Thread by @olabini

Hi all - so, after some rest and trying to find my equilibrium again, it's time to recount what happened this week. As I've mentioned, it was painful and frustrating, and the pre-trial is still not even concluded. This will be a long thread with lots of craziness. 1/

First, let's remember what the purpose of the pre-trial in Ecuador serves. The parties first present reasons why the process was illegal (so called "nullities"), then the prosecution and parties presents their accusation and supporting evidence. 2/

Then we discuss counter points to the acccusation, moving on to exclusion of prosecution evidence and finally presenting evidence for the defense. At this point the prosecutor or accusor can discuss exclusion of evidence. 3/

After all this, the judge should take it all into consideration and decide whether to call to a trial or not. The judge should also decide on all evidence presented, and reasons for exclusions. If a trial is called, only evidence presented here can be used. 4/

Now, the pre-trial actually started several weeks ago, when my defense presented a large amount of evidence showing that the process had been illegal from the beginnig - including a Habeas Corpus ratified by the national court of Ecuador. 5/

Neither the accusing party (CNT) nor prosecution actually countered any of our evidence of illegality with any arguments. They simply said "everything was done legally". Yesterday, the judge followed the same approach. 6/

While my defense presented hours of material that the process was illegal from the start, including the Habeas Corpus, the judge simply announced that "the constitutional rights of the citizen were observed", without providing any legal argument or responding to any evidence. 7/

In the rest of this explanation I will loosely use the word "expert" as a translation for the word "perito". However, keep in mind that "perito" has a specific legal meaning in Ecuador - it is someone who is certified by the judicial system to be an expert. 8/

In the hearing, the representative from the Swedish embassy ended up having to help with translation, since the prosecution didn't make any effort to find a translator in time. If there were no translator, the hearing would likely have been suspended again. 9/

And since suspending the hearing and waiting over and over for it to continue again is something we have been doing for over a year now, we decided to accept the help from the representative, even though that's certainly not his job. The court just assumed he would do it. 10/

Now, this kind of hearing is a public matter. It is not private or reserved in any way. Which means that in theory, any person from the public should be able to attend. This is not how our judge actually runs her courtroom, though. 11/

She didn't allow the civil society observer from coming in to the room. She denied our requests for the hearing to be transmitted. And once we were all seated, there were cops guarding the _locked_ doors! Yes, in a public hearing we were _locked_ inside the court room. 12/

One aspect of the previous hearing that caused a lot of trouble was that an image from the courtroom showed up on social media. The judge used this as an excuse to exclude people from the court room this time. 13/

However, during the second hour of the hearing, the prosecution seems to have been tweeting from inside the court room. When this was brought to the attention of the judge, she didn't put much weight on it, except to ask everyone to place their phones in front of the room. 14/

My lawyers pointed out that the prosecution had an iPad beside their computer, and was using it through the hearing. The judge half-heartedly said that should also be placed with the phones, but the prosecution ignored the judge and the judge simply continued. 15/

This shows the extremely disproportionate application of justice inside the court room of this judge. When the defense is sanctioned for something, it is harsh and immediate, but the prosecution is given huge leeway. Justice un-evenly applied is not justice. 16/

After the discussion of nullities, it was time for the prosecution to present their "theory of the crime" and their accusation. I'm putting this inside quotes, because nothing in the prosecutions presentation showed that they had any theory whatsoever. 17/

They simply spent a lot of time mentioning a lot of pieces of evidence from the file, without explaining how it fit together, what it had to do with anything, and especially what it had to do with any supposed computer intrusion. 18/

They included information about taxes, information about my visas, information about my bank transfers, about visits to Julian, about the people working for ThoughtWorks and CAD here in Ecuador, and so on. They even included private, personal messages without any context. 19/

For none of this they said how it was connected to the crime. Instead, the prosecutor simply tried to paint a picture of me as a master criminal, without actually showing any real evidence of any wrong doing at all. 20/

Remember, the crime I'm charged with is illegally obtaining access to a computer belonging to CNT, the main telephone company in Ecuador. However, the only so called evidence they have of this is a picture which shows me _NOT_ trying to access the server. 21/

If this was a real computer intrusion, you might expect the evidence to include firewall configurations, intrusion detection system logs, authentication logs from the server, and maybe some information about _how_ I supposedely entered the computer. 22/

None of this exists in this case, for a very simple reason - I didn't actually enter the computer in question. But instead of focusing on this aspect, the prosecution tries to show that I'm some kind of illegal person because of my friendship with J. 23/

After this whole thing, the prosecution then spent about 1.5 hours simply mentioning all the evidence they wanted to include, and all witness and experts they wanted to call. This was apparently interesting enough that one of the CNT lawyers fell asleep. 24/

Then it was the turn of CNT to come with a theory of the crime. Interestingly, their claims about what I did contradicts the prosecution. CNT claims it was a "LAN IP" I accessed, while the prosecution says it was public. 25/

Later, CNT also contradicts themselves, saying I found the LAN IP by scanning all public addresses - but per definition, if it was a LAN IP, I couldn't find it by scanning public addresses. Suffice to say, CNT doesn't say anything about informatic evidence of a crime either. 26/

Both the prosecution and the CNT talk about Tor being used for the access. Once again they contradict themselves, though - how could you access a "LAN IP" using Tor? None of them mention that the image shows that no username was entered and that it says "connection closed". 27/

The lawyer from CNT did say something very dangerous and misinformed. She said "why was I using Tor if I was not doing something illegal?". This misrepresents to a huge level what @torproject really is about. 28/

The CNT also claims that this was a crime against the whole population of Ecuador, but conveniently neglects to mention that the server in question - as given in evidence by CNT engineers - was a test server, empty of information and had no connections to anything else. 29/

At this point it was time for my defense to answer to these accusations. My defense shows clearly that the whole process against me has been a fishing expedition, not investigating a crime, but a person. According to Ecuador law, after the first charge, you can't do that. 30/

But it's clear from numerous statements that while I was sitting in prison, the prosecution was simply trying to find _something_ to charge me with. The prosecutor himself said, when asked about what crime I had committed, that he was pursuing different investigations. 31/

The order for the raid on my apartment has a field for where the crime should be written. This is simply blank on the order. And when asking police officers involved what the crime is, they all say that it's not their job to know. The police doesn't need to know the crime? 32/

Continuing, my defense pointed out how much intrusive evidence was claimed by the prosecution, without analyzing or saying why it was necessary, since it wasn't related to the actual CNT server in question. 33/

My defense also pointed out - with the help of reports from the prosecutions experts - that an image can't actually be used to prove an informatics crime, according to laws of the republic. Fundamentally, a picture doesn't prove anything. 34/

And then, my lawyers also showed in clear detail that this picture, even if it was admitted, doesn't actually show any crime. 35/

The final big part of this hearing was the analysis of evidence. My defense showed that basically every piece of evidence had been subject to numerous irregularities and illegal handling, making it clear that it should be excluded. 36/

These irregularities varied, from technical experts working on more than one report in the process - which means they contaminated all things they were involved in. It was also clear that most experts didn't have up-to-date certifications when doing the work. 37/

There were also more specific examples. One was a police officer taking part in a private hearing, which is completely against all procedures in Ecuador, thus tainting all evidence looked at in that private hearing. 38/

In another case, the server from Telconet had its chain of custody completely broken. It's clear from the reports that Ecuador asked for help decrypting it before we had the private hearing which opened it for the "first time". This also makes the evidence useless. 39/

Hilariously, Ecuador sent a bunch of hard drives to the US for help with decrypting them, but they got information for 3 _more_ drives than they sent, which can't be traced to anything else in the process. We still have no idea what these drives were... 40/

The list continuous. I guess the message is clear - for all evidence, there were numerous reasons why it was tainted and illegal to rely on it - even excluding the evidence of the Habeas Corpus, which should have been _enough_ to exclude it all. 41/

Now, the prosecution didn't actually answer to most of our legal arguments about exclusion. The only one they responded to was the one about experts working on more than one thing at the same time. According to my lawyers, the response didn't make legal sense at all. 42/

The CNT didn't even go that far. They simply said that because the image is important evidence, it shouldn't be excluded. I guess that means that any kind of legal violation is OK, as long as the evidence is important? I wonder what the point of laws are, in that case... 43/

Finally, my defense had asked for an expert to be called as a witness to the trial. The prosecution tried to exclude this expert, claiming that this is something the defense always tries to do - confusing issues by calling experts to trial. 44/

Yeah, because having actually correct information about technology could really be a huge impediment to a fair trial, don't you think? 45/

At the end of all this, the judge suspended the proceedings again, saying she needed to analyze everything to come up with a resolution. So that is what we are now waiting for. We don't know when it will be resumed or what the result will be. 46/

Of course, with the extreme amount of illegal procedures and rights violations, the only thing that should happen is the exclusion of all evidence, and no trial. However, we haven't seen this judge make decisions according to the evidence in this process, so who knows? 47/

In summary, this has been a new low in illegal acts and rights violations. I didn't have high expectations, but to be honest I am still in shock after all this insanity. 48/

I would like to expend a huge thanks to the civil society observer, who even though she wasn't allowed to enter, tried to be there and observe what was happening in this so called public process. 49/

My defense lawyers did a fantastic job, as always. They were specific, analytical, detailed and always rational, basing their arguments firmly in the laws of Ecuador and international norms. 50/

Finally, thanks again to the Swedish embassy for sending an observer. It's important for Ecuador to understand that both the civil society of Ecuador and the rest of the world are keenly observing this travesty of justice. 51/

In other news, in one of our processes the following document showed up as an appendix to a letter that says the judicial police doesn’t have any order or information about me: 52/

The most important part is the highlighted region which says partly: "Es ??? indicar que la Unidad realiza diariamente auditories de Seguridad Monitorias Telefonicas," 53/

This roughly translates to saying that the unit (UPVT) does daily security and telephone monitoring. 54/

So, in summary, we get a letter saying the opposite of what the attachment says, confirming that I'm under surveillance from the PJ, both regular and phone interception... 55/

The CIES also have confirmed there exists a secret order concerning me. Of course, all this confirms exactly what we have said since the beginning about illegal surveillance and harassment. 56/56

The ??? Is the word “menestar”