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Privacy Lost

Ola Bini has been arrested by the Ecuadorian Police based on questionable links to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Although he has been arrested, no charges against him have yet been filed.

Near to the time of Ola’s arrest the Ecuadorian police tweeted an obscured photo of a person in detention and that person’s personal belongings, including nearly 20 laptops, numerous drives, and 12 books.

The original tweet read:

APREHENDIDO ciudadano en #Quito, que mediante la utilización de plataformas digitales de redes sociales, transmitía contenido de connotación social (divulgación de información) a través de sitios web, entre los mas destacados #WikiLeaks. El sujeto utilizaba perfiles falsos.

A rough translation is as follows:

Citizen Apprehended in #Quito, who through the use of social networks, transmitted content of social connotation (dissemination of information) through websites, including most prominently WikiLeaks.

That tweet has since been deleted. It is not 100% certain if Ola is the “citizen” in question, but I find the images of the belongings particularly compelling.¹ I had the good fortune of meeting and talking with Ola on numerous occasions and found him a deep thinker who was a true lover of knowledge and intellectually engaged with matters of computing thoughtfully and eloquently. Therefore, as a lover of knowledge myself I dug in on the image above to identify the books procured as so-called evidence.²

Update: Ola released an official statement. In this statement, Ola says something troubling, specifically, “the case against me is based on the books I’ve read and the technology I have.”

Below you’ll find the books confiscated by the Ecuadorian police (left to right, top to bottom):

• The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld by James Bartlett

• The Hacker Playbook: Practical Guide To Penetration Testing by Peter Kim

• WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy by David Leigh and Luke Harding

• The Snowden Files – movie tie-in edition by Luke Harding

• Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security by Richard A. Clarke

• The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information by Frank Pasquale

• Cyber War Will Not Take Place by Thomas Rid

• The Snowden Files – original edition by Luke Harding

• The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money by Obermayer and Obermaier

• Hacking Secret Ciphers with Python by Al Sweigart

• Privacy Lost: How Technology Is Endangering Your Privacy by David Holtzman

• Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman

I’ve always been a proponent in the idea that to know someone is to read what they read. Therefore, I’m digging into Ola’s books³ to learn a little more about him and the topics and problems that have grown in importance during troubling times.⁴

#FreeOlaBini