TRANSCRIPT - Assange - Malaysia - HITB SecConf 2009

TRANSCRIPT [for quotation purposes, confirm audio] Edit of Part II transcript appearing here Entire Series Transcribed at this link HITB SecConf 2009 Malaysia: WikiLeaks 2/8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLpOI6I3Ink&feature=youtu.be [...] so we limit, we limit ourselves to the hardest cases, the hardest publishing cases that no-one else can publish.  So that means, non-public censored documents, of political, diplomatic, or historical significance. OK, so, a sort of feeling for what we're doing.  What is the impact?  Not on individual nation states, but the impact in the media. This is something you can measure a little bit.  Other stuff's a bit harder. And I’ll go into examples. But, we have caused the publication, or reprinting, of about 40,000 articles, based on our content, in websites that are listed by Google News. So that’s most, but not all, of the mainstream press. [Just yesterday, I] looked on Google Books search. There’s about 40 something books -- Google books. That doesn’t cover most book publishers, so about 40 to 100 books have, in part, been catalysed as a result of material we have released. Google hits: WikiLeaks, presently about 670,000. Our four Malaysians here, in comparison: Malaysia Insider has about 46,000. And blog references are 92,000. Now, guys.  I’ve been censored. [audience laughter] Speaking of which, in this crisis that is occurring in the United States with journalists: a journalist who is fired is one hundred per cent censored. [Thanks. OK.] So this map is by Freedom House, this is the global press freedom index for 2007, the green is what -- Freedom House is an independently funded -- OK, Freedom House is an independently funded arm of the United States government. So, it does have a little bit of a bias, but it also has some good people. So, within the US prism of how it looks on the world, this is an accurate map. So, green for the so-called 'free press countries.' Yellow, for partly free (that includes Malaysia). And grey*, not free. So you see, in fact, even according to Freedom House, most of the world is not free from censorship. Now, of course, from my -- you’ll hear from the stories I’ll tell you, that this green is a complete illusion. An entire illusion. What has happened is that there has been a privatisation of censorship in the green countries. It’s no longer direct state censorship, most of the time, it’s censorship on behalf of private organisations through the courts, and the courts are run by the states. So it’s an indirect form of state censorship when you [...] a major institute privatised [...] the major institutions of your country. How many people here have ever gone to the front page of the website? May I see some hands? How many people haven’t? OK, so this section is not completely useless. So, this is what you will see if you go to the front page of the website: This is WikiLeaks. We help getting the truth out. If you then scroll down you’ll see on the right-hand side recent material that we have released, or that has been censored and we have uncensored it. On the left-hand side, is news reports that have been caused by the material on the right-hand side, so information catalysed in the mainstream press. Sometimes including press, and sometimes articles that we have written ourselves -- if no one else is picking it up. [00:05:01] OK, so, just looking at something recent, we released this week. The UK MoD Manual of Security Volume 1,2 & 3, Issue 2 -- 2,389 pages -- all classified. So, this manual is interesting. Not -- I mean, you guys are probably interested in security. But it’s interesting for another reason, because it shows that the corruption -- the moral corruption inside the UK military -- is documented. This manual refers to investigative journalists about 13 times. What are the biggest threats, the biggest leaking threats? The kind of security threat, is what military security is really concerned about: is information being disclosed. Their biggest threats is not the Russians, is not the Chinese; it's investigative journalists. And why are they concerned about it? Because it might embarrass the government, or might embarrass their departments. OK. So, now, looking on the other column, you can see mainstream press that has picked this up. This was front page of the Telegraph earlier this week, a newspaper in the UK. MoD how to stop leaks. Document is leaked. But I encourage you to read all the 2,389 pages and don’t just rely on the Telegraph story, because you'll get a very different perspective. So you can follow the link to the Telegraph. There it is. And how do people tend to use the site? Journalists tend to use the site on a day-to-day basis. Well, in fact, nearly all the stories we catalyse we do not have time to cut and paste and stick in here, it’s just impossible. So, to some degree we are victim of our own success, although I should say the project is very embryonic. We're two years in, but I think we're only 10% in to what we're trying to achieve. So, yes, it has been quite successful. But we are very embryonic. It's still a proof of concept. It’s showing a lot of good effect, but there’s still a lot of work to do. So, you will notice here. So, to catalyse a point -- you can have a look at news, blogs, and twitter -- so this is where in fact you will find most of the media pick up. And this is from earlier today, and you can see there tends to be something every few hours catalysed in the mainstream press, based upon what we have released. This is blogs. This is the best blogs search, by the way, is IceRocket. And this is Twitter. Often you’ll see stuff here before you see it in the mainstream press. People are just starting to [...] And, OK, there’s one more: PressDisplay as well. This is actually a big organization that scans the front pages and pages of newspapers across the world and puts them online. They charge you to actually buy chunks, but you get one, or something, a day free. And so you can see this is what has been happening this week [...] in relation to events in relation to the Telegraph, MoD. And sometimes we will write our own material. So this MoD document looked at getting travel advice to UK spies about going to China and Russia, what do they need to look out for when they are in those countries. OK, so this is -- [   ---audio cuts out -- 9:40---  ] [*I think Assange means 'blue' (rather than 'grey') for 'not free.' The colour in the accompanying slide appears blue, although he refers to 'grey.'] ---------------------- PressDisplay = now known as PressReader | here IceRocket  | here Freedom House  = CIA association  | here {I guess one can refer to their information; but where the information derives from must be kept in mind} MoD = Ministry of Defence (Britain's, in this case) ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT Fun checking this out. Think I could get right into checking out all this early material ... if only there was enough time in the day. lol Thanks to the blogger who did all the hard slog transcribing. I've listened and edited the output.  So what's posted here is after I've arranged things as I want them, having made the occasional adjustment.  But there's a couple of missing bits. The audio isn't as good as it could be and the early Assange speaks too quickly, so I think I might just listen to the rest of these segments without trying to get them down word for word. ꕤ