Veranstaltung

15:45
-
16:25

Tag 4

Can you arrest a protocol?

aufgezeichnet

Entertainment

This interactive theater play draws inspiration from three real-life court cases where people were judged for developing, maintaining or using encryption technologies. The cases happened in Russia, between 2017 and 2024, and featured Tor, PGP and Delta Chat. It was a fascinating precedent where lawyers, judges, witnesses and persecutors had to discuss technical details of those protocols in court and based accusations or defense strategies on the properties and architectures of those tools. The protocols became the actors in the process. Our immersive play transforms the Community stage into a courtroom. Inspired by the tradition of “forum theater” developed by Augusto Boal in Brazil in 1960s, we make the audience become "spect-actors", with the power to stop and change the performance, participating in the court hearings on the sides of defense or accusation, and helping the actors to explain how the three different tools and protocols really work.

The play takes place in three short episodes of 10 minutes each, focusing on 3 different cases:

“Tor Prisoner” (2017): a 26 year old Linux maintainer and math teacher was arrested for running a Tor exit node, which was used by another user to criticize the Russian government.
“Network Affair” (2018): a 24 year old developer accused of being part of an “organized terrorist group”. Part of his defense line consisted of explaining the technology behind PGP encryption to the court.
“Delta Chat versus FSB” (2020-now): the Delta Chat messenger team defends itself against the Russian Federal Security Bureau due to the authorities' requests for the user data.

All three cases are united by the absence of actual crime, and the unique approach of their defense: each required a meticulous unpacking of technicalities for the courtroom. Our play highlights the unprecedented, ironic, and sometimes even surreal tone of these cases, exploring the absurdity of the situation, where encryption technology has to be explained to the Russian legal system.

To do that, we juxtapose the real life cases with Lewis Carrol’s “Alice through the Looking Glass”, where the King’s Messenger is sentenced to prison before he even commits a crime. The tools and protocols are judged as the mere “condition of possibility” for some potential crimes that could be committed in the abstract future. Through the three short episodes you will face the absurdity and black humor of the Russian court system, but also the courage and ingenuity of the defense.

Text: all texts are based on real court materials (transcriptions of the court hearings).

Costumes and decorations: are inspired by court drawings or sketches made by the real-life defendants, as well photos and screenshots used by the authorities as case materials.

Video materials: hand-made drawings over the film, projected with an old soviet diafilm projector, that one of our performers, Nado, has hacked to transform into a portable video storytelling machine. In-between the three parts, short interludes generated with AI GANs by another performer, Pemanagpo, metaphorically play with the story of King’s Messenger from Lewis Carrol’s book.