In 2019, Ola Bini, a Swedish programmer and privacy advocate, was arrested in Ecuador for being a Russian hacker.
Find Ola on X: https://x.com/olabini. Or visit his website https://olabini.se/blog/. Or check out his non-profit https://autonomia.digital/.
Sponsors
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Sources
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ecuador-political-actors-must-step-away-ola-binis-case
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/six-years-dangerous-misconceptions-targeting-ola-bini-and-digital-rights-ecuador
- https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/04/12/ola-bini-detained-in-ecuador-for-90-days/
- https://globalvoices.org/2022/10/21/ola-bini-the-cyberactivist-who-causes-panic-in-ecuador/
- https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/09/ecuador-allanamiento-violento-pone-en-riesgo-juicio-justo-ola-bini-2/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ola_Bini
Attribution
Darknet Diaries is created by Jack Rhysider.
Assembled by Tristan Ledger.
Episode artwork by odibagas.
Mixing by Proximity Sound.
Theme music created by Breakmaster Cylinder. Theme song available for listen and download at bandcamp. Or listen to it on Spotify.
Transcript
[START OF RECORDING]
JACK: Hey, it’s Jack, host of the show. When I was a teenager, I went to university and studied computer science. At one point they gave all the students logins to some central Linux computer. It’s where you were supposed to do your schoolwork. Like, you could use it for file storage or check e-mail there and do programming. Well, when they gave me my username and password, they said my username is my last name and my password is just my first and last name. I instantly realized this means if you know another student’s full name, you know their username and password and can log in as them and read their e-mails and look through their files and stuff. I told that to the teacher; hey, this is a bad password policy. He’s like, why? I’m like, ‘cause I know everyone’s password.