SPEAKER

TC IN

TC OUT

TEXT

DANIEL LEGAULT

10:00:13:17

10:00:28:22

Welcome to Metro-Optic, one of Montreal's main telecom centres, which is a well-kept secret... ...a major Internet data centre serving the province and part of Canada.

DANIEL LEGAULT

10:00:31:19

10:00:43:16

This room is located beneath train tracks in the bowels of Montreal. About 75% of Internet traffic travels through here.

DANIEL LEGAULT

10:00:46:18

10:00:59:07

Here we have "more private" clients, as it were, with their own exclusive room, who wouldn't want it filmed. So we'll move on.

DIRECTOR

10:00:59:10

10:01:03:14

- Who are they? A government agency? You can't say?

DANIEL LEGAULT

10:01:03:17

10:01:08:05

- They... Yeah. It's very private.

NARRATOR

10:01:08:08

10:01:35:18

- Privacy, today, no longer exists. Take a look behind the scenes of the internet, and you’ll see a great surveillance engine, which is continuously amalgamating billions of data points on all of us.

NARRATOR

10:01:35:19

10:01:45:02

Surveillance today is no longer solely the business of States. The web, in its totality, is today driven by the collection of personal data.

NARRATOR

10:01:48:22

10:02:01:04

Web giants, like Google and Facebook, they know everything about you. Your travels, your friends, your chronic illnesses, your financial situation, your political opinions, your sexual preferences, all your little secrets.

NARRATOR

10:02:01:07

10:02:10:07

And just think about all of these other highly sophisticated services that you can use for free. They are fighting to get access to your data.

NARRATOR

10:02:10:10

10:02:26:05

But the internet today also includes your televisions, which are now connected, your smart speakers like Alexa, who are listening in on you every second of the day, your new vacuum cleaner, which is mapping out your home, your child’s Hello Barbie doll, which is recording her voice somewhere up in the “cloud”.

NARRATOR

10:02:26:08

10:02:35:06

Wherever you go, whatever you do, you’ve become a generator of data. Data stored who knows where and used who knows how.

NARRATOR

10:02:35:09

10:02:45:11

And all of this data, is it secure? Every month, a new company gets hacked, leaking all of your personal information, which then becomes available to the highest bidder.

NARRATOR

10:02:45:14

10:03:02:11

Bell Canada, 2017, 1.9 million leaked accounts. Ashley Madison, 2015, 10 million accounts. LinkedIn, 2016, 117 million leaked accounts. Equifax, 2017, 143 million accounts. Yahoo, 2013, 3 billion accounts.

NARRATOR

10:03:02:13

10:03:07:03

No one can guarantee that your personal data is safe.

NARRATOR

10:03:14:06

10:03:29:08

But there is still some hope for privacy. And hackers are the ones showing us the way. The internet is their playground. We must listen to them, so they can help us imagine an internet free from surveillance.

JEAN-PHILIPPE DÉCARIE-MATHIEU

10:03:44:11

10:03:57:07

- Of course... the hoodie's a classic. So trite, huh? Anonymous mask, a series of ones and zeros, numbers, hexadecimals.

JEAN-PHILIPPE DÉCARIE-MATHIEU

10:03:57:08

10:04:12:07

That's often considered a bad thing, a crime, that kind of thing. Not so. There's more to it. There are different kinds of hackers. Some do it for the money, some do it professionally, some do it for fun, some work for the government.

JEAN-PHILIPPE DÉCARIE-MATHIEU

10:04:12:08

10:04:23:04

There's no such thing as a typical hacker, because there are different kinds. Hackers seen in the movies are just one type. It's important to make a distinction.

NARRATOR

10:04:35:03

10:04:44:22

- Hackers form a global community. They get together during large and festive gatherings, where the topic of surveillance and privacy is on everyone's mind.

STEVEN RAMBAM

10:04:52:02

10:05:43:08

- First of all, I’d like to welcome you all to New York. I want you all to feel comfortable. I want to ease your mind. You are constantly being protected. First of all, we have thousands of surveillance cameras. They’re only for your safety, only for your safety. There are right now 11,000 cameras and growing. In the city, in the city, there’s about 700,000 cameras. 11,000 of them are linked in to law enforcement now. Not only do these cameras go out 24/7, 365, and film license plates, 60,000 per hour, 60,000 per hour, but they keep the data, they share the data with other companies like Vigilant, which we’re going to talk about. So far, New York has a buffer of four years. So if you forget where you parked your car, not a problem, we can help you out.

STEVEN RAMBAM

10:05:43:11

10:06:24:07

Privacy is really dead. Privacy... there’s almost no point talking about it. You know. So when I see people sharing their whole lives on Facebook and on Google and posting a gazillion photos and putting up 12 year-old kids photos that I would never get any other way and that sort of thing, you know, my feeling is "thank you, I appreciate it". You know, you’ve done me a big favor as an investigator. On the other hand, as a citizen, this... this non-stop oversharing of data creeps me out. You’ve surrendered that information, you can’t get it back. You can’t put the genie back in the lamp.

CYBORG MAN

10:06:34:05

10:06:41:23

- This is a custom wearable computer. It now appears like basically there’s an iPad floating a couple feet in front of me.

PRIVORO

10:06:43:03

10:07:32:16

- You have trends that are going off there, like Facebook Messenger and Amazon Alexa, that are listening in to everything that they have to say. So we’ve gone off and we've created a solution that securely jams all of your microphones and your cameras inside of your phone so that your phone is not going to be used as a digital eavesdropping device in the world today. “Hey, how are you doing?”, you can do this or it’s “Smile, take a selfie ” or “Hey Google, make us dinner reservations”. When it goes down from here, it securely jams each one of the microphones in here to a level that’s never been seen before, that no one will be able to listen in to your phone whatsoever. And then we also have a cover over here that allows you to be able to do, hum... It’s a Faraday bag or a Faraday cage, so when you slide this over, this blocks your cell phone, so you can be underneath a cell phone tower, right next to a Wi-Fi hotspot, etc. you are invisible to the world that is out there.

GABRIELLA COLEMAN

10:07:44:08

10:08:04:23

- Groups were hacking into NATO, they were telling the FBI every week to fuck off. Hum... exactly! And, you know, I... I actually, during this period, was having nightmares that the FBI was going to visit me as someone who studied them, right?

GABRIELLA COLEMAN

10:08:05:03

10:08:29:12

There’s very different types of hackers. There are those precisely who break into systems to improve systems. There are those who want to write free- and open-source software. There are those who are into making hardware. And then there’s a group of them who are really involved in the fight against surveillance and for privacy.

GABRIELLA COLEMAN

10:08:29:14

10:08:59:02

One of the reasons why a lot of hackers are aware of these issues is precisely because they know how easy it is to surveil people. Hackers get together at events such as Hackers On Planet Earth, the Chaos Computer Club Conference, and they give impassioned speeches about the importance of privacy and fighting surveillance.

RICHARD STALLMAN

10:08:59:05

10:09:12:11

- We need heroes like Edward Snowden. Three cheers for Edward Snowden! Hip hip hurray! Hip hip hurray! Hip hip hurray!

RICHARD STALLMAN

10:09:16:07

10:09:48:05

I believe that it’s fundamentally inadequate as a solution to restrict the use of the data once accumulated. The data will be misused. It will be misused officially, because our government’s rules for using it have such loopholes that it can get away with doing anything it wants. We need to do more than limit the use of these databases, we need to prevent them from being made.

RICHARD STALLMAN

10:09:48:08

10:10:17:19

The level of surveillance imposed on us today is more than in the former Soviet Union. It’s so much that there is little room for dissent or for whistleblowers. And that puts democracy in danger. We have to reduce the overall general level of surveillance to the point where the State doesn’t know where each person goes, and the State doesn’t know who talks with whom.

RICHARD STALLMAN

10:10:18:16

10:11:19:20

I will never use Uber unless it’s fundamentally changed. It snoops on people. Which means Uber keeps tracks of who goes where. This should be illegal. Because it’s too threatening to fundamental freedoms that are needed for democracy. So companies like Uber should be told either allow people to get rides anonymously and pay with cash and not have to use any device that tracks them or shut down. You’re gone. Because when it comes to something as important as maintaining our democracy, we need a stronger defense than just saying that companies have to ask users to give up their freedom. Getting the user’s consent for treating users in a way that threatens democracy does not excuse it, does not make it legitimate.

DIRECTOR

10:11:19:23

10:11:22:05

- And do you yourself consider... yourself a hacker?

RICHARD STALLMAN

10:11:22:08

10:11:46:12

- Of course. I enjoy playful cleverness. That’s what it means to be a hacker. To enjoy playful cleverness. Everybody’s first hack is trying to walk the wrong way on the escalator. Because you’ve got a system that was designed to be used one way and you’re trying to make it do something different, which it wasn’t designed for. That’s the hacker spirit.

JEAN-PHILIPPE DÉCARIE-MATHIEU

10:12:05:21

10:12:27:12

- The pessimist in me thinks the battle has been lost for some time. The mere fact that everyone carries a cellphone, the optimal surveillance device beyond George Orwell's wildest dreams when trying to imagine an omniscient panopticon. This is also fuelled by social media. I do it, too. Everyone does.

JEAN-PHILIPPE DÉCARIE-MATHIEU

10:12:27:15

10:12:54:06

Anything that can be monitored is monitored, as well as monetized. And the prevailing business model for all high-tech companies now is the selling of personal information. It remains a cash cow for these companies. And all this is based on data collection, mass surveillance, and the slow but steady erosion of privacy.

JEAN-PHILIPPE DÉCARIE-MATHIEU

10:12:54:09

10:13:15:21

It's an Orwellian nightmare of sorts. And I think I can help in that regard, through Crypto.Québec, what we produce, with our podcast, articles, training, and what we say to the media. These matters affect everyone, though people may not realize it. They affect everyone, so this must be addressed.

GENEVIÈVE LAJEUNESSE

10:13:15:23

10:13:22:05

- Welcome to the 37th edition of Crypto.Quebec's Watchdogs podcast. Hosted by Geneviève Lajeunesse.

10:13:22:08

10:13:25:21

- Luc Lefebvre.

- Jean-Philippe Décarie-Mathieu.

- And Sophie Thériault.

GENEVIÈVE LAJEUNESSE

10:13:25:23

10:13:45:04

- We have a lot to talk about today. I simply wanted to look back on a little trip we made last week - myself, Jean-Philippe and Luc - to the nation's capital, Ottawa. We visited CSIS and CSE headquarters. Just to check them out.

- JEAN-PHILLIPE DÉCARIE-MATHIEU

- LUC LEFEBVRE

10:13:45:06

10:13:48:15

- From outside.

- Well, you tried.

JEAN-PHILLIPE DÉCARIE-MATHIEU

10:13:48:18

10:13:50:06

- Can you see the building back there?

GENEVIÈVE LAJEUNESSE

10:13:54:22

10:14:10:23

- Kinda. I really didn't expect to see Canada's cyber elite across from Loblaws. For real, it's... Imagine... Like, a huge, magical airport next to the Quartier DIX30. It's kind of like that.

JEAN-PHILIPPE DÉCARIE-MATHIEU

10:14:11:03

10:14:12:21

- That's exactly it.

- It’s...

- JEAN-PHILIPPE DÉCARIE-MATHIEU

- GENEVIÈVE LAJEUNESSE

- LUC LEFEBVRE

10:14:12:23

10:14:16:21

- With nice bay windows...

- It's awesome.

- Bay windows?

JEAN-PHILIPPE DÉCARIE-MATHIEU

10:14:16:23

10:14:20:01

- Of course. They're all about transparency.

GENEVIÈVE LAJEUNESSE

10:14:20:03

10:14:34:14

- There they are. Those who must be stopped. Those who track your aunt's metadata when she goes jogging, because she happens to be related to a person of interest. They work there.

JEAN-PHILIPPE DÉCARIE-MATHIEU

10:14:34:14

10:14:48:16

- That's it. I would tell an ordinary citizen that they're the cyber strong arm of the government. To work there is to be part of the problem, really. Because they're really knee-deep in the global surveillance network.

GENEVIÈVE LAJEUNESSE

10:14:48:19

10:14:51:20

- I wonder what happens when we reach the no-filming zone.

JEAN-PHILIPPE DÉCARIE-MATHIEU

10:14:51:23

10:14:58:07

- If we don't go beyond the sign, we should be okay. But we will in about eight seconds.

- GENEVIÈVE LAJEUNESSE

- JEAN-PHILIPPE DÉCARIE-MATHIEU

10:14:58:10

10:15:02:20

- There you go. "Breakin' the law."

- Story of my life.

DIRECTOR OF PHOTO

10:15:03:00

10:15:05:04

- Wait.

CST AGENT

10:15:08:02

10:15:10:15

- You didn’t film me did you? Just wondering.

DIRECTOR OF PHOTO

10:15:10:18

10:15:12:15

- No, no, I didn’t film you.

NARRATOR

10:15:16:07

10:15:38:07

- It’s no surprise that we’re not allowed to film our Canadian NSA. What is surprising, however, is the fact that this building is the priciest piece of public architecture in the history of Canada. It cost us 1.2 billion dollars. This confirms that internet surveillance does not only concern the United States and its NSA.

LEX GILL

10:15:38:10

10:16:19:06

- Intelligence agencies, like CSIS and the CSE, have far more permissive powers to engage in surveillance. And part of the problem with how those agencies operate is that a lot of not only their activities but also the legal frameworks which authorize those activities exist in secret. There is a track record of abuse and misconduct of these types of powers, of overreach and of interference with the democratic process and with, you know, lawful advocacy organizations that I think is well evidenced. Right? There is really clear material around that. I mean, we also have recently seen cases in Quebec where there was government surveillance of journalists.

NARRATOR

10:16:19:09

10:16:39:06

- Here, we are referring to the surveillance of journalist Patrick Lagacé as well as at least 9 other journalists who were placed under surveillance by the Montreal Police as well as the Québec provincial police. But this is just one out of many examples that show how intelligence and law enforcement agencies frequently abuse their cyber-surveillance powers.

NARRATOR

10:16:39:09

10:16:58:16

Through the Snowden Revelations, we also learned of the existence of numerous mass surveillance programs in Canada, set up by our intelligence agencies, with little to no legislative oversight. In 2017, the Trudeau government introduced Bill C-59, supposed to better regulate the powers of these agencies. But for the critics, this was unconvincing.

LEX GILL

10:16:58:19

10:17:42:23

- The problem is that the framework they’ve set up is profoundly permissive. Right? So I’ll give you one example. There are frameworks that allow for the capture of what the government has called "publicly available information" or "publicly available data". And the definition of that is effectively any data that could be accessed publicly in any manner at all, or can be purchased. Right? So if you could imagine every possible bit of data that could be known or purchased about you that is in some way justifiably public, you know, whether that’s something that you put on Facebook or something that you said in a radio interview 20 years ago or, you know, the path you walk to school 'cause there’s neighbourhood surveillance cameras everywhere. You know, this starts to get deeply, deeply invasive.

NARRATOR

10:17:45:20

10:18:03:19

- Another chapter can be added to this list: "IMSI Catchers". These devices can intercept data from your mobile phones, and in April 2017, it was reported that at least 8 IMSI Catchers were operating in Ottawa. The RCMP later admitted it was using IMSI Catchers all across the country.

NARRATOR

10:18:03:22

10:18:17:14

An IMSI Catcher is a small box that mimics a cell phone antenna. Your phone connects to it automatically and allows the IMSI Catcher to intercept your phone’s unique identifier, or the IMSI, for "International Mobile Subscriber Identity".

NARRATOR

10:18:20:05

10:18:24:01

Some IMSIs can also intercept calls and text messages.

LEX GILL

10:18:24:04

10:18:50:01

- IMSI Catchers are tremendously invasive mass surveillance tools, but they are a tiny, tiny fraction of the range of technologies available to an agency like CSE. And I think that we need to put that in context. So if your question is “How can I be surveyed in the world?”, my answer to that is “Use your imagination”. You know?

GENEVIÈVE LAJEUNESSE

10:19:06:20

10:19:20:13

- The reason we came to the march against police brutality was to see what kind of surveillance was conducted on protesters. Would surveillance methods be more conventional, more technological?

GENEVIÈVE LAJEUNESSE

10:19:22:20

10:19:30:19

So the CryptoPhone is the device that was used in Ottawa when IMSI-Catchers were found. Same device.

GENEVIÈVE LAJEUNESSE

10:19:34:15

10:19:42:17

I think it's highly likely the Montreal Police uses this type of equipment. Here too, I'd wager.

RECORDED POLICE MESSAGE

10:19:45:07

10:20:06:19

- This is a warning from the Montreal Police Department. Some protesters persist in breaking the law. Due to offences committed, protesters are ordered to disperse and leave the scene. Otherwise, we will be forced to step in.

GENEVIÈVE LAJEUNESSE

10:20:06:22

10:20:21:01

- I'm opposed to the use of IMSI-Catchers, because it not only affects the targeted individual, but everyone within range of the IMSI-Catcher. So everyone around can be overheard, can be tracked down here.

GENEVIÈVE LAJEUNESSE

10:20:22:09

10:20:30:09

There isn't much to see, the readings are not showing anything abnormal.

GENEVIÈVE LAJEUNESSE

10:20:30:12

10:20:46:06

Seems IMSI-Catchers weren't used tonight. For years, the police denied using them. So they were being manufactured and sold, but to no one.

PROTESTOR

10:20:45:03

10:20:47:19

- They caught me and took my cell!

GENEVIÈVE LAJEUNESSE

10:20:47:22

10:20:49:03

- Interesting.

NARRATOR

10:20:57:04

10:21:04:20

- The Montreal hacker scene is alive and well. Montréal is becoming an important node in the global hacker network.

NARRATOR

10:21:09:23

10:21:26:16

Each year, over 400 hackers gather in Montreal to participate in the largest on-site hacking competition in North America: NSEC. The goal is simple: score points by solving challenges and bypassing security systems and obstacles.

TEAM HACK TOUTE

10:21:31:06

10:21:48:01

The scenario is a thinly veiled parody of North Korea, I guess. Elections are being held in the fictional kingdom of Rao. It's rather unclear. Seems we can either help the regime or the rebels. Now, we're helping everyone to get more points.

GABRIEL TREMBLAY

10:21:52:04

10:22:01:08

- Rao is basically a fictional character. People will think he's North Korean, but he's really based on Mao, so more Chinese.

VOLUNTEER NSEC

10:22:01:11

10:22:09:15

- Everyone okay? What you working on? Ah, nice! Nice challenge.

GERMAN TEAM

10:22:09:18

10:22:14:18

- You brute-forced here?

- Six points!

- Yes!

GABRIEL TREMBLAY

10:22:14:21

10:22:48:09

- NorthSec is a somewhat elitist organization. Since the event was launched, we're the first to question people's abilities. They should hone their skills to help, because cybersecurity is about helping people. 30 to 40 % of our challenges are won by all teams. So about 60% of them go... unsolved by the end of the weekend competition. So people come here because they know they're really gonna bust their humps. They'll really challenge themselves. And it's nonstop.

- NSEC VOLUNTEER

- PARTICIPANT

10:22:48:12

10:22:51:07

- All hail Rao.

- All hail Rao.

- NSEC VOLUNTEER

- PARTICIPANT

10:22:52:08

10:22:56:18

- We can only vote once.

- Yes. All hail Rao.

GABRIEL TREMBLAY

10:22:59:18

10:23:12:12

- I think most people with NorthSec are against the idea of mass surveillance. Essentially, it's problematic, giving so much information to people who have no business having it.

GABRIEL TREMBLAY

10:23:16:16

10:24:12:03

I was what's known as a penetration tester, a professional hacker, in the banking world, for several years. When you work in this field, in cybersecurity, you realize that every scrap of information is a key. The more keys you have, the more powerful you are. And if this information is misused, mishandled, it can become a weapon for many people. So, of course, most cybersecurity experts are troubled by mass surveillance, because they know the stakes. Why do it when it's probably pointless? Surveillance as well as intelligence agencies already exist. In Canada, we have one with a relatively decent reputation. Why do they need more information? Is it because they're... ... caught short? Or are they simply really lazy? Maybe they’re lazy.

NARRATOR

10:24:26:13

10:24:38:04

- The Montreal hacker scene also includes groups like Subgraph and Peerio, who develop internationally renowned applications and platforms, which aim to protect their users from surveillance and data collection.

MATTHIEU LALONDE

10:24:38:08

10:24:46:05

- Subgraph is a Linux-based operating system designed to thwart malicious attacks.

FLORENCIA HERRA-VEGA

10:24:46:07

10:25:06:03

- Peerio aims to provide easy-to-use beautiful end-to-end encrypted communication and collaboration tools for teams. Our goal is really to be sort of a suite and a whole environment of tools that teams and organizations can use in order to secure their work.

MATTHIEU LALONDE

10:25:06:06

10:25:17:23

- There are two kinds of surveillance: Mass surveillance, dragnets; and targeted surveillance. We try to prevent targeted surveillance.

FLORENCIA HERRA-VEGA

10:25:18:03

10:25:35:11

- If you’re a journalist, if you’re a lawyer, if you’re a therapist and you have all this communication that’s highly confidential, we try to make sure that communications that are understood to be private between parties are actually private and they’re private from us.

MATTHIEU LALONDE

10:25:35:14

10:25:56:12

- There's very little privacy. Even people who are very... shrewd about their Internet usage, their use of technology, even they have very little privacy. Among other things, even if they're careful, someone they know is posting information about them without their knowledge.

FLORENCIA HERRA-VEGA

10:25:56:15

10:26:18:22

- Platforms that were meant to provide some kind of joy and value for users are being monetized in a way that’s almost adversarial to the users that are actually using it. Right? Your user, who you thought was going to be your customer, suddenly became your product. I find that quite tragic.

NARRATOR

10:26:23:08

10:26:33:16

- As elsewhere, the Montreal hacker scene was born in the 1980s and gave rise to several hacks that became legendary. Rob Masse comes from this period.

ROB MASSE

10:26:38:16

10:28:03:01

- So I started in computers when I was five, on an Apple II Plus. And I started telecommunications and understanding how phone systems work when I was about nine. There’s no necessarily rules at that time about how to use computers and how to leverage computers. And you know, my main goal, when I was nine was, “How do I download video games, for free?” The first component, at that age, when I was nine, was phone phreaking. Back then, there was no internet, but there were other types of networks, of interconnected systems, and we would use the phone phreaking to kind of get into those networks and then leverage that. A lot of the video games I would play, like Dungeons and Dragons, at the time it was Ultima. And in those games, the goal is to kind of, you know, explore the land and then you’d get into castles and take gold and fight dragons. So that’s the video game right. It’s important to understand that context. In the hacking world at that time, you would connect to the X25 and network datapack and you’d be able to go into castles and take information and leverage that information. So for me, it was a question of just, you know, hacking into systems just for fun. There was never any malicious intent. It was just a question of learning. I started going into systems around the world. It just happened to upset a lot of people.

NARRATOR

10:28:03:04

10:28:17:05

- At the age of 15, Rob Masse connected to a State network belonging to the Soviet Union. The year was 1989. The Cold War was still ongoing. The RCMP quickly took notice of this hack.

ROB MASSE

10:28:17:08

10:28:46:02

- So, when I was in grade 10, 15 years old, RCMP came to my house, did a full raid and then after that, I had to kinda work with law enforcement, ultimately over that year. I would go to the Ottawa police college, the RCMP would sponsor me, other law enforcement agencies from around the world would come just to listen to me speak. Like, “Hey, we caught this hacker, come see the hacker and he’ll tell you all about what goes on in the hack world.”

DIRECTOR

10:28:46:04

10:28:49:03

- Did you work for the intelligence agencies after that?

ROB MASSE

10:28:49:07

10:28:57:15

- You know, I’ve been engaged by various people to help them. So that’s the answer.

NARRATOR

10:29:00:23

10:29:13:05

- Today, Rob Masse is a professional hacker, working to compromise systems and individuals. The traces we leave of ourselves on the internet have become one of the main resources he can leverage.

ROB MASSE

10:29:16:17

10:30:03:09

- I would say the two main components of my background, personally, is on the incident response side as well as what we call offensive cyber-security. So breaking into things. And we have a 100% success ratio. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s necessarily because we’re that great. I just think that many of the organizations right now have the same challenges, on the business side and on the security side. And you know, we’re kind of losing the war on cyber-security right now. My personal opinion on privacy is that there’s almost none. If you are using social media or any of those other services where you’re not a paying customer, you’re not the client or the customer, you’re the product. And as such, you’ve traded your personal data for that usage.

NARRATOR

10:30:08:11

10:30:25:12

- To break free from surveillance, hackers try to regain control over computing and democratize it. In hackerspaces, they dismantle and dismember everything they can to better understand computer systems. Here, the motto is “Program or be programmed”.

DANUKERU

10:30:40:23

10:31:11:12

- Foulab is a hackerspace. It's really a collective that offers its members resources, and, above all, know-how. So human capital... ...in terms of knowledge, for the sharing of ideas and techniques. In hacker culture, access to information is fundamental, in order to understand a system. I call it an open-source think-tank.

MATTHIEU LALONDE

10:31:14:08

10:31:55:14

- Now we'll rid this computer... ...of its malicious piece of software. The computer comes with software, which users are usually unaware of, installed by the supplier. For example, the NSA and ThinkPad could have conspired to install software to access the computer remotely. So we'll replace this with open-source software to ensure there's no backdoor, or to simply make changes and change the computer's features.

NARRATOR

10:31:58:10

10:32:39:11

- A "backdoor" is a point of entry, unknown by the user, that provides secret access to a computer system to the person who has the key. Here, Matthieu knows that a backdoor is present in a component of his ThinkPad, the BIOS. The BIOS is the first set of functions that the computer performs at startup. A backdoor in the BIOS would give full access to the computer to the key holder. Several people could leverage this backdoor: IBM, that produces the ThinkPad, Intel, that produces the BIOS, the company that bought all of the ThinkPads for its employees, the NSA or CSE, or malicious hackers, who are easily able to exploit this vulnerability.

MATTHIEU LALONDE

10:32:41:01

10:33:23:04

- There. I have a copy of the previous BIOS, so I could configure a new one here. So I'll get OpenBIOS or Coreboot. I need to know the ins and outs of a computer, because I can't... BIOS is at the core of a computer. It controls... all functions. So if we don't know how it works and can't guarantee its operation, we can't guarantee the computer's integrity. So you can have the most secure operating system ever, but if the BIOS isn't secure, unfortunately, the rest won't be either.

MATTHIEU LALONDE

10:33:40:02

10:33:45:01

- Let me know if you need help.

NARRATOR

10:33:46:03

10:33:55:18

- DIY, "do it yourself". This often means that things won’t go exactly as planned. Hackers have become the masters of trial and error.

- DANUKERU

- MATTHIEU LALONDE

10:33:59:18

10:34:06:07

- Yeah, Mathieu... If you could... hold it.

- Need help?

- Yeah. Thanks.

NARRATOR

10:34:13:11

10:34:22:02

- Danukeru is building a drone. From top to bottom. If he can get his drone to fly, he'll use it to perform security experiments.

DANUKERU

10:34:22:21

10:34:53:12

- It'd be fun - it's been done before - to crack WiFi networks from above. So build a drone that flies over and cracks WiFi networks. Another thing would be, just to prove it can be done, to use an aerial cellphone surveillance device, like that used by the police, known as a StingRay. Essentially, we do this to detect critical flaws in the infrastructure. That's why most people would do this.

NARRATOR

10:34:53:14

10:35:12:17

- If he is able, alone and with his limited resources, to compromise residential Wi-Fi routers, using a drone pieced together with styrofoam, it’s because there are important security flaws in our infrastructures. We need hackers to seek out and find these flaws that threaten our privacy, so they can be quickly patched.

DANUKERU

10:35:12:20

10:35:45:10

- The issue of what society considers private and public will define our generation. What really worries me is when neighbours start pointing fingers. We may well eventually reach the point where someone could download a program as powerful as a military weapon and use it against their neighbour. Against their spouse, even. That's what worries me most.

MATTHIEU

10:35:59:08

10:36:04:19

- 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, ground.

NARRATOR

10:36:04:22

10:36:55:11

- Réseau Libre is a group trying to re-build the internet, one antenna at a time. This is called a mesh network. Someone who puts up an antenna can connect with the other antennas nearby. These users can connect whatever they want to their antennas: a hard drive, a local internet site or other services. And all of this without the need for an internet service provider or for costly fiber-optic cables. Simply by connecting people directly to one another. Each antenna acts as a relay. A person can connect to another, more distant person, by tracing a route through all of the antennas. As it grows, the mesh network can cover an entire city or even an entire region, as is the case with the Guifi.net mesh network in Spain, which is now 35,000 antennas strong. We could call this a local, grassroots and totally distributed network.

ANTOINE BEAUPRÉ

10:37:00:02

10:37:15:14

- A mesh is a distributed network. The idea is to have rooftop antennas to create a network alongside commercial Internet service and connect homes directly. Like, connect neighbours together.

- FENWICK MCKELVEY

- MATTHIEU LALONDE

10:37:15:17

10:37:20:15

- So you can just buy metal bands that go around.

- Yeah, at some point.

FENWICK MCKELVEY

10:37:20:18

10:37:29:15

- I mean it wouldn’t be hard to get back up on the roof and do that. Just so you can have a clear conscience that this is not a permanent solution.

ANTOINE BEAUPRÉ

10:37:29:18

10:37:54:01

- I'm kind of discouraged. Honestly. People must change their mentality, but they seem unwilling. They want "ubiquitous computing." They're willing to be monitored by Amazon 24/7 at home through a device, which they can order from at the push of a button. They use Gmail; Google knows their every move, their location, everything.

- MATTHIEU LALONDE

- ANTOINE BEAUPRÉ

10:37:54:04

10:38:01:01

- What they think.

- Same with Facebook. They're dominated by computer technology, unwittingly. Even when they know, it's: "I can't do anything about it."

ANTOINE BEAUPRÉ

10:38:01:03

10:38:04:19

So! Done!

ANTOINE BEAUPRÉ

10:38:04:22

10:38:08:02

Isn't that fucking beautiful?

- FENWICK MCKELVEY

- ANTOINE BEAUPRÉ

- FENWICK MCKELVEY

10:38:08:06

10:38:14:10

- Yeah, like I said, I gotta...

- There is a plan... there is a phase 2.

- There is a phase 2 here, yeah. Yeah.

ANTOINE BEAUPRÉ

10:38:14:12

10:38:19:08

- Basically, it's a lot easier to monitor everyone when they're in the same room.

MATTHIEU LALONDE

10:38:19:11

10:38:22:21

- We're gonna run about 10 feet of cable down.

ANTOINE BEAUPRÉ

10:38:23:00

10:38:42:07

- Google, Facebook and the like centralize information, making surveillance easier. If services are distributed, it's more difficult for a hostile party - be it the government or "black hats" - to spy on you.

MATTHIEU LALONDE

10:38:39:09

10:38:53:16

- It doesn't prevent targeted surveillance of a particular individual, or even a group, but it makes dragnet surveillance a lot more complicated. Monitoring everyone at once, then targeting someone in particular.

- ANTOINE BEAUPRÉ

- MATTHIEU LALONDE

10:38:53:20

10:39:07:12

- Okay, the tester's hooked up. Let's check it again?

- Let's do it.

- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, ground.

- Done!

- MATTHIEU LALONDE

- ANTOINE BEAUPRÉ

10:39:07:15

10:39:13:07

- Excellent. It works. It’s all good.

- Great. I’ll plug into the well.

ANTOINE BEAUPRÉ

10:39:13:10

10:39:57:17

- The big problem now is that huge corporations, the world's most powerful companies, like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple, their goal now, their lobbying, is geared toward destroying the Internet. Facebook's goal is to replace the Internet... by Facebook. They want you to go on Facebook and stay there. They entice you to stay on Facebook and away from ordinary sites. Google is similar. They... When you use search engines, sometimes you're stuck within Google instead of going to the real site. So there are a lot of forces at work preventing us from re-distributing the Internet and make it the horizontal platform it was devised to be.

ANTOINE BEAUPRÉ

10:39:57:20

10:40:26:19

There it is: relais.reseaulibre. It’s the original version of the Internet. When I first went online in '96, it was free. We didn't pay for Internet access and... ...Internet access also meant having a web page. That was it, really. It was about checking out your friends' web pages. What did he post? "Hi. I'm Antoine. I play guitar." With a pic of your guitar.

ANTOINE BEAUPRÉ

10:40:26:22

10:41:20:23

People had all kinds of stuff. Then they started sharing increasingly interesting things. And it grew, turning into Wikipedia, into Google, and so on. But it started with someone in their garage. Google started out with a web page. And I've always done that. It's good enough for me. That's it. I don't need to connect with all my friends on Facebook 24/7, know the latest news, the latest opinion, Trump's latest fake news, this and that on Facebook. I don't want to be online 24/7. For me, it's something you turn on, you go online, you're online, then you turn it off and you're offline. I'm not always connected, and I choose when to go online. I call the shots.

NARRATOR

10:41:21:02

10:41:52:20

- But we are not about to collectively disconnect. Quite the opposite. So, how can we make sure our privacy is protected on the web? For many hackers, encryption is the best, if not the only solution. The first hackers who made encryption a political issue were called the Cypherpunks. Montreal made an important contribution to the history of the Cypherpunks and it was in great part because of this man.

IAN GOLDBERG

10:41:52:23

10:42:37:03

- So the Cypherpunks, particularly in the mid-nineties, were a group of people who believed that security and privacy should come through technology, through the laws of mathematics, not through the legal system. And the reason is that legal systems change from place to place and time to time. One of the main mottos of the Cypherpunks was that “Cypherpunks Write Code”. And the point was to actually not just talk about these things but to produce software that protected people’s privacy and security. And a lot of what I did over those years was produce software like that.

NARRATOR

10:42:37:06

10:42:54:05

- The 1990s was the decade of the Crypto Wars. The US government had made it illegal for cryptographers to freely distribute their encryption software under penalty of imprisonment. To avoid legal issues, many Cypherpunks fled the US. Many of them came to Canada.

IAN GOLDBERG

10:42:54:08

10:43:05:12

- This was definitely one of the major reasons that when I finished my PhD at Berkeley, I returned to Canada. So what brought me to Montreal was Zero Knowledge System.

AUSTIN HILL

10:43:07:13

10:43:57:08

- When we’re on the internet, with email, we say personal things. We talk about things we might not say in other places. The internet is the worst place to do that right now because that email is not private at all. So what Zero Knowledge has done is it has gone back and said “Let’s make that private. Let’s give you all the benefits of being able to communicate and still have your privacy.” So we wrap your messages in strong cryptographic envelopes and we make sure the delivery of those envelopes is private. Privacy is going to be the most fundamental battle in the next hundred years. It will be the battle over your personal space. The ability to say, “Although I exist in a global community, this belongs to me, this is private. You don’t get to see this part of my life.” And if we don’t lay that groundwork now, the ability to say that, to make that statement, twenty years from now, won’t exist.

IAN GOLDBERG

10:43:57:11

10:44:18:20

- They sought me out. And they wanted to build a product based on the ideas I had in my PhD thesis. So I said, "OK, I am going to help make the internet better, help make it so people can communicate privately online" and thus started the Freedom Network.

NARRATOR

10:44:18:23

10:44:29:06

- The Freedom Network. It was developed here in Montreal. For the first time, it was possible to use the internet with privacy built-in.

IAN GOLDBERG

10:44:29:09

10:44:36:14

- There should be no way to communicate in an insecure fashion. The network should just provide the security and privacy for you.

NARRATOR

10:44:36:18

10:45:43:19

- The Freedom Network was short-lived. But many of its technical innovations were integrated into what became the most important anonymity tool in the world: the Tor Network. Tor stands for "The Onion Router". Basically, it’s a web browser that allows you to use the internet anonymously. Normally, when you access a website, the connection goes from your computer to your internet provider, and then to the server where the website is located. It's easy for anyone who wants to keep an eye on you to know which sites you visit, at what time and what neighborhood you live in. But by going through the Tor network, the signal has to go through 3 relays before reaching the desired website. Each relay only sees the immediate source of the signal and the immediate destination of the next signal. And of all of this is encrypted, of course. Using Tor, it becomes extremely difficult to know who is accessing what. But Tor also runs what is called "hidden services". These are websites ending with .ONION. They can only be reached through the Tor browser. Often, news outlets like FOX NEWS give a bad image of ONION sites, describing them like this.

ARCHIVE FOX NEWS

10:45:43:21

10:45:50:22

- It’s a secret world used by criminals to buy and sell drugs, guns, sex, just about anything you can imagine.

NARRATOR

10:45:51:01

10:46:13:02

- But this blanket criticism suggests that all .onion websites are used by criminals, when in fact, many activists, journalists and community groups heavily rely on these services to do their work. And guess what. The code that maintains these services is made possible by the work of only two Tor employees, including one who lives here in Montreal.

DAVID GOULET

10:46:14:10

10:46:27:05

- I'm currently coding... ...what's known as next-generation hidden services. It's being completely re-engineered to improve security.

DAVID GOULET

10:46:27:08

10:47:04:08

The concept of privacy is extremely important. Increasingly so. If people are being monitored... Today, it's not that people aren't aware of it. They know and accept it. They're not acting in bad faith or ignorant. It's just the new normal. When you know you're under surveillance, unconsciously or not, you change your ways. It really controls society. So the beauty of Tor is, whatever you do online... ...your privacy is protected to some extent.

DAVID GOULET

10:47:06:05

10:47:38:01

I requested access to information from the federal government, for all my personal information. They sent me this letter, which basically said: We have your information on file - maybe, maybe not... I'm under investigation. I was kind of proud, because I must be doing something right. I'm doing something useful, and the powers-that-be clearly aren't too happy about it. So it's a vindication of sorts.

- DIRECTOR

- DAVID GOULET

10:47:40:15

10:48:02:05

- What's the conference in Montreal about?

- Okay, we're currently holding our biannual Tor meeting. We invite everyone, staff and the community, to get together, convene, and over the course of five days, we problem-solve, rally, seek to improve Tor.

DIRECTOR

10:48:02:08

10:48:06:13

- Any particular reason it's in Montreal this year?

- DAVID GOULET

- DIRECTOR

10:48:06:15

10:48:20:21

- Yeah, a lot of people refuse to go to the Five Eyes, including Canada. But especially since Trump, I'd say at least half our team refuses to go to the U.S.

- Half the team refuses--

- DAVID GOULET

- DIRECTOR

10:48:21:01

10:48:26:11

- Minimum.

- Can you explain why we can't film the meeting?

DAVID GOULET

10:48:26:14

10:48:44:05

- Right. I mean, these people are for privacy. They don't want to end up on Facebook, have anyone know they came. Some people here literally can't be filmed, because they're coming here at their peril. So, overall, their privacy must be respected.

NARRATOR

10:48:44:08

10:48:58:17

- Some of the hackers and volunteers who support Tor want to maintain a certain level of discretion. But that doesn’t make them hooded paranoids. Quite the contrary. This is a community that has understood that change is only possible through public debate.

JENNIFER

10:48:58:19

10:49:06:10

- So my name is Jennifer Helsby and I am the lead developer of Secure Drop, which is a whistleblowing platform that uses Tor.

ARTURO

10:49:06:13

10:49:29:05

- Hi, my name is Arturo Filastò. I am a Tor developer I guess. From Italy. We monitor the internet and measure when and how internet censorship occurs, around the world. That is our Quattro, as we call him, which is our mascot. The OONI Octopus.

PATRICK

10:49:29:08

10:49:41:11

- Yeah, so my name is Patrick. I live in San Francisco, but I am originally from Ireland. And I run some exit capacity on the Tor network as part of an organization called NoiseTor, with some volunteers.

WILL

10:49:41:14

10:49:48:22

- My name is William Budington and I am a technologist and security engineer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

JENNIFER

10:49:49:01

10:50:05:04

- Well, we’re at the point now where many major governments have mass surveillance systems. For just a few million dollars, you can set up a mass surveillance system in your country. And we need to take steps to protect civil liberties in this situation.

WILL

10:50:05:07

10:50:20:04

- So if you’re at danger, in a repressive regime for instance, then you can access the web and access the internet in a way that doesn’t put you in danger by your government.

PATRICK

10:50:20:07

10:50:33:18

- It’s useful also for people doing research, even domestically, that they want necessarily associated with their name. I personally don’t want all of my search history to be associated with my identity because you never know how that might come back to bite you.

JENNIFER

10:50:33:20

10:50:47:07

- Tor is the best way to protect people’s anonymity. Without it, we couldn’t do the work that we do, making sure that sources can talk to journalists in a secure and anonymous way.

DINGLEDINE’S PRESENTER

10:50:53:10

10:51:02:12

- So what is the future of internet privacy, when we all have things to hide, in an age of big surveillance. Please join me in welcoming Roger Dingledine.

ROGER DINGLEDINE

10:51:09:06

10:51:52:05

- How many people here know the phrase “the dark web”? OK, so there’s this really cool - from the journalist perspective - thing where you get people all excited and scared. And they don’t understand, but there’s this dark web and... So basically, they end up with this terrible picture of an iceberg, where you didn’t know but there are 99 other internets out there and they’re all other things. And that’s true, a lot of the web pages on the internet are things that Google can’t get to. But approximately 0% of them have anything to do with Tor in any way. Nonetheless, Time Magazine was like: picture of Tor, picture of spiderweb, picture of iceberg, "you should be scared" and facts have very little to do with any of this.

NICK MATHEWSON

10:51:56:14

10:52:43:23

- I think people are very interested in privacy today. People also feel, to a certain extent, that privacy can be a lost cause. We see private information about people being collected... not only collected and sold, which is the primary business of most of the data collectors, but also collected and lost, misused, abused. Generally treated as though it were an abundant resource that there’s no need to protect. But I think there is also a lot of hope. I think more people are using encryption to talk to each other now than ever before, I think if you want to have a private conversation with someone on the other side of the world, there has never been a better time in history to do it.

ROGER DINGLEDINE

10:52:44:03

10:53:58:03

- Who here knows the phrase "lawful intercept"? A couple. OK, more hands than for "Bluecoat". So lawful intercept is the phrase they use for the backdoors in all the telephony infrastructure and the internet routers and so on. And the goal is, if somebody does a bad thing, then we should be able to tap them and there should be judges involved and so on. And maybe that’s OK in the Western world, but exactly the same infrastructure gets sold to Saudi Arabia. And the guy in Saudi Arabia is like, “What's that port for?”. And the answer is, “Oh, that’s the lawful intercept port”. And he says, “Well, I am the law, plug it in!”. The internet is more centralized than you think. There are only so many cables that go underneath oceans. If you’re in Peru and you want to send an internet connection to Ecuador, it’s going to go through Miami. That’s just how the internet is built. And that means that there are so many bottlenecks, there are so many places where large intelligence agencies can go in order to grab traffic, compared to what you think. You might imagine the internet is kind of like the world where there are a lot of different countries and everything is spread out. And I’d like an internet that’s built that way, but that’s not how we built ours.

NICK MATHEWSON

10:53:58:05

10:54:20:16

- Writing software is a fun and easy way to help the world. If you’re good at writing software then there are lots of things you can do that aren’t collecting data on people and helping people control each other. You can help people be free. It’s a good thing to do with your talent, if it’s a talent you have. And it’s a good life to live.

NARRATOR

10:54:34:07

10:55:05:23

- Tor is one of the most important tools in the fight against surveillance. But it’s far from being the only one. For almost every application and platform you use daily, there are alternatives that protect your privacy online. For messaging, replace Facebook Messenger with Signal. For your emails, use ProtonMail or install GnuPG and encrypt emails yourself. Replace Skype by Jitsi. And Google by DuckDuckGo or StartPage. The alternatives already exist and their numbers are constantly growing.

NARRATOR

10:55:10:04

10:55:30:04

Most of these tools are free software or open source software. Free software is developed by online communities of volunteers. They freely publish and tinker with the source code of the software and usually distribute them for free. For Richard Stallman, free software is the main solution to surveillance.

RICHARD STALLMAN

10:55:30:07

10:56:17:15

- The alternative to proprietary software is free, "libre" software. Software that is controlled by its users, that therefore respects those users’ freedom. If you’re using a free program, you, as one of a community of users, are collectively exercising control also. If people are enthusiastic about removing the snooping, which they probably are, they will spread that version around and you will eventually get it just in the normal course of upgrading from time to time. This is how free software creates a defense against malicious functionalities, for instance snooping. And it’s the only known defense.

GABRIELLA COLEMAN

10:56:17:18

10:57:07:22

- And what open-source projects do is give you the source code, and that’s why it’s free. So you can take the source code. And that really matters precisely because it allows outsiders to vet that source code. And let people know you can trust this. Facebook is not open source. At all. And you don’t know precisely what their software is doing. You don’t know how their algorithms are functioning. So you don’t know why you see what you see. If it was open-source, if it was open-source the way that Tor is open source, you could really do an audit of it and you could understand how it works and you could pick it apart. It’s a black box; open source is a transparent box.

PROJET THINK PENGUIN

10:57:19:23

10:58:25:21

- Light. It’s only 1.1 kilos in weight. This is a fully functioning computer. This is a laptop, 3D printed, so you can turn the computer card into a laptop. All right? You have the right to repair as well as modify. So 3D printed, you can just go down to your local maker thing and repair your own laptop. If you get fed up with the fact that this is not fast enough in a couple of years, just buy a replacement computer card, an upgrade, double the ram, double the speed, double the processors, etc. Instead of throwing away the whole 500 dollar laptop, you buy a 50 dollar computer card. So it’s eco-conscious as well as save money and bla-bla-bla, etc. Now, the other thing is, we’ve researched the processors on here so that the source code for everything, for the entire boot process, is available online. So there’s no NSA backdoors in their processors like there are in Intel ones. It’s full-source code. So...

STEVEN RAMBAM

10:58:32:07

10:58:50:23

- Facebook just won a court case in Belgium. They spent millions and millions and millions of euros to maintain their right to build profiles on every Belgian. You’re worth money. You’re worth a lot of money. You may have a right to be forgotten but you’re not going to be forgotten.

SPECTATOR

10:58:51:02

10:58:54:01

- If privacy is an illusion and it’s dead and everything, what we do now?

STEVEN RAMBAM

10:58:54:04

10:59:45:08

- Ok, there has to be a sea-change in public attitude. There has to be some - and I hate to say this because I am the most libertarian, you know, free-commercial activity believing type guy on the planet - but there has to start being regulation on Facebook and on Google. The problem is, you and everybody else, look at them as if they’re a public utility. We have water, we have electricity, we have the telephone, we have Google. They’re a private company. They own your data, they sell your data. They sell the essence of who you are. And there is zero regulation. There’s no regulation. There’s not a single law in the United States that allows you to say, "No", or "not that", or "too much".

STEVEN RAMBAM

10:59:45:11

11:00:19:15

Google and Facebook really don’t give a damn. They have the vast bulk of all information out there. Private entities. Google, Facebook, Acxiom, Information USA, Microsoft, Apple. There’s about twenty companies that have the bulk of the world’s PII, "personally identifiable information", and all the related stuff. And there is no law and no regulation, nothing that governs how they use it.

NARRATOR

11:00:22:19

11:00:40:08

- In May 2018, the European Union implemented the General Data Protection Regulation, which aims to better regulate the use of our personal data by major service providers. Meanwhile, in the US, Congress became interested for the first time in Facebook's business model.

MARK ZUCKERBERG

11:00:40:11

11:01:02:03

- It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. And that goes for fake news, for foreign interference in elections and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility and that was a big mistake, and it was my mistake, and I’m sorry.

NARRATOR

11:01:05:19

11:01:14:18

- This is also true for Canada. Our laws have to change to better protect us against abusive data collection. But why isn’t this already the case?

LEX GILL

11:01:14:21

11:01:59:21

- Government doesn’t have the technical skills or the resources to build a Facebook and make you adopt it, right. But they’re perfectly happy to take advantage of the fact that a Facebook exists and they can use it to harvest information for investigative and intelligence purposes. So I think that it’s right to acknowledge that there is a bit of a symbiotic relationship between these corporate actors and the State. I don’t think it’s right to think about it in some sort of conspiratorial way, but just to say that I think that government, when they see these private actors having access to this kind of personal data, they want to get their cut too. So yeah, that’s probably part of the reason there isn’t a huge amount of political willpower to reign those kinds of behaviors in.

MATTHIEU LALONDE

11:02:00:01

11:02:40:20

- Projects like Tor, like Subgraph, aren't winning. Obviously, this great surveillance machine is prevailing. Clearly. Of course, there's pushback now. But I think we're 20 years behind our rival, as it were. The forces at work behind this security and surveillance campaign are very powerful. We're talking huge corporations, governments, and so on. So it takes tremendous effort... to make a real impact.

NARRATOR

11:02:42:17

11:03:10:16

- A new world is unfolding right before our eyes. A world in which all our actions and thoughts are monetized and where it becomes truly impossible to be hidden from view and to be truly alone. But the internet could not have turned into this surveillance machine without our help. This internet that monitors everything, we made it happen, all together. It's up to us to invent the internet that will replace it.

IAN GOLDBERG

11:03:10:19

11:03:42:11

- A lot of people, when they think of privacy, they just think of, “Oh, what do I have to hide?”, and that’s not what privacy is at all. Or it’s the tiniest part of privacy. Privacy is about freedom, privacy is about autonomy, privacy is about self-determination. Privacy is about being able to think the thoughts for yourself and not be coerced into behaving or thinking in a certain way. It’s about growing as a person, especially for young people. And it’s about growing as a society.

RICHARD STALLMAN

11:03:42:13

11:04:01:17

- The fundamental thing is the willingness to say no. When you’re offered something and the price is your freedom, say no. The willingness to do that is crucial. It’s a sacrifice that I make to keep my freedom, it’s worth it.

GABRIELLA COLEMAN

11:04:11:02

11:04:43:18

- More than anyone else, Edward Snowden and his willingness to come forward with very concrete details about surveillance has helped us grasp the bigger picture. He has helped us sharpen our understanding of the harms of pervasive surveillance. And helped us see how new technologies facilitate ubiquitous spying. These issues are vitally important and this is why I want you to join me not just in welcoming but in thanking Edward Snowden for opening up the space to discuss and debate these topics.

EDWARD SNOWDEN

11:05:02:06

11:05:52:06

- The days where they could monitor everyone everywhere all the time, simply, what the government calls by means of “bulk collection”, which is the government euphemism for mass surveillance. They say, “we just want to collect everything in store in case we want to search it later”. Those days are numbered. We are going to move towards a freer and fairer future rather than simply the one that has already been laid out for us. We are at a decision point, and we can have a very dark future or a very bright future. But the ultimate determination of which fork in the road we take won’t be my decision, won’t be the government’s decision, it will be your generation’s decision. And I’m looking forward to seeing what it is that you guys actually decide.