That's a problem. I mean, like any sort of growing startup organization, we are sort of overwhelmed by our growth. And that means we're getting enormous quantity of whistleblower disclosures of a very high caliber, but don't have enough people to actually process and vet this information.
CA: So that's the key bottleneck, basically journalistic volunteers and/or the funding of journalistic salaries?
JA: Yep. Yeah, and trusted people. I mean, we're an organization that is hard to grow very quickly because of the sort of material we deal with. So we have to restructure in order to have people who will deal with the highest national security stuff, and then lower security cases.
CA: So help us understand about you personally and how you came to do this. And I think I read that as a kid you went to 37 different schools. Can that be right?
JA: Well, my parents were in the movie business and then on the run from a cult, so the combination between the two ...
(Laughter)
CA: I mean, a psychologist might say that's a recipe for breeding paranoia.
JA: What, the movie business?
(Laughter)
(Applause)
CA: And you were also -- I mean, you were also a hacker at an early age and ran into the authorities early on. JA: Well, I was a journalist. You know, I was a very young journalist activist at an early age. I wrote a magazine, was prosecuted for it when I was a teenager. So you have to be careful with hacker. I mean there's like -- there's a method that can be deployed for various things. Unfortunately, at the moment, it's mostly deployed by the Russian mafia in order to steal your grandmother's bank accounts. So this phrase is not -- not as nice as it used to be.
CA: Yeah, well, I certainly don't think you're stealing anyone's grandmother's bank account. But what about your core values? Can you give us a sense of what they are and maybe some incident in your life that helped determine them?
JA: I'm not sure about the incident. But the core values: well, capable, generous men do not create victims; they nurture victims. And that's something from my father and something from other capable, generous men that have been in my life.
CA: Capable, generous men do not create victims; they nurture victims?
JA: Yeah. And you know, I'm a combative person, so I'm not actually sort of big on the nurture. But some way -- There is another way of nurturing victims, which is to police perpetrators of crime. And so that is something that has been in my character for a long time.
CA: So just tell us, very quickly in the last minute, the story: what happened in Iceland? You basically published something there, ran into trouble with a bank, then the news service there was injuncted from running the story. Instead, they publicized your side. That made you very high-profile in Iceland. What happened next?
JA: Yeah, this is a great case, you know. Iceland went through this financial crisis. It was the hardest hit of any country in the world. Its banking sector was 10 times the GDP of the rest of the economy. Anyway, so we release this report in July last year. And the national TV station was injuncted five minutes before it went on air. Like out of a movie, injunction landed on the news desk, and the news reader was like, "This has never happened before. What do we do?" Well, we just show the website instead, for all that time, as a filler. And we became very famous in Iceland, went to Iceland and spoke about this issue. And there was a feeling in the community that that should never happen again. And as a result, working with some Icelandic politicians and some other international legal experts, we put together a new sort of package of legislation for Iceland to sort of become an offshore haven for the free press, with the strongest journalistic protections in the world, with a new Nobel Prize for freedom of speech. Iceland's a Nordic country so, like Norway, it's able to tap into the system. And just a month ago, this was passed by the Icelandic parliament unanimously.
CA: Wow.
(Applause)
Last question, Julian. When you think of the future then, do you think it's more likely to be Big Brother exerting more control, more secrecy, or us watching Big Brother, or it's just all to be played for either way?
JA: I'm not sure which way it's going to go. I mean there's enormous pressures to harmonize freedom of speech legislation and transparency legislation around the world -- within the E.U., between China and the United States. Which way is it going to go? It's hard to see. That's why it's a very interesting time to be in. Because with just a little bit of effort we can shift it one way or the other.
CA: Well, it looks like I'm reflecting the audience's opinion to say, Julian, be careful and all power to you.
JA: Thank you, Chris. (CA: Thank you.)
(Applause)
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