies have, most recently, fax machines.
[11:22.150 --> 11:25.590]  You can see the power of that, particularly in the 1989 crackdown in China.
[11:26.070 --> 11:36.110]  But for our purposes today, I'm going to talk a bit about Internet as an example of a technology and some of the issues around that with respect to human rights work, what my organization does.
[11:38.310 --> 11:39.190]  Human rights.
[11:40.070 --> 11:43.330]  And what I mean by human rights, it's not an abstract.
[11:43.330 --> 11:49.650]  I'm talking about the principles and norms that have emerged, primarily post-World War II.
[11:49.950 --> 11:56.230]  These are the principles and norms that have emerged so that the world could be safe for democracy and peace.
[11:56.470 --> 12:06.530]  And has now become part of a whole system of institutions and processes, primarily in the UN and other bodies.
[12:07.450 --> 12:15.830]  And stakeholders, a word I hate, but is a word that is used in our field, refers to the people, the groups that are active in human rights.
[12:15.830 --> 12:18.230]  And this means it includes governments.
[12:18.310 --> 12:22.850]  It includes NGOs like ours, non-governmental organizations.
[12:23.170 --> 12:25.910]  It involves other civil society actors.
[12:26.210 --> 12:30.990]  It also involves, as we all knew, multinational corporations.
[12:31.470 --> 12:37.670]  And then it involves a whole host of other associated, like research, think tanks, et cetera, the media, et cetera, et cetera.
[12:37.810 --> 12:46.430]  So when I talk about communication technologies and the Internet and human rights, I'm talking about these whole clusters of processes and peoples and actors and ideas.
[12:49.880 --> 13:05.060]  And out of this connection, what I'd like to begin and end with is an invitation, an ongoing invitation, for us to think about ways in which we can together build more effective alliances of conscience.
[13:05.360 --> 13:06.800]  Because that's what's called for.
[13:07.040 --> 13:15.000]  Those of us involved in human rights work and those of you in the hacker community that has been involved in working with us, you know what I'm saying.
[13:15.360 --> 13:17.820]  The cards are stacked against us.
[13:17.980 --> 13:26.740]  When we talk about China, China is, if not the holy grail for hackers, I want to be presumptuous to tell you what your holy grail is.
[13:27.020 --> 13:32.140]  China must certainly be one of the most important holy grails for hacking.
[13:32.360 --> 13:38.220]  Because if you can hack China, if you can help us break open China, you have done more than just China.
[13:38.420 --> 13:43.440]  You've done something really major for more than 1.3 billion people in China.
[13:43.640 --> 13:44.700]  It's going to affect the world.
[13:44.700 --> 13:49.220]  So partly what I'm asking today is to ask you to join us.
[13:49.840 --> 13:50.660]  Even the odds.
[13:51.180 --> 13:52.340]  Even the odds.
[13:52.620 --> 13:54.500]  And come on, on our side.
[13:54.640 --> 13:56.100]  Because we're like this.
[13:56.320 --> 14:02.860]  Small NGO communities, limited resources, limited, by and large, low-tech, low-tech techies.
[14:03.020 --> 14:04.920]  And we desperately need you.
[14:05.120 --> 14:14.560]  And because that's what's going to even it against an incredible alliance of global capital, of multinational, corporate profit interests.
[14:14.800 --> 14:27.060]  A very powerful police state that is now in an increasingly post-911 world has been able to very successfully, opportunistically exploit the rhetoric of anti-terrorism.
[14:27.840 --> 14:30.040]  And I must have to say, the U.S.
[14:30.080 --> 14:31.540]  is making it quite easy for them.
[14:32.540 --> 14:33.820]  They've raised the bar.
[14:34.080 --> 14:37.340]  Now the Chinese can say, don't talk to us about human rights violations.
[14:38.320 --> 14:39.900]  Guantanamo Bay, Iraq.
[14:40.600 --> 14:41.380]  And then there's silence.
[14:41.560 --> 14:43.140]  Because what are we to say after that?
[14:43.460 --> 14:49.440]  So it is a very serious, dismal, serious challenge that we face.
[14:49.560 --> 14:54.200]  And so I want to call for us building even more effective alliances.
[14:54.540 --> 14:55.860]  And I've only been here today.
[14:55.860 --> 14:57.600]  I've just got back from out of the country.
[14:57.620 --> 14:59.240]  So I'm a little bit jet-lagged.
[14:59.360 --> 15:03.480]  But it was so exciting just to see all of you and hear all of you talking in the hallways.
[15:03.480 --> 15:06.340]  And I said, yeah, this group can join this.
[15:06.540 --> 15:07.840]  This group can do something.
[15:08.600 --> 15:08.680]  Okay.
[15:16.630 --> 15:21.410]  I'm going to do a very quick overview of what I think is...
[15:21.410 --> 15:23.450]  I will call it the conventional story.
[15:23.470 --> 15:26.230]  And it's a story you probably read about in the Western media.
[15:26.450 --> 15:32.850]  It is primarily the dominant story that's being pitched by China, which I will call the, you know, the infrastructure people.
[15:32.850 --> 15:40.410]  So those of you who might be familiar with the World Summit on Information Society, that's supposed to be this discussion about the future of the information society in the 21st century.
[15:40.810 --> 15:46.490]  That is dominated by the infrastructure people who are focusing on some of the things that I'm going to quickly go over.
[15:46.690 --> 15:48.990]  So what I want to do is just go through the conventional story.
[15:49.130 --> 15:52.970]  And then I'd like to interrogate it and take it apart a little bit and ask the more important question.
[15:53.510 --> 15:53.650]  Okay.
[15:54.050 --> 15:55.930]  First of all, you'll hear this a lot.
[15:56.270 --> 15:59.890]  You know, China's Internet users, who are they?
[15:59.890 --> 16:02.730]  They're now over 79.5 million online.
[16:03.030 --> 16:08.990]  But this is only 6.2% of the 1.3 billion people and growing.
[16:09.390 --> 16:10.850]  But who's online?
[16:11.530 --> 16:22.750]  Predominantly young, male, and college educated or with education and predominantly located in urban areas.
[16:23.790 --> 16:27.870]  76% earn less than 2,000 yuan, which is 250 U.S.
[16:28.110 --> 16:29.770]  But that's a misleading stat also.
[16:30.210 --> 16:38.350]  Because why they're earning less than 2,000 yuan or 2,000 Chinese dollars is because they're supported by their parents.
[16:38.490 --> 16:40.010]  So these are primarily students.
[16:40.290 --> 16:43.670]  So it looks like they're in an economically lower class, but in fact they're not.
[16:43.850 --> 16:51.690]  They're part of the most special elite privileged in China, a very small percentage that make it to get an education.
[16:51.690 --> 16:52.350]  Okay.
[16:53.770 --> 17:02.930]  When you look at the gender breakout, you'll see that the gender breakout is that even though you see it sort of leveling off, it's primarily male.
[17:03.190 --> 17:09.530]  And from 1997, when the Internet really kind of took off in China, it was 87% male users.
[17:09.710 --> 17:15.650]  And in 2004, it's really evening out a little bit at about 60%, 60.4% male.
[17:15.970 --> 17:16.090]  Okay.
[17:17.350 --> 17:19.930]  In terms of their education, you can see this.
[17:20.070 --> 17:33.110]  And what would have been interesting, this is a stat that perhaps some of we will be doing at HIC and follow up with our work on education, is that if you take this and map this against who gets educated in China, this is going to look even more revealing.
[17:33.410 --> 17:38.250]  In other words, this is just looking at who, of the percentage of users and what their educational background is.
[17:38.250 --> 17:48.990]  And what you can see from the pie chart, primarily, is that most of the people online have a basic education or higher, junior college, bachelor, you know, et cetera.
[17:49.310 --> 17:49.410]  Okay.
[17:51.970 --> 17:56.050]  From 1997 to 2004, well, the picture speaks for itself, right?
[17:56.350 --> 18:02.030]  You had 620,000 people online in 1997, and now you have 79.5 million.
[18:02.570 --> 18:06.450]  Needless to say, you can see, it is growing astronomically.
[18:06.450 --> 18:07.710]  What do they call it?
[18:08.090 --> 18:08.910]  You know...
[18:10.270 --> 18:10.910]  Exponentially.
[18:11.310 --> 18:11.750]  Exponentially.
[18:11.750 --> 18:12.190]  Exponentially.
[18:13.250 --> 18:13.890]  And...
[18:13.890 --> 18:15.090]  But what does that mean?
[18:15.350 --> 18:15.510]  Okay.
[18:16.470 --> 18:16.690]  Aim?
[18:17.050 --> 18:17.210]  Yeah.
[18:18.010 --> 18:25.150]  It's also growing, not just in the number of Internet users, it's growing from the .cm, the registered domain names.
[18:25.230 --> 18:39.090]  And if you look at the registered domain names, the increase from 1997 was from 4,066 registered to 2004, 340,000 and 40 registered .cn domain names.
[18:39.830 --> 18:43.830]  But this is the...
[18:43.830 --> 18:53.350]  From another perspective, not from the perspective of numbers, not from the perspective of these, you know, usually in breathtaking terms.
[18:53.350 --> 18:58.730]  If you read about lots of the Internet in China studies, or books, or articles, this is what you get.
[18:58.850 --> 19:01.770]  It tends to be this breathy, wow, look at China.
[19:02.110 --> 19:03.030]  Millions and millions.
[19:03.270 --> 19:04.030]  Everyone's wired.
[19:04.150 --> 19:04.710]  It's online.
[19:04.910 --> 19:06.170]  It's joining the 21st century.
[19:06.350 --> 19:09.590]  You get this kind of breathless account in awe of technology in China.
[19:09.910 --> 19:17.170]  But against another perspective, if you look at it from the perspective of human development, this is another mapping, and this is what it looks like.
[19:17.430 --> 19:23.590]  If you look at the green areas, that's the so-called high development areas.
[19:23.790 --> 19:34.650]  And when we say human development, we're talking about life expectancy, literacy, healthcare, all of the basic indicators, right?
[19:34.910 --> 19:36.250]  This is how it's measured.
[19:36.750 --> 19:42.730]  If you see the yellow, sort of yellow areas, that's what they call medium development.
[19:43.130 --> 19:46.530]  But I just want to point out how deceptive that is as well.
[19:46.670 --> 19:49.990]  This comes from the UNDP, the United Nations Development Program, their stats.
[19:50.510 --> 20:00.590]  Take a look at Xinjiang, which, as you know, the Chinese are now calling the hotbed of terrorism, and they're really cracking down in terms of executions, and these have been really rising.
[20:00.590 --> 20:10.910]  And anything that goes under the ambit, anyone attempt to assert cultural identity in Xinjiang, is being labeled terrorist.
[20:11.410 --> 20:26.530]  So an attempt to, perhaps, to maintain the Uyghur language, history, religion, practices, is being met with a label of splittists, and terrorists, and anti-China.
[20:26.530 --> 20:33.950]  So how is it that Xinjiang, one of the poorest ethnic minority areas in China, gets to be medium development?
[20:34.070 --> 20:40.950]  Because of the massive colonization that has been taking place, and that has displaced the ethnic minorities.
[20:41.270 --> 20:45.270]  I am ethnically Han Chinese.
[20:45.630 --> 20:48.550]  So my group is the vast majority.
[20:48.550 --> 20:52.490]  We are 96% of the ethnic groups in China.
[20:52.490 --> 21:00.170]  And I had a chance to backpack and go to the desert in Xinjiang as a Han Chinese woman, which people thought was a really stupid, dangerous thing to do.
[21:00.530 --> 21:04.110]  Fortunately, I didn't know that at the time, until I came back from the desert.
[21:04.490 --> 21:06.410]  And they said that was a stupid thing to do.
[21:06.970 --> 21:12.570]  But it was really interesting, because I got to see firsthand just the devastation.
[21:12.770 --> 21:21.550]  And when you move further out, you see a city that had been 75-80% Uyghur, is now 75-80% Han Chinese.
[21:21.910 --> 21:31.110]  So what has happened with colonization, in addition to the massive deployment of PLA troops in the region, they are garrisoned there.
[21:31.210 --> 21:34.070]  These are military troops that are garrisoned there permanently.
[21:35.090 --> 21:44.970]  They have made a major infusion of money for the infrastructure, so that the central government in Beijing can say, look, we're developing the outer regions.
[21:45.170 --> 21:47.130]  They're not developing for the locals.
[21:47.330 --> 21:51.190]  They're developing it for the Han colonists, who have colonized the area.
[21:51.390 --> 21:53.430]  And so it's quite complex, but that's just a quick...
[21:53.430 --> 21:58.850]  Now, if you look at the vast majority of China, it is less developed.
[21:59.090 --> 22:01.490]  And less developed, as you're going to see, is a real euphemism.
[22:02.130 --> 22:02.690]  Okay.
[22:05.910 --> 22:07.030]  The bandwidth...
[22:07.030 --> 22:14.530]  I wanted you to take a look at this, because it's kind of interesting, because it looks like bandwidth, except for a little bit of...
[22:16.230 --> 22:37.310]  in July 2002, and then sort of in January 2003, when there was some massive industry restructuring and also restructuring of the ministers, the ministries responsible for overseeing the development of the Internet, you see essentially a growing up curve in bandwidth in China.
[22:37.530 --> 22:38.990]  And I just wanted to say a couple of things about that.
[22:39.330 --> 22:51.310]  One, the demand for increased speed and greater bandwidth has come from inside China, which is both a sign of hope and something very interesting in terms of being able to be exploited.
[22:51.550 --> 22:53.650]  It's come from various sectors.
[22:53.650 --> 22:56.690]  It's come from the government themselves.
[22:57.270 --> 22:58.930]  It's come from the academics.
[22:59.330 --> 23:01.270]  It's come from the business community.
[23:01.650 --> 23:08.810]  It's come from these main sectors, because they want the fast connectivity, and they need it to the outside.
[23:09.190 --> 23:22.770]  But what happens is the government is trapped between needing to have the broadband access and the speed and connectivity to enable it to globally integrate and become part of the world, WTO, accession, etc.
[23:23.150 --> 23:27.990]  And for them to be able to work with their outside governments and partners and businesses, etc.
[23:28.550 --> 23:40.030]  And the absolute need that the government sees to control the Internet, control the content, control who's on it, and in every aspect.
[23:40.030 --> 23:49.370]  And every time they try to put further surveillance and control and content filtrations and putting it at all the different routing systems, they're slowing it down.
[23:49.570 --> 23:53.490]  So you go through routing systems, you know, you've slowed down the traffic.
[23:53.670 --> 24:08.490]  And that's a very interesting tension between the government trying to control, which results in slower speeds, and this incredible domestic consumer-driven and government and business need to have the speed.
[24:08.790 --> 24:16.250]  The second thing about that that's interesting is that it's also coming from outside of China to have this greater access and speed.
[24:16.390 --> 24:20.570]  And that's coming from all of the international global communities that's working with China.
[24:22.070 --> 24:27.790]  If you look at the access to the Internet, a vast percentage of it is coming from home.
[24:28.270 --> 24:37.350]  Now, home access, that you should read as coded as class, economic privilege, economic elites.
[24:37.690 --> 24:50.170]  Because to be able to have a computer that you can have at home and that you can pay for the connectivity and the line, whether it's land lease or high speed, which many people are getting, means that you can afford it.
[24:50.330 --> 24:51.970]  This is primarily in the larger cities.
[24:52.310 --> 24:56.770]  The largest percentage, if you take a look at the Internet cafe, that's only like 20%.
[24:56.770 --> 25:00.650]  Now, you may have read a great deal about Internet cafes being shut down.
[25:00.790 --> 25:02.650]  And this is all I want to say about that.
[25:03.530 --> 25:13.810]  There's a disproportionate impact on poor, migrants, workers, in smaller cities and rural areas.
[25:13.810 --> 25:21.830]  So, when you hear about the shutdown of the Internet cafes, it's not affecting the people who have access at home and who actually are better off.
[25:21.950 --> 25:25.470]  It's affecting the much lower, poorer people.
[25:25.650 --> 25:27.870]  So, that's really important.
[25:28.010 --> 25:33.810]  And one of that calls for is that we need greater granularity in our understanding when we look at the development of the Internet.
[25:33.810 --> 25:43.670]  And when we hear about surveillance and censorship, that it has a disproportionate impact that's located in very concrete material realities.
[25:45.670 --> 25:56.350]  This is based on a survey that the China Internet Network Information Center, CNNIC, did based on data from January 2004.
[25:56.350 --> 26:03.410]  And they posted, you know, a survey on their website and they got over 49,653 responses.
[26:03.410 --> 26:08.670]  And so, a lot of these responses are based on 16,760 valid responses.
[26:09.370 --> 26:12.810]  And they also did some face-to-face and survey data.
[26:13.430 --> 26:15.550]  So, some of this you're going to see is based on all that.
[26:16.590 --> 26:20.030]  You see a large percentage saying that they use it for what?
[26:20.190 --> 26:21.910]  They use it for getting information.
[26:22.870 --> 26:25.370]  Second large percentage, they use it to be entertained.
[26:26.510 --> 26:33.130]  And then there's a little bit of studying, making friends, and then you have some jumping on bandwagons, some weird shit like that, you know.
[26:33.130 --> 26:43.910]  But the important thing is, what does it mean that they're getting information in a society, in a context, in a culture where the information is already controlled?
[26:44.270 --> 26:48.210]  Where the spin on it and the story about it is already controlled?
[26:48.610 --> 26:55.470]  And where the government actually through a very careful system, which I'll talk a little bit more about.
[26:55.470 --> 26:57.030]  But we just issued a report.
[26:57.210 --> 26:59.090]  Unfortunately, it's only in Chinese now.
[26:59.250 --> 27:05.190]  And the first two chapters of our report is on media censorship in China, is available online at our website.
[27:05.230 --> 27:06.490]  And you can get the first two chapters.
[27:06.750 --> 27:14.450]  And it's a report on how they actually tell you not only what can't be said, but they actually tell you what can be said.
[27:14.450 --> 27:19.430]  And not only what can be said, they tell you the words you have to use to say it.
[27:19.730 --> 27:30.570]  In other words, it is highly contested whether you refer to Taiwan as a comma, province of China, versus Taiwan, period.
[27:31.230 --> 27:41.350]  And it becomes extremely, really, you could get your whole paper shut down because you forgot to put comma, province of China, or something like that.
[27:41.350 --> 27:48.170]  So the access to information raises very important fundamental questions about information to what?
[27:48.490 --> 27:50.590]  And what is all that spin about that?
[27:51.370 --> 28:05.430]  The second thing here is just to point out is that there's a real question, those of you who are doing research on China, when you see surveys and when you see data from the surveys, particularly official surveys done by China, we think it's useful because it gives us some kind of a baseline.
[28:05.430 --> 28:12.810]  And normally, for torture statistics and all the work that we do, we know those numbers are vastly underreported.
[28:12.890 --> 28:18.150]  So when you look at some of these studies, those of you who are doing this area, you have to also say, let's look at the methodology.
[28:18.670 --> 28:25.250]  And in a pervasive culture, where there's fear and reporting, like, what does it mean to answer these surveys?
[28:25.330 --> 28:27.070]  Like, what does this possibly mean?
[28:27.230 --> 28:29.250]  And to really keep that skeptical...
[28:29.250 --> 28:32.630]  I don't need to tell hackers, you know, maintain a skeptical attitude towards authority.
[28:32.810 --> 28:34.710]  But I'll just say that now, you know.
[28:34.950 --> 28:35.090]  Okay.
[28:35.670 --> 28:37.470]  Maintain, especially the Chinese government.
[28:37.710 --> 28:39.430]  It's like, be afraid.
[28:40.070 --> 28:41.390]  Be very careful.
[28:41.990 --> 28:42.250]  Okay.
[28:42.790 --> 28:46.230]  This is also just some reasons that were given for not using the net.
[28:46.630 --> 28:53.770]  And that, I think, is important because you see the largest percentage is they don't know how to use a computer.
[28:53.770 --> 28:56.390]  And they don't know anything about the Internet.
[28:56.750 --> 29:05.690]  So when we think of the computer and technology, particularly Internet, as this democratizing force, we have to start with people who say, what?
[29:05.870 --> 29:06.650]  What's a computer?
[29:07.210 --> 29:10.610]  Now, we don't even know what the Internet is, right?
[29:10.790 --> 29:16.490]  So I think we need to... and they don't have the equipment, which also you can code as class and privilege and money.
[29:17.510 --> 29:18.070]  Okay.
[29:19.770 --> 29:20.190]  Okay.
[29:20.550 --> 29:23.530]  Well, there's a debate that goes on.
[29:23.610 --> 29:26.430]  And there's lots of studies of which I will not rehearse or repeat.
[29:26.630 --> 29:28.890]  I'm just going to summarize it in this next couple of frames.
[29:29.250 --> 29:31.370]  Because I don't think the debate, to me, is real interesting.
[29:31.590 --> 29:38.390]  And the debate has to do with, is technology a democratizing force or is it a tool for repression?
[29:38.710 --> 29:42.650]  And our view, working in the field, is we don't have the luxury of that intellectual debate.
[29:42.650 --> 29:43.510]  We think it's both.
[29:43.670 --> 29:45.850]  We think it's both and in different percentages.
[29:45.850 --> 29:47.730]  We think it sometimes helps each other.
[29:47.830 --> 29:48.850]  Sometimes we think it's intention.
[29:49.190 --> 29:51.010]  Sometimes we think it's productive conflict.
[29:51.390 --> 29:53.850]  Sometimes we think there's a ripple effect you can't even predict.
[29:54.150 --> 29:56.130]  And so that's my view about that debate.
[29:56.250 --> 30:05.950]  But in terms of technology's promise, I would say that at least it can function, not necessarily inevitably, but it can be a democratizing force.
[30:06.210 --> 30:14.550]  It can be a powerful tool for creating a virtual community of activists, both inside China and outside.
[30:14.870 --> 30:16.310]  And in fact, it's not can be.
[30:16.490 --> 30:19.790]  It has started to create such a community.
[30:20.110 --> 30:29.210]  And finally, it can be, from the perspective of the government in particular, a powerful tool for global economic integration and cultural integration.
[30:29.350 --> 30:37.230]  You can read that as cultural imperialism or welcoming the genes and the music and the film and the CD and the videos.
[30:37.230 --> 30:44.130]  And I put that down as a positive promise because I think as activists and as human rights activists, we can exploit that.
[30:47.470 --> 30:51.290]  However, the promise, this, also has dangers.
[30:51.790 --> 31:05.370]  And yes, it's a democratizing force, but as the government has shown, by investing and throwing hundreds of millions, and I think even we can't even get a figure on this, I would venture it's probably in the billions of dollars and resources.
[31:05.750 --> 31:12.390]  It has become a very powerful tool of repression, propaganda, and authoritarian control.
[31:12.590 --> 31:13.970]  That's what technology can do.
[31:14.170 --> 31:15.650]  We can talk about biometrics.
[31:15.790 --> 31:17.950]  We can talk about systems that are operational in China.
[31:17.970 --> 31:22.130]  We can talk about now the police stations that have linked all their computers.
[31:22.370 --> 31:25.610]  We can talk about digital cameras that are now in Tiananmen Square.
[31:25.610 --> 31:28.390]  We can talk about them matching faces.
[31:28.590 --> 31:37.750]  We can talk about within 48 hours they can catch a dissident that left one train station and catch within 48 hours a facial recognition matchup in another.
[31:38.130 --> 31:53.910]  This is all built by, and I know that there was a debate, and I don't want to get flamed immediately, but that it is an infrastructure that has been built with and been profitable to a vast foreign corporate community.
[31:53.910 --> 31:57.330]  And they continue to do so, particularly in the lead up to the Olympics.
[31:57.590 --> 32:02.910]  And they have bid for, and they are the builders for the security system for the Olympics.
[32:03.110 --> 32:06.290]  And they have gotten the construction contracts, and they're building it now.
[32:06.530 --> 32:09.350]  And from our perspective, of course, we have to protect the athletes.
[32:09.490 --> 32:12.150]  But I think from the human rights perspective, we're asking this question.
[32:12.530 --> 32:21.130]  Are you leaving behind an even more powerful architecture of control and surveillance, and just giving them the state of the arts?
[32:21.970 --> 32:24.790]  So the last thing is on global economic integration.
[32:25.010 --> 32:40.250]  What has really happened, and this is... I think that as a lawyer and as a human rights activist, when I face economists and the corporate community, they usually treat us like we're making soft arguments, like we're not scientific, like we're not empirical.
[32:40.250 --> 32:56.490]  So what they say instead is free markets, marketization, privatization, economic liberalization, and that that's inevitably going to be a trickle-down effect that's going to result in greater social justice, blah, blah, blah, for the vast majority of the people.
[32:56.670 --> 32:57.530]  Well, it's bizarre.
[32:57.950 --> 32:59.310]  It didn't work here.
[32:59.890 --> 33:01.450]  Trickle-down didn't work here.
[33:01.450 --> 33:05.070]  Why would it work in China or any place else in the world?
[33:05.950 --> 33:07.490]  Since when have people...
[33:12.620 --> 33:18.980]  Since when did economic or political elites get all the goods and decide, gee, we'll share it?
[33:19.280 --> 33:20.200]  Like willingly?
[33:20.980 --> 33:21.620]  Duh, you know?
[33:21.860 --> 33:22.880]  Like it doesn't happen.
[33:23.080 --> 33:24.040]  It doesn't happen.
[33:24.440 --> 33:37.820]  So this argument that you'll hear, and most recently, stupidly, on the front pages of the New York Sunday Times, I had to get it in because I didn't have time to write the abed, is that, you know, the creation of a growing middle class in China, six million right now,
[33:37.940 --> 33:42.020]  is going to result in greater democratization in China, is garbage.
[33:42.260 --> 33:43.360]  It's not going to result in it.
[33:43.520 --> 33:50.720]  The only time it's going to result in greater democratization is that the masses of the people are going to have to organize and demand it, and they're going to get it ourselves.
[33:50.880 --> 33:52.480]  It will not come from an elite.
[33:52.480 --> 33:57.900]  And so the reality of uneven economic development is the reality.
[33:59.300 --> 34:07.420]  I'm going to just give three quick examples of what I mean by the pervasive infrastructure problems in China.
[34:07.600 --> 34:09.920]  And one has to do with the legal system.
[34:10.780 --> 34:27.980]  There's been a lot of fanfare, a lot of attention, and a lot of foreigners working in China, you know, about legal reforms and saying that China has rewritten laws, thousands and thousands of laws, that's supposed to improve administrative, you know, due process,
[34:28.240 --> 34:33.360]  and you have a right to a lawyer, you have a right to a phone call even, you have a right to see the evidence against you, etc., etc.
[34:33.700 --> 34:35.900]  Most of these occurred in 1997.
[34:36.340 --> 34:41.500]  And Human Rights in China, we did a three-year study, where we tracked actual cases.
[34:41.940 --> 34:43.520]  And you can get that on our website.
[34:43.740 --> 34:44.920]  It's called Empty Promises.
[34:45.320 --> 34:47.080]  And we have names and we have the cases.
[34:47.420 --> 34:59.480]  And you see overwhelmingly in the politicized cases, state security, state secrets, all of those cases, counter-revolutionary, hooliganism, that would be all of you, hooligans, you know, who just refuse to, like, listen.
[35:00.580 --> 35:09.800]  Those cases, over and over, you'll see in the chart, no lawyer, no counsel, did not see the evidence, did not have the family visit, over and over and over.
[35:09.980 --> 35:16.940]  So we think it's really important that when you look at what supposedly has been happening, that's just the picture on the books.
[35:16.960 --> 35:18.200]  It's not the reality.
[35:18.540 --> 35:30.620]  And in terms of due process, the vast majority of executions, the highest number, when you think about the high number of executions, I sometimes get met by Americans who say to me, so we have the death penalty in this country.
[35:30.660 --> 35:32.880]  I said, yes, this is true.
[35:33.160 --> 35:37.580]  But we're talking about in China where there's almost no system.
[35:37.920 --> 35:41.760]  In other words, you're not talking about a lawyer and getting a right to appeal.
[35:41.900 --> 35:45.740]  You don't even get to be on death row, because death row may last exactly 24 hours.
[35:45.980 --> 35:47.620]  It's not years of appeal.
[35:47.980 --> 35:52.060]  So I think it's extremely serious, the high rate of executions in China.
[35:52.400 --> 35:59.020]  And secondly, the lawyers, the defenders of the human rights defenders, are now coming under attack.
[35:59.500 --> 36:08.200]  And now there are at least, according to Chinese lawyers who are documenting this, over 300 criminal defense lawyers who have been attacked.
[36:08.500 --> 36:09.900]  And what do we mean by attacked?
[36:10.160 --> 36:14.020]  We mean that they're then charged with bogus trumped up charges.
[36:14.340 --> 36:15.640]  Then they're intimidated.
[36:15.640 --> 36:22.480]  And most importantly, you have a lawyer who was the head of the committee to protect lawyers.
[36:23.440 --> 36:25.960]  The independence of lawyers of the Beijing Bar.
[36:26.280 --> 36:30.560]  And he gets put in the slammer for really trumped up charges.
[36:30.800 --> 36:34.280]  And it's important that Chinese lawyers have come to the defense of these.
[36:34.940 --> 36:37.880]  There's one lawyer that Human Rights in China has been working with.
[36:37.880 --> 36:42.080]  And he represented over 300 cases of people who have been forced out of their homes.
[36:42.280 --> 36:46.480]  And so he's really quite sophisticated, quite an activist, and a hero.
[36:47.540 --> 36:50.040]  He faxed us some information that had been public.
[36:50.420 --> 36:51.700]  He attempted to fax.
[36:51.800 --> 36:52.460]  It didn't get through.
[36:52.660 --> 37:00.360]  But because they had all the records on the fax machine, he was then charged with leaking state secrets, notwithstanding the fact that it had been reported in a newspaper that was irrelevant.
[37:00.360 --> 37:03.120]  And he was sentenced to three years.
[37:03.440 --> 37:04.520]  Lost the first appeal.
[37:04.700 --> 37:05.780]  He's now doing other appeals.
[37:06.000 --> 37:18.960]  You can go to our website and there's a legal campaign now being mounted by us with American lawyers and some Hong Kong lawyers and also with the UN Independence of Judges and Judiciary Special Rapporteur.
[37:19.160 --> 37:21.080]  We are trying to work on getting him released.
[37:21.520 --> 37:32.040]  And it is really important that when a system starts attacking the lawyers who are supposed to be protecting people's rights, we are really at quite a very dangerous point.
[37:32.360 --> 37:38.840]  The other thing is, separate from the regular court system, you have a whole system of what we call administrative detention.
[37:39.160 --> 37:41.780]  That means no process at all.
[37:42.180 --> 37:42.880]  No charge.
[37:43.100 --> 37:43.860]  No process.
[37:44.200 --> 37:44.660]  Nothing.
[37:45.100 --> 37:45.720]  Years.
[37:46.060 --> 37:49.540]  And one example I wanted to give is reform through labor.
[37:49.900 --> 37:52.020]  That is, you know, you get reeducated through labor.
[37:52.160 --> 38:01.420]  And by the government statistics alone, they have admitted 200,000 a year are detained under this system.
[38:01.620 --> 38:07.500]  And if you don't behave inside, they'll just add another two or three years and it'll just, you know, go on and on.
[38:07.900 --> 38:08.900]  Public health.
[38:10.000 --> 38:14.520]  I think the U.S. population is between 350 million to something.
[38:15.560 --> 38:20.360]  700 million rural inhabitants have no basic nothing.
[38:20.360 --> 38:21.200]  Health care.
[38:21.560 --> 38:23.920]  And then you're talking about a huge AIDS epidemic.
[38:24.180 --> 38:26.760]  And so you can imagine what happened during the SARS outbreak as well.
[38:27.000 --> 38:30.600]  So you're talking about a total collapse under market reforms.
[38:31.380 --> 38:31.940]  Privatization.
[38:32.240 --> 38:34.800]  A total collapse of health care.
[38:35.180 --> 38:36.680]  Basic primary health care.
[38:36.680 --> 38:40.860]  And you have a projected 10 million infections in China on HIV AIDS.
[38:41.080 --> 38:42.060]  Extremely serious.
[38:43.000 --> 38:44.000]  Public education.
[38:44.000 --> 38:48.320]  I just wanted to give a quick because we are working very hard on issues with respect to children.
[38:48.560 --> 38:50.120]  And particularly migrant children.
[38:50.420 --> 38:55.620]  Is an estimated 120 to 140 million migrants in China.
[38:55.840 --> 38:57.500]  These are people that are just moving.
[38:57.760 --> 38:58.960]  Floating population.
[38:58.960 --> 39:05.920]  And out of that, we've documented at least 1.8 million children who have no basic education.
[39:05.920 --> 39:09.500]  And that means they're relegated to a life condemned.
[39:09.900 --> 39:10.340]  Right?
[39:10.560 --> 39:11.580]  To the bottom of the bucket.
[39:12.240 --> 39:14.380]  I want to say something about like when we talk about technology.
[39:14.720 --> 39:16.140]  And we talk about the Internet.
[39:17.000 --> 39:19.760]  Let's just get down to some real where the rubber meets the road.
[39:20.680 --> 39:21.120]  Electricity.
[39:21.560 --> 39:22.000]  Phones.
[39:22.240 --> 39:23.040]  And running water.
[39:23.040 --> 39:31.780]  And what you see is, in the western provinces, which is Xinjiang and all the poor provinces, only 9.1% have even running water.
[39:32.740 --> 39:35.120]  And telephones, only 9.2%.
[39:35.620 --> 39:37.580]  And these numbers are under-reported.
[39:37.780 --> 39:39.840]  Because these are the numbers you get officially.
[39:40.280 --> 39:40.380]  Yeah?
[39:41.000 --> 39:47.520]  And then you have electricity, which looks like they have electricity, but haven't lived and worked a great deal in China over the last 18 years.
[39:48.180 --> 39:49.540]  Everyone just takes it for granted.
[39:50.040 --> 39:50.740]  It's Tuesday.
[39:51.000 --> 39:51.920]  There's no electricity.
[39:52.380 --> 39:53.540]  But I wouldn't know that.
[39:53.660 --> 39:56.840]  I would go and teach, and then suddenly I'd be doing a training program, and then we're all in the dark.
[39:57.000 --> 39:59.320]  And nobody seems upset except me going, Hello?
[39:59.880 --> 40:00.680]  Where is everybody?
[40:00.860 --> 40:01.400]  What's happening?
[40:01.520 --> 40:02.840]  And they all say, Oh, it's Tuesday.
[40:02.940 --> 40:03.720]  There's no electricity.
[40:04.020 --> 40:04.840]  That's how we save.
[40:04.960 --> 40:06.140]  Tuesday, Thursday, other days.
[40:06.320 --> 40:06.420]  You know?
[40:06.720 --> 40:12.120]  So you're really talking about even if there's electricity, there's a real question of how stable, how often, you know?
[40:12.180 --> 40:13.300]  How, you know, really it is.
[40:13.400 --> 40:13.520]  Yeah.
[40:13.840 --> 40:13.960]  Eh?
[40:15.380 --> 40:21.540]  So I want to get back to saying, okay, so this is all the technology, which looks breathtaking when you look at the infrastructure numbers.
[40:22.000 --> 40:28.560]  But then when you look at the real uneven development realities, I want to come back to China's human networks.
[40:28.960 --> 40:32.120]  And this might be Oxblood's H2H network.
[40:32.480 --> 40:44.600]  And if you look at these, these are all the groups that I would identify as despite incredible odds in China, incredible risks, incredible threats and dangers.
[40:44.900 --> 40:47.040]  These groups are all still working.
[40:47.240 --> 40:48.880]  And many of them work with us underground.
[40:49.720 --> 40:51.040]  So you have the Chinese NGOs.
[40:51.320 --> 40:53.880]  There are a lot of gungos, which are like these fake NGOs.
[40:54.280 --> 40:58.160]  But there are also emerging these really independent NGOs.
[40:58.500 --> 41:01.760]  And we try to work with those groups directly and indirectly.
[41:02.440 --> 41:05.540]  There are the workers, massive problems with labor.
[41:05.540 --> 41:20.080]  You don't read about in the major press the hundreds of thousands of people who protest, workers who protest, the corruption, the millions of dollars of back pay that just closed up.
[41:20.140 --> 41:28.520]  And I had a friend tell me that people just cried at a shoe factory because they went into work and then they were just told, get what you can because the factory is closing down.
[41:28.700 --> 41:32.900]  So they each get like 10 or 15 pairs of shoes and that's the end of it.
[41:32.900 --> 41:35.040]  And when they sell those on the street, it's over.
[41:35.220 --> 41:37.040]  They have no social safety network.
[41:37.280 --> 41:38.220]  But these are the groups.
[41:38.540 --> 41:39.180]  And I have a minute.
[41:39.180 --> 41:40.520]  So I'm going to wrap very, very quickly.
[41:41.160 --> 41:41.920]  Oh, my God.
[41:42.140 --> 41:42.540]  Okay, Amy.
[41:42.740 --> 41:43.020]  Yeah.
[41:43.860 --> 41:44.480]  No, they're giving me a minute.
[41:46.460 --> 41:48.700]  The human network is up against what?
[41:48.920 --> 41:55.100]  It's up against what you all know, this very, very structured and powerful architecture of censorship and control.
[41:55.320 --> 42:04.140]  And it's both technical, legal, social, and it's a very incredibly organized at every single level, a security apparatus.
[42:04.560 --> 42:05.660]  And you can see that.
[42:05.960 --> 42:06.840]  Okay, I'm going to just go quickly.
[42:08.200 --> 42:09.120]  Because I've gotten a minute.
[42:09.260 --> 42:09.340]  Yeah.
[42:10.160 --> 42:10.740]  I can't.
[42:10.840 --> 42:11.120]  No, no.
[42:11.160 --> 42:11.420]  Go back.
[42:11.520 --> 42:11.780]  Go back.
[42:11.880 --> 42:11.940]  Yeah.
[42:12.100 --> 42:12.320]  Go back.
[42:12.420 --> 42:12.540]  Okay.
[42:12.940 --> 42:21.680]  The regulatory framework is important because it's not only what you keep reading about, the 60 plus, you know, all of these laws that have been passed, et cetera.
[42:21.940 --> 42:23.100]  It's not just that.
[42:23.100 --> 42:36.580]  It's the law within a broader framework of state security, state secrets, and the criminal law, which criminalizes activities that many of you in this room would just take for granted you could do.
[42:36.740 --> 42:40.400]  Even, you know, if you think it's criminal, we're talking about, you'll see.
[42:40.480 --> 42:41.640]  I want to give you some quick examples.
[42:41.740 --> 42:42.900]  And then there are, this is, this is.
[42:43.680 --> 42:46.420]  But I want to give you some quick examples of the state secret law.
[42:46.600 --> 42:50.500]  And they are, we are about to issue a report on that.
[42:50.620 --> 42:51.900]  And you can look for it on our website.
[42:51.900 --> 42:53.700]  And we're going to issue it in sections.
[42:54.020 --> 42:59.280]  Because the state secrets law is so comprehensive, it covers every single area.
[42:59.420 --> 43:01.240]  Health, environment, labor, security.
[43:01.480 --> 43:03.120]  And you won't be shocked to find out.
[43:04.340 --> 43:08.680]  Oh, I've got competing authority telling me one going, one minute or you're...
[43:08.680 --> 43:11.800]  And I've got Eric, the lawyer, saying, take as much time as you like.
[43:12.820 --> 43:14.580]  So I'll be somewhere in between the two of them.
[43:14.680 --> 43:15.020]  Two minutes.
[43:15.580 --> 43:15.700]  Okay.
[43:16.320 --> 43:18.280]  I can use my time however I want it.
[43:18.320 --> 43:18.940]  You have some.
[43:19.080 --> 43:19.640]  Thank you.
[43:19.920 --> 43:20.260]  Thank you.
[43:20.960 --> 43:27.860]  So, some of the examples that we'll be, you know, documenting is, for example, the number of people who protest.
[43:28.340 --> 43:31.520]  The number of deaths in mines, in coal mines.
[43:31.720 --> 43:34.200]  The number of deaths from occupational hazards.
[43:34.500 --> 43:38.220]  The number of people who are actually infected with AIDS.
[43:38.460 --> 43:39.980]  The number of deaths from SARS.
[43:40.340 --> 43:43.060]  These are all state secrets.
[43:43.060 --> 43:44.080]  Okay.
[43:44.340 --> 43:44.520]  Next.
[43:45.180 --> 43:45.380]  Okay.
[43:45.520 --> 43:46.660]  Definition of state secrets.
[43:46.980 --> 43:49.760]  State secrets are matters that affect the security and interests of the state.
[43:50.240 --> 43:52.120]  Well, that gives you a really clear definition.
[43:52.380 --> 43:52.460]  Right?
[43:53.060 --> 43:53.820]  Kind of circular.
[43:54.860 --> 43:57.180]  But there's a classification that's really important.
[43:57.580 --> 43:58.220]  Top secret.
[43:58.540 --> 43:58.840]  Right?
[43:59.020 --> 43:59.280]  Jimi.
[43:59.700 --> 44:00.460]  Highly secret.
[44:00.600 --> 44:00.840]  Jimi.
[44:01.340 --> 44:01.580]  Jimi.
[44:01.820 --> 44:02.640]  And then there's secret.
[44:03.000 --> 44:04.040]  Then there's internal.
[44:04.040 --> 44:14.780]  The two important things about it is, new regulations that went into effect allow you to reclassify based on the consequences.
[44:14.780 --> 44:26.020]  That means if they decide that you leaked a newspaper article, faxed it to an NGO in New York, for example, but it was a newspaper article at the time or it was public, it doesn't matter.
[44:26.240 --> 44:30.200]  It can be classified retroactively as a secret.
[44:30.800 --> 44:36.780]  Because it was deemed to be later so harmful to the state.
[44:37.440 --> 44:39.340]  So that's the catch.
[44:39.580 --> 44:44.520]  That's how you can catch a net that's so wide you can get anybody.
[44:44.980 --> 44:46.280]  And in fact, they have.
[44:46.500 --> 44:50.480]  And these are cases that I know our colleague Bill Shao has already talked about.
[44:50.560 --> 44:54.420]  And I just wanted to just throw them out and just have you see that these are just a few of the cases.
[44:54.760 --> 44:56.300]  And Amnesty has said 61.
[44:56.680 --> 44:58.060]  We've documented others.
[44:58.440 --> 45:03.860]  And in part of our case work, we do a lot of advocacy at the UN on behalf of individual cases.
[45:04.080 --> 45:07.460]  And Internet activists are among a big group.
[45:07.460 --> 45:10.060]  We brought some copies of...
[45:10.060 --> 45:15.460]  This is our English language journal, which I presume most of you would prefer this to the Chinese.
[45:16.200 --> 45:18.120]  So it's the China Rights Forum.
[45:18.300 --> 45:21.980]  And the red issue focuses on Internet activists and journalists.
[45:22.200 --> 45:26.220]  And there's a chart of Internet activists and journalists who were in prison at the time.
[45:26.220 --> 45:27.120]  And we have some copies.
[45:27.240 --> 45:28.760]  And Gabe is here from us.
[45:28.900 --> 45:30.400]  And Amy, my colleague here.
[45:30.460 --> 45:31.220]  And we also have copies.
[45:32.720 --> 45:38.160]  Also, if you want, we also brought the most recent issue, which is on the 15th anniversary of the crackdown.
[45:38.260 --> 45:40.020]  Because we really don't think people should forget.
[45:40.200 --> 45:41.280]  And we can't forget.
[45:41.420 --> 45:43.720]  And we are going on with our work for that.
[45:44.640 --> 45:45.200]  Okay.
[45:55.600 --> 46:03.240]  The consequence of all of this, and I like the way Bill Shah talks about it as, you know, the matrix effect in China.
[46:03.500 --> 46:06.200]  Because within the matrix, everyone believes it's reality.
[46:06.400 --> 46:06.820]  And that's...
[46:06.820 --> 46:11.720]  One of the consequences inside China is that it's not only created a censorship and self-censorship.
[46:11.960 --> 46:12.520]  It has...
[46:12.520 --> 46:15.260]  It's not only created a climate and a culture of fear.
[46:16.500 --> 46:22.740]  And it's also undermined the capacity of a whole country and a whole society to come up with the solutions.
[46:23.020 --> 46:28.220]  Because solutions don't get generated if information isn't available and if people are threatened.
[46:28.460 --> 46:33.720]  Because the complex problems that are facing China needs all of its people.
[46:33.880 --> 46:35.880]  And it can't have them silenced.
[46:36.040 --> 46:39.320]  I really believe that's what it takes to deal with China's problems.
[46:39.580 --> 46:44.100]  And so, the consequences of the censorship, it's really undercutting themselves.
[46:44.540 --> 46:59.600]  Did you know that during the Great Leap Forward in China, which was disastrous, and millions, I think 20 million people starved to death because of the disastrous policies of the party, that when Mao made his tour around the countryside to see what the situation was,
[46:59.820 --> 47:04.200]  they painted the trees because people starved so badly.
[47:04.400 --> 47:09.040]  And starvation is not a pretty picture, so if you want to read about it, Hungry Ghosts is the most powerful book written about it.
[47:09.080 --> 47:10.820]  Hungry Ghosts by Jasper Beckers.
[47:11.800 --> 47:12.680]  Hungry Ghosts.
[47:12.800 --> 47:13.660]  Hungry Ghosts.
[47:14.580 --> 47:18.220]  People scraped the bark off trees because there was nothing to eat.
[47:18.480 --> 47:20.340]  And they made buns with dirt just to fill their stomach.
[47:20.780 --> 47:25.780]  But when Mao went through the countryside to see what the situation was, they painted the trees brown.
[47:26.220 --> 47:30.080]  So, from when he went the tour, you couldn't see that, in fact, that was the real situation.
[47:30.400 --> 47:33.120]  And what I think is they didn't learn their lesson.
[47:33.360 --> 47:38.340]  If you lie and you don't let information get out, you're not going to get the solution to deal with it.
[47:38.340 --> 47:40.720]  And frankly, they didn't learn their lesson from SARS either.
[47:41.340 --> 47:43.900]  But all of this is not new.
[47:44.060 --> 47:45.280]  And that's really important.
[47:45.920 --> 47:51.460]  All that has happened in China's authoritarian state is, it got a technological upgrade.
[47:52.460 --> 47:58.820]  All of the technology of repression was a lower end, but it was very effective during the Cultural Revolution.
[47:59.080 --> 48:00.520]  It has always been effective.
[48:00.720 --> 48:02.100]  And that's important to remember.
[48:04.000 --> 48:06.280]  This is all stuff I think you've all been talking about.
[48:06.280 --> 48:13.000]  But some of the empowering role of technology is that it can amplify the dissident voices and activist voices.
[48:13.220 --> 48:15.940]  It can generate the global support and attention we need.
[48:16.140 --> 48:18.520]  It can create the underground railroads.
[48:18.620 --> 48:20.180]  It can create the underground tunnels.
[48:20.500 --> 48:22.460]  And we need you to help us create them.
[48:22.640 --> 48:27.520]  And we need them to create a flow of uncensored information within China and in and out of China.
[48:27.520 --> 48:32.260]  And we need to help create the virtual spaces for Chinese citizens to meet and organize.
[48:32.680 --> 48:39.440]  And we need to create the shared resource libraries where they can access it and get it online.
[48:41.700 --> 48:49.260]  But all of this role of technology and all of these strategies has to be grounded in a material reality of China today.
[48:51.920 --> 48:56.680]  I'm just gonna very quickly talk about our approach and maybe I'll talk more about it in the Q&A because I'm out of time.
[48:57.940 --> 48:58.020]  Yeah.
[48:59.380 --> 49:02.200]  This is the cluster of the websites that we're building.
[49:02.640 --> 49:05.460]  And we could use a lot of help building them.
[49:06.800 --> 49:09.420]  It's all being redesigned both front-end and back-end.
[49:09.580 --> 49:14.500]  So if you visit us in about a month or six weeks, you're going to see the new launch of the new site.
[49:14.500 --> 49:21.660]  It's going to be much more interactive and it will be much more accurately reflect the range of what we're trying to do, which is really quite cutting edge.
[49:21.820 --> 49:23.420]  And the current site doesn't reflect that.
[49:23.520 --> 49:24.800]  So I'm just saying that as a caveat.
[49:25.920 --> 49:28.140]  But I'm going to talk about the Huaxia.
[49:28.260 --> 49:29.580]  The Huaxia Dian Zibao.
[49:29.900 --> 49:33.040]  It is a part of a very big, ambitious initiative.
[49:33.260 --> 49:37.180]  And what it is is we use two methods, two technological solutions.
[49:37.760 --> 49:42.120]  And we send in 350,000 emails into China a week.
[49:42.760 --> 49:51.700]  And it's a newsletter that we compile from edited stories and censored stories that we get from inside China that people send us that work with us.
[49:51.840 --> 49:53.640]  We edit it and we send it back in.
[49:53.860 --> 49:56.560]  So we get it, we edit it, and we send it back in.
[49:56.680 --> 49:58.940]  We also send in a proxy link every week.
[49:59.020 --> 50:01.600]  And we work very closely with Bill Shah and others on this.
[50:01.800 --> 50:05.220]  And the proxy link enables them to directly access...
[50:05.980 --> 50:10.280]  We do channel them to us, but it also means that they can then go on to the net.
[50:10.280 --> 50:19.880]  And I wanted to show you just very quickly that the proxy access that's coming to us through UltraReach means it came from China.
[50:20.300 --> 50:23.700]  Because nobody else is going to try to need to get to us from a proxy.
[50:23.980 --> 50:25.860]  And you see the percentage of the proxy.
[50:26.220 --> 50:34.180]  And you see the up and down on proxies, not only through how they try to get to us, it also means what the countermeasures have been.
[50:34.180 --> 50:38.400]  There were some real attacks on dissident sites just at the beginning of this year.
[50:38.520 --> 50:45.300]  And a lot of us took some very big hits and had to do a lot of major security work and re-security work.
[50:45.420 --> 50:50.100]  And we actually had to move our site, which was hosted in Hong Kong, out of our Hong Kong operations.
[50:50.200 --> 50:53.160]  And we had to move everything because it became very insecure.
[50:53.380 --> 50:54.980]  And we moved it back to the States.
[50:55.700 --> 50:57.120]  But this is what it shows.
[50:57.280 --> 51:00.360]  But if you take a look at October, this is really important.
[51:01.440 --> 51:11.460]  That huge jump in proxy access was the month that the lawyer that had been working with us, Case, blew open and we had put it on our site.
[51:11.760 --> 51:16.140]  And so people are interested and do want to know what's going on.
[51:16.520 --> 51:16.600]  Okay.
[51:17.700 --> 51:18.860]  This is some of the feedback.
[51:19.200 --> 51:20.420]  They can also email us.
[51:20.580 --> 51:22.400]  We didn't put up here the curses.
[51:23.140 --> 51:24.600]  We got cursed out a lot.
[51:25.360 --> 51:30.580]  And we also got the Public Security Bureau wrote to us and said very bad things to us.
[51:31.660 --> 51:33.840]  Said, you people have a blah, blah, blah, blah.
[51:34.100 --> 51:36.140]  And, you know, said death to you and all that stuff.
[51:36.260 --> 51:37.280]  And then we actually tracked it out.
[51:37.320 --> 51:37.920]  It was from them.
[51:38.000 --> 51:38.740]  We said, wow, it's cool.
[51:38.820 --> 51:39.520]  They're getting our stuff.
[51:39.840 --> 51:41.100]  It's not too bad, you know.
[51:41.260 --> 51:43.380]  And they actually took the time to write to us and all that.
[51:43.580 --> 51:44.820]  But this is the good feedback.
[51:45.620 --> 51:52.860]  We've also had people forward our email and our mail and they forward it to the authorities and they CC us.
[51:52.860 --> 51:57.840]  And so it's both to protect themselves, to show we got it, but we're going to turn you in.
[51:58.060 --> 51:59.280]  And so they CC us.
[51:59.380 --> 52:01.040]  So everybody knows that they did it and all that stuff.
[52:01.220 --> 52:02.960]  And Amy tracks all of that.
[52:03.100 --> 52:11.160]  We track all of the stuff we get back from China and we're monitoring it very carefully and where we could use some more interesting creative ways to monitor it.
[52:11.880 --> 52:12.760]  But this is some of it.
[52:12.820 --> 52:14.240]  But the last one is we really like a lot.
[52:14.240 --> 52:18.540]  This was written to us by a lawyer who said, I'm just a humble lawyer in China.
[52:18.540 --> 52:20.280]  I read you folks regularly.
[52:20.580 --> 52:22.400]  We're in the seventh month of the pilot.
[52:22.560 --> 52:23.680]  We've survived seven months.
[52:23.820 --> 52:25.660]  It's an interactive technology project.
[52:25.660 --> 52:29.580]  That means we have to keep coming up with a different solution every week, thanks to Bill Shah and our friends.
[52:30.220 --> 52:34.160]  But he wrote, One blade of grass can set the prairie ablaze.
[52:34.320 --> 52:35.460]  And we love that.
[52:35.880 --> 52:35.900]  Okay.
[52:39.270 --> 52:39.750]  This...
[52:40.270 --> 52:40.930]  I'm almost done.
[52:41.110 --> 52:41.410]  One minute.
[52:42.170 --> 52:51.670]  This is just to give you one example of some of the differences I think, but not... but differences that are important just to recognize so we can work together.
[52:52.230 --> 52:55.850]  And this is the framework how we have to think about effectiveness.
[52:56.110 --> 53:02.870]  And we have to think about it a little bit differently than I think than some of the... that hackers may sometimes think about it.
[53:03.010 --> 53:06.070]  And that is, we think of it as very long term.
[53:06.550 --> 53:09.650]  We think of it as, what is the multiplier and ripple effect?
[53:10.230 --> 53:11.550]  We can't go in once.
[53:11.810 --> 53:14.230]  We've got to figure out how we go in and get to stay in.
[53:14.390 --> 53:19.450]  And how do we keep it safe for the people that are in the room that we enter in and that work with us.
[53:19.490 --> 53:21.590]  A lot of the people in the underground networks we work with.
[53:21.870 --> 53:27.350]  And so some of the factors we think of, just to throw it out, is we think of assessing everything by time.
[53:27.710 --> 53:32.550]  And we try to think about comparison with other similar effects, but right now our project is one of two demos.
[53:32.750 --> 53:36.190]  And we are the only one I think right now that's truly an independent project.
[53:36.730 --> 53:38.290]  And we think of our reader feedback.
[53:38.490 --> 53:39.550]  We think of the multiplier effect.
[53:39.670 --> 53:40.230]  We think of...
[53:40.230 --> 53:42.570]  We have to think about cost because...
[53:42.570 --> 53:47.390]  And I am particularly aware of cost, because as the executive director, I spent a lot of my time begging for money.
[53:47.610 --> 53:50.070]  I didn't know I was such a good beggar and shameless.
[53:50.290 --> 53:52.270]  You know, it's just very sad to always be begging for money.
[53:52.270 --> 53:53.130]  But that's what I do.
[53:53.350 --> 53:55.930]  And I found out that I've become shameless and I beg for money.
[53:56.430 --> 53:56.930]  And I always...
[53:56.930 --> 53:58.590]  People say, what part of no don't you get?
[53:58.810 --> 54:03.130]  And I'll say, well, could you maybe think about giving us this much then?
[54:03.330 --> 54:04.450]  And they're going, no.
[54:04.770 --> 54:07.470]  I'll say, well, how about we come back next month?
[54:07.670 --> 54:08.470]  They go, no.
[54:08.690 --> 54:09.810]  And then I keep doing that.
[54:09.970 --> 54:11.530]  So we think of cost.
[54:11.730 --> 54:15.650]  And we think of cost because we have to pay for what we do.
[54:15.650 --> 54:17.310]  And we really have to pay the bills.
[54:18.370 --> 54:32.370]  So I just want to end with this, which is to first build on that and say, so let's go on and build some really kick-ass alliances because what we're up against is so hard.
[54:32.770 --> 54:47.810]  And we do that with respect for and recognition of that we do have some different goals and we may have some different approaches and we may have some different cultures and we may operate in some very different material realities.
[54:48.150 --> 55:04.950]  And that while breaking into a room can be a wonderful exercise of freedom and a statement about kick it open, we also think that for us, one of the purposes is let's break into the room and then let's ask the question, why?
[55:05.230 --> 55:09.550]  And we need to answer that question, that it has to be sustainable.
[55:10.030 --> 55:17.810]  We have to be able to empower the people in the room so that they can kick down those walls and build other kinds of houses and rooms and spaces.
[55:18.190 --> 55:24.770]  And we have to think about security and we have to think about pushing the envelope at the same time.
[55:24.770 --> 55:26.190]  How far can we push it?
[55:26.510 --> 55:31.630]  Because the consequences for what we do and the people we work with is really life and death.
[55:32.770 --> 55:33.930]  So, join us.
[55:34.490 --> 55:36.450]  Help us even out the odds.
[55:36.670 --> 55:39.790]  And I'm going to end with a wish list of what we would need and like.
[55:40.350 --> 55:44.770]  And the wish list is not inclusive and complete, but just to get you thinking, you know.
[55:46.070 --> 55:51.090]  We need training and we need helping to build the technical expertise in-house in our capacity.
[55:51.610 --> 55:54.490]  Anybody who wants to train us to unlock doors, we're there.
[55:55.170 --> 55:57.970]  Anything, we need to increase our technical expertise.
[55:58.310 --> 56:03.750]  We need pro bono support and maintenance for some of the systems that have been designed for us, but we have no maintenance.
[56:04.890 --> 56:07.210]  We need... and here's a job opening.
[56:07.990 --> 56:13.970]  So, if you want to take a pay cut for anyone who's doing six figures as a software engineer, but do a good thing with your life.
[56:15.010 --> 56:16.450]  We need a web programmer.
[56:16.730 --> 56:18.470]  We've been searching for one for over a year.
[56:18.610 --> 56:19.650]  We desperately need one.
[56:19.650 --> 56:22.770]  We need tech hacker interns.
[56:23.210 --> 56:23.870]  We need interns.
[56:24.550 --> 56:32.970]  We... Gabe is our intern now, and boy, did it make a huge difference to have him rewriting programs, redoing leads assessment, and we're not letting him go back to school.
[56:33.290 --> 56:35.750]  So, his mother is very upset because I said, quit school.
[56:35.850 --> 56:36.070]  School?
[56:36.210 --> 56:36.590]  What school?
[56:36.650 --> 56:37.090]  Who cares?
[56:37.290 --> 56:38.530]  You're changing the world.
[56:38.530 --> 56:39.710]  Who cares about that BA?
[56:40.270 --> 56:42.610]  But she... it's not a good idea.
[56:43.570 --> 56:47.570]  We need... we have a whole bunch of special IT projects that are very particular.
[56:47.570 --> 56:52.930]  So, I'd rather talk to people who are interested in contributing anything and talk to us about that.
[56:53.030 --> 56:53.550]  Amy's here.
[56:53.710 --> 56:57.170]  Amy is the Internet manager of all of these initiatives I've been talking about.
[56:57.650 --> 57:01.410]  And Abe... you know, Gabe is not going anywhere till the end of...
[57:01.410 --> 57:03.010]  He's in bondage until end of August.
[57:03.230 --> 57:04.610]  And he'll be here to talk to you.
[57:04.770 --> 57:05.990]  So, thank you so much.
[57:06.230 --> 57:06.830]  So, join us.
[57:07.110 --> 57:07.370]  Thank you.
[57:07.370 --> 57:08.210]  Thank you so much.
[57:20.440 --> 57:20.460]  Thank you.
[57:20.880 --> 57:22.620]  Pay attention to me.

[00:03.410 --> 00:21.770]  Now, I've heard a rumor, and I don't know if it's true, that we may have some Free Software Foundation people here today, which I think would be great, because they may have some questions that we're happy to answer, and I think that'll even liven things up a little bit more.
[00:22.590 --> 00:35.530]  If Richard Stallman or Eben Moglin happen to be here, I do want to know about it in advance, because I'm happy answering questions from people who are up to ten times smarter than me, but Richard and Eben are a whole lot smarter than that.
[00:35.790 --> 00:41.410]  So I expect their questions will be especially challenging if they happen to be here.
[00:42.470 --> 00:55.150]  And let me tell you why just about any question from Free Software people or Free Software enthusiasts or fair game, and any question is okay that you have later on, and it's because I deserve the hard questions.
[00:55.150 --> 01:05.070]  The reason I deserve the hard questions is because I've spent enough time over time in various fora asking exactly the same kind of questions of different kinds of speakers.
[01:06.150 --> 01:33.830]  As an example, a few years ago at an American Bar Association convention, Chris Painter from the Justice Department was there along with some of his colleagues, telling us about how they're in the business of saving corporate America $6 billion a year worth of losses from software piracy and piracy of other kinds of media here in the United States and overseas.
[01:34.170 --> 01:51.670]  And the first question that I presented to Mr. Painter and his colleagues is, in giving us those numbers of how much the losses are, are you assuming that every copy made, even in a poor country like China or over in Iran or someplace like that, that every one is a lost sale?
[01:52.070 --> 01:58.630]  That if they copy a $600 database program, that that's automatically a lost sale?
[01:58.750 --> 01:59.750]  The answer is yes.
[02:01.550 --> 02:03.410]  Oh, that's a realistic assumption.
[02:05.090 --> 02:22.510]  And are you also assuming that when people copy software, there is no economic benefit, no net economic or social benefit from the copy unless there's a payment made for it?
[02:22.730 --> 02:26.830]  Isn't the real question how we're dividing up the gains of the trade when copies are made?
[02:27.590 --> 02:29.390]  Well, that's not a very nice question.
[02:34.180 --> 02:41.720]  Another story that I'd like to relate is, in another life, I did actually work for the Justice Department as an Assistant U.S.
[02:41.800 --> 02:48.140]  Attorney and went down to their training center down in South Carolina for a computer crimes seminar.
[02:49.040 --> 03:00.100]  And there on a big screen, their version of the big screen, Mark Eckenweiler from the Justice Department put up a big image before one of his speeches.
[03:00.100 --> 03:11.260]  showing this gigantic cow skull with a big cross behind it and all kinds of red colors and, you know, looked really amazing.
[03:14.720 --> 03:37.200]  And basically, that image and stories about 2600 and the Cult of the Dead Cow were the booga booga that they used to scare all of the, you know, baby AUSAs and about half of the audience were people from the military about all the dangers of hackerism and the hacker community.
[03:40.680 --> 03:51.980]  The other remarkable thing about that presentation is that Eckenweiler basically spent a long time showing us the wonders of visual trace route.
[03:51.980 --> 03:55.660]  And, you know, what a remarkable tool that is.
[03:55.800 --> 04:00.360]  And most of the audience was pretty amazed that such a piece of software existed.
[04:00.640 --> 04:07.240]  At which point I realized, you know, these government people don't really know all that much about what they're talking about.
[04:07.500 --> 04:10.440]  And I'll bet those CDC people are pretty damn cool.
[04:14.160 --> 04:21.290]  During that conference, I took the time to ask one of the people from the Justice Department.
[04:21.560 --> 04:41.590]  So, if computers in the United States are attacked by an enemy abroad and you hack back, and you do it without the approval of a judge, would that mean that whoever is doing the hack back, even if they're in the government, would be violating a criminal statute?
[04:41.730 --> 04:42.580]  The answer is yes.
[04:44.180 --> 04:46.640]  The people from the Pentagon didn't like that.
[04:49.280 --> 04:57.960]  They started shouting all kinds of things about national command, authority, and other words that a civilian lawyer like me has never heard about before.
[05:00.050 --> 05:05.850]  And I've actually done the same thing on occasion even at a panel here at H2K2.
[05:06.060 --> 05:27.780]  I remember pointing out a couple years ago that there's at least a tangential correlation between the costumes worn by hacker types in courtroom proceedings and the outcomes that they've received.
[05:27.780 --> 05:37.350]  And sometimes it helps to pick your battles and wear a tie sometimes in court if you really want to persuade the judge that your legal position is right.
[05:37.940 --> 05:38.900]  Fight about the law.
[05:39.040 --> 05:42.560]  Don't fight with a man about who's going to wear a tie or not.
[05:44.960 --> 05:51.790]  Needless to say, I think that was about as well received as the questions about copyright by Chris Painter.
[05:54.440 --> 05:59.640]  Now before getting on farther with a talk, let me make a plug for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
[06:00.600 --> 06:06.060]  And I think a lot of other people have made a very similar plug here.
[06:07.520 --> 06:19.440]  Especially if you personally call on them to provide some sort of assistance or help, make sure to make a contribution for what that help is worth in terms of their time.
[06:20.540 --> 06:24.500]  Even if you don't, call on them this year for some kind of help.
[06:25.060 --> 06:28.400]  Support anyway because sooner or later you're going to need it.
[06:28.620 --> 06:34.100]  And the most important thing, for God's sake, don't wait until the last minute to call them.
[06:34.760 --> 06:42.200]  Just earlier this week, I'm one of the attorneys in their network that receives referrals from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
[06:43.900 --> 06:48.560]  And I got a call on Wednesday from somebody saying, I've got a really bad trademark problem.
[06:49.440 --> 06:51.980]  My answer is, well, I'm in the middle of a deposition right now.
[06:52.460 --> 06:54.440]  And I really can't answer your question.
[06:54.460 --> 06:56.000]  I can't take a lot of time to do that.
[06:56.040 --> 06:58.640]  But I am going to be in New York, where you are, on Friday.
[06:58.730 --> 06:59.380]  Can we meet then?
[06:59.560 --> 07:03.000]  His answer is, well, on Thursday, I've got to meet with the other side.
[07:03.580 --> 07:05.460]  And you're calling me the day before?
[07:06.960 --> 07:16.400]  Please make sure to give the lawyer who's going to help you enough lead time to understand the case and to give you good legal representation if you do need help on anything.
[07:21.580 --> 07:30.260]  Now, moving on to the Cult of the Dead Cow and what they're doing in terms of hacktivism and getting software out there to promote human rights.
[07:31.790 --> 07:40.820]  Another one of the interesting questions that I've asked on their behalf, this was shortly after they contacted me and said, well, we've got this really great piece of software.
[07:41.040 --> 07:49.640]  It contains strong encryption and it's going to enable people in China to communicate out past the firewall and this and that and the other thing.
[07:49.720 --> 07:54.260]  And I said, well, that's really terrific, but if it's strong encryption, you've got an export control problem.
[07:54.260 --> 07:58.180]  And I'm sure that most of the people in the audience here know how the U.S.
[07:58.340 --> 08:04.840]  government has used export controls as their major means of regulating strong encryption technology.
[08:05.440 --> 08:22.780]  And so the question that I asked, and this is while the Bush administration is in charge of the Commerce Department, is, well, can the people who wrote Back Orifice please have permission to export stronger than triple DES?
[08:22.780 --> 08:24.340]  I think it's an AES system?
[08:25.080 --> 08:26.960]  AES encryption over the Internet.
[08:29.340 --> 08:31.000]  Surprisingly, the answer was yes.
[08:38.030 --> 08:41.950]  And that yes answer, I think, is illustrative of...
[08:43.290 --> 08:48.570]  I mean, a lot of the talks here assume that the government is sort of a monolithic entity.
[08:49.930 --> 08:51.670]  That's not entirely true.
[08:54.290 --> 09:12.390]  There are a lot of good people who, when you work with them inside the government, are willing to advance your goals or, in my case, my client's goals, even if you might think that the administration proper would not share those goals at all.
[09:12.390 --> 09:20.470]  I mean, export of strong encryption by a hacker organization doesn't seem to be something that the Bush administration would be interested in.
[09:23.070 --> 09:26.090]  And had it gone to the level of Don Evans...
[09:26.090 --> 09:28.590]  Don Evans is now the Secretary of Commerce.
[09:29.230 --> 09:34.630]  He's a gentleman who actually is in the same prayer group with George Bush.
[09:34.630 --> 09:43.390]  I mean, you know the prayer group where they say all that stuff that Jesus said about blessed are the peacemakers and helping the poor people and things like that?
[09:43.570 --> 09:45.130]  That's all a bunch of nonsense.
[09:47.510 --> 09:53.110]  But Don and George pray together a lot about, you know, how not to help the poor people.
[09:53.430 --> 09:56.950]  If it had got to the Don Evans level, yeah, we'd probably have a problem.
[09:56.950 --> 10:03.130]  But most of the people in the Commerce Department or most of the people in the State Department are career officials.
[10:04.290 --> 10:06.710]  And a lot of them are very sensible people.
[10:08.010 --> 10:27.830]  And instead of just going ahead and exporting the software, what we did is we wrote them a letter and asked for a formal legal opinion saying that under certain exceptions to the export rules, as long as we put some restrictions, but not perfect restrictions,
[10:28.010 --> 10:33.150]  some restrictions, and they actually helped us craft those restrictions in a very constructive way.
[10:33.730 --> 10:40.490]  Some restrictions on that software getting into a list of seven countries, including North Korea, Iran, Iraq.
[10:40.490 --> 10:51.250]  And like I said, you need to read it very carefully in terms of what this organization can do and what third parties can do with the software and things like that.
[10:52.570 --> 11:16.270]  But subject to those details built into the distribution method, we could use servers in the United States of America as a platform to broadcast this strong encryption software all over the world, including into China.
[11:17.010 --> 11:36.650]  Which I think is a tremendous win and a tremendous victory for both the end users and for the organization that's trying to promote human rights through making available to people software that makes anonymous communications possible.
[11:40.130 --> 11:50.050]  So, I guess the moral of that story is, again, don't always assume that the government is your enemy.
[11:50.050 --> 11:57.050]  If you talk to the right people and talk to them in the right way, sometimes they will actively promote your goals too.
[11:57.630 --> 12:01.050]  You just have to be really careful about the means that you use to do it.
[12:02.570 --> 12:13.170]  Now, the next topic that we should get into, and I'm going to do this really briefly, I'm sure that we'll have a lot of Q&A about this, is the Hacktivismo Enhanced Source software license, the HESLA.
[12:13.670 --> 12:19.290]  I know that that's been sort of controversial on Slashdot.
[12:20.750 --> 12:26.230]  And, you know, some people in the free software movement say that it's not the GPL.
[12:26.230 --> 12:29.070]  And, well, if that's your criticism, I guess you're right.
[12:29.630 --> 12:31.990]  I concede it's not the GPL.
[12:32.750 --> 12:37.070]  What it does contain is some restrictions on conduct.
[12:38.130 --> 12:51.530]  If you use this software, what you do is you agree that you're not going to use it to violate people's human rights, you're not going to use it to cause physical injury to people, and some other restrictions on conduct that we don't think are entirely unreasonable.
[12:54.270 --> 12:58.350]  The Free Software Foundation takes the position and they put something up on their website.
[12:58.630 --> 13:03.470]  Well, you can never put conduct restrictions in a software license.
[13:03.470 --> 13:04.550]  That's unenforceable.
[13:04.730 --> 13:14.150]  And their position is that the law should be that you can't put conduct restrictions in software licenses.
[13:14.150 --> 13:18.590]  But the reality is a lot of software companies do exactly that.
[13:19.310 --> 13:33.750]  So I'm not sure whether the Free Software Foundation actually gets to be the judge that determines that issue or whether that issue has actually been resolved.
[13:34.610 --> 13:52.910]  Additionally, I think there are some very significant advantages in the HESLA over the GPL because we have explicit terms in there dealing with an issue that's very important in the human rights area, which is our government entities actually subject to it.
[13:54.430 --> 13:58.070]  The GPL just simply doesn't deal with issues of sovereign immunity.
[13:58.650 --> 14:02.230]  And for my illustration, how many people here know what the 11th Amendment is?
[14:05.220 --> 14:06.960]  Do we have any hands at all?
[14:07.140 --> 14:09.560]  Does anybody know what the 11th Amendment is?
[14:15.530 --> 14:17.170]  Well, let me ask you this.
[14:17.330 --> 14:21.550]  Can you sue the government of any state in federal court?
[14:24.270 --> 14:32.110]  Well, you can in some cases if they're violating civil rights that are protected under the 14th Amendment of the U.S.
[14:32.230 --> 14:32.690]  Constitution.
[14:33.670 --> 14:47.730]  But if the federal law on which your case is based is based on the Commerce Clause as opposed to the 14th Amendment, the Commerce Clause being in the original Constitution, therefore preceded the 11th Amendment.
[14:48.170 --> 14:50.450]  The 14th Amendment came after the 11th Amendment.
[14:50.630 --> 14:56.650]  So if it's a Commerce Clause regulation, you can't sue a state on that basis.
[14:56.650 --> 15:04.610]  So now they've thrown out certain kinds of anti-discrimination laws to the extent that they're based only on the Commerce Clause and not the 14th Amendment.
[15:05.630 --> 15:14.050]  The reason that I asked the question, though, has to do with a 1999 case by the Supreme Court called the...
[15:14.610 --> 15:18.510]  I think it's the College Savings Bank, and it was against the government of Florida.
[15:19.510 --> 15:30.910]  It's a trademark case, and they said that you can't sue the government of the state of Florida, even though Congress said we intend to make states subject to the trademark laws in the United States.
[15:31.570 --> 15:38.210]  The Supreme Court said you can't sue states for that unless the state says it can be sued.
[15:42.450 --> 15:44.830]  So does that apply to copyrights?
[15:44.870 --> 15:46.350]  We don't know for sure yet.
[15:46.350 --> 15:47.890]  But let me ask you this.
[15:48.070 --> 16:04.950]  If the state of Florida or the state of New York wanted to go ahead and start handing out free copies of Microsoft Windows and say, hey, you do whatever you want with it and you don't have to pay Microsoft a thing, could Microsoft sue the state of New York or the state of Florida for that?
[16:05.570 --> 16:07.470]  That's actually an open question right now.
[16:09.870 --> 16:15.170]  And then when you get to the issue of foreign sovereigns, there are additional statutes that come into play.
[16:15.170 --> 16:22.110]  There is what's called a commercial activity exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
[16:22.350 --> 16:31.310]  I think that the licensing of software, even of free software, falls within that exception.
[16:32.350 --> 16:50.850]  So when you're dealing with either a foreign government that decides for whatever reason that it's not afraid of our threat to sue them and actually uses that software and uses it for an improper purpose, or...and I'll get into some of the reasons why later if I've got one minute remaining.
[16:51.130 --> 17:02.170]  But when you deal with them or you deal with a multinational corporation, which we have difficulty suing right now in U.S.
[17:02.250 --> 17:18.790]  courts for human rights violations, because even though they act in cahoots with, you know, the government of Myanmar or, you know, some of these African governments that engaged in terrible human rights violations, nevertheless, American oil companies seem to get off the hook for the human rights violations.
[17:22.450 --> 17:46.550]  To the extent that this software license can somehow enter the mix, it may provide, and I'm not going to say it definitely does or definitely doesn't, but it will be tested in court someday eventually, and it may provide an additional avenue to get in and to do at least something to deter and to compensate human rights violations.
[17:47.650 --> 17:50.870]  I think my time has expired, so let me sit down.
[17:50.990 --> 17:54.170]  I'm sure we'll have plenty of questions later, and thank you very much.
[18:17.560 --> 18:20.820]  Anyway, I'm going to start by just fixing the technology thing.
[18:22.040 --> 18:35.860]  I would like to first thanks my colleagues from Hacktivismo and the conference organizers for inviting us from human rights community to share our experiences and our needs and also present our wish list.
[18:35.860 --> 18:40.620]  Now, it's not that we have never been collaborating with the technology community.
[18:40.940 --> 18:52.460]  We have been communicating and also kind of actively working with them to increase the collaboration and what Sharon suggested as building an alliance of consciences.
[18:54.420 --> 19:12.720]  Some of us have actually actively volunteer to do the beta testing of some of the software they are developing, and we continue to do that, but as Sharon said that we need more and more support and more and more kind of help from people who have been playing with technology.
[19:12.720 --> 19:23.360]  Now, my talk is going to mainly focus on placing the technology developments which people have tried and dreamt when the Internet was just beginning to develop.
[19:23.360 --> 19:34.500]  And where has it led us after, let's say, seven to ten years when we have kind of seen now Internet has becoming one of the mainstream media, at least in the developed countries.
[19:34.700 --> 19:40.940]  And slowly, countries like China are also catching up and become a very active user of the net.
[19:42.440 --> 19:55.180]  In the beginning, we keep on kind of repeating this kind of quotations, which is at least attributed to Gilmore, and Gilmore has slightly changed quotations to say on it.
[19:55.180 --> 19:59.100]  But it says that Nate treats censorship as a damage and doubts around it.
[19:59.320 --> 20:09.180]  And in 2004, when we see this country like China or Cuba or many other countries, we realized that the reality on the ground has changed quite differently.
[20:09.380 --> 20:12.560]  Or it had turned out to be much different than we thought it would be.
[20:13.200 --> 20:19.240]  But don't worry, many of us dreamt about it, and I suppose it's not bad to dream that.
[20:19.240 --> 20:24.200]  Or at least try to dream a good things and then see how the ground reality works out.
[20:24.600 --> 20:29.960]  And work from that and make sure that the next time when we do things, we will take into account more ground reality.
[20:30.980 --> 20:41.300]  We also thought that Internet as a revolutionary medium, which has an inherently empowering power, democratizing, and we thought authoritarian regime will crumble.
[20:41.980 --> 20:52.100]  And my colleague had very well explained that, in fact, in China or some other countries, that things have not really turned out to be what we thought it would be.
[20:53.700 --> 21:05.160]  Also, some of the other presenters have kind of said in a more context of U.S. and many other Western countries, that there is no privacy left and let's get used to it.
[21:05.500 --> 21:10.440]  So which means that the more and more bad news are coming right at the home of the Internet development.
[21:11.360 --> 21:19.300]  Anonymity could be broken the moment the software which can locate the geography or geography locator software become more norm.
[21:19.860 --> 21:24.540]  And the court starts recognizing that and start implementing that also in their judgment.
[21:25.840 --> 21:32.360]  And more and more countries strive to see that, oh, if China can build a great firewall, why not we can do it?
[21:32.500 --> 21:36.360]  And start repeating or start learning from the lessons of China.
[21:36.760 --> 21:43.360]  Then we are headed with a technology not working in our favor or the way we thought it would work in our favor.
[21:43.360 --> 21:48.940]  And we are faced with technology as a big brother watching us everywhere, not just here.
[21:51.100 --> 22:05.720]  Now, but still, even after all this development and possibility of technology being misused, even the U.S. government wanted to kind of fund a project called Global Internet Freedom Act.
[22:05.720 --> 22:11.820]  As far as I know, the bill never got passed through either Congress or Senate.
[22:12.380 --> 22:30.320]  But the idea was to support actively the anti-censorship or let's say censorship circumvention software and help the users in the countries like China or Cuba or North Korea and others to circumvent the censorship.
[22:30.320 --> 22:45.860]  Which means that even as long as 2003, people still think that the anti-censorship software are the need for helping the users in many of those repressive countries to get access to the information.
[22:46.380 --> 22:54.020]  Now, we'll come back to this issue later on to just in terms of seeing whether this kind of assumption makes much sense today.
[22:54.020 --> 23:12.780]  or we need to see the technology within the more social context in terms of what we have began to accept and how the censorship is kind of becoming more and more a mainstream thinking rather than just becoming an isolated fact somewhere happening and only in a repressive countries.
[23:15.840 --> 23:18.380]  In the beginning like when the...
[23:21.360 --> 23:30.380]  The government responses were kind of in a classified in a mainly in a two types of responses, which was one was more reactive response.
[23:30.640 --> 23:34.580]  Whenever they see something, they try to control it either through...
[23:34.580 --> 23:42.520]  This was in the beginning that the high excess cost in countries where the Internet infrastructure or telecom infrastructure was owned by government.
[23:42.820 --> 23:47.140]  And they kept the Internet prices so high that not many people would be able to access it.
[23:47.360 --> 23:58.660]  Many countries have kind of broken those barriers now because the market mechanism has forced them to rethink the excess cost and that has no more kind of been effective for.
[23:58.840 --> 24:06.400]  But at the same time, the filtering content, monitoring it online behavior, or prohibiting Internet use entirely.
[24:06.400 --> 24:13.460]  This was one of the pattern of kind of thinking which began when the Internet began spreading in the various countries.
[24:14.140 --> 24:21.960]  Some of the other countries which were even little smarter than that, that instead of restricting alone, they thought that Internet has a great potential for economic development.
[24:22.220 --> 24:28.640]  And if you want to be integrated to the global economy and communication, let's let it come, but we'll control it.
[24:29.000 --> 24:30.820]  And China would be one of the...
[24:30.820 --> 24:42.940]  This kind of a shining example of that kind of pattern that they allowed it for the economic purpose and the Internet usage skyrocketed from almost nothing in 1996 to 60 million users now.
[24:43.980 --> 24:44.180]  Next, please.
[24:45.120 --> 24:47.520]  In the beginning, like...
[24:48.560 --> 25:01.080]  1996, I'm sure some of you have participated in the Internet freedom campaign, which was done by the global Internet liberty campaign, was the blue ribbon campaign against anti-cens...
[25:01.080 --> 25:02.720]  Internet censorship.
[25:03.520 --> 25:06.360]  And that was the campaign which started in the U.S.
[25:06.700 --> 25:16.360]  So let's not forget that the first major censorship articulation came in this country, before the other countries were even trying to figure out what the heck this net is all about.
[25:16.720 --> 25:18.520]  We had started it all here.
[25:18.520 --> 25:32.820]  And at that time, the prime justification which began surfacing and was a very solid argumentation, was to protect children from undeserved information or whatever other kinds of information they don't want them to see.
[25:34.400 --> 25:38.060]  And fight terrorism, silence the racist and hate-monger.
[25:38.300 --> 25:41.880]  Now, let's go fast-forward to 2004.
[25:42.580 --> 25:46.380]  The list has expanded and it has become more universal.
[25:47.060 --> 25:53.280]  It's not that these arguments are any longer used only in one country, not only in democratic country or repressive country.
[25:53.620 --> 25:55.760]  More or less, everybody is copying from each other.
[25:56.440 --> 26:09.860]  And international laws are being kind of synchronized in terms of thinking and in terms of even creating a common legal framework around Internet censorship or what you call it, Internet regulation.
[26:13.040 --> 26:21.660]  And this kind of access control is, as I said, it's not necessarily just limiting to the Internet.
[26:22.180 --> 26:24.260]  Even some countries are even going beyond it.
[26:24.540 --> 26:31.320]  Like China, they want to even control all digital form of communication which includes even text messaging.
[26:32.060 --> 26:40.840]  Now, there's no guarantee that this will not happen in any other country because everybody uses the argument that national security comes first above anything else.
[26:41.440 --> 26:44.680]  And national security becomes an issue in many countries quite often.
[26:45.500 --> 26:49.980]  So, China is experimenting how it works out, but other countries might follow it.
[26:51.340 --> 26:58.120]  Then, in a country like Zimbabwe or many other countries, actually, the mandatory monitoring of email communication.
[26:58.120 --> 27:03.360]  So, when we say Internet censorship, it is no longer just a blocking of websites and other things.
[27:03.520 --> 27:13.280]  But all form of digital communications are being surveilled and being monitored, being logged, being put into a database, mining, everything is happening around that.
[27:13.280 --> 27:18.420]  Now, then, the data retention laws are also becoming more and more universalized.
[27:19.200 --> 27:21.380]  In a sense, initially, it began with one country.
[27:21.500 --> 27:30.200]  Then, they said, okay, let's have a cross-Atlantic regulation around it or cross-Atlantic agreement on data retentions.
[27:30.340 --> 27:35.780]  And those laws are soon likely to become kind of more or less universally practiced laws.
[27:40.300 --> 27:44.160]  Also, it's no longer at the stage of legislation alone.
[27:44.480 --> 27:56.540]  As Sharon mentioned that China had already had like 64 people who are very explicitly prosecuted, convicted, and put behind bar on the charges which are directly related with their use of Internet.
[27:56.920 --> 28:00.360]  So, Internet censorship is no longer a theoretical debate any longer.
[28:00.540 --> 28:05.420]  It's no longer legislating bad laws and let's see what happens, whether they will practice it.
[28:05.420 --> 28:07.900]  But it is becoming a part of the practice now.
[28:10.500 --> 28:18.020]  Now, in a generalized pattern of surveillance, increasing the privacy is kind of being challenged all the time.
[28:18.340 --> 28:25.860]  The people are finding it hard and hard to really use Internet in a way we thought in the beginning that we would be able to use it.
[28:26.740 --> 28:41.100]  The ISP and telecommunications are becoming a kind of a potential police state or put by the potential arm of the police because they are asked to perform certain tasks which, in a traditional way, were supposed to be a law enforcement task.
[28:42.040 --> 28:51.900]  Censorship is, at some level, in the form of either through self-censorship or filter on the public success point or voluntary plages is becoming a privatized censorship.
[28:52.320 --> 28:53.920]  Now, all this is happening.
[28:54.200 --> 28:59.880]  It's not necessary that people have to wait for 2001 or 9-11 event has to happen.
[28:59.880 --> 29:09.720]  This has been a gradual growth of our thinking which is being kind of modified to accept that we need all this thing to secure ourselves.
[29:10.040 --> 29:18.000]  And that thinking is kind of getting accepted and legislative process are being kind of going without being challenged.
[29:24.160 --> 29:37.080]  In a global way, now we have one more argument to justify all this kind of, let's say, restriction on the free expression on the net, as well as even in another form of practicing a civil liberty is terrorism.
[29:37.360 --> 29:43.260]  And terrorism is used to justify repression and restriction on all types of free expression.
[29:43.260 --> 29:59.020]  Same way governments are kind of trying to get immunity from their criticism on their practices in the name of, kind of, let's say, protecting us from against terrorism or protecting the national security.
[30:00.060 --> 30:07.400]  In that environment, the impact on the global human rights is going to be very serious.
[30:07.400 --> 30:17.620]  And we have already begun, when the debate around Abu Ghraib happened, in this country also, people began saying, maybe we don't need international laws.
[30:17.840 --> 30:19.800]  Maybe torture is essential.
[30:20.200 --> 30:32.660]  And if that starts happening, which means that, we began with a one dream 10 years ago, when we thought Internet is a liberating kind of a medium, and it will allow us a global community, freedom, and all kinds of benefits.
[30:32.660 --> 30:37.220]  And today, in a changed environment, people here also began thinking.
[30:37.440 --> 30:55.660]  Now, if this could happen in the birthplace of Internet, I'm not sure how much the global community around the globe can expect their own government, which has a very weak, let's say, history of democratic practices, or even civil liberties, can expect to protect the rights of the user.
[30:55.660 --> 31:12.140]  Now, in that sense, we would suggest that, maybe, in the future, when we think about any medium, or when we think about any technology, which can have an impact on a society, at that time, we might want to put a place, those technological development,
[31:12.440 --> 31:17.720]  or our own role, within the larger context of censorship, freedom, and human rights.
[31:18.000 --> 31:26.040]  In that situation, we have a better chance to understand, and maybe have a modest dream about what this technology can really do.
[31:26.240 --> 31:27.240]  Thank you very much.
[31:38.400 --> 31:38.840]  Great.
[31:39.980 --> 31:41.480]  How's everybody doing out there?
[31:43.500 --> 31:44.020]  Okay.
[31:44.420 --> 31:47.880]  I just want to thank the Cult of the Dead Cow for having this panel.
[31:48.200 --> 31:51.140]  I want to thank Oxblood, in particular, for inviting me.
[31:51.320 --> 31:54.940]  And I want to thank Grandmaster Rat for letting me crash on his couch last night.
[31:58.860 --> 32:08.260]  Basically, I'm going to be talking about the Citizen Lab, which is a lab at the University of Toronto, that was founded by Professor Ron Deibert, who's a professor of political science at University of Toronto.
[32:10.840 --> 32:13.120]  Basically, the Citizen Lab has been great for me.
[32:13.660 --> 32:24.060]  It let me take a lot of the projects I was working on out of my basement, and move them into a university setting, which is pretty good, in terms of bandwidth and equipment, and all that kind of fun stuff.
[32:25.020 --> 32:34.720]  Basically, my job is to go through the computer science department, find the best hackers that I can find, and also pillage hackers from the Toronto 2600, who's representing right here.
[32:36.820 --> 32:46.980]  And basically, we put them together with activists and people in political science to work on projects relating to Internet policy and politics.
[32:47.400 --> 32:49.100]  And what we want to do...
[32:49.100 --> 33:04.620]  I mean, what we do do is create a space and an environment where we encourage people to get under the hood, look at what's going on, and basically provide a hardcore technical background to a lot of the human rights projects that other people are working on.
[33:04.940 --> 33:10.480]  You know, we want to get people that really understand the technology and the policy and put them together and see what they come up with.
[33:12.900 --> 33:13.380]  Yeah.
[33:15.920 --> 33:16.400]  Basically...
[33:16.400 --> 33:17.600]  Yeah, you can go to the next slide.
[33:17.600 --> 33:31.660]  One of the projects that I'm heavily involved with is called the OpenNet Initiative, and actually it's grown out of a basement operation into a collaboration between three universities, and we managed to secure funding from the Open Society Institute.
[33:32.380 --> 33:46.400]  Basically, we're looking at Internet filtering and surveillance practices worldwide from a technical and policy point of view, as well as looking at the circumvention technology that others are developing, and developing our own.
[33:49.280 --> 33:58.020]  We're interested in a lot of questions relating to Internet filtering, not just what's blocked and how, but who's making the decisions, and how are those decisions made?
[33:58.440 --> 34:02.340]  What involvement does the public have in those decisions, and what do they know about it?
[34:02.660 --> 34:03.620]  And some of the...
[34:03.620 --> 34:06.980]  I'm going to talk a little bit more in detail about some of the projects that we're working on.
[34:07.380 --> 34:13.720]  One of them is to put together a sort of Friendster slash ORCUT of Internet filtering in these countries.
[34:14.120 --> 34:16.760]  So, you know, who are the heads of the ISPs?
[34:17.040 --> 34:21.660]  Who are the people in government that make the decisions regarding the Internet, and regarding Internet filtering?
[34:21.980 --> 34:29.560]  And kind of do a social network map, and see in a lot of countries, these people are related to each other, or they have some kind of connection with one another.
[34:29.780 --> 34:38.040]  And we want to map kind of how the decisions are being made at a policy level, as well as we want to map how this is being implemented on a technical level.
[34:39.620 --> 34:51.160]  To do this, we have established a human-based network, what we call H2H, hacktivist to hacktivist relationships, with groups that are working on these issues in the countries.
[34:51.420 --> 34:53.400]  And this is extremely important.
[34:53.440 --> 34:59.420]  We also have a technological network, so that we can do the testing of Internet filtering worldwide.
[35:00.620 --> 35:12.140]  I just want to talk about the human-based network, because that gets overlooked a lot of times, because you can find things technologically, but it's the context that's really important, when you're dealing with Internet censorship.
[35:13.020 --> 35:16.460]  You know, a lot of countries block porn, and other kinds of things.
[35:17.100 --> 35:28.140]  Yeah, if you look at my logs from the testing box we have at University of Toronto, they've emailed me a few times, because visiting hundreds of thousands of porn sites kind of sets off some red flags with the university.
[35:31.120 --> 35:41.740]  But basically these people provide the context, and the technological research that we develop also enables them to challenge these practices in their countries on their own terms.
[35:43.580 --> 35:59.160]  Basically what we do, from a technological point of view, is we get access in these countries in a variety of ways, depending on the security situation in those countries, and how much risk the individuals in those countries are willing to take, because they are putting themselves at risk.
[35:59.320 --> 36:02.300]  For us it's research, but for them it's a serious concern.
[36:03.240 --> 36:18.980]  What we do is, we develop lists of URLs and domains, some of which we call a global list, which is kind of just a broad category of URLs that we test to get a general sense of what's going on, as well as putting together a list of high impact websites.
[36:19.180 --> 36:24.200]  And these are websites that are of particular concern in the country that we're testing.
[36:24.200 --> 36:28.620]  And what we do is, we run through these a number of times.
[36:29.100 --> 36:34.060]  The first time is just basically a GET request, you know, can we get it or can we not?
[36:34.120 --> 36:39.260]  We record the headers and send that information back to the lab for analysis.
[36:39.520 --> 36:48.200]  And anything that doesn't kind of match up, because we test one connection from our testing location in University of Toronto, and another connection from the remote computer.
[36:48.420 --> 36:52.800]  And if the headers don't match, or if something's weird going on, we flagged that as kind of being odd.
[36:53.400 --> 36:59.880]  Because there's a lot of different behaviors in terms of filtering, depending on the type of filtering that's going on.
[37:00.160 --> 37:08.140]  If they're filtering with a commercial application, or something that gives you a block page, that's actually good for us, because it tells you, you can't go here because we've blocked it.
[37:08.480 --> 37:10.720]  In other situations, you just get different headers.
[37:11.540 --> 37:15.880]  We might... we'll get a 200, and they might get a 403, or a 404, or whatever.
[37:16.380 --> 37:18.300]  And in other cases, you don't get anything at all.
[37:18.300 --> 37:20.980]  The connection just dies when you try to go to a banned site.
[37:21.120 --> 37:22.020]  You don't get any headers back.
[37:22.140 --> 37:22.760]  You don't get anything.
[37:23.420 --> 37:27.080]  That's sort of how we classify the URLs that we test.
[37:27.280 --> 37:36.500]  And in the second run, after we've determined that something weird is going on, then we test with TCP traceroute and see how far up the chain we can go before it dies.
[37:38.860 --> 37:40.860]  Yeah, just a little bit about filtering.
[37:41.040 --> 37:47.480]  Blacklist means, you know, there's a list of URLs, categorized URLs usually, that are used to block.
[37:47.560 --> 37:52.000]  Whitelist means you only allow access to a certain number of URLs.
[37:52.200 --> 38:04.600]  And this has been called the National Intranet Model, which is being developed in Myanmar, formerly Burma, and Cuba, which is basically they have an internal network for the citizens with pre-approved sites that they can visit.
[38:05.240 --> 38:10.740]  Content analysis is, you know, just mainly refers to blocking by keyword.
[38:11.400 --> 38:15.300]  Oh, the general network setup is what I'm going to get into more specifically.
[38:15.300 --> 38:21.140]  As opposed to China, a lot of the countries that we're particularly focusing on right now are in Central Asia and the Middle East.
[38:21.420 --> 38:28.160]  And basically, we're seeing a kind of same setup developing, as opposed to China, which is basically router-based blocking.
[38:29.080 --> 38:39.400]  These countries are purchasing technology from Western companies and using that in conjunction with cache servers to actually have a really efficient filtering system.
[38:41.900 --> 38:44.420]  Yeah, basically, this is the behavior of block pages.
[38:45.320 --> 38:48.680]  One of the things we do is try to figure out exactly what technology they're using.
[38:48.780 --> 38:52.100]  And sometimes it's easy, like when they have smart filter in the block page.
[38:52.380 --> 38:55.400]  And usually, smart filter shows up in the headers as well.
[38:55.600 --> 39:00.360]  But other times, you know, they don't tell you exactly what's going on in the headers.
[39:00.360 --> 39:05.560]  You just usually get a result back from net cache, which is, you know, just your basic caching server.
[39:05.660 --> 39:09.400]  Other times, you'll get just a generic error, and you don't really know what's going on.
[39:09.540 --> 39:12.140]  Basically, there's different levels of accountability.
[39:12.440 --> 39:16.920]  In some cases, it's good to have a block page, because then you know for sure that it's being blocked by policy.
[39:19.160 --> 39:22.120]  In Uzbekistan, they're actually pretty interesting.
[39:22.280 --> 39:26.820]  Instead of giving you a block page or a timeout, they actually redirect you to another site.
[39:26.820 --> 39:31.440]  So here we have Birlik, which is an opposition party, and Stop Dictator Karamov.
[39:31.500 --> 39:32.500]  Karamov is the president.
[39:32.740 --> 39:37.540]  And these redirect to weird MSN search and some weird Russian site.
[39:37.720 --> 39:44.260]  And there's been reports from users there that what they'll actually do sometimes is make a fake website of the opposition party.
[39:44.440 --> 39:48.500]  And then when you sign up for their email list and other things, well, they all have it.
[39:48.660 --> 39:50.060]  So that's kind of sneaky.
[39:51.400 --> 39:54.000]  I'm gonna talk a little bit specifically about Saudi Arabia.
[39:54.500 --> 39:57.920]  There's been a lot of work done on filtering there, and I've been working on it myself.
[39:58.720 --> 40:01.920]  And it's a good kind of profile to counterbalance what's going on in China.
[40:02.680 --> 40:04.640]  Basically, they have a very centralized system.
[40:04.840 --> 40:11.540]  They have a big farm of cache servers and proxy servers located at the ISU, which is way up on the chain.
[40:11.660 --> 40:18.480]  So all of the ISPs and universities and everything else that's underneath that are all subjected to blocking at this one centralized point.
[40:19.160 --> 40:22.720]  So it's pretty easy to test and get a good sense of what's going on there.
[40:22.720 --> 40:25.920]  They have blocked page filtering, which is...
[40:26.300 --> 40:29.780]  A page comes up and tells you, hey, you can't go here because we've blocked it.
[40:29.920 --> 40:34.400]  And they have a blocking request form and an unblocked request form.
[40:34.600 --> 40:38.080]  I filled out the unblocked request form a few times, but nothing happened.
[40:39.480 --> 40:41.440]  One of the things that we're working on...
[40:41.440 --> 40:43.540]  We'll call it a fingerprint, but it's not really a fingerprint.
[40:43.860 --> 40:44.840]  It's basically...
[40:44.840 --> 40:46.400]  We want to figure out what...
[40:46.400 --> 40:52.500]  When commercial technology is being used in these countries to filter on a national level, we want to figure out what it is.
[40:53.000 --> 40:55.460]  And one of the ways that we've come up with is...
[40:56.340 --> 40:57.740]  Can you flick the next slide?
[40:58.900 --> 41:01.040]  Is to look for miscategorized URLs.
[41:01.240 --> 41:01.960]  Here's an example.
[41:03.000 --> 41:12.500]  Teenpregnancy.org is classified in Smart Filter as health and some other categories, which is generally okay, which means that you can get to it if those categories aren't being blocked.
[41:12.760 --> 41:24.300]  By the way, Smart Filter and WebSense have a filtering category called NGO slash advocacy groups, which is basically, you know, a handy category for regimes that might want to filter these groups.
[41:24.440 --> 41:27.020]  They just check it off on the box and go about their business.
[41:27.980 --> 41:32.740]  But you'll notice that teenpregnancy.org slash teen is misclassified as pornography.
[41:33.040 --> 41:34.380]  There's nothing pornographic there.
[41:34.520 --> 41:42.180]  It's an error probably because of teen in the domain and teen in the path kind of sets off their automated process.
[41:42.320 --> 41:45.960]  They claim to manually look at all the URLs in their database, but they don't.
[41:46.440 --> 41:53.840]  So basically, what I do is I put together a list of these misclassified URLs and I run them for different commercial products.
[41:54.000 --> 42:03.380]  And if I'm getting a good high hit rate on blocks for sites that shouldn't be blocked, it tips me off pretty well as to what commercial filtering system they're using.
[42:03.720 --> 42:12.000]  And actually, in Saudi Arabia, if you look in the content of the block page, you'll see they insert this special tag.
[42:12.280 --> 42:16.200]  And when it's a smart filter block, they have filter equals SF.
[42:16.520 --> 42:22.440]  And when it's a block that they've added themselves, like Arab Times, which is not in the smart filter database, it says local.
[42:22.620 --> 42:27.020]  So it's easy to tell what ones they've added and what ones are blocked default by smart filter.
[42:27.700 --> 42:34.000]  Recently, Reporters Without Borders put out an advisory about some gay websites that were being blocked in Saudi Arabia.
[42:34.000 --> 42:35.720]  And they were blocked because I checked.
[42:35.880 --> 42:38.920]  But the thing is, they weren't blocked because the Saudis wanted to block them.
[42:39.100 --> 42:42.080]  They were blocked because they were miscategorized by smart filter.
[42:42.340 --> 42:52.160]  So a lot of these countries that are using this commercial applications to do their filtering, I mean, really it's a problem of having proprietary lists that people can't check.
[42:52.160 --> 43:02.280]  And so people are subjecting entire nations to filtering based on the decisions made by a company on information that they won't let us scrutinize.
[43:04.240 --> 43:06.340]  There's also other unintended consequences.
[43:06.540 --> 43:07.380]  This happened in India.
[43:07.600 --> 43:12.980]  They tried to block one Yahoo group and they sent out an order to all the ISPs to block it.
[43:13.080 --> 43:14.600]  Some of them did and some of them didn't.
[43:14.700 --> 43:17.260]  But most of them didn't have the capacity to filter.
[43:17.440 --> 43:20.380]  So they just blocked the IP address of groups.yahoo.com.
[43:20.380 --> 43:25.440]  So all of the Yahoo groups were blocked until they finally figured out how to block just the one.
[43:25.560 --> 43:27.260]  Well, some of the ISPs anyways.
[43:28.140 --> 43:32.920]  The other thing is recently HinduUnity.org received the same treatment.
[43:32.960 --> 43:36.300]  But there's a bunch of other sites hosted on that server that are also blocked.
[43:36.480 --> 43:46.040]  And in terms of countries where filtering is done within a sort of legal environment, this is good ammunition for people that are fighting because there's no order to block those sites, yet they're blocked.
[43:46.100 --> 43:50.280]  And so they can take that to court and challenge the governments in an open way.
[43:52.800 --> 43:54.840]  Moving on to circumvention technology.
[43:55.240 --> 43:57.060]  One of the things we're working on is called Syphon.
[43:57.560 --> 44:01.620]  It started kind of off as a side project and I haven't had a lot of time to work on it.
[44:01.760 --> 44:03.220]  But basically it's nothing new.
[44:03.760 --> 44:04.940]  And it's really simple.
[44:05.200 --> 44:11.940]  All I wanted to do was make a really simple application that non-technical people could use.
[44:11.940 --> 44:19.700]  that was really similar to existing products that were out there except for with just ease of use as its main priority.
[44:20.040 --> 44:25.940]  And taking into account some of the vulnerabilities that people had talked about those existing products.
[44:26.220 --> 44:30.160]  The main one I pillaged was CGI Proxy which is really awesome and a lot of people use it.
[44:30.160 --> 44:36.120]  But for non-technical people setting up Apache and mod SSL, they won't do it.
[44:36.520 --> 44:38.700]  And it needs to be made really easy for them.
[44:38.860 --> 44:40.860]  So we actually coded it in Python.
[44:41.100 --> 44:46.520]  Basically it's an SSL web server and provides the user with a web form.
[44:46.780 --> 44:48.820]  They put in the URL they want to go to.
[44:49.100 --> 44:54.640]  It rewrites the URLs to point back through the proxy and delivers it to the user.
[44:55.700 --> 44:58.900]  We use Py2exe for Windows to make it nice.
[44:59.040 --> 45:00.880]  So they just double click on it and it starts up.
[45:01.120 --> 45:04.680]  And we tried to keep the options pretty limited.
[45:04.840 --> 45:13.040]  We have bandwidth throttling so that if you don't want to use up all your bandwidth letting people surf through your connection, you can and user management.
[45:13.320 --> 45:20.120]  But the main thing that we wanted to do is sort of replace the idea of a technological peer-to-peer network with a human peer-to-peer network.
[45:20.360 --> 45:38.740]  So the problem with peer-to-peer networks and circumvention is that if you use a system that relies on nodes knowing other nodes, if they can node harvest, so make a new account and connect into the network and get an IP each time, they just start adding that to the blocking list.
[45:38.900 --> 45:46.580]  The same is true for distributing URLs to public proxies and things like that.
[45:47.060 --> 45:54.640]  If the people you're targeting with the information can find out about it, so can the people intercepting and looking at that information or monitoring these groups.
[45:55.140 --> 46:02.960]  And so what we wanted to do was make the requirement, basically, that you have to know somebody outside of the country to run this thing for you.
[46:03.440 --> 46:04.480]  It's not a service.
[46:05.000 --> 46:07.200]  It's not a public service that you would let people.
[46:07.220 --> 46:08.600]  It's just for people that you know.
[46:08.780 --> 46:14.500]  And we thought if we keep it really simple and kind of low-tech like that, that it has a better chance of survival.
[46:14.500 --> 46:20.620]  And along with the people that are working on public proxy systems and all that kind of thing, we thought it was a good addition.
[46:20.820 --> 46:37.560]  Because the other problem with volunteer-based systems or public proxy systems, I mean, this is the case with CGI proxy for sure, is that if you have somebody running CGI proxy and telling users, hey, you know, use this, they can intercept everything that you're doing too.
[46:38.840 --> 46:42.620]  So, the other problem with it is the self-signed certificates.
[46:43.420 --> 46:48.760]  Those can easily be subjected to man-in-the-middle attacks and people were pretty concerned about that.
[46:49.020 --> 46:58.580]  The other thing we wanted to do is start a resource where basically we would collect projects that other people were working on and look at certain scenarios where they would be effective.
[46:58.740 --> 47:08.920]  So that if there were groups or individuals that wanted to implement these products, they could look at it and say, yeah, you know, my scenario fits this situation, this product is what's the best for me.
[47:09.780 --> 47:16.160]  And also, you know, look at if there was any particular problems or glaring errors in the design of the system, kind of point those out.
[47:17.340 --> 47:23.220]  So we did that with IBB, which also runs Voice of America.
[47:23.600 --> 47:29.440]  They contracted with Anonymizer to provide web-based circumvention systems to people in Iran.
[47:30.140 --> 47:31.060]  And it works.
[47:31.980 --> 47:36.080]  But the problem is that the system designed to get around filtering filters.
[47:37.620 --> 47:43.080]  Because if any of you run public proxies or CGI proxy, most people are looking at porn.
[47:43.900 --> 47:50.060]  And so they set up this system to block access to porn, except for it was done in a really horrible way.
[47:50.280 --> 47:52.680]  Basically, it was done by blocking keywords and domains.
[47:52.860 --> 47:58.320]  So if the domain name, not the path, just the domain, contained any of the keywords, you couldn't go there.
[47:58.460 --> 48:02.720]  So you couldn't go to GeorgeWBush.com because it's got Bush in it.
[48:03.280 --> 48:07.040]  And you couldn't go to a lot of U.S. Embassy sites because it has ASS in it.
[48:08.100 --> 48:12.620]  You couldn't go to any site that was .tv because it has TV in it.
[48:12.720 --> 48:13.560]  A whole domain name.
[48:13.700 --> 48:15.500]  And the same with MY for Malaysia.
[48:15.880 --> 48:18.120]  I mean, it was a completely ridiculous system.
[48:18.280 --> 48:20.440]  We found, I think, 82 of these words.
[48:21.360 --> 48:22.520]  And we tested them.
[48:22.920 --> 48:27.460]  And we tested them from connections in Iran, too, to try to find sites that were double-blocked.
[48:27.560 --> 48:34.700]  So sites that were blocked by the Iranians and sites that were blocked by the system that they're supposed to use to get to these sites.
[48:34.880 --> 48:36.800]  We didn't find many, but we found a few.
[48:38.700 --> 48:54.040]  The other thing is that when you go to these anonymizer sites and you translate the Farsi, it tells them that their anonymity is protected, that they're not at risk from hackers or governments that might want to spy on them, but it's all in plain text.
[48:57.130 --> 49:03.690]  So they're giving people this false sense of security when their communications can easily be intercepted.
[49:03.870 --> 49:12.930]  Yeah, they can circumvent properly, and yeah, the URL that they want to go to is obfuscated, but the content can easily be sniffed.
[49:14.870 --> 49:20.250]  So basically, anonymizer has an SSL option for premium users.
[49:20.430 --> 49:22.410]  I guess that's not good enough for the Iranian people.
[49:24.170 --> 49:38.810]  So the main thing I kind of wanted to end with, which is Oxblood's idea of hacktivist-to-hacktivist networks, and that it really takes developing relations of trust with real people and not just relying on technological solutions to these problems.
[49:40.370 --> 49:42.950]  You know, users are being encouraged by people.
[49:43.130 --> 49:49.650]  A lot of times these sort of third-party brokers that tour around and visit with different NGOs and recommend software to them.
[49:49.990 --> 50:01.550]  So, you know, there needs to be a pretty good audit of what's available out there so that groups can make informed decisions for, you know, for security needs that fit their specific purposes.
[50:01.550 --> 50:05.310]  Because there's different climates in terms of security in different countries.
[50:05.550 --> 50:14.570]  So some solutions that might not be completely fully secure might work in a situation where the consequences, you know, aren't too bad.
[50:15.110 --> 50:21.690]  And that's something that we have to do working really closely with these groups, especially in terms of development.
[50:21.790 --> 50:27.430]  It's not enough to just develop some new cool technology or whatever the latest thing is.
[50:27.430 --> 50:33.350]  Because in a lot of the cases, I visited NGOs where they got 15 users sharing one 56k dial-up.
[50:34.050 --> 50:35.490]  I mean, they just can't...
[50:35.490 --> 50:38.650]  The bandwidth restrictions are huge in a lot of developing countries.
[50:38.870 --> 50:44.030]  And also really ancient operating systems and pretty much everybody's running Windows.
[50:44.370 --> 50:50.830]  People are slowly migrating to Linux, but, you know, Windows is sort of what everybody runs.
[50:51.150 --> 50:53.050]  I guess I'm running out of time here.
[50:54.150 --> 51:02.330]  I have a couple of sort of suggestions that people have told me in terms of types of technology that they'd like to see be implemented.
[51:02.730 --> 51:10.690]  In addition to knowledge transfer and training and things like that, is one, requirements that projects sort of have a firm commitment to support.
[51:10.850 --> 51:17.210]  Because groups, a lot of times people will go over there, install stuff, teach them how to use it, but then there's no support over time.
[51:17.790 --> 51:27.710]  The other thing is things like remote backup systems that are really easy to run because now that groups are becoming part of the WTO, and as part of that, they have to crack down on piracy.
[51:27.910 --> 51:35.610]  They use that as an excuse to go and seize computers of NGOs because most people aren't using legitimate versions of Windows.
[51:35.910 --> 51:36.450]  Oh, my God.
[51:37.090 --> 51:40.410]  And so they use that as an excuse to seize their boxes.
[51:40.670 --> 51:46.030]  And so at the very least, they'd like to have their data stored somewhere else so they can at least recover from it.
[51:47.070 --> 51:47.650]  I don't know.
[51:47.730 --> 52:01.230]  A lot of really simple ideas like that, the main point is to put a really user-friendly interface on them so that people don't have to be too inconvenienced because if it's too much inconvenience to use security, a lot of times they just won't.
[52:02.530 --> 52:07.370]  So that's my sort of thing that I like to get across to everybody, is that it's more than just development.
[52:07.370 --> 52:10.630]  We actually have to start developing these human relationships with people.
[52:10.990 --> 52:11.230]  Thanks.
[52:21.860 --> 52:26.900]  I'd like to thank two groups of people, our panelists, and especially you guys.
[52:27.060 --> 52:28.060]  This is a long presentation.
[52:28.700 --> 52:29.440]  You're all very hearty.
[52:29.540 --> 52:30.320]  Thanks for sticking around.
[52:30.520 --> 52:32.040]  I just want to check how much time we have.
[52:32.260 --> 52:33.100]  About five minutes?
[52:33.480 --> 52:34.340]  About two and a half.
[52:35.460 --> 52:35.940]  Okay.
[52:37.540 --> 52:42.520]  We have a shorter Q&A than we would like, but I'm sure some people have questions.
[52:42.760 --> 52:43.840]  Microphone is up here.
[52:52.570 --> 52:53.050]  Hi.
[52:53.490 --> 53:02.850]  One figure that stuck with me during particularly your presentation was the 200,000 people forced into labor without any kind of trial or anything like that.
[53:03.030 --> 53:07.370]  Is that indicative of latent revolution bubbling up to the surface?
[53:07.410 --> 53:15.170]  Or is that more, do you get the feeling of abuse by local officials, of somebody torqued off the local magistrate and got themselves tossed for that?
[53:17.350 --> 53:18.130]  Do I need this?
[53:19.670 --> 53:20.170]  Is this on?
[53:20.350 --> 53:20.750]  Is this on?
[53:20.930 --> 53:21.050]  Yeah.
[53:22.510 --> 53:27.230]  There are a range of different reasons why people are put into re-education through labor.
[53:28.510 --> 53:32.210]  They could be dissidents because they need to be re-educated.
[53:32.570 --> 53:35.050]  They could be people who have pissed off locals, all of the above.
[53:35.550 --> 53:41.550]  One of the things that's a problem with our trying to investigate that is it's very hard to get information.
[53:42.190 --> 53:44.690]  And that underscores why it's very hard for us to do the work.
[53:44.910 --> 53:50.390]  But what we also see is that there is a percentage of those people that are treated particularly harshly.
[53:50.550 --> 53:53.030]  And that's, quote, political-related crimes.
[53:53.230 --> 53:58.670]  So if you're, you know, an organizer of an independent democratic party, you know, those people are going to get treated much more harshly.
[53:58.750 --> 54:12.730]  And then I think recently, not only in the RTL camps, they've also been put into psychiatric hospitals, and Kong, where they're really subject to really, you know, really torture and very bad things because there's something wrong, they think, with them and they're trying to just sort of wash their brain,
[54:12.950 --> 54:13.090]  yeah.
[54:17.420 --> 54:21.040]  I had a question about the great firewall of China.
[54:21.680 --> 54:24.620]  The current attempts to bypass that.
[54:24.900 --> 54:27.060]  Do you think there's a certain amount of...
[54:27.060 --> 54:35.180]  Like, obviously, the more that it's attempted to bypass, and if it actually works, then the Chinese will update it so that it stops working, assumedly.
[54:36.000 --> 54:42.840]  Is there a certain amount of time that you think that it would have to be essentially useless for them to just take it down?
[54:42.840 --> 54:47.660]  Or would there just have to be massive political change in the country before that would be taken down?
[54:48.340 --> 54:50.700]  I'm going to also ask Bill Shah to weigh in on this.
[54:50.780 --> 54:55.040]  But I think from our perspective, from the activist perspective, I think there's been a shift.
[54:55.200 --> 54:56.340]  And the shift has been...
[54:56.340 --> 55:07.700]  Although you're using, and we're still using the word, the great firewall, I think the shift in strategy within China is from blocking the strategy to filtration and monitoring and surveillance.
[55:07.700 --> 55:16.480]  And you can see that trend in the new SNM software that's now filtering SMS messages like 100 million a year.
[55:16.720 --> 55:19.560]  And they actually can store the sender and everything.
[55:19.700 --> 55:28.780]  So I think the shift has been to not just stop, but to actually let people know that it's being monitored for content.
[55:28.980 --> 55:30.880]  And I think that has a real ripple effect.
[55:30.880 --> 55:39.820]  So I think that's even more effective to not just stop, but to let people know what you send and what you received is being monitored, which is much more effective.
[55:43.820 --> 55:49.380]  I found this just fascinating, and I really appreciate all the speakers.
[55:49.620 --> 55:57.520]  I just had a question more on, let's say, spam, which I think a lot of people do want to eliminate from their lives.
[55:57.520 --> 56:10.580]  But from what I'm hearing here, to do that is going to have a significant impact because you have to eliminate the anonymity of the sender.
[56:10.680 --> 56:13.020]  And that's to eliminate the spam is my understanding.
[56:13.140 --> 56:23.740]  So I guess I would just like somebody's thoughts on how do we accomplish both goals to eliminate the spam but still try to keep things open for things like these human rights.
[56:26.300 --> 56:28.920]  Mark would be a perfect person to answer this.
[56:32.490 --> 56:46.910]  Well, I mean, some of the testing that I've been doing with email accounts in China, basically spam filters at some of the email providers there are configured to block political messages.
[56:47.270 --> 56:51.210]  So spam filtering technology is being used for that purpose.
[56:52.430 --> 57:01.490]  But in terms of just blocking spam in general, I mean, most sysadmints set up, you know, spam assassin or whatever.
[57:01.730 --> 57:06.210]  I mean, I don't really see how that affects things at a national level.
[57:12.250 --> 57:33.470]  I would like to just add that dealing with this kind of issues, maybe like when it comes to censorship, why do we always go to the level of let's say block it and we are willing to give away our rights because there is some annoyance coming from the marketers.
[57:34.110 --> 57:41.450]  Why not we use the same mechanism which has encouraged because the spam has a very strong connection with the way the marketing concept have developed.
[57:42.330 --> 57:48.210]  So instead of dealing with that to a level of like, the first thing we do is sacrifice our civil liberty because we are annoyed.
[57:48.810 --> 57:58.110]  Instead of going to a solution, it's like market-based solution is being promoted all through in terms of getting all targeted marketing and everything.
[57:58.610 --> 58:07.250]  So if we apply that principle to deal with the spam, that if it is being discouraged so much, the consumers stop buying on anything which has come by spam.
[58:07.710 --> 58:16.810]  And the way we have encouraged and allowed even the direct marketing to continue to go on challenge, it has got extended into electronic form in terms of a spam.
[58:17.250 --> 58:24.390]  I think that may be a better way to even start thinking about it rather than just letting our anonymity go because we want to deal with the spam.
[58:31.540 --> 58:32.540]  Thanks very much.
[58:33.100 --> 58:35.920]  I am sure a few people might have some more questions.
[58:35.920 --> 58:41.260]  I think these guys maybe have a few minutes outside or wherever.
[58:41.500 --> 58:42.840]  And thanks very much for coming.
[58:52.240 --> 58:53.680]  Coming up next we have...
[58:53.680 --> 58:53.860]  We're gonna turn...
[58:53.860 --> 58:54.140]  We've got...