An evening of learning, proposed by Federal Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, to keep us safe online. And what an excellent job Dan Bryant did of making both the why and the how clear in his workshop. Dan is a ‘conscientious objector’ systems engineer from the private sector, who joined the Greens to help refugees and keep the internet a fair playing field.

CRYPTOPARTY LIKE IT'S 1984 systems engineer and tutor - DAN BRYANT

The ‘Cryptoparty Like It’s 1984′ event is in 4 parts, and I’ve documented that into 3 films; the fourth being an interaction with the audience (whom I did not film for the entirety of the evening). The first is a preamble from Greens MP Jamie Parker and Senator Scott Ludlam; the second a cyber-security work-shop; and the third a Q&A with Ludlam and NSW Greens Candidate for Newtown, Jenny Leong.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussies… whether or not you like knights and dames, methinks it’s time to castle. With both major parties bull-dozing their way into our private lives, with the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2015, on *someone’s* behalf, the sensible reaction is to don the Invisibility Cloak. Go Dark! This trove of Australian metadata will likely become a target for penetration and theft world-wide; so best not to allow one’s own data-set to become vulnerable. Hell knows they haven’t thought it through about how to compensate us, if we all get robbed.

CRYPTOPARTY LIKE IT'S 1984 - Dan explains how TOR works

What I fear is that global surveillance provides a means for a global elite, to learn the ‘Deepest Secret Fear’ of any opponent; and to thwart their every move in advance. Metadata essentially monitors networks of communications, not just individuals; so this power extends over groups of all kinds, be it political parties, unions, journalists or activists defending their water supplies and farmlands.

The Greens are the only large political party opposing this ‘accident waiting to happen’ / totalitarian-corporate take-over. Senator Ludlam has decided to spread the word, far and wide, on how to really protect Australia. Every technique you learn in this workshop is entirely legal, and safe for use. If you can get yourself a decent VPN (virtual private network), it may even speed up your internet connection.

“We might think that the Internet is a place where we are all equals and we all communicate. It is a new civilian world, a new world where we can develop our ideas and understandings about how planet earth actually works. Where in some sense we are all equal because we can all communicate to everyone. They may not want to listen… but if they do they can send it to anyone. But it is not an equal place. This week’s revelations have proved that it is very far from an equal place, and it is very far from a civilian place.

The Internet has been transformed into a militarily occupied state. When all of our private communications, heart felt, the inner core of our life, communications between boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, between business partners, even between bureaucracies and states; when all those communications are swept up, hovered up into a vast collection apparatus, indexed and stored for all time available only to a select few… then we are in the situation where we have a tank on the street of the inner core of our lives, where we have a soldier under our bed, listening to everything that a husband and wife says to one another when they are communicating by email or sms. The penetration of the digital on civilian life is also the penetration of the military and intelligence agencies of civilian life.”
Julian Assange (full transcript)

Wikileaks Party National Council Member Cassie Findlay spoke out in July 6th 2013, at the Sydney PRISM-BREAK rally, in response to the revelations of Edward Snowden. She pledges to uncover the extent to which Australian citizens have been spied upon by foreign intelligence agencies, at the behest of our own government.

“The Wikileaks Party in the Australian Senate will demand that security agencies and the rest of government come clean on what they’ve signed up to with PRISM and other surveillance programs. An Abbott or a Rudd led government will inevitably steer us into ever more secretive arrangements with foreign intelligence bodies, with our own telecommunications providers and with our own internet service providers. Rather than going with a rubber stamp for a sweeping surveillance by these foreign powers and providers, our Party will ins ist on knowing the full story of surveillance and data collection, and fight to give the power back to the Australian people, to decide what rights to privacy and liberty we deserve.”

The Australian Wikileaks salute... a double peace sign