Julian Assange was switched on during his presentation on "Chaos Communication Congress" in Hamburg via video link. The busy activist is still in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in exile after he had published, among other confidential documents from the U.S. Army via the website Wikileaks. The video connection broke off several times, but the message of the activists was clear: He called for the system administrators of this world to rise up against the powerful. Assange advised the technicians, intelligence agencies and corporations to join, there to gather information and to make this publicly.
"System administrators of the world, unite," the WikiLeaks activist Julian Assange and the Internet specialist Jacob Appelbaum called at the weekend at a hacker conference in Hamburg.
awk. Julian Assange was switched on during his presentation on "Chaos Communication Congress" in Hamburg via video link. The busy activist is still in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in exile after he had published, among other confidential documents from the U.S. Army via the website Wikileaks.
The video connection broke several times as of yet the message of the activists was clear: He called for the system administrators of this world to rise up against the powerful. Assange advised the technicians, intelligence agencies and corporations to join, there to gather information and to make this publicly. Following the example of the whistleblower Edward Snowden, who worked as a technician for the NSA and this compromised later with the release of secret documents.
Surprise appearance by Sarah Harrison
Edward Snowden, who currently lives in Russia in exile, was indirectly represented also on "Chaos Computer Congress»: His flight assistant Sarah Harrison entered in Hamburg the stage. The English journalist who, since the flight of Edward Snowden in Germany and also is considered close adviser of Julian Assange. Now she fears prosecution in Britain. "That's why I stay in Germany," she told the audience.
Harrison confirmed Assange's concerns and stressed that the Wikileaks revelations keep working despite pressure from the U.S. government. "We are continuing our publications continue," she said. Harrison's appearance was greeted with a standing ovation.
The war is not yet lost
Many hackers dealing for years with the establishment of monitoring infrastructures and rebel against delusions of control of state institutions and the manipulations of multinational corporations.
Only after the revelations of Wikileaks and the surveillance scandal at NSA got the computer specialists around the "Chaos Computer Club" which organizes the conference every year, significant public support.
Seven years ago, the mood was on "Chaos Communication Congress" still a lot darker. "We live now in the dark world of science fiction novels that we never wanted," Frank said at the time Rieger, spokesman for the "Chaos Computer Club". - "The hackers enter the war against Big Brother lost," wrote the NZZ in their reporting to the Congress.
Interestingly, the activists had even then concocted a plan of attack against the intelligence services. In 2006, they called for better collaboration with defectors from the ranks to intelligence agencies. Only missing the hackers then, the colorful characters and the public interest. With Harrison, Assange, Snowden, Appelbaum and colleagues further the hacking scene has finally the stars that she had so desperately needed - and the war against Big Brother is in full swing.
