“Even now that we know that the US government knows everything about us, many people shrug at the idea”, says Appelbaum. “But in ten or twenty years, it will be the Russians or the Chinese who’ll have that information”. And he believes the western world will change its tune, then. The only way for minor world players like the Netherlands to get around the digital omnipotence a little, is to develop freeware that doesn’t have security backdoors built in by order of the intelligence agencies. “The surveillance battle will be lost by the civilian, eventually. It is only with systems that guarantee user anonymity, or at least enable users to see when they’re being tapped, that democratic freedom can be secured.”

Computer scientist, hacker, journalist, and activist: Jacob Appelbaum is all of the above. He works with people like Julian Assange (Wikileaks) and whistleblower Edward Snowden. The American has been living in Berlin for some time now, where he’s working with Der Spiegel to reveal practices by US intelligence agency NSA – they tapped Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone, for example. He says he doesn’t feel comfortable in the US anymore, because he’s constantly being harassed by the authorities. He’s quite a big deal internationally, which shows from the BBC cameras filming his lecture in the Auditorium. “Prior to Snowden’s disclosures, people thought we were a bunch of weirdos. Thankfully, people listen to us now.”