jz

jz, 3 months ago

👩‍⚖️ For 10y Sweden kept the "investigation" ongoing (think of "the victims"!) without agreeing to interview him. When case was finally closed, his name was durably muddied. The truth is: there was NO Swedish case... or rather the Swedish case has been the case of Sweden's police and judicial authority manipulating the truth to help the US harass a journalist, while instrumentalising these women for 10y. (background of 2nd woman A. Ardin is interesting but not the topic here.)

8/14

jz, 3 months ago

🦅 After 7+ years in the Ecuadorian embassy, a regime change there, the mega-release of Vault7 that proved how incompetent, unaccountable and crazy the CIA was with its capacity to enter about any device without leaving traces, and a few days after Ecuador got a 4B$ loan from the IMF, the UK police got invited into the embassy to drag him out and arrest him (2019). Accused of "skipping bail" (usually a 20ish weeks of prison) he spent 4+years in the worst max-security prison in UK.

9/14

jz, 3 months ago

😷 Of course his health is degrading. Mentally and physically. Many would have been dead already in such conditions. That is: a few weeks in jail + 2 years of house arrest + 7 years of "detention" (according to UN) in embassy + 4 years in max-security prison.. But his incredible resilience, his strong network of support, and the faint hope that there would be legal or political means to get him out kept him alive so far...

10/14

jz, 3 months ago

💀 If Assange is sent to the US he is a dead man. Because:

• 1917 espionnage act doesn't leave a chance to defend oneself (no way to invoke general interest, it is just about whether
  or not documents were published, and they were);
• he faces up to 175 years in prison;
• he would be detained in isolation in the topmost-security prison;
• the CIA wants him dead (and already attempted to kidnap or kill him while in embassy https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london-shoot-out-inside-the-ci-as-secret-war-plans-against-wiki-leaks-090057786.html);
• his mental health is in decline;

11/14

jz, 3 months ago

🗽 So in case you're not convinced yet: Assange/WikiLeaks case is the most important legal case of our times, as it impacts: press freedom; freedom to publish; war crimes; cyber-security; the resilience of our collective infrastructures online; online censorship; geopolitics; lies and crimes in governments; instrumentalisation of police and justice; the CIA; the relationship of we (the people) facing arbitrary authoritarian powers of the state; character assassination; [list too long]

12/14

jz, 3 months ago

⁉️ If you think you "hate the guy" or just "dislike him" or that you are not concerned by his legal case because.. you know.. his "personality", please ask yourself: why? How do you know about his personality? What are your sources? Please put all this in the balance and take a look at the big picture of the massive (almost 15y!) campaign of manipulation/influence/slander/character assassination, and a legal case that goes way beyond him. If a precedent is made here, you will suffer too.

13/14

jz, 3 months ago

📚 A few weeks after the massive releases of 2010 (Collateral Murder, the Afghan and Iraq War logs), while residing and working in Sweden, Julian was tipped off that the US will attempt to snatch him, to use the particularly lax extradition law in Sweden to get him to the US, and use any excuse possible (his sources evoked accusations of "child pornography" or "a bag of drugs found in a suitcase" or anything). What happened to to him got indeed very strange...

2/14

jz, 3 months ago

🚔 A Swedish woman he slept with freaked out about a broken condom when learning he also slept with another person, and got convinced by that person to go to the police, to attempt to force him to take an HIV test. That person knew somebody working in the police... The police further 1/ manipulated the transcript of the interview 2/ pressed charges for sexual offense (the woman later said she was "railroaded into pressing charges") 3/ leaked parts of the transcript to the press.

3/14

jz, 3 months ago

⚖️ Assange went to the police to answer all their questions. The case got closed, but weeks after a prosecutor from a different jurisdiction re-opened it. Assange lawyers then requested that he would promptly be interviewed by the prosecutor so he could clear his name. This was refused as the prosecutor was "sick". Weeks after lawyers ask for a permission for him to leave Sweden, as he had work to do elsewhere. Permission granted. He leaves for the UK.

4/14

jz, 3 months ago

🚨 Weeks after, Interpol issues a "red notice" (usually used for international organized crime, terrorism, etc.), while Sweden issues an extradition warrant for Assange. Unbelievable! This is when he decided to go by himself to the police in London, so his name could be cleared in court. Of course it didn't go as planned, extradition was upheld (hence the appeal, during which the photos were taken). Preposterous "house arrest", ankle bracelet, daily report to the police, etc. ensued.

5/14

jz, 3 months ago

🇪🇨 Later on, as it became clearer and clearer that the UK won't help get that case closed, and as all was pointing to the US preparing an indctment for "conspiracy for espionnage" (under the 1917 espionnage act under which a defendant has no way of arguing his motive was political, or of general interest...), Julian took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy. He got political asylum and EC nationality as its government confirmed the risk was real he'd be extradited to the US.

6/14

jz, 4 months ago

Simplex.chat is based on users not needing any sort of strong identification (phone number, email address) to be usable, unlike most other chats. Sure you technically still have a "cryptographic identity" (a public key), but the protocol is designed in such way that the server (yes there is still servers unfortunately) will know the minimum about its users. no user-identifying metadata are stored or processed. :blobCatAnon:

2/9

jz, 4 months ago

On simplex, identity is just something you chose and store on your client, that can easily change depending on context. You decide you are "Alice" and your contacts will see that, unless if when opening a contact with a given person or group you use an "icognito" identity, in which case they will see you as "FlamboyantTruth" or some other generated name.

With incognito groups, one can share publicly links to a group and people join them (via a QR Code) with their identity protected! 🥸

3/9

jz, 4 months ago

So this idea of protecting your identity is really the core of Simplex, and it should be the Freedom0 of any communication protocol if you ask me.

To connect to someone over Simplex you send them either a very long URL through another channel or better get them to flash a QR Code on your device or on a piece of paper. 🤝

4/9

jz, 4 months ago

Use case: you meet that person in a bar, they're nice and chatty and want to stay in touch. You are mildly interested so give them a QR code to flash linking to an "incognito" identity.

You chat with them afterwards, and after some times can decide to say "OKThanksBye.", and disconnect from them without them ever having to know your name, phone number, email etc. and thus unable to stalk you or anything... 🥂

5/9

jz, 4 months ago

So, for vulnerable and/or exposed people who want to seriously organize Simplex.chat may be (or become) one of the best options: dispoable identities on fresh devices, connected to un-identifiable contacts.

If your device gets compromised or seized, it doesn't give away the identities of other incognito members of your groups... 🤫 Also works well for/with people with no phone whatsoever.🛖

6/9

jz, 4 months ago

Also as part of the interesting features: Simplex allows for out-of-app webRTC calls+video, Simplex is NOT an electron app, yet it exists under: android, iOS, linux-tui, linux-desktop, windows, macos... So more multiplatform already than most.

It has a whitepaper https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplexmq/blob/stable/protocol/overview-tjr.md and its decentralized protocol is documented, it is independant from the Internet-Freedom-Industrial-Complex(tm) (unlike Signal and its shady past funding...), has an active dev community... 😍

7/9

jz, 4 months ago

Yet, as a piece of software even if advancing fast in the last months, it is still young. The way it is being packaged and distributed solely over Microsft Pages(tm) (aka github) is a bit concerning, but these things will evolve in the future, according to its main author in the public user group channel, and discussion about these things is rather open...

Maybe one needs to write their own client? 🖥️

8/9

jz, 4 months ago

Now calling to all cryptographers, free/libre software enthusiasts and other techno-critical people out there:

what do you think of Simplex?

Have you used it?

Would you recommend it? ⁉️

💗

9/9

jz, 4 months ago

@Rainer_Rehak @fabian

Well one can adhere to principles, for political+philosophical/ethical reasons, and only hope that the technological aspects will be audited, ironed out, triple-checked, reimplemented in stricter/safest/minimalist ways, etc...

...rather than trusting some third-party technological opinions on something that leaves blatant holes on the political side ("we kill people based on metadata" 2014) while trying to mono-culturishly look cool....

jz, 4 months ago

@ploum Indeed a chicken-and-egg thing! i started by telling a pair of very close people that i would love to experiment that with them, and as we weren't satisfied with existing/available solutions we tried.

then i started systematizing offering it as an option to new contacts, and was suprised by how many of them got curious, as soon as i explained key concept of identity-independance. was mostly nerds and tech-adjacent people, but still!

now 20+ contacts, daily use. (and tui on pinephone!)