He Was Arrested as a Russian Hacker, But The Truth Is Far Scarier ☠ Darknet Diaries Ep. 163: Ola

0:00 JACK: Hey, it’s Jack, host of the show.

0:02 When I was a teenager, I went to university and studied computer science.

0:06 At one point they gave all the students logins to some central Linux computer.

0:11 It’s where you were supposed to do your schoolwork.

0:13 Like, you could use it for file

0:16 storage or check e-mail there and do programming.

0:18 Well, when they gave me my username and password,

0:21 they said my username is my last name

0:24 and my password is just my first and last name.

0:28 I instantly realized this means if you know another student’s full name,

0:32 you know their username and password and can log in as them

0:36 and read their e-mails and look through their files and stuff.

0:39 I told that to the teacher; hey, this is a bad password policy.

0:42 He’s like, why?

0:42 I’m like, 'cause I know everyone’s password.

0:45 <!--more--> He’s like, yeah, well, everyone should be changing their password.

0:48 I’m like, yeah, but they're not.

0:50 None of them are changing their passwords.

0:52 I tried helping a few students change their password,

0:54 but I knew it was a lost cause.

0:56 You could pretty much pick any computer science

0:58 student in the school and there was a pretty

1:00 good chance that you could log in as them

1:01 if you just knew their first and last name.

1:04 Well, while I was sitting in class one day,

1:07 the school sysadmin came into the class,

1:10 and he pointed at me and he motioned for me to follow him to the hall.

1:14 So, I go into the hall and he starts telling me,

1:17 someone has broken into our Linux computer and is going

1:19 around deleting a bunch of student files and data and stuff,

1:22 and some students lost a ton of work from this.

1:25 I was like, well, it wasn’t me.

1:26 I don't know anything about that.

1:28 I’ve never done that.

1:29 But this guy was giving me a crooked look.

1:31 He was like, come on, fess up; I know it was you.

1:34 I was like, no, it wasn’t.

1:35 Why are you blaming me?

1:36 What makes you think I did this?

1:38 He’s like, come on, man, I’ve seen your command history.

1:41 You're way more active on that computer than anyone else,

1:43 and the commands you're doing show me that you

1:45 know way more than any other student, too.

1:47 So, it had to be you.

1:49 There’s literally no other suspects.

1:51 I’m like, I promise you I did not do anything bad on your system,

1:56 but you have really terrible default passwords,

1:59 and the students are not changing them.

2:03 He was like, whatever, dude.

2:05 Look, if it happens again, you're getting suspended.

2:08 I started to realize if whoever did that again,

2:12 I might get kicked out of school for that.

2:16 This made me super worried.

2:19 I was being wrongfully accused.

2:22 But I was lucky; they either found the guy who did it or he never did it again,

2:31 because I never saw that sysadmin again.

2:35 (INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC] These are true stories

2:36 from the dark side of the internet.

2:41 I’m Jack Rhysider.

2:47 This is Darknet Diaries.

2:54 [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] JACK: 2019 is when you got arrested, right?

3:02 OLA: Yeah, correct, in April 11.

3:04 JACK: Right.

3:05 So, let’s go back before that.

3:06 First of all, tell me your name, and what were you doing before that?

3:10 OLA: Okay, so, my name is Ola Bini.

3:12 I’m from Sweden originally,

3:13 but I’ve lived in London and Chicago and here in Ecuador

3:18 where I’m still located since 2013 when I came to Ecuador.

3:22 JACK: When did you leave Sweden?

3:24 OLA: So, I left Sweden in 2007 because I

3:27 was hired by an international software development company called Thoughtworks.

3:31 I worked for them for ten years, and that’s how I came to Ecuador originally.

3:37 I came with the company.

3:39 JACK: What’s your preferred programming language?

3:43 OLA: That’s a hard question since I’ve

3:45 developed my own programming languages and, of course,

3:47 I like my own programming languages a lot.

3:50 But I’m pretty old school when it comes to the history of programming languages,

3:54 so I’m a huge fan of common lisp.

3:57 I’m still a proud emacs user,

3:59 and I have my millions of lines of emacs list code to customize my experience.

4:04 JACK: Millions; geez.

4:06 Are you a big Java fan?

4:09 OLA: See, that’s a funny question because when I got my first job,

4:13 I started working in Java,

4:15 and I was very frustrated with Java from a productivity perspective.

4:18 So, I got involved in creating other languages for the JVM.

4:22 So, I first was involved in a list variant called Jatha,

4:26 and then I got involved in JRuby, which is basically a project to create a Ruby

4:30 implementation that runs on top of the JVM.

4:33 I became one of the core developers for JRuby,

4:35 and that’s kind of what I did for the next few years.

4:39 The idea was basically to use all the good stuff that is

4:42 in the Java platform without actually having to deal with the bad stuff,

4:45 which is, in my opinion, the Java language.

4:47 JACK: Fascinating.

4:48 Java always marketed itself as usable on any device or operating system,

4:52 making it so you can program something once and it’ll run anywhere,

4:55 as opposed to making different apps for different operating systems.

4:58 However, the language itself is clunky and ugly.

5:01 So, Ola took the beauty he saw in the Ruby

5:04 programming language and got it to work in Java somehow.

5:06 It’s kinda mind bending to me that you could

5:09 code something in Ruby and it’ll run anywhere Java can.

5:13 But this is the kind of audacious project that Ola enjoys working on.

5:17 He likes to work on huge projects that are pretty obscure and strange.

5:22 He spent decades as a programmer

5:24 working for various companies in various countries,

5:26 and besides having a love for programming,

5:29 he’s also got a burning passion for online privacy.

5:32 OLA: If you look back in the key servers for GPG,

5:36 you will find my first GPG key uploaded in 2001 or 2002 or something like that.

5:41 So, privacy was something that I was

5:42 always interested in, and from my first job,

5:45 I was involved with cryptography and that kind of stuff.

5:49 In 2010, WikiLeaks started releasing the diplomatic cables, and so,

5:53 my interest kind of— and my activity kind of started coming back in that time.

5:58 But then I had my regular day job,

6:00 and I didn’t really get super engaged until the beginning of 2013,

6:04 because that was when— actually,

6:06 it was an event where a friend of mine named Aaron Swartz—

6:10 I don't know if you've heard of him… JACK: Yes, of course.

6:14 OLA: Yeah, so, he killed himself in the beginning of January of 2013,

6:19 and that was a huge blow to me and it was a huge

6:23 blow to many people inside of the company because he worked with us.

6:26 We started talking about how we wanted to do more from a privacy perspective,

6:32 from a digital advocacy perspective and all these things.

6:36 So, in 2013 I kind of started out working on those things,

6:39 and I started out doing both— I really was

6:43 doing both privacy and information security at the same time.

6:46 JACK: So, what was your involvement with WikiLeaks?

6:49 Did you actually work with them?

6:51 OLA: No, no.

6:52 That’s the thing; I’ve been accused of working for WikiLeaks for a long time,

6:57 but that’s not true.

6:58 I never worked for WikiLeaks in any way.

7:00 [Music] But I am a friend of Julian Assange,

7:03 and that’s what came in 2013 because I was doing all this work

7:08 reaching out to privacy networks and talking to people around the world,

7:11 and then a friend in common who was the lawyer

7:15 for Julian recommended to Julian that I should meet Julian.

7:18 So, it was pretty funny.

7:20 It was a week before the Snowden disclosures.

7:22 I went to London and I went to the Ecuadorian embassy and I met Julian,

7:28 and we became friends.

7:29 Since then, I was traveling a lot, and every time I was in Europe,

7:33 I passed by London and I went to the embassy to hang out

7:36 with him and just talk about technology or privacy or all these things.

7:40 But we were only friends.

7:41 We were never collaborators or working together in any way.

7:45 JACK: Ah.

7:46 It’s interesting; Julian was in the Ecuadorian embassy,

7:48 and Ola had just moved to Ecuador from the United States.

7:51 OLA: I was in a very privileged position because my company basically

7:55 told me I could go wherever I wanted that the company had offices,

7:59 and I could work from anywhere.

8:00 So, I could have moved to india, I could have moved to China, to Australia.

8:04 But at the same time, there was this discussion about opening up an office—

8:09 because the company at that point had offices in Brazil,

8:11 but nowhere else in Latin America.

8:14 I had a wife at the time, and she was interested in learning Spanish.

8:19 So, we were thinking about— okay, Latin America could be interesting.

8:23 Then the company decided that Ecuador would be the place,

8:26 and we went and we liked it, so we went there.

8:30 Everyone always asks if there was any

8:33 connection with what Julian went through, but actually,

8:36 it was complete coincidence that I ended up

8:38 in the same country as Julian was in the embassy of.

8:41 JACK: Julian Assange was in trouble because

8:43 his website WikiLeaks had published some sensitive articles which

8:46 exposed things like governments that were doing things

8:49 that they didn’t want us to know about,

8:51 and they wanted to arrest him for exposing this stuff.

8:54 So, he was granted asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London,

8:58 because Ecuador looked favorably upon him.

9:01 [Music] But he couldn't leave the embassy because

9:03 the UK and the US didn’t like him, and they wanted to arrest him.

9:07 So, Julian Assange was stuck there on a little island that if he

9:11 stepped off of, the UK police would swoop in on him and arrest him.

9:15 OLA: Oh yeah, yeah.

9:16 No, it was crazy.

9:17 Of course, he didn’t have so many friends, so— that could come and visit him.

9:22 So, that was one of the reasons why I kept doing it,

9:24 to— sitting in that situation that he was in, being

9:28 alone like that— if I were in that situation,

9:32 I would like for people to come and hang out

9:34 and just have friends that you can talk to in different ways.

9:38 So, yeah, so I met him the first time in the first week of June 2013,

9:43 and then just a few days later came the first Snowden disclosures,

9:49 and the whole world blew up and started

9:51 talking about privacy and all this stuff.

9:53 JACK: Yeah, it’s true; once the Snowden papers became news,

9:55 the world started talking about privacy a lot.

9:57 See, it’s against the law for the US

10:00 to do mass surveillance on its own citizens,

10:02 but the Snowden paper showed that through the Prison Project and others,

10:06 the US government was doing mass surveillance on its own US citizens.

10:10 It was awful for them to be doing that without consent,

10:14 without approval, without the citizens knowing it’s happening.

10:17 So, tons of people were suddenly talking about privacy then.

10:20 Of course, all this made Ola realize you can't

10:23 trust the infrastructure that our communication is going over.

10:27 There’s entities in the world trying to suck up

10:29 all the data they can and look into everyone’s packets.

10:32 So, it’s incredibly important to do end-to-end encryption on everything so only

10:36 you and the person you're talking to can see what’s being said.

10:40 See, with e-mail for example,

10:42 typically the e-mail provider can open and read all the e-mail they want.

10:46 If the police get a search warrant,

10:49 they can ask the e-mail provider for full readable e-mails.

10:54 So, Ola started working on tools which would restrict

10:56 the e-mail provider from being able to see e-mails.

10:59 Even if someone put a gun to the e-mail provider’s head,

11:02 they wouldn't be able to hand over readable e-mails.

11:05 It would just be encrypted gibberish.

11:07 He made it so that the sender and receiver would exchange encryption keys.

11:12 This means the e-mail gets encrypted upon hitting

11:15 Send and only decrypted when the receiver opens it.

11:18 Nobody else will ever get to see what’s in it.

11:20 OLA: We were also doing our own development.

11:23 We created a chat platform, a chat tool called CoyIM.

11:27 JACK: This also had end-to-end encryption built in and was very privacy-focused,

11:31 because most of the popular chat apps then—

11:34 and surprisingly still today— are not end-to-end encrypted.

11:37 So, these chat services can read anyone’s messages,

11:40 and so can the governments of the world

11:43 or hackers if they can get into the systems.

11:46 As you can see, privacy is very important to Ola.

11:50 OLA: I use the definition of privacy which is based on the idea of control.

11:54 Privacy is the capacity for you to control the information about yourself.

11:59 So, privacy is not about hiding,

12:02 although hiding can be one of the things you do with privacy.

12:05 Privacy is controlling what information you want to release

12:08 to whom you want to release it under what circumstances, etc.

12:11 For me, privacy is important— well,

12:14 it’s important because it’s a human right, and that should be enough,

12:19 but it’s also very important because it’s very,

12:22 very closely linked to other rights.

12:24 For example, if you're a person that believes in democracy,

12:28 then you should believe in privacy,

12:29 because there’s been a lot of studies that show that people under

12:32 surveillance vote in a different way than if they're not under surveillance.

12:36 So, if you want to have free and proper elections,

12:39 then you need privacy for people, for example.

12:42 So, in my perspective,

12:44 the important thing about privacy is that it enables all these other rights.

12:51 The problem is that privacy— in the fiscal world,

12:55 privacy has always been quite hard to violate in a massive way.

13:00 It’s not like you can have a person

13:02 just standing at the window of 100,000 people.

13:05 I mean, if I remember correctly,

13:07 the Stasi in East Germany— I think at some point,

13:11 four percent of everyone was working as an informant for the Stasi,

13:15 four percent of the population, but they still weren't able to in any way invade

13:20 the privacy of most people with that amount of people.

13:23 But, of course in the technological world,

13:26 the possibility for violation is extreme, and that’s what we're seeing.

13:31 Like, every year the privacy invasions are becoming larger and larger.

13:35 JACK: Since 2013 Ola has been vocal about this, blogging about it on WordPress,

13:40 working with others, building tools to enhance our privacy,

13:43 and trying to be a privacy activist.

13:45 His job allowed him to build privacy tools while working there,

13:49 but that company he was working at got bought out by a private equity company,

13:53 and he knew he wasn’t going to be able

13:55 to work on those tools anymore with that new leadership.

13:58 OLA: [Music] So, I quit, and a few of the other people quit as well,

14:01 and we started a nonprofit here in Ecuador.

14:03 Well, actually, we started it first in Brazil and in Barcelona,

14:07 but then in 2019 we moved the nonprofit to Ecuador.

14:11 JACK: This nonprofit was entirely focused on privacy.

14:15 OLA: So, this is a nonprofit called Centro de Autonomia Digital.

14:19 Yeah, the Digital Autonomy Center you can call it in English.

14:23 It’s based here in Ecuador.

14:25 We work to create free software that protects the privacy for people at risk,

14:31 and specifically we try to work from a context

14:33 of global south more than global north,

14:36 because a lot of the tools that exist are

14:38 done for white people in Europe and the United States,

14:42 and we know that— being in Ecuador,

14:44 for example, we have contacts with a lot of nonprofits that work here and a lot

14:49 of the indigenous groups and all

14:51 these kind of situations that are quite complicated,

14:53 and many of the tools are not really made for them; not in the right language,

14:57 not with the right usability, not for the right circumstances.

15:00 So, we work on free software.

15:02 JACK: They built a chat app

15:04 and e-mail privacy tools and a teleconferencing tool.

15:07 OLA: The software development is a big part, but the other big part is that we

15:10 do public education about security and privacy,

15:13 and this is directed against— directed towards

15:17 the communities of civil society to try to help

15:22 them to have better practices and so on, because a lot of them— I mean,

15:27 a lot of the people that work in civil society,

15:30 they get money to do projects to help people,

15:33 and they often don’t have time to think about their security practices.

15:37 JACK: In May of 2018 when a new

15:42 president took office in Ecuador, everything changed.

15:45 We're gonna take an ad break here,

15:48 but stay with us because this story is about to go off a waterfall.

15:52 OLA: So, the new president— his name is Lenin Moreno— he came in in 2018,

15:59 and when he came into power, everyone thought that he would be kind

16:04 of from the same political alignment as the previous government,

16:07 which was headed by President Rafael Correa.

16:11 But when Lenin Moreno came into power, he basically cut ties with Rafael Correa

16:17 and the whole movement of Correastas, as they are called,

16:20 and he basically started investing for corruption,

16:23 and he made a lot of moves towards

16:25 industry and going into a right-wing kind of direction.

16:29 So, everyone was quite surprised.

16:31 JACK: With this sudden change in political alignment,

16:34 in 2019, the new president, Lenin Moreno,

16:37 suddenly wasn’t happy with Julian Assange and no

16:40 longer was willing to give him asylum.

16:43 [Music] OLA: I was actually on my way to the airport when all of this happened.

16:47 So, basically, I’m a martial artist,

16:49 and at the time I was practicing something called Bujinkan.

16:52 A few months earlier I had received my black

16:55 belt and I was planning to go to Japan.

16:58 The idea was to go to Japan to train with the grand

17:01 master that still teaches in Japan for this martial art.

17:05 So, I had publicized the fact.

17:07 I had the tickets bought months before.

17:09 Early on the morning of the 11th, on the Thursday,

17:12 I received a message from a few

17:14 of my friends telling me about what had happened.

17:16 JACK: The foreign minister and the interior minister

17:19 of Ecuador had given a press conference that morning,

17:22 and Ola was watching what they said.

17:24 OLA: These two people, they were talking about the fact that they

17:28 had— ‘esposado’ is the word they used,

17:31 but that they had thrown out Julian because he

17:34 was collaborating with enemies of the state inside of Ecuador.

17:38 What they were saying in this press conference was

17:41 that they also had evidence that there were two Russians living

17:45 in Ecuador that were key members of WikiLeaks and that they

17:49 were also part of this attempt to destabilize the government.

17:53 JACK: Just like that, Julian was under arrest in the UK.

17:57 After having asylum for seven years, he lost it,

18:01 and the UK police swooped in on him and took him to jail.

18:04 It was shocking for the world to see that Julian Assange was arrested.

18:09 OLA: I saw this press conference and I didn’t really think anything about it.

18:13 So, I continued my preparations for my travels.

18:16 I was gonna leave at 12:00 midday and get to the airport.

18:20 So, that’s what I did.

18:22 JACK: So, he goes through the airport, through security,

18:25 and arrives at his gate, sits down, and reads a book.

18:28 Then he hears an announcement; will Ola Bini please come to the gate?

18:32 He goes up to the gate, and they wanted to check his luggage for some reason.

18:35 OLA: This is pretty common that they ask you to go

18:38 down to where they manage the luggage and go through it,

18:40 because they're looking for drugs.

18:41 So, that’s something that always happens with these trips.

18:43 So, I went there, and I had no idea.

18:46 When I stood there, about ten different people came up to me

18:50 and they were trying to explain to me that they wanted to apprehend me.

18:55 JACK: [Music] Apprehend him?

18:56 He’s like, me?

18:57 Why?

18:57 What did I do?

18:58 OLA: These people, they didn’t identify themselves.

19:00 They didn’t have any markings on them saying

19:03 that they were police or who they were, and I was quite confused.

19:06 At that time I didn’t really speak Spanish well,

19:09 so I was trying in English to understand what was happening.

19:12 They were saying that they were stopping me from going

19:16 on the airplane and that I needed to come with them.

19:19 At this point I had no idea why.

19:21 JACK: There was a moment where he was able

19:23 to sneak his phone out and text a friend; hey, I’m in trouble.

19:25 I think I’m being arrested.

19:27 I need a lawyer immediately.

19:28 I’m at the airport.

19:29 They took him into a little room, and he looks at the sign on the room.

19:33 It says Interpol.

19:34 OLA: Then they sat me down there.

19:36 They asked me to put my things away from me,

19:38 but they still let me keep my phone for some reason.

19:42 So, I was still in contact, and I managed to get hold of the lawyer.

19:46 He said he was coming towards the airport to be there.

19:50 But at that point, after about ten minutes inside of this room,

19:54 the person there asked me to put my phone away,

19:57 that I was not allowed to have the phone,

20:00 and that I needed to put the phone away for my own safety.

20:03 I have no idea what he meant by that, but basically

20:06 I had to put the phone on the table.

20:09 From that point, I wasn’t allowed to touch the phone anymore.

20:12 All of this was a little bit confusing because no

20:15 one tried to talk to me about what was happening,

20:18 and I kept asking, hey, what’s going on?

20:20 What’s happening?

20:20 They basically didn’t say anything.

20:22 It was also complicated because the people—

20:24 the person keeping me in this office, he didn’t speak any English.

20:27 So, when I wanted to ask questions,

20:29 he had to go out and get someone from the immigration department that was

20:33 out in the airport to come back and to talk to me in English.

20:38 So, they didn’t really have a translator or anything

20:42 like that to talk to me at all.

20:46 That basically was how I spent the next few hours.

20:51 JACK: [Music] Hours spent in the Quito Airport in this little room.

20:55 He missed his flight at this point, and he has no clue why he’s being detained.

21:00 They weren't asking him questions and they weren't giving him answers.

21:03 They just kept him in a room with the guy

21:05 there who didn’t speak any English to watch over him.

21:08 Eventually someone comes in and tells him they are taking him to the city,

21:13 and they escort him to a car and they put him in a car,

21:15 and they start to drive off.

21:16 But then they change their mind and take him back

21:18 to the airport and send him into that little Interpol room again.

21:20 He asked if he can call his lawyer,

21:22 and they let him, but only for like one minute.

21:25 OLA: At that point— and this is the most ridiculous thing.

21:28 At this point, the guy that was holding me there,

21:31 he held up a paper in front of me

21:33 and said that this was the reason I was being held.

21:35 Now, this paper he held up for five seconds,

21:38 and I couldn't see anything except that my name was badly written,

21:43 and it said ‘Russo’.

21:44 So, this, whatever thing they had, said ‘Russian’,

21:48 and they had the wrong name on it or misspelled name on it.

21:52 He held it up to me when I was talking to my lawyer,

21:56 and then he hid it again, and I wasn’t allowed to see it again.

22:00 JACK: Russian?

22:00 Are the police saying he’s Russian or are they saying the Russians

22:03 are out to get him or that he’s working for Russia?

22:07 He has so many questions, and nobody’s answering them.

22:10 They hold him there at the airport for another five hours.

22:13 It’s now 11:00 p.m.

22:15 at night.

22:15 OLA: They forced me to stand up and they put handcuffs behind my back,

22:20 and then they took away all my things from me.

22:23 I said that I wanted to talk to a lawyer, and they said no.

22:27 I said that I wanted to talk to a person from my family, and they said no.

22:32 These two are basic rights in Ecuador.

22:35 Then basically what ended up happening was that they put me against the wall,

22:39 and then I had to stand with the wall,

22:40 like looking at the wall, for about twenty minutes.

22:42 I don't know what they were doing during this time period.

22:46 But then, finally, they went to the door,

22:50 and at the door was a person reading from a paper.

22:56 Later— I’ve been told that this person was trying to read in English,

23:01 but I had no idea what the person was

23:03 saying because the English— the pronunciation was so terrible.

23:06 I had no idea what they were saying.

23:08 This happened three times with three different people.

23:10 Afterwards I found out, oh, they were trying to read my rights,

23:13 but they didn’t have a translator, so they couldn't make use of a translator

23:20 to actually make sure that I understood.

23:22 Then they tried to force me to sign this paper,

23:25 which I didn’t do, and then they took me out to a cop car.

23:28 They put me in the back of this cop car,

23:30 [music] and we sat on this dark parking space outside of the airport,

23:34 and there was no one around.

23:36 These two cops were inside of the car,

23:38 and we sat there for three hours in the middle of the night.

23:42 JACK: Sitting in a parked cop car for hours through the night?

23:47 Man, all this sounds highly unusual.

23:49 I can't imagine that this is how arrests normally happen in Ecuador,

23:54 where unidentified people come and they keep you in a room for eight hours,

23:58 then they put you in a car to hold you there all night,

24:01 and the whole time you never know why you're being detained,

24:04 and they don’t even ask you questions

24:06 to make sure that they’ve got the right person.

24:08 They didn’t even bring his luggage with him.

24:10 He didn’t know it, but his lawyer did show up

24:12 at the airport and he was trying to see Ola,

24:14 but they were telling his lawyer that he didn’t

24:16 have a right to a lawyer, which is false.

24:18 Ecuador law says you are allowed immediate

24:20 access to a lawyer when you are arrested.

24:22 In fact, they're even supposed to tell you that you

24:25 have a right to a lawyer while being arrested.

24:27 They were telling both Ola and his lawyer

24:29 that he didn’t have a right to a lawyer.

24:31 It just seems incredibly strange.

24:32 If he’s arrested, then arrest him and take him

24:35 to jail and tell him what he did wrong.

24:37 What’s with all this waiting around and no explanation

24:40 and violating his rights in so many different ways?

24:42 I mean, how would you hold up sitting in the back

24:45 of a cop car in a dark parking garage, waiting quietly in the dark all night?

24:53 OLA: I started getting really scared.

24:55 Before I was more confused,

24:58 but at this point I was really scared because no one knew where I was.

25:04 The lawyers had never showed up,

25:06 and I was sitting here in the darkness and no one was around.

25:09 I was wondering that— because Ecuador

25:11 has a history of police disappearing people.

25:14 There has been some famous cases that I knew about,

25:18 and at that point I was thinking that, okay, this is the time when I disappear,

25:23 when I get thrown into a ditch somewhere,

25:25 and no one knows what— no one will ever find out what happened.

25:30 JACK: So, you stayed all night in the back of a car?

25:34 OLA: No; only until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.

25:37 JACK: Okay, but I just don’t understand what the other

25:39 person in the car was doing the whole time.

25:41 Were they just staring out the window, waiting?

25:43 OLA: No, they were just sitting there, yeah.

25:45 They were just sitting… JACK: What a boring job.

25:47 Whatever they were doing is just so boring.

25:50 OLA: I mean, I think at some point they

25:52 went out and they were talking a little bit,

25:53 but then they came back and they were sitting there.

25:55 They didn’t have any radio on, nothing.

25:57 They weren't doing anything with their mobile phones, absolutely nothing.

26:01 JACK: Wow.

26:01 OLA: Yeah, definitely not a very interesting job, I can imagine.

26:08 But finally in the middle of the night,

26:10 around 2:30 or 3:00 in the middle of the night,

26:12 they drove me away from the airport, and we started driving.

26:14 At this point I wasn’t sure if we were

26:17 driving to my death or driving to somewhere else.

26:20 After a while, we ended up at my apartment building.

26:23 I live on the fourth floor in an apartment building in the city of Quito.

26:29 We came there, and I could see that there was

26:32 a bunch of— in Ecuador we have what we called RoboCops,

26:36 and these are the riot cops.

26:37 They're dressed all in black and they have masks and weapons,

26:41 and they— yeah, they look a little bit like RoboCop.

26:44 So, there was a bunch of these RoboCops outside

26:47 of my apartment building and other people going in and out.

26:50 At some point someone came up to me in the car when I was sitting there,

26:55 and they showed me a paper which I didn’t understand,

26:59 and asked me in bad English if I would

27:01 like to be helpful and allow them into my apartment.

27:05 JACK: Helpful?

27:05 How about some equal respect here?

27:07 If you can arrange to have ten cops come to the apartment,

27:11 then you can arrange to have an English translator

27:14 show up and explain to him what’s going on.

27:16 If you can't give him the courtesy to let him know why he’s being arrested,

27:20 then why should he be helpful to you?

27:22 Anyway, he refused to let them into his apartment,

27:25 and he demanded his lawyer again.

27:26 So, at 3:00 a.m.

27:27 he was sitting in a cop car in front of his apartment

27:31 for another thirty minutes while the police

27:33 are talking about what they're gonna do.

27:35 He wasn’t gonna let them in the apartment,

27:37 so they decided to take him somewhere else.

27:39 [Music] Little did he know, as soon as they drove him away,

27:43 they just broke into his apartment and seized a bunch of stuff.

27:46 OLA: Then they drove me to another place which was some

27:51 kind of office environment where several of the cops were working,

27:55 and basically I sat there for three hours just without any knowledge,

27:59 no information, no nothing.

28:01 At some point in the night, around 5:00 in the morning,

28:06 my luggage had arrived to this office and they were going through the luggage,

28:10 but they weren't doing it in front of me.

28:12 They didn’t ask me to verify anything or anything else that I would expect.

28:15 Then a few minutes before 6:00 in the morning,

28:18 one of the people turned on a TV that was sitting on the wall,

28:23 and at that point I still didn’t understand what was going on.

28:28 But on the TV they started showing a news show that was showing images of me,

28:34 including an image of me from the evening before,

28:36 and I could see the word ‘hacker’, I could see the word ‘Russo’,

28:40 which means Russian, and a few other things.

28:43 They had clearly been taking pictures from my Twitter and from previous

28:47 speaking engagements where I had been publicly giving talks and stuff like that.

28:51 So, at that point I understood that this had something to do with computers,

28:55 but I still didn’t know what they were

28:58 accusing me of or what was actually happening.

29:00 JACK: What?

29:01 It appeared that Ola Bini was being arrested

29:03 because they thought he was a Russian hacker?

29:06 This isn't right.

29:08 Ola is Swedish, not Russian, not affiliated with Russia at all,

29:11 and he’s not a hacker or a criminal.

29:13 He’s the president of a nonprofit who works on privacy tools.

29:17 He’s a programmer.

29:18 This is all very strange, and how could the police tell the media what’s

29:22 going on before even telling him what’s going on?

29:25 It must be so frustrating to find out why you're

29:27 being arrested by turning on the TV and discovering why.

29:30 So, now it’s 6:00 a.m.

29:32 and he hasn’t slept all night.

29:34 OLA: No, no, no.

29:35 No, god no.

29:36 I mean, the first half of the night I was afraid for my life,

29:41 and then when I came to this office I was just exhausted,

29:46 but I was also confused and didn’t know what was going to happen.

29:50 At this point still, I had not been able to talk to anyone.

29:53 No one knew where I was.

29:54 JACK: They keep him in this office for a total of four hours,

29:57 then they put him in the back of a cop car and drive him to a jail.

30:01 It’s more like a temporary holding cell.

30:03 They take him out of the car and walk him into the building.

30:06 OLA: When I came in there,

30:08 I had the relief of seeing my friend who I also work with, Sada,

30:13 and one of my lawyers that were there waiting for me.

30:16 But they were not allowed to speak to me,

30:19 and the cops took me directly into the holding cells.

30:23 [Music] In the holding cells once again,

30:26 they tried to force me into signing papers that I didn’t really understand.

30:29 They said that this was to acknowledge that I had— know my rights,

30:33 but since I didn’t know my rights

30:35 and clearly they weren't really respecting my rights, they— I didn’t sign it.

30:42 Then they basically threw me into these holding

30:45 cells which are basically three big kind

30:48 of cement holes with a big door and space for maybe twelve or fifteen people.

30:56 I was sitting there with maybe ten people.

30:59 This was in the morning, 9:15, Thursday and Friday.

31:03 So, all of these people that had been caught out

31:06 on parties or for small drug charges or things like that.

31:09 Everyone’s speaking Spanish, and I had no idea what they were saying.

31:13 JACK: So, he sat in this jail— he called it a dungeon— still not sleeping,

31:18 and hours passed by there.

31:20 Eventually, to his surprise, the Swedish consular shows up.

31:23 See, in Ecuador if a foreigner is arrested,

31:26 the police have to immediately notify the foreign embassy,

31:29 which the Ecuadorian police didn’t do right away.

31:31 It wasn’t until the next day that they notified the Swedish embassy,

31:34 which I think should have been a pretty big clue

31:36 to the police that they're not dealing with a Russian;

31:39 they're dealing with a Swedish man.

31:40 I mean, can you imagine calling the Swedish embassy and say,

31:44 hello, we’ve arrested a Russian hacker.

31:46 So, this Swedish consular came to the jail to see what was going on.

31:49 OLA: I finally got to talk to him.

31:51 He didn’t really know what was going on.

31:53 Then finally a criminal lawyer showed up,

31:55 and— because the other lawyer I got to see was

31:58 a corporate lawyer because we didn’t have any criminal lawyers;

32:00 we didn’t know that we needed criminal lawyers.

32:02 So, finally at 10:00 or 11:00 I got to speak

32:05 to a criminal lawyer that was assigned to my case.

32:09 His name is Carlos, Carlos Soria.

32:11 He told me that we have no idea what is going on.

32:15 They haven't shown him anything.

32:17 I told him the story of everything that had happened,

32:20 but he couldn't really tell me anything.

32:22 JACK: How frustrating.

32:24 How infuriating.

32:25 Back into the holding cell he goes with no answers to anything.

32:30 It’s now been twenty-four hours since his initial arrest,

32:33 and he’s still absolutely clueless as to why he’s arrested.

32:37 He’s trying to think if there’s something

32:40 that he did that would have caused all this.

32:43 OLA: I was thinking about everything, and I just couldn't make sense of it.

32:46 JACK: He’s now been awake for over thirty hours, tired as hell.

32:51 But at 11:00 p.m.

32:52 they take him to see the judge.

32:54 Yeah, at 11:00 p.m., because there’s a legal requirement that he must

32:57 see a judge within twenty-four hours of being arrested.

33:00 So, it had to be the middle of the night, I guess.

33:03 Anyway, great.

33:03 This is super.

33:04 Surely he’ll get some answers here.

33:06 Surely he can see what evidence they have

33:08 on him and what crime they're saying he did.

33:10 OLA: In Ecuador all the proof is stored in a physical folder called expediente.

33:17 That’s all the evidence, and it’s the prosecutors that are in charge

33:21 of this expediente where all the proof is in.

33:24 My lawyers had basically gotten to see this expediente

33:28 five minutes before going in front of the judge.

33:32 So, it was like, okay, how are we gonna make a defense out of this?

33:36 [Music] Basically what we found out was that they

33:40 had received a phone call to an anonymous tip

33:43 line saying that I was one of the two

33:46 Russians that the Minister of the Interior had mentioned earlier,

33:50 and that I was escaping to the airport in order to escape from the country.

33:55 This is what they claimed was the whole reason why they arrested me.

33:59 They had no other evidence.

34:00 They had absolutely nothing.

34:02 What they accused me of in this hearing in front

34:05 of the judge was an attack against the integrity of computer systems.

34:10 That’s the name of the charge.

34:13 But they didn’t tell me which computer system,

34:16 when I had attacked it, how I had attacked it.

34:20 They basically just said, okay,

34:21 this is the crime you are accused of, but they didn’t

34:24 tell me anything else and there was no information of anything else.

34:28 Basically, my lawyer tried to show that I was a martial artist

34:31 on the way to Japan in a completely legitimate reason for leaving the country,

34:37 that I was a software developer, etc, etc.

34:40 But at the end of this— I didn’t really understand the discussion,

34:43 but at the end of this the consul turned around to me and said,

34:47 okay, it looks like you're going to jail.

34:49 JACK: Well, hold on.

34:50 I do want to ask a question here.

34:53 The fact that they got you as Russian— couldn't you simply say,

34:59 listen… OLA: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

35:00 That’s funny.

35:00 [Crosstalk] JACK: I am not Russian.

35:01 You have the wrong guy.

35:03 You cannot arrest me for being Russian 'cause I’m not Russian.

35:07 OLA: Okay, that is completely true and that’s a very good point,

35:10 and I forgot to tell you that we found some documents later

35:14 that basically said that the first set of documents say that I’m Russian.

35:20 The next set of documents says that I’m Swiss,

35:24 because in Spanish, Swedish and Swiss are very similar.

35:27 So, they must have gotten so confused that they first thought I was Russian,

35:30 then Swiss, and then finally they got it right and found out that I was Swedish.

35:34 So, there are documents that show

35:37 this evolution of understanding through the whole story.

35:40 But, no, they didn’t care about that at all.

35:43 JACK: So, they put him back in the holding cells for the next two days,

35:47 then they took him to prison.

35:49 I guess they thought he was a flight risk or he

35:51 would leave the country or was going to destroy evidence,

35:53 so they wanted to keep him in jail until the trial could take place.

35:57 OLA: Yeah, so, they took me there,

35:59 and that’s where I stayed for the next sixty-eight days, in prison.

36:07 JACK: [Music] Holy cow, what is happening here?

36:10 I mean, Ola has done no crime whatsoever,

36:13 but the police have arrested him at the airport and violated so

36:18 many of his rights and put him in prison with no way out.

36:22 I mean, this could have been you or me.

36:26 Ola is an innocent person, but now his life is completely ruined.

36:33 OLA: Yeah.

36:33 So, the prison time is— when I first came there,

36:37 I had this idea of prison from American television series and movies.

36:40 I thought that it was gonna be a little bit like that.

36:43 An Ecuadorian prison is nothing like that at all.

36:47 It was complete chaos.

36:48 The prisoners are basically running the place.

36:51 You get two visitors per week.

36:53 The water is not drinkable.

36:55 So, your friends and family has to buy water on the outside and send in to you.

37:01 It was a crazy situation and I was lucky to get out of it alive because— so,

37:07 I was there from April 13 until June 20,

37:10 and during May was a period where Ecuador started having prison riots.

37:15 The most famous example kicked off in one of the big prisons where prisoners

37:20 killed other prisoners and then hacked off

37:22 their heads and played soccer with their heads.

37:26 This was happening at the same time as I was in prison.

37:31 JACK: So, the police raided his apartment and took a lot of his computers,

37:35 and they physically took them apart to try

37:37 to analyze the hard drives and do forensics on them,

37:40 but they were soon met with a huge problem.

37:43 Ola was a privacy advocate, and he encrypts his hard drives and he uses

37:48 throwaway operating systems and anonymous accounts and stuff like that.

37:50 The police were absolutely no match to his privacy practices.

37:55 They couldn't get into anything.

37:58 OLA: The thing is, of course, I work with security,

38:01 so I had encrypted hard drives everywhere

38:03 and everything was encrypted and good passwords.

38:05 So, they didn’t get anywhere with any of that stuff.

38:09 At that point the prosecutor,

38:10 he was like— he was asking if I would be so kind to collaborate with them,

38:15 because in Ecuador you don’t have to give up

38:18 the password to your devices if you don’t want to.

38:21 You have the right to deny that.

38:23 It’s not like in the UK, for example, where they can force you by putting you

38:26 in prison if you don’t give up the passwords.

38:29 Though, I said if they tell me what they think I have done,

38:33 what I’m accused of, what computer I’m supposed to have broken into… JACK:

38:37 Yeah, that was my first reaction, too.

38:38 They said, could you be so kind to help us?

38:41 OLA: Exactly.

38:41 JACK: It’s like, well,

38:42 could you be so kind to tell me why I’m here and talk to me like a person?

38:45 OLA: Exactly, exactly.

38:46 Yeah, no, no, that’s exactly what we did.

38:48 JACK: Of course, they didn’t want to share any information with him,

38:52 so they were at a standstill and they couldn't get into his devices.

38:55 OLA: In the beginning of May, I was able to go in front of another court

38:59 with three judges at this time to do the appeal.

39:02 This appeal was specifically not for my— not for the whole case,

39:06 but it was an appeal for the prision preventiva, for the imprisonment.

39:12 We had a long hearing,

39:13 and in this case it was actually quite good because a lot of people came,

39:19 like a lot of media and a lot of my friends and everything.

39:22 Everyone came to support me.

39:23 At this point my family— all my family live in Sweden,

39:26 but at this point my mother and father had come,

39:28 and they were at the hearing and everything.

39:30 So, I was feeling like, okay, this has been three horrible weeks,

39:34 but at least now I’m gonna get some

39:36 justice because— of course at the next level,

39:39 obviously, I’m gonna get justice, or at least that’s what I thought.

39:44 So, basically— the prosecution basically said that the case—

39:50 they began by explaining everything that had happened with Julian,

39:54 and their explanation is that Julian was

39:57 interfering in the affairs of other countries,

39:59 and that’s why they were drawing him out.

40:02 Then they kind of jumped into this thing

40:04 that I had visited Julian many times in the embassy,

40:07 but they never really made the connection between anything else.

40:10 Then, I kid you not, I had programming books in my home,

40:16 and they used these as evidence that I was a dangerous hacker.

40:22 They were not even using the right kinds of books for that stuff.

40:25 They were just using the basics of programming Python or super basic books.

40:30 Also, yes, I had a few books about WikiLeaks,

40:34 I had a book about Stuxnet, I had a book about the Panama Papers.

40:38 All of these books were literally evidence against me.

40:41 They literally thought that I was too

40:44 dangerous to be outside because of the books.

40:46 There was still no evidence against me.

40:49 There was still no clarification about what crime I had committed.

40:52 At the end of the day, the three judges decided to send me back to prison.

40:59 JACK: [Music] Sheesh,

41:00 this wasn’t even to determine if he was guilty or innocent.

41:02 It was just to recommend that he come out of prison until he’s found guilty.

41:06 You know, innocent until proven guilty.

41:08 But no, the judges made him go back to prison and wait for his trial.

41:15 OLA: Then three weeks later we asked for bail,

41:19 because Ecuador has this law that you have to be able to get out of prison

41:25 on bail unless your crime has more

41:27 than five years as punishment, which mine didn’t.

41:29 My punishment would have been three to five years in total according to what

41:33 they were accusing me of, this attack against the integrity of computer systems.

41:37 If you have committed a crime against minors or against family members,

41:41 then you can't get bail,

41:43 and if you tried to do money laundering, you can't get bail.

41:47 But everyone else has the right to get bail,

41:50 and the only question for the judge would be, okay, how big the bail should be.

41:55 So, we went in front of this judge,

41:57 and once again I had hope because my lawyer told me,

42:00 legally speaking, there is no way they can deny this.

42:05 At this point they didn’t take me to the courtroom.

42:08 Instead, I was forced to do it from the prison, and they did it in such a way

42:12 that there was no media allowed or anything like that.

42:14 So, at this point they were trying to hide the whole stuff.

42:17 Basically, what happened was that the judge,

42:19 she denied the request for bail, but the reason was very interesting.

42:24 She said because the bail has to be proportionate to the amount of victims.

42:30 But what she said is because the prosecutor hasn’t defined what the crime is,

42:35 she can't know who the victims are,

42:37 and because she can't know who the victims are,

42:39 she has no way of setting the bail amount,

42:41 and for that reason there was no possibility for me to get bail.

42:45 So, yeah.

42:45 So… JACK: Wow, that is wild that even the judge doesn't know who you've wronged.

42:50 OLA: Exactly.

42:51 I’m in the country of insane troll logic at this point.

42:56 JACK: What do you…?

42:57 Okay, but there— that’s one thing.

42:59 It’s insane, but there’s another thing that I think is a clue here of like,

43:03 wait a minute, even the judge doesn't know what I’ve done.

43:06 OLA: Exactly.

43:07 JACK: This is a tell.

43:09 This is a tell of some kind.

43:11 This tells me that there’s— that they're not just keeping it secret from me,

43:16 but they're keeping it secret from other people, and what’s the reason for that?

43:20 [Crosstalk] Like, you must have thought of that.

43:22 OLA: Well, actually, what I was thinking and what we were

43:25 all thinking is that they didn’t have a crime.

43:27 They thought that they would be able to arrest me

43:30 and that they would be able to find something later,

43:34 but they didn’t find something,

43:36 and that’s why they couldn't actually go forward.

43:39 JACK: This is even more frustrating now.

43:42 He’s been arrested for some strange, unknown reason,

43:44 maybe only because he knows Julian Assange, and to think about sitting in prison

43:48 without actually committing a crime— the prosecutors

43:51 said that he was in trouble for an assault on the integrity of computer systems,

43:55 but they didn’t list a victim or show any

43:58 evidence to prove that he’s done such a thing.

44:00 It’s almost like they made up some crime to try to PIN that on him later.

44:04 At this point he’s been in prison for months.

44:06 OLA: So, anyway, what ended up happening is that we did

44:10 the final recourse which is a constitutional recourse called habeas corpus.

44:14 JACK: Oh, nice.

44:15 Yeah, habeas corpus is the perfect tool here.

44:18 It’s the constitutional right that protects people who got arrested

44:21 to challenge the court by saying if I’ve committed a crime,

44:25 I demand you show me proof.

44:27 If they can't show proof, then you could say your rights have been violated,

44:30 and they could potentially let you go.

44:32 OLA: So, we got in front of three judges once again on the 20th of June,

44:37 and we presented the information about what had happened when I was arrested.

44:40 JACK: His lawyer listed all the violations that took place during his arrest,

44:44 and there were dozens of them; cops didn’t identify themselves,

44:47 they didn’t say what he was charged with, they

44:49 illegally broke into his apartment and seized his luggage,

44:52 they didn’t tell the Swedish embassy within the twenty-four-hour window,

44:54 and they wouldn't let him have access to his lawyer,

44:57 and dozens more violations of his rights.

44:58 OLA: Finally— we actually won that one,

45:01 but they sent me back to prison because it’s

45:05 a bureaucracy and you have to follow the bureaucracy,

45:07 all the rules of the bureaucracy and all that stuff.

45:09 So, I was sent back to prison.

45:11 Okay, I won, but I’m still in prison.

45:14 But then a few hours later, like at 10:00, 11:00 in the evening,

45:18 my lawyers had managed to convince the judges

45:20 to issue an order to immediately release me.

45:22 [Music] At that point I came out, and my friends had organized bodyguards

45:29 because they were being followed by people.

45:33 So, we got into a car.

45:35 I had bodyguards.

45:36 Suddenly I was out, and I can't even describe— it was a very

45:40 weird feeling being outside after seventy days of being stuck in prison.

45:44 JACK: Okay, he’s finally let out of prison, but he’s still facing trial.

45:48 He still has to go to court and plead

45:50 his side to see if they think he’s guilty or innocent.

45:52 OLA: But the case didn’t go away, because even though they violated my rights,

45:56 habeas corpus is just about fixing the immediate problem.

45:59 The immediate problem was that I was in prison,

46:02 so because they violated my rights when they arrested me, they let me go.

46:06 But it didn’t have an impact on the rest of the process.

46:09 The process continued.

46:10 JACK: So, he’s got some rules he has to follow.

46:12 One, he can't leave the country.

46:14 Which, okay, he’s facing legal issues; I could see that.

46:17 Two, he’s not allowed to have a bank account, and three,

46:20 he has to check in with the prosecutor’s

46:23 office every week to show he’s cooperating with authorities,

46:26 like physically show up and check in.

46:28 He’s still baffled at what’s all this about.

46:31 He hasn’t done anything illegal,

46:33 so he knows they're not gonna find any crime that he’s committed.

46:36 But at the same time, it’s super scary to face charges when the government

46:40 is dead set on finding some crime that you've done.

46:43 Why are they dead set on sending him to prison?

46:46 It’s all a mystery to him.

46:48 OLA: [Music] While I was still in prison,

46:51 the US sent an official request to interview me.

46:55 So, we said, sure; following the Ecuadorian rules, we're fine.

46:59 But the US withdrew their request.

47:02 But over the years I have received notifications from Google,

47:07 I received notifications from Automattic,

47:10 the WordPress company, I’ve received notifications from Apple.

47:13 I don't think I’ve received notifications from Menta.

47:17 So, those three companies at least gave information

47:20 to the FBI and to the DOJ about my accounts.

47:26 So, somewhere in the background there is a US presence,

47:29 but we still don’t know exactly why.

47:32 JACK: Man, what is happening?

47:34 Why are there multiple countries investigating him now?

47:37 Keep in mind, the Ecuadorian authorities never gave him back

47:40 his phone or computers even after being let out of prison.

47:43 OLA: They took all of that from me in the airport.

47:46 They took everything I had except

47:48 for the clothes I was wearing, including— I mean,

47:50 I’m one of those weird people that have—

47:53 I have USB drives and YubiKeys around my neck, and they took all of that stuff.

47:59 But since I have good password practices,

48:01 none of that stuff was enough for them to get into any of my devices.

48:05 JACK: In 2018, what were you doing there to keep safe, right?

48:09 So, you had YubiKey; that’s two-factor authentication.

48:12 The USB drives around your neck, how are those encrypted?

48:16 OLA: Most of them were Tails drives with persistent modules,

48:19 because I was using Tails a lot for high-sensitive stuff.

48:21 JACK: Tails is a version of the Linux operating system,

48:24 which is a total amnesiac.

48:25 It’s built so that when you reboot, everything you did gets erased.

48:29 It’s made for extra-sensitive operations

48:30 or for those who have very strict privacy practices.

48:33 OLA: For the regular computers, I was mostly using Debian versions and I

48:37 was using just standard LUKS for the hard drives.

48:40 So, it wasn’t anything advanced.

48:42 I mean, basically my passwords are composed of stuff from the YubiKey composed

48:46 of things that I have in my head combined with that to make it stronger,

48:51 and then I was just using KeePass for everything else.

48:54 JACK: So, you say that… OLA: Strange stuff.

48:57 JACK: …you were using Tails a lot for high-sensitive stuff.

49:00 What was some of the high-sensitive stuff you were working on?

49:03 OLA: Well, a lot of that stuff had to do with— like, for example,

49:06 I was talking to people all around the world like Glenn Greenwald, for example.

49:09 I was in touch with him on and off because at one point we

49:13 were in discussions for me to come in and look at the Snowden archives.

49:18 That never ended up happening, but I was in contact with him, for example,

49:22 and that’s the kind of contact that I

49:24 don’t really want to do from a normal machine.

49:27 JACK: Well, his privacy practices all paid off big time,

49:30 because the Ecuadorian authorities couldn't get into anything,

49:33 and the clock was ticking on them to find things, too.

49:36 OLA: In general, the prosecutor and the defense

49:38 only had ninety days to find evidence.

49:41 In my case it was extended to 120 days,

49:44 and this time in August was the last month.

49:48 When August was over, they wouldn't have any possibility of finding new

49:51 evidence and adding new evidence to the process.

49:53 JACK: They were determined to find some evidence on him within the time period,

49:57 but they were really struggling.

49:59 They were desperately looking for something they

50:01 could find on him to charge him with.

50:03 OLA: [Music] I have been surveiled by different parts of the government.

50:07 They are always following me, sometimes on motorcycles.

50:10 Sometimes they are in cars with polarized windows and without the license plate.

50:17 They have these very specific cars that are

50:19 from the intelligence department of the judicial police here,

50:22 and they keep following me.

50:24 JACK: He sent me photos that he’s taken of people following him.

50:27 OLA: One of the pictures you can see— it’s a picture of one

50:30 of those cars with a guy pushing out

50:33 and holding an antenna outside of the window,

50:35 and this is one of those, I don't know, meter-long antennas.

50:38 This car with this antenna was standing outside of my home,

50:43 pointing at my window for like thirty minutes.

50:46 So, they were trying to— I don't know what they were trying to do.

50:51 The other thing that also happened was that in my apartment I

50:56 started seeing Wi-Fi networks with different strange names with my name in them,

51:01 and I never use my own name in my Wi-Fi names.

51:06 They were coming and going, and it’s clear that the police were trying

51:09 to convince me to connect to these open networks,

51:12 because they were the only networks that didn’t have any password on them.

51:15 JACK: They were really determined to find something on him.

51:18 OLA: The thing is they managed to get video

51:21 recordings from the surveillance cameras inside of my building.

51:24 So, at some point when I was standing in front of an elevator, I put in my code.

51:29 I didn’t have a strong PIN code; it was just eight digits,

51:32 and the cameras inside of my building were apparently good

51:34 enough that they could see the PIN code on my screen.

51:37 JACK: Wow, by looking at the security cameras from his apartment building,

51:42 they figured out his PIN code on his phone.

51:45 Man, I just got chills listening to that, because now I’m realizing

51:49 that I’ve unlocked my phone a million times in view of a security camera.

51:54 Elevators often have cameras in them, and I pull out my phone in elevators

51:59 often and check what’s going on on my phone.

52:02 You might say, pssh, I don't need to worry about protecting my PIN

52:06 in front of cameras because I don’t break the law.

52:09 Yeah, well, Ola didn’t break the law, either.

52:11 What’s your plan when your own government comes after you?

52:14 The more they can look into your private life,

52:17 the more likely they're gonna find something bad that you did.

52:20 OLA: In August they managed to get into my phone.

52:24 Of course, the funny part about this is

52:28 that it’s clearly not legal for them to get

52:31 access to the video cameras that were

52:33 for our protection and use this for this purpose.

52:36 According to the laws of Ecuador,

52:37 this is a violation and shouldn't have been possible.

52:40 My phone was taken from me under illegal circumstances.

52:43 The habeas corpus already showed that they were illegal circumstances.

52:47 So, in theory, the phone shouldn't have been possible to use as evidence.

52:51 But the judges— later on, they ignored all of this.

52:55 JACK: [Music] So, once they got into his phone, they started looking through it.

52:57 They used a tool called Cellebrite to analyze his phone,

53:00 which is a tool used by law enforcement

53:02 to extract and analyze data from digital devices like phones.

53:06 So, with this, they were able to grab everything.

53:10 Ola’s lawyers asked for a court date so they

53:12 could see what the investigators found on the phone,

53:14 and the technician brought the forensic computer

53:16 into the court room to show them what they found.

53:18 OLA: I can tell you by the way that the version

53:20 of Cellebrite they were using was like seven years old.

53:23 So, it didn’t have support for Signal,

53:24 which is where I had most of my conversations.

53:27 But what was interesting was also

53:30 they basically plugged this phone and Cellebrite

53:32 into a regular desktop computer that was running a cracked version of Windows,

53:37 that was running Word that was expired,

53:39 and that had like— I think that I could see on the desktop about ten

53:44 different games that was on this machine

53:46 that they were using to exhibit evidence to us.

53:49 JACK: Games on there— the fact they had games is the funniest part.

53:54 OLA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

53:55 No, it’s like— I don't— I didn’t even know what to think about it.

53:58 JACK: I’ll tell you what I think about it.

54:01 Having outdated forensics tools,

54:02 unlicensed version of Windows, expired Microsoft Word,

54:04 and video games on this computer indicates to me

54:08 that the forensics team has zero accountability or integrity.

54:12 They aren't professionals or serious.

54:15 You don’t play video games on a computer that’s collecting evidence for crimes.

54:18 That chain of custody is extremely important,

54:21 and evidence should be treated carefully and never tampered with.

54:24 Yet, whoever had this computer did not care what the state

54:27 of their computer was in, and probably didn’t care too much about their job,

54:31 either, or following the rules.

54:32 OLA: Cellebrite had generated a 40,000-page PDF

54:35 with all the content of my phone,

54:38 because that’s apparently what Cellebrite does.

54:40 That’s not so helpful.

54:41 So, we started looking at this from page to page to page,

54:44 and then the prosecutor, he was just like, this is taking too long.

54:49 Please just add all of this to the expediente.

54:53 What that means is that he basically asked

54:55 for all those 40,000 pages to be added as evidence.

54:59 Obviously, they were nothing sensitive from a security standpoint,

55:04 but they were private conversations with girlfriends,

55:08 with my family, information about, I don't know,

55:12 health history of my family, stuff like that.

55:14 So, there were definitely sensitive things inside of that, and he

55:17 was just— let’s add all of it to the pile of evidence.

55:20 What’s important to know here is the expediente is public for anyone.

55:23 Anyone can go into the prosecutor’s office and ask for a copy of any expediente.

55:28 So, once it’s added there, it’s public forever.

55:30 JACK: They were able to argue that, really,

55:33 all 40,000 pages should not be submitted to public record,

55:36 and they were able to get it stopped, which is good.

55:38 But then they requested a copy of this document so that they could

55:41 look through it and prepare a defense if there is anything in there.

55:44 OLA: So, yeah.

55:45 So, we asked to see the evidence on the phone

55:47 and see if there was anything we could use.

55:50 They responded back that, no, in order to preserve the privacy of the defendant,

55:56 we cannot share the information on this phone with his defense.

56:00 But it turns out that they had access to it.

56:04 Basically, we found out that the phone and the USB

56:08 drive is apparently in the safe of this woman,

56:12 Diana Salazar, who is the prosecutor general of the whole country.

56:16 They are apparently in her safe inside of that building,

56:19 and apparently it’s still there.

56:20 [Music] Then this is when things take a turn,

56:23 because a few weeks later we find out

56:26 from television— we don’t find out from the legal system.

56:31 We found out from television that the prosecution

56:34 has found an image on my phone, and this is the image that I shared with you.

56:40 JACK: Okay, let me pull it up.

56:42 It’s a photo of a computer screen taken by a cell phone.

56:46 It’s poor quality.

56:47 It looks like a terminal window, like maybe a Linux computer.

56:51 We're looking at the command line here.

56:53 It looks to me like someone’s tried to do a telnet connection to an IP address.

56:58 It connects and it says, you are connected to an ISP in Ecuador called CNT.

57:03 But then it says, what’s your username?

57:05 Nothing is typed in.

57:07 Then it times out and kicks him back

57:09 into the home directory which is called Ola Bini.

57:12 OLA: So, any person with any kind of technical

57:15 understanding knows that this is a telnet connection

57:18 that— where it asks for the username and no

57:21 one put anything in, and then it times out.

57:23 That’s exactly what it looks like.

57:25 But the prosecution starts using this, saying

57:28 that I hacked into the systems of CNT,

57:30 and they claim that this picture is actually

57:33 the proof that I hacked into their systems.

57:36 In fact, they're so confused that they start asking if

57:39 this IP address has a username, Ola Bini, on it,

57:43 because they think that the prompt at the end of it

57:45 is not the prompt on the computer making the telnet call.

57:48 They think it’s the prompt of the computer that is running the IP address.

57:52 JACK: You're making me furious.

57:55 OLA: Yeah.

57:56 JACK: So, here’s my question, though, okay?

57:58 So, this photo is a— it looks like maybe taken by a cell phone,

58:03 especially if it was found on your phone, of a computer screen,

58:06 'cause I see the reflection of the screen and a shadow and such.

58:10 So, why did you take this photo?

58:13 OLA: The funny part is— first of all,

58:15 you can see on the timestamps this log information includes the year,

58:19 which shows that this was taken in October 2015.

58:22 So, first of all, this image has nothing to do

58:26 with why I was arrested in the first place.

58:29 Secondly, the funny thing is I don't even remember taking this photo.

58:33 It’s likely that I did take the photo, but I don't even remember it.

58:37 I do know what happened after, because this photo came from WhatsApp,

58:42 and I have a friend— his name is Ricardo,

58:47 and he’s worked with open source and free

58:51 software in Ecuador for many, many years.

58:54 In 2015 he had a contract with CNT.

58:57 He was working with them.

58:59 Basically, the WhatsApp message that I sent with the image is basically,

59:02 hey, what do you think about this, or something in that style.

59:06 I sent the picture and the response I got says, looks like a router to me.

59:11 I’ll see what I can find out.

59:13 So, that was the only conversation that was around this picture.

59:16 So, the way I interpret this, since I don't remember taking the picture,

59:20 is that I must have found an open telnet port to the internet,

59:24 and this is something that is not great for a big corporation like CNT.

59:28 So, I must have thought that, okay,

59:31 I can tell Ricardo about this and he can escalate it to the right person.

59:36 That’s what I think is what happened.

59:39 JACK: Well, this is it.

59:41 The Ecuadorian prosecutors thought this was the smoking gun.

59:44 Clearly he’s connected to an ISP in this photo,

59:46 which clearly he’s not even tried to log into it.

59:49 I mean, if you're gonna attempt to log into something,

59:51 I would at least think that you would put in your username, right?

59:53 But he doesn't even put in a username to try to log in.

59:57 But that didn’t matter.

59:58 The prosecutor was going to make this his crime.

1:00:01 So, Ecuador was now charging him with access

1:00:04 without permission to a computer system or telecommunication system.

1:00:08 Well, in my opinion, this is going to be a slam-dunk case for Ola.

1:00:12 He’s being charged with access.

1:00:14 The photo, the only evidence they have on him,

1:00:17 clearly shows he doesn't access it.

1:00:20 I mean, I’m perplexed by what the government

1:00:23 even thinks you've done wrong at this point, right?

1:00:26 They thought you were a Russian hacker, and at this point you're not Russian.

1:00:31 They don’t have any evidence of you hacking.

1:00:34 So, haven't they— don’t they think maybe we just have the wrong guy?

1:00:38 Like, let’s really look at this analytically.

1:00:39 We're not seeing any evidence on this guy.

1:00:42 Like, why would they have kept you?

1:00:45 From their perspective,

1:00:45 what do you think was the reason why they were holding you?

1:00:48 OLA: Well, we had one theory.

1:00:50 In March of 2019, there was a very big

1:00:54 leak of documents in Ecuador called the INA Papers.

1:00:58 The INA Papers were basically financial documents showing

1:01:01 that the president— his name is Lenin Moreno—

1:01:04 his family were hiding a lot of money

1:01:06 in tax paradises and all kinds of bad stuff.

1:01:11 Lenin Moreno was furious about these papers,

1:01:15 and some people say that the reason why Julian was thrown

1:01:20 out is because WikiLeaks tweeted a link to the INA Papers.

1:01:24 Now, the INA Papers didn’t come from WikiLeaks as far as we know,

1:01:29 but Julian posted a link to it.

1:01:33 Lenin Moreno was very upset about this.

1:01:36 So, basically what we’ve heard is that he told

1:01:39 Romo to get him the person responsible for this.

1:01:42 Now, here is where it gets stupid.

1:01:46 The secret intelligence organization in Ecuador was called the Senain.

1:01:51 So, Senain was basically an internal NSA, an internal CIA,

1:01:55 that were spying on everyone inside of Ecuador.

1:01:59 Senain had a source, a secret source, called El Russo.

1:02:04 So, that was their name for the source.

1:02:07 Apparently, the way we’ve heard it told, is that the whole INA Papers thing

1:02:12 happened because El Russo published these papers.

1:02:16 So, this was an internal scandal inside of the Senain

1:02:20 doing an attack against the president with these INA Papers.

1:02:24 Now… JACK: El Russo meaning The Russian.

1:02:26 OLA: The Russian; exactly.

1:02:28 So, basically, what seems to have happened is that Romo went

1:02:33 to the cops and to everyone saying that, okay, we need El Russo.

1:02:38 [Music] Then, the day before I was arrested,

1:02:41 there was a meeting where some of the cops,

1:02:44 high-up cops, presented a photo of me saying that I was El Russo.

1:02:49 But there were other people around the table

1:02:51 that knew who the source was and said, no, no, no, he is not El Russo.

1:02:57 Romo ignored all of that, and that’s what set

1:03:00 in motion all of the stuff that happened afterwards.

1:03:04 Basically, I became a scapegoat for the president,

1:03:08 for the whole thing with— actually, I served as a scapegoat for two things.

1:03:11 First, I served as a scapegoat for the INA Papers,

1:03:13 but they never charged me with that.

1:03:15 They never actually accused me of the INA Papers.

1:03:18 But they also used it as a way of explaining what happened with Julian,

1:03:23 why they threw out Julian.

1:03:25 So, basically, they were saying that Julian

1:03:27 Assange was thrown out of the embassy

1:03:30 because he was working with Ola Bini in order to destabilize the government.

1:03:35 So, I was politically useful for the political class in Ecuador

1:03:39 to have as an excuse or as a scapegoat for these different events.

1:03:44 JACK: They were accusing you of destabilizing the government.

1:03:48 OLA: Yeah, that’s what Romo said in that press conference.

1:03:52 Legally speaking, I was never accused of that.

1:03:55 JACK: What an awful situation to be in, to be a political scapegoat.

1:04:01 He’s never gonna win this.

1:04:03 I mean, if the president is like, bring whoever leaked this to justice,

1:04:07 then the authorities better do something, or they're gonna face embarrassment.

1:04:11 So, it seems like the authorities just grabbed someone

1:04:14 who looked like it just to please the higher-ups, that they caught someone.

1:04:18 But if he’s found innocent, the higher-ups are gonna get upset all over again,

1:04:22 so they absolutely must find something Ola is

1:04:25 guilty of in order to appease the corrupt politicians,

1:04:29 and there’s just no winning move for anyone.

1:04:32 No wonder judges are confused and cops can't

1:04:34 figure out what they're supposed to do with him.

1:04:36 No wonder nobody is explaining anything to him,

1:04:39 because they purposely arrested the wrong man in order to make him a scapegoat.

1:04:45 I don't see how this will ever end for Ola.

1:04:49 I think he’s gonna be dealing with this for decades.

1:04:53 He was let out of prison in 2019,

1:04:56 but he’s required to check in weekly to the prosecutor’s

1:04:59 office by going down there in person to show himself.

1:05:03 Years go by of him doing that.

1:05:06 OLA: So, it went really slowly,

1:05:09 but finally in January of 2022, we went to trial.

1:05:14 At that point, my team and me,

1:05:17 we had asked some friends around the world to serve as expert witnesses.

1:05:22 So, I had four friends of mine from different places serve as expert witnesses.

1:05:27 One of them is Roger Dingledine.

1:05:29 He’s one of the co-creators of Tor, and another one is DMA— that was one

1:05:34 of the kind of original people for cybersecurity;

1:05:37 he was the person that ran BUGtrack for a long time— and a few other people.

1:05:43 Basically, these people— Roger was there

1:05:46 because they were saying in the accusation

1:05:48 that using Tor is a sign of me being a criminal.

1:05:52 You only use Tor if you're a criminal.

1:05:56 So, Roger was there basically to explain that, no, Tor has many uses.

1:06:00 The others were there to explain how telnet works, how a connection works.

1:06:07 You have to realize these judges,

1:06:10 they're like fifty, sixty years old, all of them.

1:06:13 They have absolutely no technical knowledge.

1:06:15 My lawyers… JACK: It’s not just the judges but the investigators, too,

1:06:19 had video games on their computers that they

1:06:21 were using to investigate your case with.

1:06:23 OLA: Exactly.

1:06:24 No one had any technical understanding.

1:06:27 [Music] So, basically, this was a big challenge.

1:06:31 JACK: Guess how long his trial took to complete.

1:06:35 Just take a wild guess.

1:06:37 Go ahead, say a duration of time.

1:06:39 OLA: We had to pause the trial and then take it up again three times.

1:06:44 So, the trial finally ended in 2023.

1:06:46 So, the whole trial took a year.

1:06:49 JACK: A whole year.

1:06:50 Gah, how excruciating.

1:06:52 For a trial to last this long with absolutely no evidence on him is absurd.

1:06:59 OLA: The good thing is that at the end of all this, these three judges,

1:07:03 unanimously, they declared that I was innocent.

1:07:06 So, they— and they made a written declaration that was quite good.

1:07:09 Because the thing that I’ve been worried about

1:07:12 in my case is a bad case not just for me,

1:07:15 but it’s a very bad case for security, cybersecurity researchers in the country.

1:07:20 So, when this result came in, I was actually quite happy,

1:07:23 because they wrote a lot of stuff that would

1:07:26 serve as protection for future cybersecurity researchers in the country.

1:07:30 JACK: Oh yeah, a lot of people speculated that the reason all this happened is

1:07:34 because Ola is a privacy activist creating tools

1:07:37 to keep the government from spying on you.

1:07:40 So, you could see how this could upset the government.

1:07:42 So, he was particularly happy to see that the judges

1:07:45 used language which would protect future researchers from getting in trouble.

1:07:49 OLA: [Music] But sadly what ended up happening is that the prosecutors,

1:07:54 they appealed the decision.

1:07:55 JACK: Of course they appealed.

1:07:57 They are never going to let him go.

1:08:01 They have to keep him in legal trouble or else

1:08:04 their house of cards is going to fall down.

1:08:08 So, a new trial date was set, this time for a whole year later.

1:08:12 OLA: A year ago in— it was in the beginning of April last year;

1:08:16 I was in front of three judges that were from the provincial level.

1:08:20 JACK: But this time it didn’t go his way.

1:08:24 The judges found him guilty,

1:08:26 but they didn’t find him guilty of the charge that he was on trial for.

1:08:29 He was on trial for unauthorized access to a computer,

1:08:32 but the judges changed his charge and found

1:08:35 him guilty of attempted unauthorized access to a computer.

1:08:38 They added the attempted part all on their own.

1:08:42 OLA: So, in Ecuador you're not allowed to change the accusation.

1:08:46 If you're accused, someone will be convicted

1:08:48 for that or they will not be convicted.

1:08:51 These judges, they did a very bad thing because

1:08:54 what they said in their decision is that they

1:08:56 said that because I had the knowledge to break

1:08:59 in, that’s enough to call this an attempt.

1:09:01 So, only the fact that I had the knowledge was enough

1:09:04 to say that this was what— they used the word ‘tentativa’,

1:09:08 that this was an unauthorized access just because

1:09:12 I had the possibility and I knew the tools.

1:09:16 JACK: Ahh, it’s like a circus, this court.

1:09:18 It’s a bunch of clowns running the show.

1:09:20 How can the prosecutors violate so many of his rights and get away with it?

1:09:24 How can the judges change his charge

1:09:26 and find him guilty of something else entirely?

1:09:28 But even all that aside, simply having the knowledge of how to do a telnet

1:09:33 connection is enough to convict someone of attempted hacking in Ecuador?

1:09:38 Come on.

1:09:39 This is killing me.

1:09:41 Of course, now he has to appeal this.

1:09:43 So, he said to the court, this is ridiculous.

1:09:45 Can we please get this sorted?

1:09:47 You've arrested an innocent man.

1:09:48 I’m appealing this.

1:09:49 Let’s take this to the next level.

1:09:51 OLA: We sent in that request for appeal in July of 2024,

1:09:56 and the judges have not responded since then.

1:10:00 So, they are basically just not responding.

1:10:03 JACK: This is what I mean.

1:10:05 He’s never going to escape this legal battle.

1:10:08 The authorities, the prosecutors, the judges,

1:10:11 they all know he’s innocent, but he’s a political scapegoat,

1:10:15 so he’s got to stay tangled up in this legal battle for optics of some sort,

1:10:21 and it especially looks good if his last trial found him guilty.

1:10:25 So, I’m willing to bet there’s never gonna be a new trial for him.

1:10:28 He’s gonna remain in this limbo of being guilty but also

1:10:32 not being in prison for a long time to come.

1:10:35 OLA: I’ve been in this situation for six years since I came out of prison.

1:10:39 For six years I’ve been living with constant surveillance

1:10:41 and because of this, my friends decided that I needed protection,

1:10:44 because we don’t know what their goal is.

1:10:47 So, I have been living with bodyguards, and I don't leave my— I’m not

1:10:53 allowed to leave my apartment without bodyguards, basically.

1:10:56 So, I’ve been living like that for six years now.

1:10:58 They are so afraid of losing face,

1:11:00 so they don’t want to stop now because they're afraid that they will look bad.

1:11:04 So, that’s why this process continues,

1:11:05 because all of these powerful people— the president of the country

1:11:09 literally went out on public television saying that I was a criminal.

1:11:13 While I was in prison— this was in April of 2019.

1:11:17 I was in prison and he was saying that I

1:11:21 was hacking in the airport while— when I was arrested.

1:11:26 That’s what he literally said to the whole country.

1:11:29 Of course, we have pictures that show that when I was arrested,

1:11:32 I was reading a book.

1:11:34 So, unless you call it hacking to read a book— yeah.

1:11:37 Then he was also saying that I didn’t have any training equipment with me,

1:11:42 but actually in the lists that the police made

1:11:44 of all my belongings is all of my training equipment.

1:11:47 So, when the president of the country goes

1:11:50 out and lies to the whole population about you,

1:11:52 it’s a position where they can lose a lot of face.

1:11:56 It wasn’t just him; it was Romo and many other people that have gone out

1:12:00 publicly and put their name on the fact that they think that I am a criminal.

1:12:05 So, for this reason I’ve been stuck

1:12:07 in this, and I don't know when it’s gonna end,

1:12:12 to be honest, but I believe that honestly they would never have done this now.

1:12:18 But since they're stuck in the situation, they just don’t want to lose face.

1:12:22 JACK: Can you leave the country now?

1:12:25 OLA: No, no, no, and I still have

1:12:28 to present myself at the prosecutor’s office every week.

1:12:31 I still have no access to my bank accounts.

1:12:34 I’m basically living with the help of my friends because

1:12:37 I use their bank accounts to be able to pay things.

1:12:40 JACK: What is the public opinion of you?

1:12:43 OLA: That’s a great question, and from the beginning I had a lot of— so,

1:12:47 I’m very lucky because I have a lot of international friends.

1:12:50 I have friends all around the world.

1:12:52 When I was arrested,

1:12:53 a lot of the international community immediately came out to support me.

1:12:57 The EFF has been particularly supportive, and the Tor Project,

1:13:01 because those are the people I worked closely with, and we know each other.

1:13:07 So— but Amnesty International,

1:13:09 Human Rights Watch— there’s been more than a hundred

1:13:13 different international organizations that have come out in my support,

1:13:15 and they came out in my support immediately,

1:13:19 and it was very heartening to feel that support when I

1:13:23 was still in prison and worried about what was gonna happen.

1:13:27 Here in Ecuador, it’s changed.

1:13:29 Basically, from the beginning,

1:13:31 the government had all the narrative because I wasn’t outside.

1:13:37 I couldn't do any interviews.

1:13:38 I wasn’t allowed to talk to the press or anything like that.

1:13:41 So, during the first year or so, everyone was like, oh, you're that hacker.

1:13:46 Basically, that’s what was happening in the minds of basically everyone.

1:13:50 But I’ve had a team helping me that was helping me with the defense.

1:13:56 They were also giving advice on how to change the public opinion,

1:14:00 on how to do interviews in a good way.

1:14:03 I’m really, really happy to say that basically most of the population

1:14:08 in Ecuador are actually on my side at this point.

1:14:10 They just think about me as the poor software

1:14:13 developer that got thrown in prison by the previous government.

1:14:17 So, right now I’m feeling very supported, and actually,

1:14:21 that’s why— so, I told you I have the NGO,

1:14:24 but actually I run another organization as well,

1:14:27 which is called Seguridad Digital Ecuador,

1:14:29 which is basically a cybersecurity company.

1:14:31 We do both offensive security work and defensive security work.

1:14:36 For the last year or so, I’ve been able to find work doing that kind

1:14:41 of stuff to finance the NGO on the side.

1:14:44 The fact that I’m able to do that kind

1:14:47 of work and people are comfortable allowing me to do

1:14:50 penetration testing or security audits without any trouble means

1:14:53 that they don’t really believe any of the accusations.

1:14:56 JACK: Are you recognized on the street in Ecuador?

1:14:59 OLA: Oh yeah, all the time, all the time.

1:15:02 Yesterday I was at an event and I spent

1:15:04 probably thirty minutes with people taking pictures together with me.

1:15:07 I get regularly recognized when I go to the supermarket or anything like that.

1:15:13 JACK: Ola lives in fear of the possibility that any day

1:15:16 they might suddenly deny his appeal and immediately take him to prison.

1:15:20 After all, he was found guilty of attempted hacking.

1:15:23 So, it’s possible the police could just come and lock him up at any moment.

1:15:27 This kind of stuff gives him panic attacks when he starts thinking about it.

1:15:30 It’s really hard to get to the truth of this story.

1:15:33 To figure out exactly what it is that you're being charged

1:15:37 of and what they think you're guilty of is still not even entirely clear,

1:15:42 that you're— they're accusing you of attempting hacking of— into what?

1:15:47 What was my target?

1:15:48 Who did I— who are the victims?

1:15:51 Bring the victim forward.

1:15:52 So, if that’s not the case— if it is because, well,

1:15:56 the president doesn't like whistleblowers and they're

1:15:58 just gonna blame you for being a whistleblower and now that it’s turned

1:16:03 out that you're not the actual whistleblower,

1:16:06 the government doesn't want to be embarrassed for saying

1:16:08 publicly that you're the one who did it, and so,

1:16:12 we're just going to carry on with it anyway

1:16:15 is a whole ‘nother world of— it’s almost conspiracy-theory stuff.

1:16:18 Imagine what the government thinks without

1:16:21 actually knowing what the government thinks;

1:16:23 you're just making stuff up at that point.

1:16:25 I hate to indulge in that, but there’s no other road here

1:16:28 that I can go down to be— to make sense of this story.

1:16:31 OLA: Yeah, I completely feel you.

1:16:33 I completely understand you, because to be honest,

1:16:36 I’m not sure if I buy any of the explanations I’ve given you.

1:16:39 Like, these are the explanations that we have

1:16:41 any kind of possibility that they might be true,

1:16:44 but I don't know if they're true,

1:16:46 and they don’t explain some other stuff that we’ve heard.

1:16:49 For example, we’ve heard that CNT was very close to the US embassy,

1:16:53 and that the US embassy instructed CNT

1:16:55 to continue with the case against me, for example.

1:16:58 We’ve heard other things that keep happening that, to be honest,

1:17:03 don’t necessarily explain everything.

1:17:06 One example is a journalist actually published photographs,

1:17:12 and I can identify that these photographs

1:17:15 were taken weeks before I was arrested.

1:17:19 If I was under surveillance long before I was arrested,

1:17:21 that means that the whole story about Maria Paula Romo

1:17:24 and the INA Papers and all that stuff must be false.

1:17:27 There must be something else behind this.

1:17:29 Sadly, we’ve done freedom of information requests and we’ve asked

1:17:32 all the government entities about what information they have about me,

1:17:37 and they all responded that they have no information about me,

1:17:40 including the cops that are surveiling me have no information about me.

1:17:44 [Music] So, I mean, this is the kind of thing

1:17:47 that I lie awake during nights trying to figure out.

1:17:51 Like, what— why did they do this?

1:17:53 What was the purpose, and what are they thinking?

1:17:56 Especially the constant surveillance— now, six years later,

1:18:00 why are they still keeping me under surveillance?

1:18:03 It must cost them so much money.

1:18:06 JACK: Have you heard of the book The Trial by Franz Kafka?

1:18:12 It’s a fictional story and meant to be totally absurd,

1:18:16 but it’s almost the identical story of Ola Bini.

1:18:20 In the book The Trial, a man named K.

1:18:23 is arrested, and they don’t tell him why.

1:18:26 In fact, they make him feel bad for even asking questions.

1:18:29 The people arresting him say it’s not their job to say why he’s under arrest.

1:18:33 They're just carrying out orders to arrest him.

1:18:35 So, they didn’t even know why themselves.

1:18:37 They tell him, well, you'll learn everything at your hearing,

1:18:39 but when he goes to his hearing, K.

1:18:41 doesn't learn anything about why he’s been arrested.

1:18:43 Instead they tell him, well, you'll find out at your trial.

1:18:46 But then they tell him his trial is super far into the future.

1:18:49 In the meantime they let him go home and do his business as usual.

1:18:53 So, he’s stuck in this space that they say he’s done something illegal,

1:18:56 but they won't say what with a looming trial far off into the future.

1:19:01 In the book, K.

1:19:03 stays locked in this legal battle without ever

1:19:05 knowing what he did wrong until he dies.

1:19:08 Part of why I’m so frustrated about Ola’s story is

1:19:11 because it feels like no one has accountability for his situation.

1:19:15 The cops didn’t know why they arrested him, so he can't get clarity there.

1:19:19 The prosecutors weren't sure, either.

1:19:20 They were probably just following orders, too.

1:19:22 The judges were also in the dark.

1:19:24 When bureaucracy becomes that thick, where you can't find anyone accountable,

1:19:30 then you face big problems like this.

1:19:33 Innocent people start losing their freedom.

1:19:35 Because if everyone’s just following orders

1:19:37 and no one takes responsibility or is accountable,

1:19:40 then where does truth fit into anything?

1:19:43 In my opinion, this Ola Bini case is frivolous not

1:19:47 because it’s weak but because it was never meant to win.

1:19:50 The main objective of a frivolous case is to waste someone’s time,

1:19:55 money, or energy through court, and that’s what makes it so dangerous.

1:19:59 You and I can't file a frivolous case to waste someone else’s money,

1:20:02 but the government can do it, and here’s an example of them doing it.

1:20:06 They use the process as punishment when they

1:20:10 want to hurt someone but know they can't win.

1:20:13 They just do this.

1:20:15 I’m still wondering if this is a battle over privacy.

1:20:18 If Ola was helping people stay private and secure and harder to surveil,

1:20:23 then I could see how governments could be upset

1:20:25 about that, and maybe they thought they could arrest

1:20:28 him and find something later to charge him

1:20:30 with, but were no match for his own privacy practices.

1:20:33 A lot of people think that’s the reason why he was arrested,

1:20:36 and it’s scary to think that those helping us

1:20:39 be more private can face legal troubles like this.

1:20:43 It’s also a bit ironic that Julian Assange was confined

1:20:46 to the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years until he was forced out,

1:20:50 and now Ola Bini, his friend,

1:20:52 has been confined to Ecuador for over six years now,

1:20:55 unable to leave, forced to stay there by the government.

1:20:59 In 2021, there were elections for a new president in Ecuador.

1:21:04 By that time, Lenin Moreno, the sitting president,

1:21:07 had a disastrously low approval rating of nine percent.

1:21:10 He didn’t even try to run.

1:21:13 In 2023, Diana Salazar, Ecuador’s attorney general,

1:21:16 brought forth charges against the ex-president, Lenin Moreno.

1:21:19 By the way, she’s the same person who supposedly has Ola’s phone in her safe.

1:21:24 She’s alleging that Lenin Moreno conducted corruption

1:21:27 over the building of some hydroelectric plants.

1:21:29 So, now the ex-president has his own legal problems

1:21:32 where he has to do what the court says.

1:21:34 He even has to appear before a prosecutor every few weeks

1:21:38 just like Ola has to, and that’s where we're at today.

1:21:41 Both Ola and the ex-president are waiting

1:21:44 for the next steps in their legal battles, and we’ll see where they both end up.

1:21:48 But I sure hope that Ola gets out of all this soon.

1:21:52 He didn’t break any systems, but the system tried to break him.

1:21:57 Maybe it’s still trying to do that.

1:21:59 But as Kafka wrote, logic may indeed be unshakable,

1:22:05 but it cannot withstand a man who wants to live.

1:22:13 (Outro): [Outro music] Thank you so much to Ola Bini

1:22:19 for coming on the show and telling us this crazy story.

1:22:21 I hope he gets his charges dropped soon and can travel

1:22:24 outside Ecuador again someday and not have to worry about this anymore.

1:22:28 This episode was created by me, the Ctrl+Alt delinquent, Jack Rhysider.

1:22:32 Our editor is the zero-day Zorro, Tristan Ledger, mixing by Proximity Sound,

1:22:36 and our intro music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

1:22:40 Remember, kids, privacy isn't just something you do once.

1:22:42 It’s a lifestyle.

1:22:43 It’s like, if you forget to put your pants on one day,

1:22:48 people are gonna see your junk.

1:22:51 So, cover up.

1:22:53 This is Darknet Diaries.