Berlin · nov 25-26 · 2016:
TRUTH-TELLERS: The Impact of Speaking Out
“Art & Evidence” conference series by Disruption Network Lab
Can we trust the sources and can the sources trust us? Hacktivists, privacy advocates, investigative journalists, artists and researchers reflect on the consequences of leaking and whistleblowing from a political, cultural and technological perspective.
The 10th event of the Disruption Network Lab
Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin. Directed by Tatiana Bazzichelli.
Funded by: Der Regierende Bürgermeister von Berlin, Senatskanzlei, Kulturelle Angelegenheiten / City Tax.
In cooperation with Kunstraum Kreuzberg /Bethanien. In collaboration with the Wau Holland Stiftung, Xnet, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), and SPEKTRUM.
With the participation of the Free Chelsea Manning Initiative Berlin.
Media partners: ExBerliner, Furtherfield.
Pre-Lab 9.11 at SPEKTRUM, Bürknerstraße 12, Berlin.
Entrance 5€ / day. Pre-Lab 3€. In English language.
Friday November 25 · 2016
17:00-18:30 – KEYNOTE
Grace North (Director of the Jeremy Hammond Defense Committee, and Jeremy Hammond Campaign Manager, USA). Moderated by Andy Müller-Maguhn (Courage Advisory board member, Wau Holland Stiftung board member, DE).
19:00-21:00 – PANEL
Simona Levi (activist, founder of Xnet, ES), Katharina Meyer (curator and researcher, member of the Whistleblower-Netzwerk e.V, DE), Giovanni Pellerano (CTO of GlobaLeaks, privacy and transparency activist at the Hermes Center, IT). Moderated by Theresa Züger (researcher on civil disobedience, DE).
Saturday November 26 · 2016
16:30-18:00 – KEYNOTE
Mustafa Al-Bassam (alias Tflow, former core member, LulzSec, UK). Moderated by Gabriella Coleman (Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University, Quebec, CA).
18:20-18:30 – SHORT
Seattle Crime Cams: Video contribute by Dries Depoorter (digital artist, BE).
18:30-20:30 – PANEL
Jack Werner (investigative journalist, SE), Hans Bernhard / UBERMORGEN (artist, CH/USA/AT), Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo / !Mediengruppe Bitnik (artists, CH/DE). Moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Director of the Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE).
TRUTH-TELLERS: The Impact of Speaking Out
"Art and Evidence" Series by Disruption Network Lab 2016
Can we trust the sources and can the sources trust us?
TRUTH-TELLERS, the 10th conference of the Disruption Network Lab, aims to reflect on the impact of speaking out, leaking, and whistleblowing from a technological, cultural and artistic perspective. If speaking out is a mean to expose wrongdoing, misconducts, and inform about unknown facts that must be revealed, an in-depth analysis of the consequences of this act is needed.
This is of importance not only for the sources of whistleblowing and leaking, facing serious charges in a vulnerable context of safety and protection, but also for all the people – from journalists to hacktivists – who directly or indirectly share the responsibility of spreading sensitive issues in the broader context of politics and society. Alongside, the concept of "truth-telling" is often ambiguous and questionable, being hard to determine the validity of the sources, especially in the digital realm.
This event brings together computer scientists, activists, privacy advocates, investigative journalists and researchers who have been working actively on the topic of truth-telling, running leak platforms and working for exposing misconducts and wrong doing, as well as artists that have been creatively working with the concept of truth, by questioning it in the online and offline realm through their artistic practices. From one side, we aim to reflect on the act of producing evidences within the debate on surveillance, whistleblowing, transparency, social justice, and freedom of information; from the other side, artistic and activist projects working on multiple truths, viral rumors and fictional legends will be presented.
This two-day conference not only aims to question the issues of truth and evidence in a conceptual way, but also aims to investigate the structural aspect of this debate, by analysing concretely the effects of disclosures, the work of the sources, and the conscious understanding of the consequences of speaking out.
Pre-Lab @ SPEKTRUM · November 9 2016
From 20.00 – Lie-able art
An artist talk by Gabriel S Moses (sequential artist and graphic novelist, IL/DE).
For the pre-event of Truth-Tellers, we have invited artist Gabriel S Moses to talk about why he lies. In his performances and films Gabriel radically accelerates deceptive online strategies such as false identities, trolling, disinformation and absurd viral myths, in a way which undermines the work itself. But this mischievous logic simply mirrors a larger trend in the current political climate: The act of telling or revealing the truth seems
to have been eclipsed by an evasive power dynamic in which politicians seem to have stopped caring about their own credibility while constantly discrediting those who blow the whistle on them, as mere pawns and liars. Gabriel’s work offers just one of several approaches to critical engagement within this mind boggling discourse of ‘post-fact’, which will be further explored in the following conference event.
The event is introduced by Tatiana Bazzichelli and will take place in collaboration with SPEKTRUM | art science community (Bürknerstraße 12, Berlin).
CONFERENCE EVENTS
Friday November 25 · 2016
17:00-18:30 – KEYNOTE
EXPOSE, CONFRONT, AND SABOTAGE:
SUPPORTING TRUTH-TELLERS BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY
Grace North (Director of the Jeremy Hammond Defense Committee, and Jeremy Hammond Campaign Manager, USA). Moderated by Andy Müller-Maguhn (Courage Advisory board member, Wau Holland Stiftung board member, DE).
“We have an obligation to expose, confront & sabotage by any means necessary the system which oppresses and exploits us all”, said once Jeremy Hammond. A hacktivist associated with Anonymous, Jeremy Hammond is currently in prison for hacking the private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) server, and releasing the information, which revealed massive corporate and government spying through WikiLeaks. Jeremy is a whistleblower, or truthteller - a brave individual who, at great personal sacrifice, lived out the true essence of what a whistleblower is, and exposed the system that exploits us all. This keynote presentation by Grace North, Director of the Jeremy Hammond Defense Committee, and Jeremy Hammond Campaign Manager, will explore not only what a truthteller is and why we should support them, but some practical ways we can offer our assistance to not only our jailed heroes, but the communities they have risked it all to support.
19:00-21:00 – PANEL
UNFOLDING THE TRUTH:
THE PERSONAL CONSEQUENCES OF LEAKING & WHISTLEBLOWING
Simona Levi (activist, founder of Xnet, ES), Katharina Meyer (curator and researcher, member of the Whistleblower-Netzwerk e.V, DE), Giovanni Pellerano (CTO of GlobaLeaks, privacy and transparency activist at the Hermes Center, IT). Moderated by Theresa Züger (researcher on civil disobedience, DE).
In the context of analysis of the political and social impact of whistleblowing, the emergence of truth-telling incidents is enormous and impossible to enumerate. When people get active to expose misconducts and wrongdoing in industries, governments, corporations and other official and unofficial contexts, many stories often do not come to life. Leakers are in most of the cases anonymous, and in the worst cases risking disappearance or death. In other situations, investigative journalists are working on the front line to protect their sources, and often there is no way back for them either, risking their job and changing their life’s path for exposing injustices. This panel brings together activists, advocates for whistle-blowers rights and protection, and experts on the subject of leaking, some of them running leak platforms themselves. Leaking platforms have brought to the surface dark truths of crimes, corruption and human rights violations, with heavy consequences for the people that have worked on these topics. Furthermore, the background stories that the panel will present will help in understanding the history of some important leaking activities of the past few years.
Saturday November 26 · 2016
16:30-18:00 – KEYNOTE
50 DAYS OF LULZ
Mustafa Al-Bassam (alias Tflow, former core member, LulzSec, UK). Moderated by Gabriella Coleman (Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University, Quebec, CA).
This keynote presentation wants to trace back the so-called "50 Days of Lulz" (“lulz” as a derivation of lol, laugh out loud), 50 days of high profile attacks by the hacker group named “LulzSec” in the spring of 2011. This story, which is about truth-telling activity beyond moral conformism and political correctness, as well as fighting for freedom and social rights, facing corporations, oppression and corruption, is told by one of its protagonists, Mustafa Al-Bassam alias Tflow, who was one of the six core members of LulzSec, and at the time only 16 years old. The activity of LulzSec is well documented in the book Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous (2014) by Gabriella Coleman (who will introduce this Keynote), as a unique example of a collective that was able to find vulnerabilities in high level computer systems, revealing hidden information, as well as straightforward attacks on private corporations (from HBGaryFederal to Sony Pictures), using the strategy of leaking for exposing wrongdoing and sensitive data. LulzSec is shrouded in some degree of deliberate mystery, combining the activity of whistleblowing with the one of opacity, deceit, and play, as the broader entity of Anonymous to whom LulzSec was affiliated. Here the fun of trolling and political activism are bound together, having a large impact on public opinion and media culture. Mustafa Al-Bassam, who also managed the LulzSecurity.com website, is currently a Computer Science PhD student at University College London, and back on the Internet after a nearly two year Internet ban imposed by police.
18:20-18:30 – SHORT
SHERIFF SOFTWARE: Seattle Crime Cams & Jaywalking
Video contribute by Dries Depoorter (digital artist, BE).
Dries Depoorter stretches the limits of truth-telling by showing two installation projects focusing on privacy and surveillance: Seattle Crime Cams and Jaywalking, in a video contribute for the Disruption Network Lab. With his project Seattle Crime Cams (a co-production of de Brakke Grond Amsterdam), he turns us into ultimate long-distance disaster tourists. In this city, which is filled to the brim with traffic cameras, the police make the calls they receive available online. Using the location of the latest call, the closest live online traffic cameras are shown. Seattle Crime Cams first checks the location of the latest emergency caller in Seattle. Knowing the location of this potential “crime scene” it searches for the closest real-time surveillance and shows them. The second installation automatically catches jaywalkers using live surveillance webcams and gives visitors the choice to report them to the police. A single press of the button can send a screenshot of the violation to the nearest police station via email. Depoorter presents us with a dilemma: will we report the unsuspecting jaywalker? More info: http://driesdepoorter.be
18:30-20:30 – PANEL
BEYOND EVIDENCE: FINDING SOURCES, QUESTIONING TRUTHS
Jack Werner (investigative journalist, SE), Hans Bernhard / UBERMORGEN (artist, CH/USA/AT) Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo / !Mediengruppe Bitnik (artists, CH/DE). Moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Director of the Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE).
If we consider truth-telling as the act of providing clear facts and evidence, which is a keen discourse within whistleblowing, what happens if we question the concept of truth itself, by analysing how Internet culture works? The challenge becomes to investigate those obscure parts of the Internet that are fed by "fakelore" (as a combination of fake, and folklore), as well as artistic projects that question a single perspective of understanding and bring along multiple truths. Hans Bernhard, co-founder of the artist project UBERMORGEN together with lizvlx, will tell us about the (true or false?) stories of discovering whistle-blower Edward Snowden at the Vienna International Airport escaping from Hong Kong, as well as Facts, Truth, Fake, and consensual hallucinations; Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo /!Mediengruppe Bitnik will present, among others, their project “Delivery for Mr. Assange” as a SYSTEM_TEST and a Live Mail Art Piece broadcasted in the Internet through a camera, as well as other projects about the hidden side of the Internet. Finally, investigative journalist Jack Werner, author of the book Creepypasta: Ghost stories from the Internet (2014), will open up the discourse to “fakelore”, by discussing the impact of viral storytelling and source trust in online journalism and culture.
Biographies:
Grace North (Director of the Jeremy Hammond Defense Committee, and Jeremy Hammond Campaign Manager, USA).
Grace North is a prison support guru & all-around solidarity rock star who heads up Jeremy Hammond defense committee, and, alongside their Courage Foundation colleagues, is also involved in supporting for Lauri Love & Matt DeHart. A lifelong anarchist & activist, Grace believes strongly in not only prison abolition, but in the power of direct action to advance pro-choice, pro-queer, anti-racist ideals in an increasingly hostile political & social climate. Her favorite animal is the penguin.
www.freejeremy.net
Mustafa Al-Bassam (alias Tflow, former core member, LulzSec, UK)
Mustafa is an undergraduate at King's College London in Computer Science. He gained notoriety in 2011 for being a part of LulzSec, a computer hacking group responsible a number of high profile attacks. As a result, he was legally banned from the Internet for almost two years as a condition of his bail. Mustafa has worked with Privacy International to analyse the destruction of computer equipment ordered by GCHQ, that held top secret material leaked from the NSA and GCHQ. He was portrayed as one of the main characters in "The Internet is Serious Business", a play by the Royal Court Theatre telling a story about Internet culture. Concerned about mass and corporate surveillance, he has advised human rights defenders around the world on protecting their data and communicating securely online. During the Jasmine Revolution he created a tool for Tunisian dissidents to defend themselves against government malware.
musalbas.com
Gabriella Coleman (Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University, Quebec, CA).
Gabriella (Biella) Coleman holds the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University. Trained as an anthropologist, her scholarship explores the intersection of the cultures of hacking and politics, with a focus on the sociopolitical implications of the free software movement and the digital protest ensemble Anonymous. She has authored two books, Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous (Verso, 2014), which was named to Kirkus Reviews’Best Books of 2014 and was awarded the Diana Forsythe Prize by the American Anthropological Association. Her work has been featured in numerous scholarly journals and edited volumes. Committed to public ethnography, she routinely presents her work to diverse audiences, teaches undergraduate and graduate courses, and has written for popular media outlets, including the New York Times, Slate, Wired, MIT Technology Review, Huffington Post, and the Atlantic. She sits on the board of Equalitie, The Tor Project, and the Social Science Advisory Board of the National Center for Women and Information Technology.
gabriellacoleman.org
Andy Müller-Maguhn (Courage Advisory board member, Wau Holland Stiftung board member, DE).
Andy Müller-Maguhn is a member of the German hacker association Chaos Computer Club. Having been a member since 1986, he was appointed as a spokesman for the club in 1990, and later served on its board until 2012. In an election in autumn 2000, he was voted in as an at-large director of ICANN, which made him jointly responsible with 18 other directors for the worldwide development of guidelines and the decision of structural questions for the Internet structure. His term lasted two years, and from June 2002 to June 2004, he operated as an honorary board member of the European Digital Rights Institution (EDRI), an umbrella organization for European NGOs which campaigns for human rights in the digital age. In 1995, Müller-Maguhn founded the “Datenreisebüro” (‘Data Travel Agency’), since 2002 based in a Berlin office. The Datenreisebüro organises workshops which train system administrators in data protection and data security.
www.datenreisen.de
Simona Levi (founder of Xnet, ES)
Theater director, artist and activist, in the last few years Simona Levi has focused on free culture, digital democracy and the strategic use of digital tools for organization, communication, collective action and democratic renovation. Promotor of projects such as 15MpaRato, which started the trial against Bankia’ s heads - the 4th Spanish bank -, she organizes platforms to uncover corruption and political responsibility in economic injustices. Active participant in the Indignados' movement, she is co-author of several books, among them “ Technopolitics, Internet and R-evolutions”.
https://xnet-x.net
Katharina Meyer (curator and researcher, member of the Whistleblower-Netzwerk e.V, DE),
Katharina Meyer is a curator, researcher and publicist who works for Whistleblower Network, re:publica and previously worked for initiatives like Open Knowledge Foundation. She is a irregular contributor to netzpolitik.org and Hackademia-summerschool graduate. Her interest is focused on the intersection of Digital Culture and impacts on society. She is trained as historian of technology and holds a M.A. in Arts and Media Administration from Freie Universität Berlin. Previously she has been research fellow at Center for Digital Cultures, Leuphana-Universität Lüneburg.
www.whistleblower-net.de
Giovanni Pellerano (CTO of GlobaLeaks, privacy and transparency activist at the Hermes Center, IT)
Giovanni Pellerano is an Italian computer engineer graduated at Università di Pisa. Transparency advocate and privacy activist in 2012 he co-founded the Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights where he is researching on the field of whistleblowing best practices and where he lead the development of GlobaLeaks. In 2016 he co-founded Whistleblowing Solutions, a social enterprise offering whistleblowing services applied to anti-corruption with the strong aim of making the world a better place.
www.hermescenter.org, www.globaleaks.org
Theresa Züger (researcher on civil disobedience, DE).
Theresa Züger is Associated Doctoral Researcher on Global Constitutionalism and the Internet at the HIIG (The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society) in Berlin. She studied media and culture, German philology and philosophy at the University of Cologne. Her magister thesis addressed Internet ethics and Internet governance. Before joining HIIG, she worked as a communication specialist at Great Place to Work® Germany. The question of her PhD project at the HIIG concerns digital civil disobedience.
Dries Depoorter (digital artist, BE)
Assembling, sharing and experimenting with private data of himself and random people found on the Internet, digital artist Dries Depoorter tackles in a thought-provoking way issues like social identity, big data sharing, encryption and (the lack of) protection of our online privacy.
www.driesdepoorter.be
Jack Werner (investigative journalist, SE)
Jack Werner is a journalist, writer and podcaster covering social media, web culture and modern folklore. He is the author of Creepypasta: Ghost stories from the Internet (2014). Jack has been called “probably the most important journalist in our country right now”. In 2014, he was awarded the The Swedish Grand Journalism Prize for his work with the fact checking effort Viralgranskaren.
http://kwasbeb.se
Hans Bernhard / UBERMORGEN (artist, CH/USA/AT)
lizvlx (AT, b. 1973) and Hans Bernhard (CH/USA, b. 1971) are European artists who work in installation, video, code and performance. They are doing strange things with software & hardware. Their early work is referred to as 'Media Hacking' and 'Online Performance', combining various forms of digital media into artistic action. In 2000, they created Vote-Auction, a vote-selling/buying online platform and were described by CNN as 'maverick Austrian business people'. The New York Times called their 2005 'Google Will Eat Itself' project 'simply brilliant. Their main influences are Rammstein, Samantha Fox, Guns N’ Roses & Duran Duran, Pfizer's Olanzapine & Hoffmann's LSD, Lindt's Dark Chocolate & KFC's Coconut Shrimps Deluxe. They have shown their work in major international institutions such as the Centre Pompidou, MoMA, Sydney Biennale, MACBA Barcelona, New Museum New York, SFMoma, ICC Tokyo, Gwangju Biennale and were commissioned by Serpentine Galleries London & Whitney Museum New York.
http://ubermorgen.com
Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo / !Mediengruppe Bitnik (artists, CH/DE)
!Mediengruppe Bitnik (read - the not mediengruppe bitnik) live and work in Zurich. They are contemporary artists working on and with the Internet. Their practice expands from the digital to affect physical spaces, often intentionally applying loss of control to challenge established structures and mechanisms. !Mediengruppe Bitniks works formulate fundamental questions concerning contemporary issues. In early 2013 !Mediengruppe Bitnik sent a parcel to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy. The parcel contained a camera which broadcast its journey through the postal system live on the internet. They describe «Delivery for Mr. Assange» as a SYSTEM_TEST and a Live Mail Art Piece. They have also been known for sending a bot called «Random Darknet Shopper» on a three-month shopping spree in the Darknets where it randomly bought objects like Ecstasy and had them sent directly to the gallery space. !Mediengruppe Bitnik are the artists Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo. Their accomplices are the London filmmaker and researcher Adnan Hadzi and the reporter Daniel Ryser.
https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org/
Gabriel S Moses (sequential artist and graphic novelist, IL/DE)
Gabriel S Moses, 1982, Jerusalem, is a Berlin based sequential artist and performer. in other words, he is into very serious comics for very serious people. He likes making up theories and stories about our kids, their smartphones and the slurs they post next to pixelated images of household pets. He also holds a practice-based Masters degree (Institute for Art In Context, UdK Berlin). His works have been showcased in transmediale (Berlin), Lenbachhaus (Munich) and FILE (Sao Paulo). In 2014, his project Enhancement won first prize at the ‘Anthropocene’ conference in HKW, Berlin.
www.gabsmoses.com
