
Transcript of meeting between Julian Assange and Google CEO Eric Schmidt - chasingtheflow
http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt?nocache
======
redthrowaway
Say whatever you will about Assange; it's clear he puts a great deal of
thought and effort into what he does. I highly recommend his essay on the
nature, structure, and weaknesses of conspiracies he wrote shortly after
starting Wikileaks:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20070129125831/http://iq.org/cons...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070129125831/http://iq.org/conspiracies.pdf)

It's not exactly a pg classic, but it does give good insight into his
motivations and thought processes.

------
rb2
JA: " I have been told actually that VeriSign, by people who are in the know,
although I am not yet willing to go on the public record, cause I only have
one source, just between you and me, one source that says that VeriSign has
actually given keys to the US government. Not all, but a particular key."

~~~
ggamecrazy
Thats not surprising in the least bit, In fact if you're really paranoid you
can assume most of the signing authorities have given up some of their private
keys....

~~~
Pwnguinz
As a non-crypto-literate web denizen, does an individual (in this case,
governmental organization) possessing the "root" CA private key mean they can
decrypt messages that were encrypted by derived 'child' certificates/keys?

I might be completely off base and confusing certificates and keys here,
though...

~~~
samuelkadolph
Having the private key of a trusted root CA lets you create leaf certificates
(or intermediate CAs) that your computer will trust implicitly (because the
root is trusted). This would allow someone to man-in-the-middle your
connection to, say, gmail (with help of your ISP) and you would not be able to
easily detect it.

Gibson Research Corporation created a page that shows the real signature for
some common websites (and lets you check any site you want). You can then
connect to them and view the signature in your browser and compare them. This
is what you would have to do to know if you were being MITMed with a "real"
certificate.

<https://www.grc.com/fingerprints.htm>

~~~
arjie
That's a nice enough idea, but how do I know I'm looking at the real grc.com?
They use an SSL certificate from a US CA too.

~~~
enraged_camel
This is the implicit weakness of the SSL system. The question is always "how
do I know I can trust _those_ people?"

~~~
Pwnguinz
Relevant, "Reflections on Trusting Trust":
[http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thomps...](http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf)

------
stevep98
JA: there was this fantastic video that came out of Stanford in about '69 on
nuclear synthesis of DNA. Have you seen it? It's on youtube. It's great. A
wonderful thing. So it is explaining nuclear synthesis through interpretive
dance.

Here it is: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9dhO0iCLww> Skip to 3:30 and, um
take something to get in the mood of the era...

~~~
jaredmcateer
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9dhO0iCLww#t=3m30s>

------
belorn
I wonder if one could automate a process to find articles that has been
removed (censured) from news papers, but which still exist in libraries.

Is there any project which digital store some index of news articles outside
the control the publishing newspaper? Maybe Google could give such index (and
only index), so as to enable investigating reports and citizens to notice when
articles get pulled.

------
mrmaddog
This is incredibly fascinating. If you are trying to figure out whether this
is worth a read or not, I don't think you'll be disappointed spending an hour
or two following along through the interview. For those of you that are tight
on time, here are some heavily paraphrased notes I've been taking, referencing
some of the more thought provoking parts of the interview. (And I'm only half
way through! I'll need to finish reading this tomorrow):

\- We should create human readable (memorable) hashes to map names to specific
data, so people can trust the documents they have are not tampered with and so
that such documents can't be removed from the public record. Sort of an
immutable DNS system for data built on hashes. Readability is important so the
keys can be transmitted independently of computer networks. Bitcoins may be a
good reference technology for this. (See: "So this Bitcoin replacement" and
passages leading up to that)

\- We need secure, robust communication systems for medium sized groups of
people (think revolutionaries) that don't need to rely on centralized
(government owned) networks. Possibly use UDP to message someone (since
without ACKs you can send to many hosts, and a listening host looks the same
to the network as an unrelated host). More ideas about this in passage:
"Right, so you send it to random internet hosts"

\- The internet lets one hear their own beliefs echoed back with such force
that it drowns out any other input. It reinforces (makes extreme?) the
person's original thought. This creates a "radicalization of internet educated
youth," makes us highly political.

\- The US doesn't need to care as much about free speech since free speech
won't change the fiscal outlook of those at the top (US is in a "rigid
fiscalized structure"). China and Egypt are a more political society though,
so they still need to control free speech. (See passage:"I am not going to say
governments")

\- "censorship is always cause for celebration. It is always an opportunity,
because it reveals fear of reform. It means that the power position is so weak
that you have got to care about what people think."

\- Censorers don't care what information exists in darknets. They only care
that their bosses don't find out about the darknets. (See: "Even the censors
in China" passage)

\- There is a second type of censorship beyond overt government censorship:
"Censorship through complexity." Harkens back to the earlier discussion in the
interview about the 'self-censorship' pyramid for journalists.

\- Journalists should give all of their source data, not just choice quotes,
so that people can make up their own minds. (See: "scientific journalism")

\- "Most wars in the 20th century have started as a result of lies. Amplified
and spread by the mainstream press. And you go, well that is a horrible
circumstance, that is terrible that all these wars start with lies. And I say
no, this is a tremendous opportunity, because it means that populations
basically don't like wars and they have to be lied into it. And that means we
can be truthed into peace."

~~~
mrmaddog
And, since there seems to be interest in these notes, here are my paraphrased
notes from the second half on the interview (once again, only including the
parts I found especially thought-provoking):

\- Systematic crime/injustice requires a paper trail. The threat of making
documents public disrupts that paper trail, which causes mass ineficiency in
an organization. ES: "So it's exactly your point, so that in order to kill six
million Jews, you actually have to write it down." JA: "It's a big logistical
process"

\- "Fundamental justification [For Wikileaks] is that, there is really two.
First of all, the human civilization, its good part, is based upon our full
intellectual record, and our intellectual record should be as large as
possible if humanity is to be as advanced as possible. The second is that in
practice releasing information is positive to those engaged in acts that the
public support and negative to those engaged in acts that the public does not
support." [Ok, I don't really buy this. Small groups are just as capable as
large groups of harbouring secret plans that the public is opposed to. Secrecy
is a double edged sword for both those in power and those outside of it.]

\- If you support these ideas, you should "give money to WikiLeaks
[Laughter]". But seriously.

\- "Courage is not the absence of fear. Only fools have no fear. Rather
courage is the intellectual mastery of fear by understanding the true risks
and opportunities of the situation"

\- "because we all only live once, we all suffer the continuous risk of not
having lived our life well. Every year. Every year that is not used is 100%
wasted, it's not a risk of that, it is a dead bet"

\- Assange's response to accusations that wikileaks causes harm, is
interesting. See: "Up until Collateral Murder"

\- Interesting aside about the purpose of the Pentagon's posturing, see:
"WikiLeaks became the status quo"

\- A great story straight from Firefly, episode "Our Dear Mrs. Reynolds" See
dialogue after: "The woman from Catalonia"

\- Leading through values instead of through command and control allows an
organization like WikiLeaks to be better protected against two types of
organizational attacks: infiltration and getting members plucked off (scared
away?). This creates a P2P network of people instead of a classic
client/server hierarchy.

\- Wikileaks does premature redactions not because there is a "risk of
producing harm as a result of disclosure", but because "there is a probable
risk that if we don't engage in that sort of behaviour, our opponents will
opportunistically attempt to distract from the revelations that we have
published." Once again goes back to "controlling the story" conversations they
had earlier. Interestingly, Assange failed to control the story w.r.t. rape
allegations, and that is now what he and wikileaks is known for. Resulting
discussion on the slippery slope of redaction is interesting. Assange would
ideally like the source of the material to provide the redactions.

\- "If it is true information we don't care where it comes from. Let people
fight with the truth, and when the bodies are cleared there will be bullets of
truth everywhere, that's fine"

\- Lisa asks "How do you know if you've won?" JA: "... [insightful comments
snipped]...I think we can make some significant advances and it is perhaps, it
is the making of these advances and being involved in that struggle that is
good for people. So the process is in part the end game. It's not just to get
somewhere in the end, rather this process of people feeling that it is
worthwhile to be involved in that sort of struggle, is in fact worthwhile for
people."

There's a lot to think about here. Regardless of Assange's actual character,
he has some amazing ideas. I think I may have a new answer to "If you could
have dinner with one person in the world..."

~~~
nwzpaperman
I agree with many of Assange's positions, but I disagree on one fundamental
position: anonymity.

Anonymity is where wikileaks breaks down. All of the lies and deception Julian
speaks of are possible because there is no systemic transparency or
accountability in the information ecosystem. All of those lies are abstraction
events in the cognitive plane of existence and require action in the physical
plane to manifest any outcome.

At the end of the day, I think people must step up to the plate and say, "no,
this happening, it needs to stop and I am cosigning this information with my
community identity on the line." At that point, a wise community should
support that person through any life interruption or transition, if the
individual cannot.

The thing about living a lie is that it is extraordinarily expensive to
sustain or scale because the lie must defy nature and reality. The internet
news information systems make it easy to proliferate small/trivial lies in/for
a short period of time, but it makes any non-trivial lies much more expensive
to sustain. People need more information, more transparency and more
accountability.

If you have the accountability, you won't have the "boy crying wolf" problem
at scale because of the individual cost of lying.

Ironically, one such platform exists and is six months into beta, but this
community hell-banned it in week one. Think about how that will look, PG, in a
couple of years. I have screenshots and the record won't be going away.
nwzPaper is lean and will be here, it will continue getting better as an
application and stronger as a community.

~~~
nwzpaperman
The fundamental flaw with an anonymity-structuree news information system as
acknowledged by Assange:

"There is many ways for people to transmit anonymously. One of the greatest
difficulties for sources is their proximity to the material. So if they have
high proximity to it and it's a limited number of people know it. It actually
doesn't matter what technical mechanism you then apply at the top. It would be
quite difficult for them to evade scrutiny. And it doesn't matter what country
or regime you are in."

------
bytefactory
Very interesting. I'm curious about the role Eric Schmidt and Google play in
this, however.

From the looks of it, Eric definitely seemed to be a supporter (especially
considering how he mentioned getting in trouble for being against Patriot I
and Patriot II), yet Google hasn't spoken out against CISPA. Seeing as how
Assange mentioned how important funding was for the movement, I would think
it'd be very easy for Google to funnel a few million dollars to Wikileaks if
they truly wanted to help.

Too bad there's not more about those aspects being discussed.

~~~
harryf
The impression I got from the interview is that Eric Schidt feels there is
some common ground between what Google does and what Wikileaks does. Some of
his reactions seem like "that's the missing idea we needed".

That may also relate to the book they were working on, now called the "The New
Digital Age" and to be released in 3 days apparently (
[http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Digital-Age-
Reshaping/dp/03079...](http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Digital-Age-
Reshaping/dp/0307957136) ) - this interview is great marketing for the book
then.

The Draw Shop has a nice summary of what's in the book -
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39tvjOATrCA>

~~~
bytefactory
My impression was that Eric tried (successfully), to keep Google completely
out of the picture, while only talking about issues from a personal
perspective. A lot of the technical challenges JA mentioned would arguably be
trivial for Google to solve, or attempt to solve (creating a name-hash network
tree architecture like the one JA mentioned he'd liked to have seen become
popular).

The problem I think is two-fold: 1. Google aligning with Wikileaks/JA will be
seen as a political landmine for Google, since Wikileaks' agenda is very much
at odds with many governments. This would obviously be something Google will
have little interest in pursuing.

2\. It's not in Google's best interest to propagate anonymity (as of now).
Google's core revenue model derives from its ability to track people on the
Internet. Making it easier for them to don anonymity will undermine and
possibly destroy this model.

Whether Google's/Eric Schmidt's ultimate goals are good or evil is anybody's
guess, and I don't think I gained any new insights into it based on this
interview. It does appear that Eric/Google do have an interest in seeing freer
access to information, as evidenced by them pushing for faster Internet, more
secure/private browsing (https, 2-factor authentication, fighting official
requests for access to user accounts [2]), access to the Internet in North
Korea, etc. The more people are on the Internet, and the more they browse, the
greater Google's revenues.

Google's upper management have also allegedly (and secretly) played a part in
the Arab springs, which I would hazard a guess was a altruistic move, rather
than a purely political one, but that's speculation [1].

Oh, and BTW, the timing of this 'leak' a few days before Eric Schmidt's book
is highly suspect, no? :)

[1]:
[http://thepassionateattachment.com/2012/03/23/stratforleaks-...](http://thepassionateattachment.com/2012/03/23/stratforleaks-
confirm-jared-cohens-involvement-in-arab-spring/) (sorry this is not the best
source, but Googling around will get you the actual Wikileaks cables and
analysis)

[2]: [http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2259557/google-
figh...](http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2259557/google-fights-us-
government-requests-for-private-data)

Edit: formatting

------
aray
Pretty good summary by the Verge, but definitely worth reading the whole
thing: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/19/4241486/eric-schmidt-
and-j...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/19/4241486/eric-schmidt-and-julian-
assange-conversation-published-on-wikileaks)

------
stevep98
[LS spills water all over her note taking laptop]

[JA quickly grabs her laptop and turns it upside down]

JC: Ha ha ha! Why do I feel that has happened before?

LS: Did you see how fast he was? It was like an impulse.

------
generalseven
Great discussion in there about Bitcoin, Namecoin, alternative CA system,
anonymity, censorship, etc.

------
tomrod
Well now I'm looking forward to the book.

I greatly appreciate Julian Assange's views, even if his approach runs afoul
of the law.

~~~
arjie
I don't believe Julian Assange's approach to Wikileaks-related issues has put
him on the wrong side of the law. He is charged with rape, not with publishing
what people sent him, AFAIK.

~~~
kkowalczyk
He wasn't charged with anything.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_A...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_Authority)

"Assange has not yet been formally charged with any offence.[62] The
prosecutor said that, in accordance with the Swedish legal system, formal
charges will be laid only after extradition and a second round of questioning.
Observers note however that Assange has not yet been interviewed about several
of the allegations,[63] including the most serious, and that Swedish law
allows interviews to be conducted abroad under Mutual Legal Assistance
provisions.[64]"

~~~
Ygg2
So he is stuck in Trial? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial>

~~~
ben0x539
It's more like he's a fugitive.

~~~
betterunix
Usually fugitives are at least charged with a crime...

~~~
ben0x539
He'd have to show up to be charged.

------
lawnchair_larry
On "putting people at risk":

\--

So if we look at the attacks on us, they always talk about the words "placed
people at risk." But risk relative to what? Is it a proportionate risk? Is it
a risk that is significant enough that it is even worth speaking about?

So these rhetorical tricks are often used by people who are making their
argument in relation to security. What has to be done is people need to engage
in an intellectual defense against manipulation by rhetoric by understanding
that if someone mentions that there is a risk without saying the risk is
higher than crossing the road, or the risk is twice that of being stung by a
bee, then you must ignore it. Similarly with possibility versus probability.

\--

------
guybrushT
Definitely worth a read. Its like reading a wonderful short story that just
works on so many levels. It has many layers - interesting ideas on technology,
free-speech, values & idealism, information flow, bitcoin - plus the
personalities involved themselves (JA, ES). Fascinating indeed.

In particular, I am intrigued by JA's thoughts on a peer-to-peer mobile
network. For those who understand this well, can you explain how feasible it
is to do this today? What are the challenges involved? Why isn't a startup
doing this? It would be nice to one day, bypass the telecom company towers to
transmit data directly to another person/phone.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
> Why isn't a startup doing this?

There is no financial incentive. A recurring theme throughout the interview.

------
mz1988
Eric Schmidt is not google ceo, he is google chairman

~~~
waqf
I was about to reply that when this meeting took place in 2011 Schmidt was
still CEO. But in fact you're right, he was not: he'd stepped down a couple of
months previously.

------
junto
There are some interesting comments in here, namely:

"So, on the one hand we have live dynamic services and organizations... well
there's three things. Live dynamic services. Organizations that run those
services, so that you are referring to a hierarchy. You are referring to a
system of control. An organization, a government, that represents an organized
evolving group. And on the other hand you have artefacts. You have human
intellectual artefacts that have the ability to be completely independent from
any system of human control. They are out there in the Platonic realm somehow.
And shouldn't in fact be referred to by an organization. They should be
referred to in a way that is intrinsic to the intellectual content, that
arises out of the intellectual content! I think that is an inevitable and very
important way forward, and where this... where I saw that this was a problem
was dealing with a man by the name of Nahdmi Auchi. A few years ago was listed
by one of the big business magazines in the UK as the fifth richest man in the
UK. In 1980 left Iraq. He'd grown rich under Saddam Hussein's oil industry.
And is alleged by the Italian press to be involved in a load of arms trading
there, he has over two hundred companies run out of his Luxembourg holding
unit. And several that we discovered in Panama. He had infiltrated the British
Labour political establishment to the degree that the 20th business birthday
in London he was given a painting signed by 146 members Commons including Tony
Blair. He's the same guy who was the principal financier of Tony Rezko. Tony
Rezko was the financier and fundraiser of Rod Blagoyevich, from Chicago.
Convicted of corruption. Tony Rezko has been convicted of corruption. And
Barack Obama. He was the intermediary who helped Barack Obama buy one of his
houses and then the money not directly for the house but it bouyed up Tony
Rezko's finances came from that... [indistinct]. So during the - this is
detail, but it will get to a point. During the 2008 presidential primaries a
lot of attention was turned to Barack Obama by the US press, unsurprisingly.
And so it started to look into his fundraisers, and discovered Tony Rezko, and
then they just started to turn their eyes towards Nadhmi Auchi. Auchi then
hired Carter Ruck, a rather notorious firm of London libel solicitors, whose
founder, Carter Ruck, has been described as doing for freedom of speech what
the Boston strangler did for door to door salesmen.

And he started writing letters to all of the London papers who had records of
his 2003 extradition to France and conviction for corruption in France over
the Elf-Acquitaine scandal. Where he had been involved in taking kickbacks on
selling the invaded Kuwaiti governments' oil refineries in order to fund their
operations while Iraq had occupied it. So the Guardian pulled three articles
from 2003. So they were five years old. They had been in the Guardian's
archive for 5 years. Without saying anything. If you go to those URLs you will
not see "removed due to legal threats." You will see "page not found." And one
from the Telegraph. And a bunch from some American publications. And bloggers,
and so on. Important bits of history, recent history, that were relevant to an
ongoing presidential campaign in the United States were pulled out of the
intellectal record. They were also pulled out of the Guardian's index of
articles. So why? The Guardian's published in print, and you can go to the
library and look up those articles. They are still there in the library. How
would you know that they were there in the library? To look up, because they
are not there in the Guardian's index. Not only have they ceased to exist,
they have ceased to have ever existed. Which is the modern implementation of
Orwell's dictum that he controls the present controls the past and he who
controls the past controls the future. Because the past is stored physically
in the present. All records of the past. This issue of preserving politically
salient intellectual content while it is under attack is central to what
WikiLeaks does -- because that is what we are after! We are after those bits
that people are trying to suppress, because we suspect, usually rightly, that
they're expending economic work on suppressing those bits because they
perceive that they are going to induce some change."

------
dreen
Is there a recording of the talk? I would much prefer that to the transcript.

~~~
andybak
How odd. I usually find myself thinking exactly the opposite when someone
posts a video or audio clip.

~~~
dreen
I wish I had time to read but I don't. I listen to everything I can though;
books news etc. while commuting and working.

~~~
andybak
I wish I had the time to watch and listen to things but I don't. I skim read
everything I can though; books, news etc. It's much quicker for me than
listening watching!

------
navs
I can't get over the Fiji comment. I'm from there you see and I'd never heard
of this particular theory regarding the CIA.

------
tmanx
SC: This is a fantastic tree. It keeps us totally dry.

LOL

------
shakiba
TL;DR!

------
kybernetyk
Ugh, is Eric Schmidt really that non-technical that he can't remember the
right name for TOR?

I mean I don't expect him to write code or know the implementation details of
TCP/IP but as Google CEO he should at least know a little about the field his
company is playing in and the right names for the more important technologies.

Or is this some kind of practical joke I don't get?

~~~
hammerzeit
Eric Schmidt has a Ph.D. in Computer Science, wrote Lex [1], and just spent 10
years running one of the most important software companies in the world, while
generally retaining the respect of the thousands of engineers in his company.
His credentials are as close to unimpeachable as, say, PG's.

Tech is massive, multifarious, and constantly growing. It's easy to believe
one's parochial corner is the center. Tor, it's safe to say, is not the
center.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_(software)>

~~~
kybernetyk
Well, Ok, I didn't know that. Thanks for clarifying that for me.

So I guess it really was a practical joke I didn't get.

~~~
waqf
Also, "Tor" is the Scandinavian spelling of Thor. He probably thought of that
when he saw the name, and mentally hashed it as "that anonymous routing
software that's named for the Germanic god of thunder". I can imagine making
that mistake.

