LOWER 3rd The Art of Dissent BY LAURA POITRAS JUNE 9, 2015 DIALOG (Appelbaum) Oh, some of these are different. CARD On April, 22, 2015, artist Ai Weiwei and technologist Jacob Appelbaum met in Beijing to collaborate on an art project commissioned by Rhizome and the New Museum in New York. I was asked to film. DIALOG (Appelbaum) In this case you see a breakdown of the CIA budgeting, and in this case about cryptologic programs. LOWER 3rd AI WEIWEI STUDIO, BEIJING DIALOG (Appelbaum) This is, um, talking about their programs to monitor the things you do on— DIALOG (Ai) Twitter DIALOG (Appelbaum) —corporate services like Twitter. This one’s a good one it explains that they use this for propaganda, deception, mass messaging, pushing stories, alias development, and for psychological manipulation. DIALOG (Ai) Who’s doing that? DIALOG (Appelbaum) This is the British government. They call it Full Spectrum Cyber Effects. It’s from the head of JTRIG and from SD Effects Lead. DIALOG (Ai) So this program’s for whom to use? DIALOG (Appelbaum) It’s to use on you, and to use on me. DIALOG (Ai) Yeah but who’s gonna use it? DIALOG (Appelbaum) These people use it to disrupt us. DIALOG (Ai) Agencies. Agencies. DIALOG (Appelbaum) Yeah. So you know when you’re attacked on Twitter... DIALOG (Ai) Because in China they have this, so I thought only Chinese have this, but... DIALOG (Appelbaum) No, no. This... DIALOG (Ai) Let me take that one, that page. DIALOG (Appelbaum) This page? DIALOG (Ai) That’s interesting. Because we always think... We call it the 50, 50— DIALOG (Appelbaum) 50-Cent Party. DIALOG (Ai) 50-Cent Army. So... DIALOG (Appelbaum) Here’s one where the journalists involved either didn’t understand the technology, or they did and they decided to help censor. DIALOG (assistant) Don’t press here. Otherwise, you’re turning it off. DIALOG (Appelbaum) So-called “network operation detection“. The NSA can target financial or commercial organizations that are unnamed. They can just do whatever they want to those organizations. Does that remind you of anything? CARD For years, Ai Weiwei has exposed government corruption in China. In 2009 he was beaten by police and suffered serious brain injury. Two years later, he was imprisoned and interrogated for 81 days. DIALOG (Ai) Uh, If I talk about the room I have been in: there’s a bed, there’s a toilet, and there’s a table for questioning. Was routine interrogation. I was handcuffed with the armchair. And there’s always two military soldiers, with uniforms, 80 centimeters in front of me, 24 hours a day. So in the room, the light is never off. They cannot talk. But they always look at me, emotionless. Yeah, basically that’s the condition. CARD Jacob Appelbaum has worked with WikiLeaks to expose government corruption and civilian war casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2010, he has been repeatedly detained and interrogated at U.S. borders. DIALOG (Appelbaum) Um, I get off the airplane, and at the customs desk they flagged me and took me down an escalator and then past a mirrored kind of observation post. At one point the mirrored door opened and someone said, “So that’s what a terrorist looks like these days?” Then I was taken into another room, and they took off some of my clothes and pushed me up against a wall. And one officer grabbed my wrists and held me against the wall, where another one stuck his fingers dangerously close to being inside of me. And then they put me in an interrogation room. And they took turns asking me lots of questions about Wikileaks and about Julian. And at this point they’re still holding me while ripping apart my shoes with a screwdriver so they could see if I had hidden anything. So it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. And I kind of felt like, I knew that this was coming. Because I knew the effect of political dissent would ensure a reaction. in the form of political persecution. CARD The Chinese government installed surveillance cameras outside Ai Weiwei’s studio. Ai Weiwei hung lanterns in response. DIALOG (Ai) It’s a better panda without this. Right? It’s a better panda. Still—you still can—oh! God look. DIALOG (Appelbaum) It’s a panda suit. DIALOG (Ai) I can’t believe that one panda will take so much stuff in there. Look, look. That’s from one panda. Shit. DIALOG (Appelbaum) It’s just not clear to me what the pandas think. You know? Like, how do the pandas feel that they’re being used for information trafficking. DIALOG (Poitras) When I started filming with you, this is just not where I imagined ever being. DIALOG (Appelbaum) Right, so we’re gonna take this out of the panda. And we’re gonna stuff those documents in. And then we’re gonna put a card that has all of the documents on them. And we’re gonna distribute them to as many different places as we can, so it’s like a distributed backup. So if we send one to different places, it makes it impossible to destroy the information without destroying all 20 of them. And the safest, one of the safest places, to put these things is in a museum, or in a gallery, where it’s, uh, as an object, it’s protected. CARD Ai Weiwei is unable to leave China because the government confiscated his passport. He moved his young son to Berlin and cannot see him. CARD Jacob Appelbaum now lives in Berlin. His lawyers advise him not to return to the U.S. because of the ongoing investigation into WikiLeaks. CARD “Panda to Panda” is a backup of shredded published documents and micro-SD cards distributed in China, Germany, United States, Britain, Russia, and Canada. ______________________________________________________________________ Credits: 1. DIRECTED & FILMED BY Laura Poitras 2. EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS Lisa Phillips Dorothy Berwin 3. ADDITIONAL FOOTAGE COURTESY OF Ai Weiwei 4. EDITED BY Stephen Maing Laura Poitras 5. MUSIC Brendon Anderegg 6. PRODUCED FOR RHIZOME’S “SEVEN ON SEVEN” 7. ADDITIONAL SUPPORT Heather Corcoran New Museum Sima Familant 8. THANKS Ai Weiwei Studio Siri Smith Darryl Leung Doug Xu Sunmo Kimberly Sung 9. THANKS Yoni Golijov Kate Crawford Kashmir Hill Brenda Coughlin Hanna Mattes Katy Scoggin 9. EXECUTIVE PRODUCER & SERIES CREATOR Jason Spingarn-Koff COORDINATING PRODUCER Kathleen Lingo SERIES RESEARCHER Lindsay Crouse 10. © 2015 New York Times & Praxis Films REFERENCES Full-Spectrum Cyber Effects GHCQ Documents https://www.eff.org/files/2014/04/09/20140404-intercept-gchq_full_spectrum_cyber_effects.pdf Christina Sterbenz, China Banned the Term ‘50 Cents’ to Stop Discussion of an Orwellian Propaganda Program, Business Insider, October 17, 2014 http://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-50-cent-party-2014-10 Josh Rudolph, China’s Internet Propaganda Machine Revealed, China Digital Times, December 18, 2014 http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/12/leaks-reveal-chinas-elaborate-internet-propaganda-machine/ Keith Bradsher, Conditions of Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei’s Detention Emerge, N.Y. Times, August 12, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/13/world/asia/13artist.html Elinor Millis, Researcher Detained at U.S. Border, Questioned About Wikileaks, CNET, July 31, 2010 http://www.cnet.com/news/researcher-detained-at-u-s-border-questioned-about-wikileaks/ Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, “We Don’t Live in a Free Country”: Jacob Appelbaum on Being Target of Widespread Gov’t Surveillance, Democracy Now, April 20, 2012 http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/we_do_not_live_in_a Jacob Weisberg, Someone’s Always Watching Me, Slate, May 30, 2012 http://www.slate.com/articles/video/conversations_with_slate/2012/05/ai_weiwei_talks_about_living_under_constant_government_surveillance_video_.html Azmat Khan, Ai Weiwei Pokes Fun at Gov’t Surveillance - with Webcams, PBS, April 3, 2012 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/biographies/whos-afraid-of-ai-weiwei/ai-weiwei-pokes-fun-at-govt-surveillance-with-webcams/ Justin Jones, Will Ai Weiwei Get His Passport to Freedom?, The Daily Beast, March 26, 2014 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/26/will-ai-weiwei-get-his-passport-to-freedom.html Ed Pilkington, US Government Still Hunting WikiLeaks as Obama Targets Whistleblowers, March 5, 2015 http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/05/us-government-still-hunting-wikileaks-obama-targets-whistleblowers Kashmir Hill, Three Days in Beijing with Three of the World’s Most Famous Dissidents, Fusion, April 21, 2015 http://fusion.net/story/125475/ai-weiwei-jacob-appelbaum-and-laura-poitras/ Jeffrey Marlow, A Rare visit with Ai Weiwei, China’s Loudest Rebel, Wird, January 29, 2014, http://www.wired.com/2014/01/ai-weiwei-moon/ Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Ai Weiwei to Film Love Letter to Berlin from Beijing, via Skype, The Guardian, February 6, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/06/ai-weiwei-skype-berlin-i-love-you Michael Connor, Eight Big Ideas from Seven on Seven, Rhizome, May 4, 2015, http://rhizome.org/editorial/2015/may/4/seven-seven-2015/