*37C3 preroll music*
*Applaus*
Boris: All right so everybody can hear me very well. My name is Boris I'm part of the
ABC black cross Belarus and I will be talking about tractors Rockets and the
internet and I have very short time so you will see very few things of those. ne
thing we are in the saal G because I didn't want to be in the saal Z. Z as it's kind of
like ideologically doesn't pass for people in the Eastern Europe *laughter, applause*
yeah and yeah. We will have like a short question answer section in the end. What
the [ __ ] is ABC-Belarus? Many of you don't know, we are like an activist
Anarchist Collective that supports for the last 15 years. People who ended up in
prison fighting dictatorship in the country. Since our existence beginning of
our existence we never had any people or we never had a situation where we never
had people in the prison so people are constantly in prison in Belarus in the
last 15 years fighting the dictatorship. We do solidarity work also with those who are
around the people who are in prisons so their families and so on we also promote,
we we promoting we don't have so much time left anymore, but before building up a
security culture so for the activists to know how to go around the new mechanisms
of a dictatorship to suppress the population. We do collect a little bit of
data from like the courts, so we see what the government is using for example to
crack the laptops, we see all this [ __ ] coming up in in the documents from time to
time and this is not a talk about our group so you can check out our website and
see what is it about so tractors here they are they don't always look like that
sometimes they look like that tractors are one of the important parts of like for
you to imagine how Belarusian industry looks like so after collapse of the Soviet
Union Belarusia Bellarus was and remained like a zone of heavy and Light Industry
production of tractors but also we had industry that was connected with war or
militarism of the Soviet Union right? So there are factories that are producing
small chips for the rockets and [ __ ] like that and this continues so partly
Russian war industry on Belarus in production of the Rockets the situation
where you know Russian Rockets hit wrong Target in Ukraine also connected with the
fact that Belarusian workers are stealing precious metals from the factories. So
like those produced chips are working like [ __ ] and we do have it but it's not like
Taiwan or something like that it's more like imagine Soviet Union post Soviet
Union country that people are doing like some outdated Technologies. Yeah. So those
are like the topic about the Rockets. Belarus is participating in the war
efforts of Russia right now and it was participating for very long in buildup to
the war, so helping producing enough rockets and enough of the you know like
flying [ __ ] that goes to Ukraine right now. However after collapse of the Soviet
Union Belarus became also very dependent and it was dependent and became dependent
on Russian resources so oil gas and all this [ __ ] comes mostly from Russia
economically dependent on Russia and that's politically dependent as well.
Talking about Lukashenka, so belorus is a dictatorship that ruled by this guy, next
year is 30 years anniversary. Lukashenka and Technologies he's a very special
character you can do like lectures in universities about his personality. I will
do a couple of quotes about how he perceives Technologies and how he sees
himself in the technological World. For example "we do not need an imported system
for falsifying elections, we will create our own one run by the State" and thas is connected
with this notion that for the you know successful dictatorship you don't need some things, you can produce dictatorship in the country yourself.
A lot of things that are happening in Belarus are homemade shit. As a child I was groing among animals and plans, so he is
very close to the nature he thinks also shows his like attitude to Technologies
and the last part is "I even don't have a mobile phone I'm looking at other
presidents and see how they're preoccupied with their iPhones I'm not doing that I
know what security is" and even more "I have enough people who can do that for me".
And that's an important factor Lukashenka knows how to drive a tractor, he doesn't
know how to operate iPhone most probably. But he's he has this mentality that
understands okay I need enough smart people around me who will help me to go
through the modern world and that's what he's doing a lot. So he has quite a huge
let's say cabinet of people who are helping him out to figure out the modern
world in a different directions politically technologically wise
economically. Although Belarus is a dictatorship it is a country that was for
many years a partner of the European Union. It changed recently before 2020 protest
before the uprising of 2020 European Union was cooperating with Belarus on the border
security, what they're doing also in turkey and many other authoritarian regimes. So
for European politicians to protect the borders build up a fences it's fine to
have like a bloody dictator that is ready to kill people. So that's what European
Union was doing and that involved also transaction of Technologies so for example
you go to the Belarusian border and you get in controlled and you have this huge
x-ray machine that is going to x-ray your car or whatever [ __ ] you have and it's
written like there's a plate that says like this machine is financed by the
European Union and you think like wow thank you European Union, you're like
really helping democracy in Belarus. So European Union was also investing a lot in
the infrastructure projects inside of the country roads and [ __ ] like that this
was connected also because Belarus is Transit country so you need a lot of
Transit between Russia and Europe not anymore but before it was the case right
everybody wanted to trade with Russia a lot still do. Also some countries inside
of the European Union were supporting police efforts in Belarus, there was a
huge scandal in Germany, that German cops were bringing Belorussian Riot cops to
evictions of or like protection of Gorleben transport like the nuclear waste
transport back in the days. So they wouldn't have like Belorussian cops hitting
you you know but they would have them like just sitting next to you and and watching
how the German cops are working and that's where for example Belarusian cops learned
to film everything at the demonstrations or at some events so they're also running
with these cameras and filming and then post factum might apply repressions to the
people who were participating in the protests. And some of the cameras were
donated generously by the German state to the Belarusian cops. And there are many
more other money flows like ecological, technological also private public
everything goes in Belarus, dictatorship yes but I mean money you know that cross
the border easily. Very simple Technologies to fight the population,
water cannons were brought from Canada so we had this fancy water Canadian water
cannons. I will show you how Belarussian people hacked those during the protests
very easy. Camera usage for documentation as I was mentioning cops running around
with cameras all the time. This is they what they learned from the German cops
there were like a new technologies that were like mobile car Shields so they bring
it up to block the whole street. Russians have like bigger machines belarusians have
smaller machines but in general the idea is that you you have this kind of like a a
truck that brings a huge shield and you block the whole street so protesters
cannot go through it. And crowd control equipment from other countries like we had
tear gas from Czech and stun grenades from Czech and Israelis and so on so like
everybody were delivering and providing weapons to Belarus as if it's like sure
you know we know that you doing some [ __ ] there but have it for you. But there are
some other funny you know like hacking from Belarusian state so for example here
like during the protest people were putting Flags like white red white flags
which were the protest Flags [ __ ] I have to put the sound in one second, but it's
not really important what people was laughing about him *some laughs*. So yeah
this is one of the hack that this is I think somebody connected with the ban
State who was trying to remove the flag then we have like this systems of
notification in the city that were used to play like a patriotic music during the
protests which Belarusian state was doing trying to like you know demoralize the
protesters looks [ __ ] bizarre and crazy and that was the hacking part of the
Canadian water cannon. Belarussian people are very creative you can see you love
hacking we all love hacking that's how you hack the the water cannon.
*Applause*
Later on they stopped using them because this what happened to them when
you hack them
*Music* yeah.
But they were they were very open for hacking like nothing is closed you can
just open and take it away. Internet in Belarus right, so this is a separate topic,
we we are the country of the post Soviet so we didn't have internet for very long I
think like the general consumers market for the internet opened like beginning of
2000s maybe middle of 2000s I got my internet connection first 2004 - 2005 so
internet is a is a is kind of like a thing that was developing very slowly but then
it exploded. One of the things was for example internet like online
infrastructure was used for the protests in 2005, wrong date, of the elections
so we had like a protest camp on the streets and people set up an indymedia
media information point which was broadcasting updates online life you know.
And this was one of the first situations in Belarus where the website started
getting blocked. So Belarus in IND media was the first attemp of Belarusian state
to fight certain content on the internet. There was like mirrors there was a lot of
solidarity also from outside. So this worked pretty well for the protesters
didn't work so well for the government. The protest was smashed, but for a lot of
people the opportunity of organizing through the internet became very obvious
and people started using it in mass. Later on Belarusian State started blocking from
2016 Tor network with different success of course like you can't block it with
tractors putting it on the road so you need more sufficient you know like or
complicated systems and of course you can't get them easily in Belarus from the
factories that are producing Rockets. You can't hit the Tor network with the rocket.
So like they started searching for those and you can see that like three years
Belarusian cops were going to security congresses where like this private
companies was selling [ __ ] to anybody pretty much and they were searching for
Solutions, there were like for 2014 I think there was a hacking team Italian hacking
team leak where we figure out that Belarusian state was trying to buy
something from Italians and stuff like that, right? So at the end of the day they
got some stuff in 2016 and slowly started applying more and more censorship in on
the internet, Anarchist websites oppositional websites starting getting
blocked in 2020 this system like exploded in Mass so we have like hundreds and
hundreds of the websites some of them like you know islamist [ __ ] and and stuff
like that but some of them are legit oppositional anarchists and stuff like
that that are blocked and you can't access them through like a normal Network. Yeah
and right now because Belarusian state was under attack for quite often from certain
groups, a lot of websites governmental websites kind of created a white listing
just for belarussian IPs so you can't go to the belarussian state websites from outside.
So a lot of people paradoxically left the country live in Exile but use Belarusian
VPN to know if they're included in extremist the terrorist lists. Yeah so one
more thing about Belarusian internet and Belarusian like communication
infrastructure is sorm, some of you have heard about it this is like a saying that
was developed for many years and there are different versions of it and it's pretty
much backdoor like legal back door to put into the networks of the communication
providers before it was just a cell network now it's also
internet Network and so on internet providers you just put a black box and the
cops somewhere on the other side of the of the country can have access to your
network directly and they can see all the what is happening on the network and they
you know like clone easily IDs and so on and so forth. So they are like owning
pretty much the net the private networks of the private providers also what is not
mentioned on the slides Belarusian internet is in one way or another is
governmental so you have like one exit for the internet to the outside world and this
is controlled by the state and all the private companies that are working with
the internet are actually like renting internet from the state and then reselling
it to the private biders. Internet censorship. So I was telling you that they
were going and buying [ __ ] on the market one of the things that kind of blew out
and we figure out in 2020 was this company sandvine you might have heard about it
they were selling pretty much the the gear the hardware for for censoring traffic in
the first days after elections. But the network was set up already for longer so
it was not like s Vine is rushing into Minsk and on the day of Elections but
rather this was sold for some years before and the Belarusian and state was successfully
using it and on the day of Elections like we lost internet connection for most of
the country. There was also coming a lot of assistance days following that from
Russian and Chinese government who would try to you know nav help to navigate
Belarusian government through the fact that they basically shut down not only
like a protest infrastructure but their own infrastructure because a lot of their
own [ __ ] was dependent on the internet and that was one of the reasons why
internet was returned to Belarus three days later as a lot of repressive
infrastructure was not working for the state. Yeah so those were very supportive
of Belarusian regime and they're still doing that but there were some also
private companies that were helping Belarus to deal with the protests
Microsoft I mean there is a lot of pirated Microsoft installs but Skype server
infrastructure was used for prosecuting protesters, this was very handy so you
would have a court, where there will be like just a computer standard, like it's
not really technological country so much right? So in the court there will be a
laptop and there would be like a guy in the Mask who would be a witness in the
case of the of the protesters and it takes around like 2 minutes to prosecute the
person for them to get like 15 25 days in prison. The person leaves and then there
is a new case and quite often there were like the same cops basically testifying
for the people on many on multiple occasions and this provided a lot of
anonymity from one side for the infrastructure of repressions because the
cops didn't ha:ve to be at the place and they couldn't be identified but on the
other side it provided allso this kind of like a mobility of repressions. You don't
need to bring another cop who would stand there and he doesn't know what to read and
to say and so on and so forth. So this was there and this was like Skype was not in
any way you know and Microsoft was not in any way reacting how the Belarusian state
is using their services in the country at that .Then we had cinezis, cinezis is like
a Belarusian company that was developing a face recognition system and this smart
City [ __ ] and all the crap you can find on the pages of the internet days. So one
of the products they had was keyboard and this was basically like a life face
recognition system that they installed in Minsk. And this keypod was used for
identifying also protesters during the protests and also identifying High Target
like high political Targets in the city at some point. So for example one of the
congress wars an anarchist was arrested through like a common operation of keyboard.
That was telling the police that he's there so they would follow him to the
place where he was living underground and so on and so forth. So, face recognition
system worked pretty well in certain situations right? They were also using
like their own face recognition system for postprocess so they get images of high
resolution from Big crowds like 100,000 people and from there they would pick up
some faces of the protesters and this would be like ending up in the court cases
of the people. So you would have like a print out from keyboard system that was saying
okay we identify this person like this and that. The CEO of the company is like a son
of the KGB agent so they had like a lot of connections with the state and what else
is here? Like the company itself was trying to present itself, we are like an
IT company that is doing just a you know like a nice thing for everybody and make
people happy in Belarus. But reality was different and we figured that also post
factum I think a month later there was a bigger article published on what they're
doing and how they are basically like helping out the Belarusian state to
suppress the uprising. And here we also have a great Corporation Called Intel that
doesn't you know for whom money also doesn't smell it's it's very funny because
intel was very proud of cooperating with cinezis till 2022 even though cinezis was
on sanction under sanctions in the European Union by that time but US was not
sanctioning. So when the fullscale war in Ukraine broke broke out cinezis ended up
on US sanction list so intel was like okay we we this is not good imagery for us, so
they deleted the keyboard page from their website, where they were very proud of it
but if you search keyboard Intel it's you still find a Chinese page like a page in
Chinese on the Intel website that still does like all this [ __ ] advertisement we
are helping human rights and developing Technologies and progress and blah blah
blah. So Intel is still partly proud of cooperating with the repressive
organization in Belarus but only for the Chinese market most probably. Social
networks, so there is like a certain you know a hype around that telegram was used
a lot to coordinate protest and so on and so forth but reality I mean and it was
but reality the other side of the coin was that we ended up in quite a [ __ ] storm
because people could be identified through the telegram or the way telegram is built
through IDs like the unique IDs that are doesn't matter if you change the phone
number and so on and so forth. So a lot of people ended up being prosecuted because
they did some [ __ ] on telegram and in like the further we went after repressions
of the uprising the more ridiculous those could be, like even putting you know a [
__ ] Emoji under information that a KGB agent was shot during a raid would be
enough to start criminal prosecution against you. So those things became very
problematic and at the end of the day we've seen that Belarusian state is
observing not only telegram but also other social networks. Telegram at that point
was not really cooperative with belarussian State and they were still
selling like Durov was still selling this you know image of we are like for the
human rights and for people and all this [ __ ] but by the time like a year later
we ended up with a situation when the protest like died out that Durov started
blocking like telegram started blocking certain website certain [ __ ] not
websites certain channels in telegram that were for example dedoxing police or
documenting police violence and and court cases and so on and so forth. So those
channels are for example like, there is a channel that is called Belarussian
punishers that has a list of police officers who were responsible for the
violence and this is blocked on Telegram and you can't find it. Official point of
like telegram this is not us saying, they said okay, Apple actually forced us to do
that but reality is that it goes both ways. You know like you have to cooperate
with each other for this to to happen and this was happening on one side on the
other side telegram was blocking also channels of the same kind of groups in
Russia that were also dedoxing cops who were using violence and who were
participating in repressions even after the fullscale invasion. So we see a lot of
censorship and a lot of cooperation happening after like the protest, so
during the the active phase like they would be like yeah we standing with you
and you're almost one so we would like to be with you but when you know they see
that the status quo is maintained they start cooperating they start like
following the laws of the country even if those laws are oppressive or doesn't make
any [ __ ] sense and so on and so forth. Yeah and vkontakte, I think you know this
is like a social network in Russia, they are like completely working with FSB and
and [ __ ] and Belarusian State also has pretty much direct access on what you're
doing there. So there there were some people organizing but for even like normal
people it became clear that like don't use Russian social networks, this is like a
bad idea and then apparently you shouldn't use Chinese social networks and maybe
don't use social networks in general because a lot of them have like a
potential of repressions of not on the individuals but the social movements and
and [ __ ] like that. Mobile phones and data collection. So what did we figure out
during the protests and and the last years cellebrite of course they are [ __ ] happy
to to sell themselves to any repressive regime so Belarus is not an exception and
they they're they they were used they're still used so belarusan state is still
buying cellebrite licenses through some third party companies and I mean sanctions
is is a [ __ ] joke in general. And even the companies who are saying we are not
doing that in most cases they are doing that but through the third party. Data
dumps so through cellebrite but through other certain other companies you just get
like a set of phones right and I don't know there would be like 500 people
detained, there would be all the phones confiscated and the cops would be dumping
all the data from those phones and then you know like they wouldn't have a time to
go through this data at the point but then you might be prosecuted in half a year
later for what they found from those phones. And also you know like there is a
lot discussions during the Congress as well and in general in the security
Community the strong passwords you know, encryption is very important but we
figured out that you know encryption works very bad if they're torturing you. And
that was the Belarussian like way to break encryption, they didn't try to you know
make a technological way into this, but rather they [ __ ] you up to the point
where you decide okay I rather die or I give them the password and quite often it
worked pretty well and it worked also in the way like not retrospectively but in a
in a threaten way. So you know, okay some people were tortured to get access to the
encrypted drives and other people would be like okay I give you the password without
torture. So encryption doesn't work against torture in Belarusian State and in
many other cases and this is yeah it doesn't matter how perfect your security
system built technologically wise quite often the human factor is still the
the weakest link in the whole situation. Then we had situations where the cops were
impersonating activists. Up to the point where they were registering like for
example on the dating apps and putting like naked pictures that they would get
from the data damps and so on and then people would be calling those activists
hooking up with them and so on and so forth. Sim cloning that's a huge thing
that I think people should [ __ ] like get engraved in their like brain that's that
your phone and the SIM cards that you get do not belong to you you are like
borrowing them from the companies and quite often if the companies have or the
state has access to the companies then the state owns those and that means the state
owns your [ __ ] phone number and that means phone number is not unique
identification. So we had a lot of situations where telegram accounts were
hijacked by the state just by you know like cloning the SIM card and getting all
the access and normal person wouldn't put a password on your account. Yeah so be
aware of that and please like stop using that for your you know technological
things you're doing or software that you are developing this is not a secure way in
any way. This also goes to Signal people. Traffic analysis yes as I was mentioning
like the [ __ ] storm is there so they're trying to identify what people are doing
and this might be also a reason for a house rate or something like that if your
traffic looks suspicious. Resistance. So resistance unfortunately is very low
technologically speaking so there's not so much of like you know laser rifles and [
__ ] like that. But rather and and and that's like unfortunately the story of
resistance against authoritarian regimes, that normally even when the state has like
very sophisticated heat guns and [ __ ] like that people end up on the streets
with the stones and sticks and that was the case also in Belarus. However people
started learning Technologies very fast so there were a lot of people who learned how
to use proxies, Tor, VPN, you see how the whole usage of those Services spiked during the
protest and this is not like you know your 20 30 year old friends but rather like
older people 50 60 who were forced into doing that, because they are interested in
joining the protest. So to be part of the protest you actually have to learn how to
do those. We also figured out that mesh networks although it's such a great idea
and maybe one day on the other planet it will work out, but for your average
protester and average participant in in like an anti-authoritarian uprising this
is not the case you can't [ __ ] get them working and people are not really capable
of of using them. Destruction of surveillance property so there were people
who would just go around and smash the [ __ ] cameras that was the way to resist
the facial recognition system. Hacking of infrastructure so there were a lot of
different attempts and the biggest one I think was hacking into the ID database
where which brought like a lot of other stuff so there databases of all this
Belarusian citizens their criminal records and and [ __ ] like that available to
certain groups right now and this gives also opportunity to look into police
activity and what the cops are doing what they own where they work and so on and so
Forth. The doxxing of the police officers and regime functions like the judges and
other bureaucrats basically as I was mentioning like on telegram you have this
whole list like thousands and tens of thousands of people there is also a map so
you can have a look if you're living next to a [ __ ] in your house who is like a
colonel of repression operatus or something like that so this is also
helping a lot but it also build up a lot of pressure on the police because police
apparently think if you know if you know the address of the police officer most
probably you will go and smash his [ __ ] house and kill everybody and so on, which
didn't didn't happen but it did provide a certain pressure on the repression
apparatus. We also ended up with the solution for like what do you do when the
cops torture you for your password for encrypted hard drive, you break your hard
drive and sometimes maybe you wouldn't be able to break your hard drive so you do
like this thing that they do in the movies you know in US you break the screen. *some
laughs* Really bizarre right? But it works the the point here and I'm not talking
about the laptop the point here is you have a smartphone and there you have
something going on so if you smash it the average Riot cob guy doesn't know what
what to do with it, so he can't torture you to open it right it doesn't work. And
that was like a solution for a lot of activist. So basically if you are in the
danger of being arrested you just break the phone and you have this buffer time
when the cops arrest you put you in jail and blah blah blah and this expert comes
who knows how to you know open the phone that has a broken screen. And that's kind
of like a place where most of the torture happens. So you're capable of avoiding and
the cops also figured out that pretty fast so they started trying to get you arrested
before you break that and I have a story like of a friend who you know like who was
laying on the ground and he was putting his hand in the pocket and like smashing
the screen and he did it and the cops were like how did you do that we were formed
sitting on you you couldn't [ __ ] move? So these kind of things and these kind of
things I think saved at least a health of certain people and also there was a lot of
online education where there were like workshops for the people how to figure out
out their smartphone security their telegram security and [ __ ] like that.
This is one of the examples of online education that is not connected with the
security of the smartphones it is more about production of new technologies
right? In Belarus not connected the tractors and those are like just to
immobilize the police Vans. Yeah so this this was a lot of this kind of online
education as well. The interesting fact again that a lot of people were afraid to
put to do that online education because eventually on many social networks you can
get banned for that, like if you put you know how do you say a video how to make
molotov cocktail this is considered illegal activity and you know your account
can be banned and [ __ ] like that and I think people in not in the first World
figure that out a lot. Like people who are in in Palestine and in many other places
figure that you know the repressions are working from the private companies against
them when they're fighting against the regimes. Conclusions so this is a small
sticker that says if you can't break the dictatorship you can still burn it down.
*laughter*
Conclusions are very short. There is a lot to talk about. Capitalism
is [ __ ] evil I mean hundreds of years of this [ __ ] up story. I hope all of you
figured this out this is not really a [ __ ] mystery, you know you don't have to come
from USSR indoctrinated by Marxism leninism to know that capitalism is evil!
and capitalism *Many Applaus*
And capitalism destroys lives not only here you know like in in Germany in US or
whatever and your political life but it destroys lives everywhere in Belarus,
Myanmar, Hong Kong, Syria like the [ __ ] corporations and the [ __ ] private
business is ready to sell anything even their [ __ ] mothers and brothers and
sisters to the dictators just to make money. Your phone number is not a good ID
it's a bad ID don't [ __ ] use it ever because it can be easily identified in
Germany as well in many other countries. It is like it it's a [ __ ] like if giving a
passport. Just when you are registering with your phone number just imagine that
you're giving a passport to some company right?
Someone from the audience: taking pictures.
Boris: Yeah password is a good thing, still, many years after you can also
forget it. You get a concussion you forget it, you get tortured you forget it,
password is good right? Surveillance is good for the state bad for society so all
those corporations that are selling right now also in Western world the business of
surveillance they are destroying the social glue of the society and this is
like a different topic but but in general like surveillance is destructive for us as
a humankind. Western private companies are crucial for the dictatorship, we are not
living in the world where you know like the dictators have horses and they are
riding them into the crowd and like w hooray but rather a lot of technologies
that are used by the state by the Belarusian state but also by Syrian state,
by Russian state are not the technologies that were developed within the small
states by the local companies but rather a lot of technologies that were brought in
and developed in this countries where we are sitting you know? And they were
developed under certain freedom but at the same time they are now used to engrave the
dictatorship and those dictatorships are spreading like Russia wants to [ __ ]
conquer half of the Europe. So you have to be aware of that and you have to like WE
have to fight that back. This is not you know whether it is should be done or not
it is more like how much energy and how [ __ ] your ass should be on on fire to
fight those. Smart also doesn't mean smart and by that I mean that a lot of Engineers
believe that they they you know they can open a [ __ ] Wikipedia page, so they know
everything about the world. But it is not the case a lot of Engineers fail miserably
in understanding how the world is working how the society is working so if we
develop technological solutions to certain problems we do have to work with
sociologists, political scientists with activists to understand how those
technologies will influence the world you know?
*very many ovations*
The time is [ __ ] running out and I'm not talking about all only about ecological
catastrophe but also technologically speaking. We are in the race with you know
the dictators and authoritarian regimes who want to enforce and make their regime
stronger through Technologies, face recognition systems and all this [ __ ]
that is making the state way stronger against the society so yeah, get your [ __
] done and get your [ __ ] like going already now today, you know. And digital
resistance is part of a broader Uprising so do not see yourself you know as a
hackers community that exist in isolated world and you're in a bubble and [ __ ]
like that but rather if we want to stop like technological dictatorships or
whatever [ __ ] you can imagine we actually have to work together,
technological activists, Street activists, Community organizers all of those get
together and fight against the dictatorships fight against the
authoritarian attacks on us, on our society, on our families, on our friends
and only then we can win thank you!
*Applause*
Engel: I have one more thing ... Boris: And don't forget to donate to our
group, we are not like getting money for ourselves we're collecting money for the
political prisoners so don't forget to do that this is an important part of just
supporting the struggle. Angel: Yeah *Applaus* so we have a couple
minutes for questions but if you have to leave, leave super quietly and also a
question is a short sentence with a question mark behind it not a long essay.
You have chat GPT for that and we have a question from the the signal Angel by the
way the microphones are up front here here 1 2 3 4 that's where you have to stand in
order to do a question signal Angel go ahead.
Signal Angel: Yes the internet wants to know what you expect Microsoft or Skype to
do for example blocking Belarus as a whole or wouldn't that also negatively impact
the activist? What's your opinion on that? Boris: I mean I don't think that blocking
Skype like or Skype stopping providing services in Belarus would negatively affect
activist scene, nobody in activist scene was using Skype right? On the other side
like you do have mechanisms of black listing cord IPS at least you know like
this is Belarussian state is not you know super sophisticated going to connect to
the [ __ ] bpn and [ __ ] like that, but rather you block those and the court is
already not doing that. The thing with the Microsoft and Skype is that it's story of
the past because right now they switched to Viber so like this is this is gone,
like they did their part and nobody will most probably remember that and I mean
honestly [ __ ] Microsoft. So...
*few ovations*
Engel: We're running out of time question for Num 3.
-Okay I have a question how much would a better and more secure VPN technology and
better anonymizing systems help in these kinds of situations and what what has the
Bella russian State done against using VPS into foreign countries?
B: I mean in the first days of the protests in the first days of the uprising
the whole internet infrastructure was gone. Like there were certain ways to go
around the blocking that were connected with telegram proxies, I have no [ __ ]
clue how they managed to do it successfully but they did and in general
like the internet was just not working. So it doesn't matter if you have VPN and a
Tor, the internet doesn't work and later on when they unlocked the internet they
were very slow in reacting to the fast protest community so in those cases VPNs
very important somehow but for us at that point the the local organizing and
providing infrastructure for the local organizers was way more important. So also
like building decentralized networks inside of the country sometimes is way
more crucial to the protests than getting out to the services that are outside of
the country and that's what was happening as well. But in general like it's still an
important part of fighting back like having a reliable VPN or any other
anonymizing and like censorship circumsing Technologies. How to develop those more
successfully? I have no [ __ ] clue honestly. Because those like the fight
against those are going on very fast and I like I can't answer this, I'm very sorry.
Engel: So we might be able to squeeze in another two questions very briefly. on
number one. -How bad is the suppression of the APC
Belarus activists and can you safely reside inside Belarus without getting
arrested immediately or do you have to flee into Exile?
B: Like in general not talking only about us but the bigger political spectrum of
all the groups that are providing solidarity work all of them are gone like
from Belarus. So all of the activists from Liberal also human right defending groups
and so on had to leave and if you would be identified as a member of such a group
inside of the country this would be enough to prosecute you and to put I mean any
case they want on you. This is not a you know like a legal state but rather they
prosecute you and that's it. And with the case of activist Anarchist activists in
general there are laws that would allow them to make a group extremist
organization that doesn't need a core decision and through that you can get like
five six seven years in prison easily without any other actions you know. And
this is happening to certain solidarity groups already yeah. So we also have in
tomorrow in like a self-organized sessions a bigger presentation another collegue
will be doing that about repressions in Belarus about the political situation less
like focused on Technologies more focused on social political situation so if you
want to know a little bit more about that you can come there and ask your questions
and and [ __ ] like that. Engel: I would suggest that for anybody
in the room but we will take one last question very briefly from the Signal
Engel and then we'll have to call it quits unfortunately.
Signal Engel: Yes another question regarding the use of encryption. It is if
theography is used with to encryption or instead of encryption in Belarus by
activists. B: I mean we do not have so many people
who were like technologically savvy and were participating in the protests that's
why nobody was hiding messages like that but we did have like a collective for
example that developed a telegram app that would have like a double I don't know
how it's in English like a double something double like basically you have
two accounts in the telegram and one of those accounts like is is is a very nice
fluffy you don't do anything and that's where what the cops see and then you need
to put a password to get another one so we got like this kind of hiding your activity
on the internet but this was I think like the biggest people can imagine using on
their smartphones. In general like we have to understand that technological savvy is
dropping right people when people are using smartphones they know less about
Technologies than they did like 10 years ago. So people are capable of doing less
and less and less yeah. Engel: So that's all the questions we can
take please help me thank him for this wonderful talk something we never and...
B: Thanks for doing it!
*a lot of ovations*
*37c postroll music*
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