Everything is one. Except for the 0 (2020) - full transcript
Using lots of archival material, this documentary tells the story of the legendary Computer Chaos Club and it's founder Wau Holland, computer nerd and data artist, subversive hacker and advocate of democracy.
When you listen to the radio,
remember how people came to have
this wonderful tool of communication.
The original source of all technical
achievements is the divine curiosity
and play instinct of the tinkering
and brooding researcher,
and, to no lesser extent, the technical
inventor's constructive imagination.
WHO RULES THE WORLD?
AN OVERDOSE OF FACEBOOK
ADVERTISING IS MASS SURVEILLANCE
DETECTION OF SECRET PROGRAMMES
WHISTLEBLOWERS FOR THE TRUTH?
ALONE AGAINST AMERICA
I'M TAKING YOUR FREEDOM
IS THERE STILL ROOM FOR UTOPIAS?
FORGET ABOUT IT
AND NOW.: SWITCH OFF
WE ARE THE INTERNET.
ABOUT DIGITAL RESISTANCE
MODEMS FOR ALL
HACKER
HOME COMPUTER
OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE HOME COMPUTER
SCREEN TRICKS
ALL IS ONE.
EXCEPT 0.
I used to do a lot of programming.
There was no other way.
When I switched on my computer,
it expected instructions
in a programming language,
a kind of "screen Lego".
We all helped each other out with this.
But first, I'd like to introduce myself.
POETRONIC is my name,
at least in the online universe.
It's also the name
of one of the first programmes I wrote.
It automatically generates poems.
I'm a writer,
and it was clear to me at the time
that I first had to teach my computer
the lyrical modes of expression
used by poets.
I first heard about a "Chaos Computer Club"
and a certain Dr Wau in the early 1980s.
I immediately envisaged
a kind of rocket scientist
wearing a white lab coat
and with a slide rule
and ballpoint pen in his breast pocket.
When I first met Wau in Hamburg back then,
the door opened
and what looked like a hobgoblin
in rustic knickerbockers came into the room,
a chubby, cheerful, bacchanalian chap.
Very much the opposite
of what I had imagined.
But I liked him right away.
Wau was someone who connected
the 19805 and 1705 with the future.
Someone who set a course
that enabled a subculture
to become the central technical,
cultural and economic current
that led into the 21st century.
A hacker is a person who doesn't
let himself be turned on only by the surface,
hut who tries to find out what else can he
done with it, especially on a technical level:
the creative, inventive use of technology.
Complexity is the combination
of many single things,
each one of which seems manageable.
If we take a car and a goods waggon,
we can combine them to make a Motorail train.
Now you're standing
at a closed level crossing barrier,
waiting for the train to come.
In the distance, you hear the wild,
arrhythmic beeping of car horns.
What caused them to go off?
Alarm systems with motion detectors.
Complexity cannot be mastered.
You can deal with individual things,
but you will be forced to face problems
that cannot in any way be foreseen.
Unpredictability is an essential element
of the time in which we live.
We he came friends at computer speed.
I once criticised "Die Datenschleuder",
the new club magazine,
and Wau said: You do it!
So I became editor-in-chief.
And because I have rheumatism,
we held the editorial conference
every Thursday in my flat.
Sometimes people stayed there till Monday.
ABWÄRTS
"Computer State", 1981
THE DOOMSDAY SHOW
Reagan made this joke at a microphone
rehearsal, probably regretting it later.
But the Cold War between East and West
was still on, and Germany was the buffer.
We were caught
between these hardened fronts.
On Monday there's a knock on the door
and Arafat stands before you,
Tuesday there's a test alarm
and paranoia on the tram.
Wednesday the war ls very cold
Brezhnev's lurking I the public baths.
Wau could get East and West German TV.
STOP
INNER-GERMAN BORDER
So he could clearly see
how information was distorted.
Not by real lies, but by omissions.
We questioned the norms of our society:
was there a better system in which everyone
could be as free as possible?
On the Left, there was clandestine sympathy
for those who'd engaged in armed resistance
because they considered themselves
to be at war with the system.
LSD FOR ALL PRISON GUARDS
But Wau didn't like violence or
the dogmatic Marxism of many left-wingers.
His sympathies lay with the "Spontis",
who organised the TUNIX Congress in 1978,
which marked a watershed
for the alternative movements.
DREAM IS REALITY
Thursday, you already know,
2 thousand agents in the sewers.
Friday belongs to the Mafia,
the ravioli comes from Florid.
Saturday evening lunatic asylum,
the KGB in the German forests.
Sunday, everything is dear]
World war is near in the Gulf of Mallorca.
Instead of engaging
in a hopeless confrontation with the state,
they opted to create "free zones".
Stalingrad Stalingrad.
Germany, a catastrophic state.
We live in a computer state.
We live in a computer state.
We live in a computer state.
Against this background, TAZ, the first
alternative daily newspaper was founded.
At the same time, the Green Party was
founded, and the PC revolution began.
But there was still little confidence
in an electronic future.
Most people were suspicious
of the new technology.
At this time a census was held.
KNOWLEDGE FOR THE FUTURE
It smacked of an Orwellian police state.
NO CONTROLS FOR THE FUTURE
There was a massive movement
to boycott the census: unimaginable today!
KEEP YOUR DATA SECRET
You guarantee the data
will remain confidential? - Yes.
At the meetings that we, the
computer-mad mob, were holding at that time,
we eventually reached a point
where we began to think
about finding a name for ourselves,
as well as about meeting more regularly
and making contacts nationwide.
Then we placed a classified ad in the TAZ
and met at the TAZ offices in Berlin
in order to launch the Chaos Computer Club.
And if you want to discuss things as a group,
it's also very helpful
to be able to look each other in the eye
and discuss things calmly.
It was actually really great
that the computer
always played a secondary role,
that the social event Chaos Computer Club
was always the more interesting aspect.
And that's the core of what
the Chaos Computer Club is to me:
realising that people
are more important than machines.
The fascinating thing
about the Chaos Club was
that the computer functioned
as a kind of social catalyst.
It was a place where people with
radically differing opinions and worldviews,
from very different age groups
and social backgrounds,
sat down at one table
and talked and argued with each other.
I know, you've seen this before.
Oh no, not again!
Not now, please!
Sometimes science fiction
helps us to understand history.
The last lines of "Shockwave Rider"
contain two suggestions.
"One: This is a rich planet. Therefore
poverty and hunger are unworthy of it
and we are obliged to eradicate them.
Two: We are a civilised species.
Therefore, in future,
no one should create
an unfair advantage for themselves
by abusing the fact
that our combined knowledge
is greater than what any one of us can know."
People saw the new computer technology
as a way towards a utopian society.
We were impressed how the novel "Shockwave
Rider" predicted the current situation,
and by Robert Anton Wilson, who wrote
the "llluminatus" conspiracy trilogy.
Wilson said that computers would totally
change our society in the next few years.
He said that holding knowledge
would supersede holding property
and that knowledge would be held
by a small conspiratorial group.
And Hagbard Celine
fought against these people.
I realised that "Illuminatus!
might be more real than I thought
Some of our members were only interested
in the wonderful world of technology,
others were also interested
in science fiction
and thought about questions
of societal development.
Hippie activist Stewart Brand and his crew
had been publishing the catalogue since 1968
and wanted to attain
a networked consciousness.
Brand was also one of the Merry Pranksters
who rode around in a colourfully painted bus
distributing LSD for free.
In 1984, he organised the Hackers Conference,
bringing together flower children
and hackers.
Steve Jobs once called the Whole Earth
Catalog "the search engine before Google™.
The seeds for the world's
most powerful Internet companies
were clearly sown
during this LSD-infused time.
I met Tim Leary there:
a hit too American for my taste,
too much into self-promotion,
but otherwise a fascinating person.
Not only Leary dreamt of this!
Here are the "hacker ethics" by Stephen Levy.
Access to computers and anything
that can teach you how the world really works
should be unlimited and total.
All information should be free.
Mistrust authority, promote decentralisation.
You can create art and beauty
on a computer.
Computers can change
your life for the better.
Hackers should be judged by their actions,
not bogus criteria such as appearance,
age, origin, species,
gender or social position.
But the CCC added rules
to the American hacker ethics.
"Don't mess with data!"
is the first thing that occurs to me:
handle other people's data with care.
"Use public data, protect private data."
When I look at political practice
in this country,
the opposite often seems to he true.
But this idea really nails it, especially
regarding our use of other people's data,
something we're now
increasingly confronted with.
The "hacker ethics" came from the MIT.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
is a kind of Vatican for technology lovers.
There has been a model railway club there
since 1946.
The people who thought up the circuits
and inventively constructed them
were called "hackers".
These experiences had given them
a good understanding of computer hardware,
and so the club became the nucleus of the
worldwide hacker movement in the 1970s.
The problem
was the Federal Post Office in West Germany.
This had a legally enshrined monopoly
on all telecommunications technology.
You weren't even allowed to repair
your own telephone socket.
Then another one of the Chaos Computer Club's
"Gyro Gearlooses" marched in
and said: "You need a modem."
- I said: "A what?"
A modem allows you to travel
without you actually going anywhere.
You have no feeling
of space or distance anymore,
it's like a global village,
like having the whole world on your desk.
But how do you connect a computer
to the phone?
For this, you need an acoustic coupler.
This is our do-it-yourself acoustic coupler,
the "Data Lavatory".
You can get the plans
from "Schwarzmarkt" in Hamburg.
It includes rubber stoppers,
which you can get from bathroom stores.
These fit over your telephone's
mouth- and earpieces.
Because it's a DIY device,
it's not approved by the Federal Post Office,
which is why I'm showing you
the approved version.
It works like this:
the computer generates characters
and the acoustic coupler
converts them into tones.
I'll demonstrate this by typing in a "u"
and then holding it to the microphone.
You'll then hear what a "u" sounds like
when the computer makes the sound.
But we can try it the other way round too.
If I whistle into the device,
it will try to convert my whistling
into letters of the alphabet.
Now you can see some nonsense on the screen,
because I can't whistle
as well as a computer.
Now ['ll call a computer
and make a connection to it
Am I online or what? I'm online!
Then Steffen entered Wau's life.
The domestic intelligence service
asked me where you can learn to hack.
I said you can't learn it
it's an attitude to life.
It'll stay exciting and there's plenty to
explore in data networks and with computers.
Steffen was a doer. At 14 he was
a junior firefighter, then head pupil.
At 22, he joined the CCC,
where he was soon feared
for his actionistic organisational talent.
For him, every ideology
had something limiting about it.
His meeting Wau came at just the right time.
Is it a movement
that might take over the whole population?
That's a beautiful utopia!
You can cause a lot of mischief.
The German teletext system
is a huge advertising wall, so to speak.
El Springer Publishing, for example,
advertises its products here.
Hey, what's this?
I'm Bix from the Federal Post Office.
1 offer your TV
access to the modern computer world,
And once again, we had a strange experience
when we had to deal with the FTZ,
the central telecommunications authority.
They also have Btx and
are actually responsible for security in Btx
What's the password at their headquarters?
And Steffen said:
"Maybe their own telephone number?"
First attempt: a hit!
We fell...
We fell about laughing for 10 minutes
because we just couldn't believe it.
It says in the state treaty on teletext:
Videotext is also intended for games.
You even have a programme
to annoy the Federal Post Office:
they pay you nine marks and you play them
a film you made in which you rubbish them.
We did it because we were angry with them.
We blew up their post-horn logo
with a little atomic mushroom cloud.
We wanted to express our anger somehow...
Good evening.
The Minister for Postal Affairs
won't like this,
but the Federal Post Office's teletext system
isn't tamper-proof.
Using the customer ID of Haspa,
a Hamburg bank,
the Bix crackers activated their own video.
This costs the Federal Post Office
9,90 marks per view.
Then we started the machine,
which pressed the button all night long.
I slept next to it,
it kept going "clicker, clicker..."
The next morning, the hackers
had bagged 135,000 marks from Haspa.
We didn't think it was possible.
We've already taken action:
we changed our personal password immediately,
so that Mr Holland
can no longer use these means
in order to...
In order to disadvantage us.
Then the flat was overrun by journalists,
and we were confronted with problems
we'd never known before.
We suddenly had to do media management.
Germany's most famous hacker,
data artist Wau Holland!
So what you're doing is breaking into other
people's databases or computer systems?
I don't see it as breaking in.
They're like department stores:
brightly lit places where you can go in
and take a look around.
International data networks are similar:
you go in, take a look around.
That's when we realised
that the dimensions of our actions
hadn't been clear to us at all.
We didn't know you could get
up to five years in prison
for interfering with someone else's system
and installing and operating
telecommunications equipment
without authorisation,
a punishment more severe than for the
negligent triggering of a nuclear explosion.
After the Haspa hack,
the club became unexpectedly popular.
During this time,
Andy Müller-Maguhn joined.
At the age of 15,
he was the club's youngest member.
He was also very enthusiastic about computers
and came every day.
Conveniently,
the club was on his way to school.
Me and my computer
we used to be a team.
Plastic with the apple
I # never understand your
The first Chaos Communication Congress
took place in Hamburg in 1984.
There were workshops
on modems and computer mailboxes,
but also on psychological disorders
caused by computer abuse.
No dongle, no fiat rate,
inbox full 2 Trojan's got in.
Software fucked,
contacts deleted pin code forgotten.
Bank transfer not possible,
cursor not moving.
Data surplus, no wireless LAN,
email not answered, spam answered.
Too few megabytes,
hourglass, hourglass...
This is the Chaos Communication Congress,
and anyone who assumes
that some kind of major hack
or break-ins into other people's databases
will take place here
must really be quite stupid.
We meet to exchange information,
not via telecommunications or new media,
but from person to person.
Because many things
can only be exchanged directly.
I'm far more interested
in making people aware
of what personal data is
and what dangers it poses.
Because data processing, public access,
automated retrieval and processing
bring a new quality to the data,
even at the moment
when the information content
initially seems ridiculously low.
1984:
the first Macintosh is launched.
7985:
the first Commodore Amiga ls launched
As an information provider,
the CCC legally used
the Federal Post Office teletext system
10 publish a shocking case study
from a urological doctoral thesis.
Title: "Penis Injuries Caused by Masturbation
with Vacuum Cleaners."
They put their penis in here
and nothing happens.
So with their flaccid penis in here,
they turn on the vacuum cleaner
and the penis becomes erect.
- You can switch off if you like!
But the manufacturer wasn't impressed
and threatened the hackers with a hefty fine.
SUCTION ALONE WON'T SATISFY YOU
At some point, we registered
the CCC as a legally recognised club,
in order to defend ourselves
against the potential threat of us
being declared a criminal association.
Our job is to break into this bank
and get everything we're entitled to,
regardless of the consequences.
The CCC even used the quote from "Decoder"
in a study it carried out
for the new Green Party.
We discovered
that Bonn really was so deathly grey
and the administration so tough.
And the Green Party was an absolute disaster.
For the Greens,
computers are the work of the devil
The hackers' conclusion:
"The introduction of computer technology
Is as diff cult for the Greens
as phasing out nuclear energy is for others."
TRUST NO COMPUTER
THAT YOU CAN'T BEAR
Defend yourselves and resist,
stop nuclear power stations in our land.
Defend yourselves and resist
stop nuclear power stations in our land.
Power to the people,
power to the people,
even if the nuclear waste train comes.
Power to the people,
power to the people,
even if the nuclear waste train comes.
Come on,
defend yourselves and resist
stop nuclear power stations in our land...
The first MCA,
maximum credible accident:
warnings against consuming
salad, mushrooms, milk.
For the first time since the war
there was a shortage in Germany,
a shortage of information.
After the accident in Chernobyl,
people from the CCC scene
used private computer networks
to spread measurement data
and information on radioactive radiation.
They did this more quickly
than the government or the press,
who initially covered things up
and fobbed off the public.
Yes.
Absolutely impossible,
because a hazard only exists
within a radius
of 30 to 50 km around the reactor.
The recommendation applies
to the milk from the cow
but not to the milk from the dairy.
For hackers, it was a key moment.
But the CCC's own MCA was yet to come.
Real hackers from Germany
have broken into sensitive data networks
worldwide in the last three months.
The perpetrators are still unknown,
but the Hamburg Chaos Computer Club
Is now the voice of the secret hackers.
These are mainframe computers
by the firm Digital
that are mainly used
in the field of research:
industrial research, high energy,
astrophysics, aerospace.
The systems directly affected are computers
that belong to a special network
that was set up by NASA
to organise the exchange of data
for the needs of NASA
and for the needs of the aerospace industry.
The things the hacker kiddies did,
they really sickened us.
The idea was to prove that you
really have power over the system,
that you could exchange the contents
of CASTOR and POLLUX's hard drives.
They were NASA's two mainframe computers.
We said: "For heaven's sake:
the moment you gain access somewhere,
you carry a terrible responsibility."
We informed the domestic intelligence
service, so that they could inform the CIA,
so that they would know about it
before it appeared in the papers.
We also informed the manufacturer.
We were hoping the systems
would already have been secured
by the time it appeared in all the media,
but that wasn't the case.
Nighttime raid at the Chaos Computer Club
in Hamburg.
15 officers from Hamburg, as well as
French and federal police officers,
searched the rooms of the computer club
and three private flats.
Hackers are believed to have penetrated the
European nuclear research centre's computer.
I was relatively friendly to the officers
and made them a coffee during the search.
Steffen was a hit harder on them.
The officers, including those
from the French and federal police,
had to form a queue outside,
and he had everyone show him their ID card.
In his fire-brigade manner,
Steffen discovered
that one of their IDs had expired.
And he did what the fire brigade
had taught him to do:
he made the guy
go to the back of the queue.
Officers will be searching
into the early hours.
"A search warrant is being executed
and this will take until the early hours."
And Steffen said:
"Am I actually under arrest now?"
- "No, you're not."
"Then I'm going out to give an interview."
In my capacity as club spokesman,
I have to say
that I was not involved
in any of the stories mentioned here,
and that I consider my livelihood to be
threatened by the actions of the authorities.
I consider this to be unreasonable,
as there's also the option
of us discussing this calmly
if the gentlemen have problems.
But they seem to prefer
trying to criminalise me.
We'll have to see what happens now.
HACKER WERNERY ARRESTED IN PARIS
REFUSES TO COOPERATE WITH POLICE
CHAOS COMPUTER CLUB IN CRISIS
I was aware, when I travelled to Paris,
that the French authorities
might ask me to say something.
However, I did not assume
that I would end up in prison.
I've done nothing wrong,
so I saw no reason
for me not to go to France.
Considering you've hardly slept,
you look great. - Must be the make-up.
You've just spent 59 days in prison.
How was it? Were you with other people
or alone in a cell with bars?
French prisons are actually very simple,
you might say.
There are three- and four-person cells,
usually cramped, due to lack of space.
The facilities are pretty limited, too.
For example, if we wanted to boil some water,
we had to use an improvised stove
made of Kleenex tissues and olive oil
to heat up the water in a tin can.
Very simple and primitive.
Is there an extractor fan?
- An extractor fan?
When do you reach the point
when you want to crawl up the walls,
when you want to scream?
After four weeks you start to feel
that the walls are closing in on you,
hut the others notice that
and then you get over it.
I can't think of much at all
that I should tell you,
but I think
you might have a lot of questions.
To put it bluntly,
the accusations made against me
are that I committed theft
and deliberate destruction.
I'll start again right away.
I think it's totally wrong to be hunting
young people because of this.
If someone leaves his car key in,
he shouldn't be surprised
if someone takes his car for a spin.
Is hacking a tightrope walk
in the data network? - Among other things.
We've gone beyond simple computer hacking:
there's social hacking, reality hacking.
Last night, someone said: "What's hacking
a computer compared to hacking society?"
How's that happening?
- Through freedom of information.
Feverishly awaited: a panel discussion
between hackers and the state.
Hamburg's highest-ranking domestic
intelligence officer was going to come.
We've had so much stress and so much bother,
so we think it's nice to have the opportunity
to talk about our ideas
and ask: How do we proceed?
We want to work openly,
and we have to achieve that.
Lochte cancelled at the last minute, claiming
his personal safety would be compromised.
A video recording of a TV discussion
from the evening before was quickly fetched,
The domestic intelligence service
should hire the hackers,
because they show you
the gaps in your data.
They're difficult to recruit for our work.
But you haven't received any such offers yet?
Well, I haven't myself.
- But?
To my knowledge,
others have turned them down.
Our principle is the open use of data,
the open use of systems.
And in this area
there are many scandals and situations
that the domestic intelligence service
is aware of but won't talk about.
So in this respect, when we find out
about things like Chernobyl,
where the state authorities kept silent
and disinformed us,
we try to inform the public and act openly.
Are you concealing anything, Mr Lochte?
- No, and I reject your assertion,
especially regarding Chernobyl.
You'd have to be more specific.
There is a lot of data, information,
about which government agencies are informed
That's kept secret.
And if I consider that,
along with the personal stress
we've had with investigating authorities...
At that time, and a number of our friends
criticised us sharply for this,
we gave the domestic intelligence service
information about the NASA hack.
But I could imagine
that there are also hackers
who act in secret,
rather than having an open approach.
Something like that is possible.
But we've been crystal clear about this
from the very beginning:
the moment someone
starts to hack for financial gain,
this is a fundamental violation
of our idea of hacker ethics,
approach to hacking and open use.
But what about
the very human openness to blackmail?
How do you stop it?
- By not being open to blackmail.
As a lifestyle, an attitude:
that's the essential thing.
An economic whodunnit called "Tanker"
was scheduled for tonight,
but we're not going to show it.
Instead, you're about to see
an espionage thriller, a real one.
Today, a spy ring was busted
that stole via computer cables
top secret military, scientific
and economic data from computer centres
in the USA, Europe and Japan,
and sent it to the Eastern bloc.
German hackers played a key role.
One of those involved
was the young hacker Karl Koch.
He'd founded a branch of the CCC in Hanover.
Together with three friends,
he hacked into American computer systems,
and sold the information thus collected
to the KGB in East Berlin.
But worst of all
was the news of Koch's death.
Three months after the official discovery
of the KGB hack,
Karl Koch's charred body
was found in a wood.
Apparently it was suicide.
But the role played by the domestic
intelligence service is still unclear today.
Imagine a friend of yours goes missing
without telling anyone why.
You know he'd been through a rough time:
he'd got mixed up in espionage and
the intelligence services had grilled him,
he'd been locked up in a psychiatric clinic
and journalists had used him.
"ALL GREAT ANARCHISTS
DIED ON THE 23RD."
I believe he was murdered so that Germany's
reunification wouldn't be jeopardised.
The journalists had a major story
in preparation,
KGB, hackers, etc.,
at exactly the time when Gorbachev
was due to be visiting Germany.
Unfortunately, Karl died just prior to this,
so the story didn't appear in the press
during Gorbachev's visit.
What we were afraid of is now happening:
young hackers and computer criminals
are being lumped together.
They're then given a good stir
and forced into a dark corner
where they're open to blackmail.
And just as the domestic intelligence service
tried to recruit spies in East Germany,
they also tried to recruit hackers
who would work here for West Germany.
And that can't really be the point:
making young, committed people,
who actually want to work constructively,
the plaything of the secret services.
It's a catastrophic development.
The secret services have been playing
this game for thousands of years.
They've played it consistently
throughout history,
from the Stasi to the East German domestic
intelligence service, put in modern terms.
And the institutional know-how
they have about this game is such
that anyone who thinks they can join in and
influence anything is simply a megalomaniac.
Where I have a hit of a problem
or hope for the future
is that we can deal with similar incidents
in future
in a more relaxed way
instead of decrying these people
as not being hackers, not belonging to us.
For me it was unimaginable
that a hacker would pass on information to,
of all things,
a state-controlled secret service.
But that's the "occupational accident"
that occurred at the Chaos Computer Club.
You brought the term hacker into disrepute
in a way I wouldn't have expected from you.
But at the end of the day, you can't prevent
people from straying in that direction.
Each club consists of individuals!
The person next to you might be a spy
and you don't notice
for three or four years.
You could even live with one and not know.
These kinds of things really happen.
Hello, who is this?
Christian, kick everyone without ID
out of your room.
They should report here. Over and out.
The KGB hack led to our expulsion
from hackers' paradise.
The people in the club
not only felt surrounded by secret services,
they also began to mistrust each other.
An international industrial exhibition
in Moscow.
State Council Chairman Erich Honecker
presents Mikhail Gorbachev
with the first megabit chip
"made in East Germany".
The People's Liberation Army
shoots at its own people,
at peaceful unarmed citizens.
That same year,
the Game Boy was launched in Japan
and became the best-selling
handheld console in the world.
And the first Love Parade was held in Berlin.
Just 150 ravers met for a demonstration
in central Berlin
under the slogan: Love, Peace and Harmony.
Berlin, the night of 9 November, 1989,
All border crossings from East Germany to
West Germany and West Berlin will be opened.
To my knowledge with immediate effect.
Right that's it ls it working again?
Every night at half past midnight,
when the TV shuts down,
1 tie on my bed and wonder
what it would be like
I weren't who I am
but chancellor, emperor, king or queen.
What Kohl can do, I can do as well,
I'd listen to Vivaldi, day in, day out.
I would get around lot, travel to the USA,
bite Ronnie's calves like Wald would
All this and much more I would do
if I were King of Germany.
Hello?
Network busy! What the fuck?
In keeping with our desire for unimpeded
worldwide communication,
in our view, a further wall has fallen
and we now have to fulfil an obligation
to share knowledge with you.
Here in East Germany,
there's lots of experience.
Because it's not like we're gurus
or leaders of some clubs or other.
Everyone has his abilities,
his strengths and weaknesses.
And the best way to get along with each other
is to pool our resources.
Steffen wanted the 1989 Chaos Congress
to take place in East Berlin
as the first all-German event.
He wanted to show
how progressive and flexible hackers are.
But some months passed before
a first conference took place in Berlin.
It was clear
that the Hamburg crowd wouldn't come
no matter what I have to say.
In Hamburg, they'd rather stir their own shit
than tear down intellectual walls.
The worldly ones are gone.
Steffen, I've followed the whole thing.
In my view, the only stubborn die-hard
in the club was you.
In the last few years,
Steffen, the person over there,
took care of most of the organisational stuff.
But now he's given up for some reason.
Afterwards, Andy Müller-Maguhn
became the CCC's spokesman.
We as a club have set ourselves the task
of informing the public
about what you can do with computers
and also what you shouldn't do with them.
And we've also set ourselves the task
of mapping out these different aspects.
What we don't do is hack into other people's
computers, which we're often accused of.
Instead, we act as intermediaries between
hackers, the public and system operators,
and we also publish materials,
including our own magazine, that help people
to build their own computer networks, etc.
From free speech to pure joy.
I'll begin by quickly introducing myself.
I'm Wau Holland,
and I'm celebrating the 40th anniversary
of the day I was produced.
I've been in telecommunications
since they cut my umbilical cord.
And I'm active in various places
as a data artist and hit-smith.
Longing..
Longing..
Longing comes out of chaos.
Longing..
We drove here...
We drove here this afternoon.
I see.
- We've been here since Sunday evening...
Come on in, then.
You're nice and summery!
...my longing,
my addiction.
Longing..
Longing is the only...
..energy.
Now that I'm living in a village
in the Thuringian Forest:
the Thuringian Mountains,
they're something I missed here in Hamburg.
I couldn't stay in such a flat place,
that much was clear.
And the second thing is:
a person's character is strongly influenced
by what his mother feeds him.
So that's why the Thuringian eating habits,
which I got to know as a child,
are a different style of digestion
than the Hamburg cuisine,
which is why I feel more comfortable there.
When I'm in llmenau
and walk through the town,
I meet lots of people anyway,
because in a small town of 30,000 people,
you cross each other's paths.
Direct exchange
is where you get the most information across.
At the end of the 1990s,
Wau arrived in Jena,
where an Internet start-up was having
a huge impact on the stock market.
They offered Wau a well-paid job,
as a data protector.
But Wau preferred to continue his job
at the local youth centre.
We live in rags. we love the night
our time Is always now.
We have made
the bourgeais philistines anxious,
and we laugh whenever they harry us.
We have made
the bourgeais philistines anxious,
and we laugh whenever they harry us.
For many years, Wau was a member
of the Association of European Boy Scouts,
an organisation which even then
imagined a Europe without borders.
In the Boy Scouts,
my nickname was "Mole".
And when I started programming,
I shortened it to Wau,
and because of my nature,
my friends didn't see me as a professor
but as Doctor Wau.
Little Dr Wau skimmed through
his first children's hook when he was 10.
He told his mother that he'd
simply left out anything unimportant.
I love this story!
Wau had a very democratic home,
but his mother died when he was 13.
A huge shock.
He started working very early and...
...got my radio amateur licence,
repaired TVs and radios.
I operated a drill for a week
at a radio and TV dealer's in Marburg.
The next week I worked
at a private telephone branch exchange,
strictly forbidden for a schoolboy.
I really enjoy information ethics,
questions of responsibility
when dealing with information.
I think the Chaos Computer Club will continue
to exist for a very long time to come,
certainly in cooperation
with many large companies
and not least
with the federal government, right?
The civil rights movement
is more important to me!
For me, the nodes
are the most interesting aspect of a network.
These are connected to a great many
other points, and if you look at a node
there's no way of telling
what this node is connected to.
And this is an interesting characteristic
of communication.
Right now,
I'm talking into a camera, into a microphone,
and I've no idea where this recording
will end up and what will be done with it.
But certain thoughts and ideas
arrive somewhere and act as a trigger.
There's always a war going on somewhere,
and communication is a chance
not only to provoke,
hut also to de-escalate
and defuse conflicts.
At the same time,
CERN researcher Tim Berners-Lee
developed a concept for a hypertext project
that would simplify
the worldwide exchange of information.
This is now known as the World Wide Web,
with all its pros and cons.
You spend the first two years
in a state of euphoria. You don't think,
you just spend weeks
trying out the possibilities:
the first ascent of the high score table
without oxygen.
And the moment you not only write an email,
or, even more anonymously,
fill in a form on some website or other,
just having two recipients is enough
for this to result in you having made
a public statement,
which, in extreme cases,
can land you in trouble,
sometimes years later,
because of how you once saw things
and what you once said.
I like to use myself as a deterrent.
Anyone wanting to do research
using keywords like "fuck Wau",
"Wau dirty bastard",
"Wau arsehole"
or "Wau women's representative"
and so on...
They'll find all manner of flames
that I was involved in in recent years,
and so they can use all these things
to put together
an absolutely hateful picture of me
and garnish it with original quotations
to really finish me off.
And then the business with Tron happened.
Tron was a good friend of Andy's,
an exceptional hacker.
In 1997, Tron was the first
to crack the phone card system.
That got him 10 months on probation.
He then developed a cryptophone
that made the tap-proof encryption
of ISDN telephone calls possible.
Everyhody was interested
in someone like that,
from the secret service
to industry to the Mafia.
I'd like to give you a few evaluations
from memory.
I just learnt from Andy
that Tron has disappeared.
On Monday, Andy said:
We'll find him dead in the next few days.
And I asked, do you have any other,
more positive vision than this one?
And Andy said: No!
That was already pretty tough on Monday.
Then I went to the Better Research booth,
they do the encryption for DR,
for the Kirch media group,
and I told them, I can't say why,
that we urgently needed to get in touch
with their security guy.
So was clear that he hadn't gone anywhere
of his own free will,
but had been violently abducted.
And we just hoped to find his telephone,
as this was still in the network.
The body was found by walkers,
hanging from a tree in a wood.
POLICE DOUBT DEATH WAS SUICIDE
HACKER "TRON":
HIS DEATH REMAINS A MYSTERY
Two dead hackers were enough for me.
That's self-protection.
Plus, if I realise that I can no longer
implement my ideas in one structure,
then I have to look for a new one.
In 1997, me and a few others
founded "The Lockpickers' Club".
Yes, Mr Wernery...
Great...
- Yeah, is this the first time?
What?
- In handcuffs.
It is indeed.
We're interested in
the non-violent and non-destructive
opening of locks of all kinds,
this is called "lockpicking".
For me, this is a hacker sport.
I can research freely
without all that political,
ideological and intelligence stuff.
Nevertheless,
I'm still very attached to the CCC,
but no longer in the front row.
Wau withdrew more and more
from club activities.
Organising education at a time
when knowledge is developing rapidly
is a problem.
We don't have enough people
who can understand and solve the problem.
This is a vicious circle,
and it can only be broken
if competent people pass on their knowledge
to others as quickly as possible.
In a globally networked world,
isolated concepts stand no chance.
Strongest are those who exchange experience
and so have more common experiences.
I volunteered in a youth centre in Jena for
15 months and looked after the Internet room.
It was actually my expectation
that it would become a paid job.
But when after a year, 15 months,
that still hadn't happened,
I said: "OK...
I'll look for something else."
And "something else" meant
either I go to Dortmund
and start a similar project there,
or I go to Munich, or wherever.
And one of the options I had was Berlin.
Every time he left a place,
he left everything just as it was.
I think the way his room looked
reflected the way he often was inside.
Wau was restless,
and most of all neglected himself.
Many of his friends
were worried about his health.
I'm aware of the fact that at certain points,
when I work 36 hours without a break,
I am overexploiting my hody.
But, damn it, it's my body,
my body belongs to me.
And what I do with it is my business.
OK, I'm done. Over to you, Schultz.
And then, in the prime of life, he collapsed.
He'd had a stroke.
Then he died.
This is Project Blinkenlights in Paris,
with a tribute to Wau.
The photo of him was generated
by 520 illuminated windows.
The first Blinkenlights installation was
in Berlin in 2001, shortly after his death.
The lamps behind the windows
could he controlled via mobile phone,
meaning that messages could be placed
on the building's facade.
If love alone counted,
if love alone counted,
I would travel the same road for you again.
If love alone counted,
if love alone counted,
I would follow you to the ends of the earth,
No price is too high for me to see you.
20 years have passed since Wau's death.
The CCC still exists
and has become a respectable authority.
Wau's heirs have continued in his spirit.
It's almost impossible
to pick out a single event...
Well, maybe this one here.
Another major coup:
Interior Minister Schäuble's fingerprint.
Using the simplest means, a copy is made.
The CCC struck a massive blow
against the government at that time.
This called into question
the security of biometric data
of the kind used in passports.
If what the Chaos Computer Club's experts
claim to have discovered is true...
I have to put it so cumbersomely,
as there's no irrefutable evidence,
but if it's true, then the computer
surveillance methods used in Germany
are criminal or at least criminally reckless.
At least according to the CCC.
They claim the government
has developed a Trojan
that picks up more data
than constitutionally allowed.
It gives you total remote control.
This spyware allows you to do whatever
you want with someone's computer.
You can upload and run
any software you've programmed on it.
The Chaos Communication Congress
has blossomed too.
Every year, shortly after Christmas,
17,000 visitors now come to
an international event lasting several days.
Originally, it was just a few hundred.
A team of volunteers, the "Chaos Angels",
help to perfectly organise everything.
The rocket's been greeting you
at these events for years.
You've all seen it.
And the first camp
was a kind of new beginning, a launch.
And there's a video
of Wau speaking at that camp.
And we need to listen to it.
I remembered a time in the 1980s,
when we were invited
to the Open Ear Festival in Mainz.
We were allocated a garage,
known as the "Techno Shed",
and this had a single telephone line with
an acoustic coupler: 300 hits per second.
Today we have about 100,000 times
that connection capacity,
hut most of it runs via the Internet,
and the whole camp is self-organised.
I couldn't have imagined it back then.
Here we have the rocket,
which we're going to launch again.
And sometimes it runs into turbulence,
0 we provide sick bags.
We thought:
"What would be a suitable symbol
for this congress?"
And, of course, it's the phase tester,
which you all know.
Probably Wau's old joke,
because he always carried a phase tester.
And if someone asked him what it was for
he just said:
"I might need to make a phone call."
One of the best things this year
was what took place in Berlin-Südkreuz,
where the government
is trying to normalise camera surveillance
with automatic facial recognition
by carrying out a field test
at the train station there,
where several cameras are feeding
a number of facial recognition systems.
There was a lovely protest action
against this.
SUSPICIOUS
SURVEILLANCE
ACCESS FOR MODEL CITIZENS
The thing is, this isn't about
gathering information on terrorists.
This isn't about catching criminals.
The purpose of this video surveillance is
to say to people who don't want to conform:
Make sure you behave yourselves,
or we'll see you and get you.
"YOU CAN'T PLAY
WITH SECRET SERVICES"
DIGITAL COURAGE
Two years after Wau's death,
the Wau Holland Foundation was established.
Its aim is to preserve and continue
his free-thinking approaches.
Andy Müller-Maguhn
is one of the foundation's hoard members.
Among other things, the foundation
collects donations for WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks is seen as a continuation
of Wau's philosophy.
The platform has undoubtedly become
an important political instrument.
WikiLeaks is very controversial.
Or does criticism of it
have more to do with Julian Assange?
By publishing the American diplomatic cables
and other things,
WikiLeaks has shown that it's possible
to create radical government transparency
via the Internet.
And governments, according
to their current understanding of themselves,
have recognised this,
or they wouldn't have carried Julian
out of the embassy.
That's the highest journalism award
you can receive:
recognising that through your own actions,
you've really ruffled the feathers
of the powerful
and that they believe that your existence
and theirs are mutually incompatible.
The impression that on Twitter Julian was not
only unbiased towards his own publications,
well, that's just the way it is.
Because on social media
it might be useful to employ
rhetorical overstatement and hyperbole
in order to attract attention.
Whether that's good for your reputation
for neutrality is another question.
The war crimes uncovered by Daniel Ellsberg,
the mass surveillance uncovered
by Edward Snowden,
the dirty political games that came to light
because of the diplomatic cables,
and ultimately because of Chelsea Manning,
all these things speak for themselves.
They're all pieces of information
that describe firm facts.
The idea behind WikiLeaks,
that one should use the Internet
to counter the wish of governments
to suppress information and truths
and ultimately prevent us from recognising
and exercising our democrating rights,
has worked.
You're thrashing me, Linus.
Now you say something.
Even before we really had an Internet
for the general public,
it was clear that it would either he
the perfect tool for centralised control,
power and surveillance,
or the perfect tool against these.
It's up to us what we do with it.
That's why it says in "tuwat.txt"
that you can still do useful things
with small computers
that don't require
large centralised organisations.
That's what the CCC stands for
and that's what the CCC does every day.
This is the fight against Google,
Facebook and other giants,
and the fight for the use of one's own intellect
as understood by the Enlightenment,
for mistrust of authorities,
and for technology and competence
and using these autonomously.
The realities are currently merging
into something rather grotesque.
Large Internet firms are now employing
former presidential advisors
and election campaign bosses.
Now that Facebook has started
to buy up and integrate dating sites,
bringing people together on the basis
of their psychoanalytical profiles
and effectively attempting
to create their own population,
the outlook is pretty grim.
People being held in their own little
perceptual bubbles is one problem,
but how to get them out of there
is anyone's guess.
We used to say that people should control
technology and not the other way round,
but in view of the complexity
behind most cases... Deactivate.
Bullshit!
Zuckerberg is a dangerous sociopath.
We can't have people being held
in microrealities, being kept happy,
having their attention,
to all intents and purposes,
constantly distracted
by diversionary tactics,
thus keeping them from seeing real conflicts,
engaging in real human interaction
and from reflecting on their own actions
and lives in a societal context.
Also necessary is the human right to
unhindered communication, at least worldwide.
Wau has had a profound influence on this.
Because preparation for war was always based
on the principle of preventing communication,
because if people are talking, they're
less likely to hit or shoot each other.
But this also means
that things have to be noticed,
just putting them up on the Internet
isn't enough.
A good example is FC/MC.
There is a G20 summit in Hamburg.
we know the usual press reports on it.
The CCC simply goes there and builds
an alternative media centre,
with its own cameras, with an infrastructure
for uploading, with an Internet connection,
with an infrastructure
for providing the content
that the independent journalists
produce there.
And it does this in addition to its other
activities, such as the camp or congress.
Enthusiastic people meet there
in order to solve the problems they see,
and that's great.
Has all the enthusiasm from the beginnings
of hacker culture now evaporated?
All those plans for the future?
No. The Internet is cool
and gets cooler every day.,
and it's creating tremendous potential.
It's just a pity how little we as a society
really make out of this potential.
I never got to meet Wau,
but I ask myself this:
Did he actually foresee all the conflicts,
all the struggles,
all the social challenges we would have?
Or was he surprised himself at some point?
I've waited for this question for ages.
Immediate experience...
Yesterday evening,
Rob sat at the front of the rostrum
and described how he had only learnt to
understand certain problems in the region
because he hadn't been virtually present,
and I repeat, hadn't been virtually present,
but had been there "in the flesh",
to use that lovely expression.
Because he'd been physically present,
able to see people's faces,
able to see their reactions directly.
And he did this without a medium,
which for many is an alien concept.
And this direct experience
is incredibly important.
We really should get rid
of all this virtual bullshit.
EVERYTHING IS ONE.
EXCEPT 0.
Subtitling: SUBS Hamburg
Michael Hale