Marta is an expert journalist in technology, networks and cryptology, an inspirer of the CryptoParty Berlin Handbook, director of the culture section of ElDiario.es, co-creator of Elástico, an activist collective where she co-directs the CopyFight Project. She is one of the most important critical voices in our country (and beyond) with data traffickers and government control (of any government).

 In 2015 she published The Little Red Book of the Web Activist, an essential manual for getting confidential communications, basic for journalists work, with a foreword by Edward Snowden. Her newspaper published an extensive interview on the occasion of its publication.

 In the interview, he speaks about the ability of the NSA to spy on us: “There are several things: most of the network infrastructures (servers and others) that we use in Spain belong to North American companies. This means, among other things, that all this information is regulated by North American legislation. Therefore, we Spaniards have the same rights as the seventeen-year-old undocumented Nigerian who ends up in a detention center. In fact, its own legislation encourages the authorities to monitor foreigners. The big scandal in the United States has been that these agencies were watching American citizens! The great problem of the NSA is that they have the right technology to get away with it, and they do get away with it».

 In his statements I think I recognize a certain leftist ideological tone, but I can not distinguish whether it is simply that he defends the pre-eminence of the individual against governments and companies, and not so much against power or Capital. Either way he is quite right in what he stands for.

 My first contact with Marta was for her TED conference, with more than 2,200,000 views on YouTube, which I consider mandatory:

She has published a magnificent book this year, “The enemy knows the system”, which I have read. She explains how our perception is conditioned and manipulated, beginning with the aromas that come to us when we arrive at a store, and the information that comes to our screens.

 Personally, I have realized what kind of trap I have built around me with the tools of the system. In my case, spending hours reading information from multiple sources and believing that because of this I am more aware of what is really happening, exchanging quantity for quality, analysis and depth. I’ve always been a compulsive reader, like many of the readers of this blog, but in reality in recent years the number of books I read each year has been declining.

 In a recent conference at the Ruiz-Funes Foundation in March 2019, she delves into other privacy matters, such as character recognition algorithms:

Near the end of her conference, she expresses an idea that seems brutal to me: “In Facebook Groups the only thing that can happen is that you get manipulated.” I do not usually spend time on social networks, but for the short time I have used them, I can attest how addictive it is to watch what others do.

It is a luxury to have journalists like Marta in our country. At Sónar + D 2019 in Barcelona, s​​he will give a conference on Wednesday 17.