1
00:00:09,350 --> 00:00:11,250
So I thought I'd talk about identity.

2
00:00:11,250 --> 00:00:13,770
That's sort of
an interesting enough topic to me.

3
00:00:13,770 --> 00:00:16,948
And the reason was,
because when I was asked to do this,

4
00:00:16,948 --> 00:00:20,511
I'd just read, in one of the papers,
I can't remember,

5
00:00:20,511 --> 00:00:23,647
something from someone
at Facebook saying, well,

6
00:00:23,647 --> 00:00:25,894
"we need to make everybody
use their real names"

7
00:00:25,894 --> 00:00:28,245
and then that's basically
all the problems solved.

8
00:00:28,245 --> 00:00:29,857
And that's so wrong,

9
00:00:29,857 --> 00:00:33,800
that's such a fundamentally,
reactionary view of identity,

10
00:00:33,800 --> 00:00:35,902
and it's going to get us
into all sorts of trouble.

11
00:00:35,902 --> 00:00:37,403
And so what I thought I'd do

12
00:00:37,403 --> 00:00:41,568
is I'll explain four
sort of problems about it,

13
00:00:41,568 --> 00:00:43,531
and then I'll suggest a solution,

14
00:00:43,531 --> 00:00:45,541
which hopefully
you might find interesting.

15
00:00:45,541 --> 00:00:47,654
So just to frame the problem,

16
00:00:47,654 --> 00:00:49,244
what does authenticity mean?

17
00:00:49,244 --> 00:00:53,995
That's me,
that's a camera phone picture of me

18
00:00:53,995 --> 00:00:55,314
looking at a painting.

19
00:00:55,314 --> 00:00:56,339
[What's the Problem?]

20
00:00:56,339 --> 00:00:58,071
That's a painting that was painted

21
00:00:58,071 --> 00:00:59,253
by a very famous forger,

22
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and because I'm not very good
at presentations,

23
00:01:01,506 --> 00:01:04,257
I already can't remember the name
that I wrote on my card.

24
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And he was incarcerated in,
I think, Wakefield Prison

25
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for forging masterpieces by,
I think, French Impressionists.

26
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And he's so good at it,
that when he was in prison,

27
00:01:14,722 --> 00:01:16,904
everybody in prison,
the governor and whatever,

28
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wanted him to paint masterpieces
to put on the walls,

29
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because they were so good.

30
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And so that's a masterpiece,

31
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which is a fake of a masterpiece,

32
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and bonded into the canvas is a chip
which identifies that as a real fake,

33
00:01:30,439 --> 00:01:31,971
if you see what I mean.

34
00:01:31,971 --> 00:01:33,163
(Laughter)

35
00:01:33,163 --> 00:01:35,406
So when we're talking about authenticity,

36
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it's a little more fractal than it appears
and that's a good example to show it.

37
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I tried to pick four problems
that will frame the issue properly.

38
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So the first problem, I thought,

39
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chip and PIN, right?

40
00:01:49,601 --> 00:01:52,951
I'm guessing everyone's got
a chip and PIN card, right?

41
00:01:52,951 --> 00:01:54,717
So why is that a good example?

42
00:01:54,717 --> 00:01:58,192
That's the example of how
legacy thinking about identity

43
00:01:58,192 --> 00:02:01,110
subverts the security
of a well-constructed system.

44
00:02:01,110 --> 00:02:03,901
That chip and PIN card
that's in your pocket

45
00:02:03,901 --> 00:02:07,143
has a little chip on it
that cost millions of pounds to develop,

46
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is extremely secure,

47
00:02:08,720 --> 00:02:10,884
you can put scanning
electron microscopes on it,

48
00:02:10,884 --> 00:02:13,061
you can try and grind it down,
blah blah blah.

49
00:02:13,061 --> 00:02:16,648
Those chips have never been broken,
whatever you read in the paper.

50
00:02:16,648 --> 00:02:19,882
And for a joke,
we take that super-secure chip

51
00:02:19,882 --> 00:02:23,396
and we bond it to a trivially
counterfeitable magnetic stripe

52
00:02:23,396 --> 00:02:27,018
and for very lazy criminals,
we still emboss the card.

53
00:02:27,018 --> 00:02:30,525
So if you're a criminal in a hurry
and you need to copy someone's card,

54
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you can just stick a piece of paper on it
and rub a pencil over it

55
00:02:33,626 --> 00:02:35,209
just to sort of speed things up.

56
00:02:35,209 --> 00:02:37,705
And even more amusingly,
and on my debit card too,

57
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we print the name and the SALT code
and everything else on the front too.

58
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Why?

59
00:02:43,435 --> 00:02:47,544
There is no earthly reason why your name
is printed on a chip and PIN card.

60
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And if you think about it,

61
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it's even more insidious and perverse
than it seems at first.

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Because the only people that benefit

63
00:02:54,111 --> 00:02:56,685
from having the name
on the card are criminals.

64
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You know what your name is, right?

65
00:02:58,326 --> 00:02:59,227
(Laughter)

66
00:02:59,227 --> 00:03:01,479
And when you go into
a shop and buy something,

67
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it's a PIN, he doesn't care
what the name is.

68
00:03:03,816 --> 00:03:07,043
The only place where you ever have
to write your name on the back

69
00:03:07,043 --> 00:03:08,366
is in America at the moment.

70
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And whenever I go to America,

71
00:03:09,866 --> 00:03:12,659
and I have to pay with a mag stripe
on the back of the card,

72
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I always sign it Carlos Tethers anyway,
just as a security mechanism,

73
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because if a transaction
ever gets disputed,

74
00:03:17,837 --> 00:03:21,470
and it comes back and it says Dave Birch,
I know it must have been a criminal,

75
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because I would never sign it Dave Birch.

76
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(Laughter)

77
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So if you drop your card in the street,

78
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it means a criminal
can pick it up and read it.

79
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They know the name,
from it they can find the address,

80
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and then they can
go off and buy stuff online.

81
00:03:34,126 --> 00:03:36,272
Why do we put the name on the card?

82
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Because we think identity
is something to do with names,

83
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and because we're rooted
in the idea of the identity card,

84
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which obsesses us.

85
00:03:44,802 --> 00:03:47,486
And I know it crashed and burned
a couple of years ago,

86
00:03:47,486 --> 00:03:51,953
but if you're someone in politics
or the home office or whatever,

87
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and you think about identity,

88
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you can only think of identity in terms
of cards with names on them.

89
00:03:56,459 --> 00:03:59,719
And that's very subversive
in a modern world.

90
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So the second example I thought I'd use

91
00:04:01,975 --> 00:04:03,617
is chatrooms.

92
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[Chatrooms and Children]

93
00:04:04,845 --> 00:04:07,035
I'm very proud of that picture,
that's my son

94
00:04:07,035 --> 00:04:11,111
playing in his band with his friends
for the first-ever gig,

95
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I believe you call it, where he got paid.

96
00:04:13,080 --> 00:04:13,867
(Laughter)

97
00:04:13,867 --> 00:04:15,745
And I love that picture.

98
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I like the picture of him
getting into medical school a lot better,

99
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(Laughter)

100
00:04:19,211 --> 00:04:21,324
I like that picture for the moment.

101
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Why do I use that picture?

102
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Because that was very interesting,
watching that experience as an old person.

103
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So him and his friends,

104
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they get together, they booked a room,
like a church hall,

105
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and they got all their friends
who had bands,

106
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and they got them together,
and they do it all on Facebook,

107
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and then they sell tickets,
and the first band on the -

108
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I was going to say "menu,"

109
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that's probably the wrong word for it,
isn't it?

110
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The first band on the list of bands

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00:04:45,643 --> 00:04:49,645
that appears at some
public music performance of some kind

112
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gets the sales from the first 20 tickets,

113
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then the next band gets the next 20,

114
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and so on.

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They were at the bottom of the menu,

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they were like fifth,
I thought they had no chance.

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He actually got 20 quid.
Fantastic, right?

118
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But my point is,
that all worked perfectly,

119
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except on the web.

120
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So they're sitting on Facebook,

121
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and they're sending these messages
and arranging things

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and they don't know who anybody is, right?

123
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That's the big problem
we're trying to solve.

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If only they were using the real names.

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Then you wouldn't be worried
about them on the internet.

126
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And so when he says to me,

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"oh, I want to go to a chatroom
to talk about guitars" or something,

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I'm like, "oh, well,
I don't want you to go into a chatroom

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to talk about guitars, because
they might not all be your friends,

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and some of the people
that are in the chatroom

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might be perverts and teachers
and vicars."

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(Laughter)

133
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I mean, they generally are,
when you look in the paper, right?

134
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So I want to know who
all the people in the chatroom are.

135
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So okay, you can go in the chatroom,

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but only if everybody in the chatroom
is using their real names,

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and they submit full copies
of their police report.

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But of course, if anybody in the chatroom
asked for his real name, I'd say no.

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You can't give them your real name.

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Because what happens
if they turn out to be perverts,

141
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and teachers and whatever.

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So you have this odd sort of paradox

143
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where I'm happy for him
to go into this space

144
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if I know who everybody else is,

145
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but I don't want anybody else
to know who he is.

146
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And so you get this sort of logjam
around identity

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where you want full disclosure
from everybody else,

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but not from yourself.

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And there's no progress, we get stuck.

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And so the chatroom thing
doesn't work properly,

151
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and it's a very bad way
of thinking about identity.

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So on my RSS feed,
I saw this thing about -

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I just said something bad
about my RSS feed, didn't I?

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I should stop saying it like that.

155
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For some random reason,
I can't imagine,

156
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something about cheerleaders
turned up in my inbox.

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I read this story about cheerleaders,
and it's a fascinating story.

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This happened a couple of years ago
in the U.S.

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There were some cheerleaders
in a team at a high school

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in the U.S., and they said mean things

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about their cheerleading coach,

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as I'm sure kids do
about all of their teachers

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all of the time,

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and somehow the cheerleading coach
found out about this.

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She was very upset.

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And so she went to one of the girls,
and said,

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"you have to give me
your Facebook password."

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I read this all the time,
where even at some universities

169
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and places of education,

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kids are forced to hand over
their Facebook passwords.

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You've got to give them
your Facebook password.

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She was a kid!

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What she should have said is,
"my lawyer will be calling you

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first thing in the morning.

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It's an outrageous imposition
on my 4th Amendment right to privacy,

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and you're going to be sued
for all the money you've got."

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She should have said that.

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But she's a kid,
so she hands over the password.

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The teacher can't log into Facebook,

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because the school
has blocked access to Facebook.

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So the teacher can't log into Facebook
until she gets home.

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So the girl tells her friends,
guess what happened?

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The teacher logged in, she knows.

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So the girls just all logged into Facebook
on their phones,

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and deleted their profiles.

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So when the teacher logged in,
there was nothing there.

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My point is, those identities,
they don't think about them the same way.

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Identity is, especially
when you're a teenager, a fluid thing.

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You have lots of identities.

190
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And you can have an identity,
you don't like it,

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because it's subverted in some way,
or it's insecure, or it's inappropriate,

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you just delete it and get another one.

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The idea that you have an identity
that's given to you by someone,

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the government or whatever,

195
00:08:05,126 --> 00:08:08,255
and you have to stick with that identity
and use it in all places,

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that's absolutely wrong.

197
00:08:09,653 --> 00:08:12,625
Why would you want to really know
who someone was on Facebook,

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unless you wanted to abuse them
and harass them in some way?

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00:08:15,555 --> 00:08:17,358
And it just doesn't work properly.

200
00:08:17,358 --> 00:08:19,522
And my fourth example
is there are some cases

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00:08:19,522 --> 00:08:21,765
where you really want to be -

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In case you're wondering,
that's me at the G20 protest.

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00:08:25,335 --> 00:08:29,011
I wasn't actually at the G20 protest,
but I had a meeting at a bank

204
00:08:29,011 --> 00:08:32,443
on the day of the G20 protest,
and I got an email from the bank

205
00:08:32,443 --> 00:08:36,880
saying please don't wear a suit,
because it'll inflame the protestors.

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00:08:36,880 --> 00:08:38,779
I look pretty good in a suit, frankly,

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00:08:38,779 --> 00:08:42,620
so you can see why it would drive them
into an anti-capitalist frenzy. (Laughter)

208
00:08:42,620 --> 00:08:43,833
So I thought, well, look.

209
00:08:43,833 --> 00:08:46,552
If I don't want to inflame the protestors,

210
00:08:46,552 --> 00:08:49,045
the obvious thing to do
is go dressed as a protestor.

211
00:08:49,045 --> 00:08:50,942
So I went dressed completely in black,

212
00:08:50,942 --> 00:08:53,620
you know, with a black balaclava,
I had black gloves on,

213
00:08:53,620 --> 00:08:55,924
but I've taken them off
to sign the visitor's book.

214
00:08:55,924 --> 00:08:58,052
I'm wearing black trousers, black boots,

215
00:08:58,052 --> 00:08:59,798
I'm dressed completely in black.

216
00:08:59,798 --> 00:09:02,542
I go into the bank at 10 o'clock,
go, "Hi, I'm Dave Birch,

217
00:09:02,542 --> 00:09:04,553
I've got a 3 o'clock
with so and so there."

218
00:09:04,553 --> 00:09:07,020
Sure. They sign me in.
There's my visitor's badge.

219
00:09:07,020 --> 00:09:07,976
(Laughter)

220
00:09:07,976 --> 00:09:09,294
So this nonsense

221
00:09:09,294 --> 00:09:12,308
about you've got to have real names
on Facebook and whatever,

222
00:09:12,308 --> 00:09:14,093
that gets you that kind of security.

223
00:09:14,093 --> 00:09:18,102
That gets you security theater,
where there's no actual security,

224
00:09:18,102 --> 00:09:21,440
but people are sort of playing parts
in a play about security.

225
00:09:21,440 --> 00:09:23,545
And as long as everybody learns
their lines,

226
00:09:23,545 --> 00:09:24,411
everyone's happy.

227
00:09:24,411 --> 00:09:26,965
But it's not real security.

228
00:09:26,965 --> 00:09:30,207
Especially because I hate banks
more than the G20 protestors do,

229
00:09:30,207 --> 00:09:31,392
because I work for them.

230
00:09:31,392 --> 00:09:34,219
I know that things are actually worse
than these guys think.

231
00:09:34,219 --> 00:09:35,992
(Laughter)

232
00:09:37,582 --> 00:09:42,676
But suppose I worked
next to somebody in a bank

233
00:09:42,676 --> 00:09:45,610
who was doing something.

234
00:09:46,121 --> 00:09:48,790
Those people
who take the money from banks...

235
00:09:50,171 --> 00:09:52,323
traders - that's who I was thinking of.

236
00:09:52,323 --> 00:09:54,633
Suppose I was sitting
next to a rogue trader,

237
00:09:54,644 --> 00:09:56,931
and I want to report it
to the boss of the bank.

238
00:09:56,931 --> 00:09:59,253
So I log on
to do a little bit of whistleblowing.

239
00:09:59,253 --> 00:10:01,328
I send a message,
this guy's a rogue trader.

240
00:10:01,328 --> 00:10:02,626
That message is meaningless

241
00:10:02,626 --> 00:10:05,574
if you don't know
that I'm a trader at the bank.

242
00:10:05,574 --> 00:10:07,574
If that message just comes from anybody,

243
00:10:07,574 --> 00:10:10,160
it has zero information value.

244
00:10:10,160 --> 00:10:12,629
There's no point in sending that message.

245
00:10:14,173 --> 00:10:16,940
But if I have to prove who I am,

246
00:10:16,940 --> 00:10:18,411
I'll never send that message.

247
00:10:18,411 --> 00:10:22,198
It's just like the nurse in the hospital
reporting the drunk surgeon.

248
00:10:22,198 --> 00:10:25,119
That message will only happen
if I'm anonymous.

249
00:10:25,119 --> 00:10:29,611
So the system has to have ways
of providing anonymity there,

250
00:10:29,611 --> 00:10:31,861
otherwise we don't get
where we want to get to.

251
00:10:31,861 --> 00:10:34,843
So four issues.
So what are we going to do about it?

252
00:10:34,843 --> 00:10:38,636
Well, what we tend to do about it

253
00:10:39,530 --> 00:10:41,918
is we think about Orwell space.

254
00:10:41,918 --> 00:10:45,064
And we try to make electronic versions

255
00:10:45,064 --> 00:10:47,371
of the identity card
that we got rid of in 1953.

256
00:10:47,371 --> 00:10:50,128
So we think if we had a card,

257
00:10:50,128 --> 00:10:51,467
call it a Facebook login,

258
00:10:51,467 --> 00:10:52,764
which proves who you are,

259
00:10:52,764 --> 00:10:55,815
and I make you carry it all the time,
that solves the problem.

260
00:10:55,815 --> 00:10:58,471
And of course, for all those reasons
I've just outlined,

261
00:10:58,471 --> 00:11:01,313
it doesn't, and it might, actually,
make some problems worse.

262
00:11:01,313 --> 00:11:03,998
The more times you're forced
to use your real identity,

263
00:11:03,998 --> 00:11:05,898
certainly in transactional terms,

264
00:11:05,898 --> 00:11:08,808
the more likely that identity
is to get stolen and subverted.

265
00:11:08,808 --> 00:11:11,034
The goal is to stop people
from using identity

266
00:11:11,034 --> 00:11:13,101
in transactions which don't need identity,

267
00:11:13,101 --> 00:11:15,220
which is actually almost all transactions.

268
00:11:15,220 --> 00:11:17,217
Almost all of the transactions you do

269
00:11:17,217 --> 00:11:18,575
are not, who are you?

270
00:11:18,575 --> 00:11:20,709
They're, are you allowed to drive the car,

271
00:11:20,709 --> 00:11:24,057
are you allowed in the building,
are you over 18, etcetera, etcetera.

272
00:11:25,162 --> 00:11:27,060
So my suggestion - I, like James,

273
00:11:27,060 --> 00:11:29,980
think that there should be
a resurgence of interest in R & D.

274
00:11:29,980 --> 00:11:31,746
I think this is a solvable problem.

275
00:11:31,746 --> 00:11:33,346
It's something we can do about.

276
00:11:33,346 --> 00:11:35,983
Naturally, in these circumstances,
I turn to Doctor Who.

277
00:11:35,983 --> 00:11:37,833
Because in this,

278
00:11:37,833 --> 00:11:39,782
as in so many other walks of life,

279
00:11:39,782 --> 00:11:42,690
Doctor Who has already shown us
the answer.

280
00:11:42,690 --> 00:11:43,695
So I should say,

281
00:11:43,695 --> 00:11:46,026
for some of our foreign visitors,

282
00:11:46,026 --> 00:11:49,880
Doctor Who is the greatest
living scientist in England,

283
00:11:49,880 --> 00:11:51,457
(Laughter)

284
00:11:51,457 --> 00:11:54,257
and a beacon of truth and enlightenment
to all of us.

285
00:11:54,257 --> 00:11:58,099
And this is Doctor Who
with his psychic paper.

286
00:11:58,099 --> 00:12:00,927
Come on, you guys must have seen
Doctor Who's psychic paper.

287
00:12:00,927 --> 00:12:02,497
You're not nerds if you say yes.

288
00:12:02,497 --> 00:12:04,633
Who's seen Doctor Who's psychic paper?

289
00:12:04,633 --> 00:12:07,863
Oh right, you were in the library
the whole time studying I guess.

290
00:12:07,863 --> 00:12:09,713
Is that what you're going to tell us?

291
00:12:09,713 --> 00:12:11,025
Doctor Who's psychic paper

292
00:12:11,025 --> 00:12:12,905
is when you hold up the psychic paper,

293
00:12:12,905 --> 00:12:14,293
the person, in their brain,

294
00:12:14,293 --> 00:12:16,402
sees the thing that they need to see.

295
00:12:16,402 --> 00:12:18,761
So I want to show you a British passport,

296
00:12:18,761 --> 00:12:21,425
I hold up the psychic paper,
you see a British passport.

297
00:12:21,425 --> 00:12:23,063
I want to get into a party,

298
00:12:23,063 --> 00:12:24,670
I hold up the psychic paper,

299
00:12:24,670 --> 00:12:26,154
I show you a party invitation.

300
00:12:26,154 --> 00:12:28,198
You see what you want to see.

301
00:12:28,198 --> 00:12:31,417
So what I'm saying is we need
to make an electronic version of that,

302
00:12:31,417 --> 00:12:33,610
but with one tiny, tiny change,

303
00:12:33,610 --> 00:12:36,134
which is that it'll only show you
the British passport

304
00:12:36,134 --> 00:12:37,422
if I've actually got one.

305
00:12:37,422 --> 00:12:40,504
It'll only show you the party invitation
if I actually have one.

306
00:12:40,504 --> 00:12:43,515
It will only show you that I'm over 18
if I actually am.

307
00:12:43,515 --> 00:12:45,386
But nothing else.

308
00:12:45,386 --> 00:12:49,866
So you're the bouncer at the pub,
you need to know that I'm over 18,

309
00:12:49,866 --> 00:12:51,987
instead of showing you my driving license,

310
00:12:51,987 --> 00:12:54,026
which shows you I know how to drive,

311
00:12:54,026 --> 00:12:56,762
what my name is, my address,
all these kind of things,

312
00:12:56,762 --> 00:12:58,201
I show you my psychic paper,

313
00:12:58,201 --> 00:13:01,367
and all it tells you
is am I over 18 or not.

314
00:13:01,367 --> 00:13:02,803
Right.

315
00:13:02,803 --> 00:13:04,141
Is that just a pipe dream?

316
00:13:04,141 --> 00:13:06,954
Of course not, otherwise
I wouldn't be here talking to you.

317
00:13:06,954 --> 00:13:09,088
So in order to build that
and make it work,

318
00:13:09,088 --> 00:13:11,889
I'm only going to name these things,
I'll not go into them,

319
00:13:11,889 --> 00:13:12,866
we need a plan,

320
00:13:12,866 --> 00:13:14,585
which is we're going to build this

321
00:13:14,585 --> 00:13:16,601
as an infrastructure for everybody to use,

322
00:13:16,601 --> 00:13:18,233
to solve all of these problems.

323
00:13:18,233 --> 00:13:20,041
We're going to make a utility,

324
00:13:20,041 --> 00:13:21,589
the utility has to be universal,

325
00:13:21,589 --> 00:13:22,952
you can use it everywhere,

326
00:13:22,952 --> 00:13:26,233
I'm just giving you little flashes
of the technology as we go along.

327
00:13:26,233 --> 00:13:27,490
That's a Japanese ATM,

328
00:13:27,490 --> 00:13:30,378
the fingerprint template
is stored inside the mobile phone.

329
00:13:30,378 --> 00:13:32,285
So when you want to draw money out,

330
00:13:32,285 --> 00:13:35,142
you put the mobile phone on the ATM,
and touch your finger,

331
00:13:35,142 --> 00:13:37,247
your fingerprint goes through
to the phone,

332
00:13:37,247 --> 00:13:38,967
the phone says yes, that's whoever,

333
00:13:38,967 --> 00:13:40,934
and the ATM then gives you some money.

334
00:13:40,934 --> 00:13:43,321
It has to be a utility
that you can use everywhere.

335
00:13:43,321 --> 00:13:45,047
It has to be absolutely convenient,

336
00:13:45,047 --> 00:13:47,884
that's me going into the pub.

337
00:13:47,884 --> 00:13:50,677
All the device on the door of the pub
is allowed is,

338
00:13:50,677 --> 00:13:54,350
is this person over 18
and not barred from the pub?

339
00:13:54,350 --> 00:13:57,602
And so the idea is,
you touch your ID card to the door,

340
00:13:57,602 --> 00:13:59,789
and if I am allowed in,
it shows my picture,

341
00:13:59,789 --> 00:14:01,820
if I'm not allowed in,
it shows a red cross.

342
00:14:01,820 --> 00:14:03,758
It doesn't disclose any other information.


343
00:14:03,758 --> 00:14:06,802
It has to have no special gadgets.
That can only mean one thing,

344
00:14:06,802 --> 00:14:09,967
following on from Ross's statement,
which I agree with completely.

345
00:14:09,967 --> 00:14:12,853
If it means no special gadgets,
it has to run on a mobile phone.

346
00:14:12,853 --> 00:14:16,193
That's the only choice we have,
we have to make it work on mobile phones.

347
00:14:16,193 --> 00:14:18,527
There are 6.6 billion
mobile phone subscriptions.

348
00:14:18,527 --> 00:14:22,063
My favorite statistic of all time,
only 4 billion toothbrushes in the world.

349
00:14:22,071 --> 00:14:23,587
That means something,

350
00:14:23,587 --> 00:14:24,944
I don't know what.
(Laughter)

351
00:14:24,944 --> 00:14:26,927
I rely on our futurologists to tell me.

352
00:14:26,927 --> 00:14:28,977
It has to be a utility
which is extensible.

353
00:14:28,977 --> 00:14:31,569
So it has to be something
that anybody could build on.

354
00:14:31,569 --> 00:14:33,960
Anybody should be able
to use this infrastructure,

355
00:14:33,960 --> 00:14:36,234
you don't need permissions,
licenses, whatever,

356
00:14:36,234 --> 00:14:39,021
anyone should be able
to write some code to do this.

357
00:14:40,886 --> 00:14:42,151
You know what symmetry is,

358
00:14:42,151 --> 00:14:44,498
so you don't need a picture of it.

359
00:14:44,498 --> 00:14:46,148
This is how we're going to do it.

360
00:14:46,148 --> 00:14:48,812
We're going to do it using phones,
using mobile proximity.

361
00:14:48,812 --> 00:14:51,514
I'm going to suggest to you
the technology to implement

362
00:14:51,514 --> 00:14:53,596
Doctor Who's psychic paper
is already here,

363
00:14:53,596 --> 00:14:56,647
and if any of you have got one of the new
Barclay's debit cards

364
00:14:56,647 --> 00:14:58,478
with the contactless interface on it,

365
00:14:58,478 --> 00:15:00,218
you've already got that technology.

366
00:15:00,218 --> 00:15:02,013
If you've ever been up to the big city,

367
00:15:02,013 --> 00:15:03,605
and used an Oyster card at all,

368
00:15:03,605 --> 00:15:04,799
does that ring any bells to anybody?

369
00:15:04,799 --> 00:15:06,355
The technology already exists.

370
00:15:06,355 --> 00:15:08,745
The first phones
that have the technology built in,

371
00:15:08,745 --> 00:15:10,984
the Google Nexus, the S2,
the Samsung Wifi 7.9,

372
00:15:10,984 --> 00:15:13,695
the first phones that have
the technology built into them

373
00:15:13,695 --> 00:15:15,021
are already in the shops.

374
00:15:15,021 --> 00:15:16,403
So the idea that the gas man

375
00:15:16,403 --> 00:15:17,895
can turn up at my mom's door

376
00:15:17,895 --> 00:15:20,097
and he can show my mom his phone,

377
00:15:20,097 --> 00:15:21,762
and she can tap it with her phone,

378
00:15:21,762 --> 00:15:24,819
and it will come up with green
if he really is from British Gas

379
00:15:24,819 --> 00:15:25,841
and allowed in,

380
00:15:25,841 --> 00:15:28,074
and it'll come up with red if he isn't.

381
00:15:28,074 --> 00:15:29,741
We have the technology to do that.

382
00:15:29,741 --> 00:15:30,886
And what's more,

383
00:15:30,886 --> 00:15:33,821
although some of those things
sounded a bit counter-intuitive,

384
00:15:33,821 --> 00:15:36,219
like proving I'm over 18
without proving who I am,

385
00:15:36,219 --> 00:15:38,414
the cryptography to do that
not only exists,

386
00:15:38,414 --> 00:15:40,623
it's extremely well-known
and well-understood.

387
00:15:40,623 --> 00:15:43,508
Digital signatures, the blinding
of public key certificates,

388
00:15:43,508 --> 00:15:45,802
these technologies have been around
for a while,

389
00:15:45,802 --> 00:15:47,901
we've just had no way
of packaging them up.

390
00:15:47,901 --> 00:15:49,541
So the technology already exists.

391
00:15:49,541 --> 00:15:52,384
We know it works.

392
00:15:52,384 --> 00:15:54,907
There are a few examples
of the technology being used

393
00:15:54,907 --> 00:15:55,997
in experimental places.

394
00:15:55,997 --> 00:15:57,325
That's London Fashion Week,

395
00:15:57,325 --> 00:15:59,199
where we built a system with O2,

396
00:15:59,199 --> 00:16:01,966
that's for the Wireless Festival
in Hyde Park,

397
00:16:01,966 --> 00:16:03,089
you can see the persons

398
00:16:03,089 --> 00:16:05,760
walking in with their VIP band,
it's just being checked

399
00:16:05,760 --> 00:16:07,794
by the Nokia phone
that's reading the band.

400
00:16:07,794 --> 00:16:10,762
I'm only putting those up to show you
these things are prosaic,

401
00:16:10,762 --> 00:16:12,670
this stuff works in these environments.

402
00:16:12,670 --> 00:16:14,421
They don't need to be special.

403
00:16:14,421 --> 00:16:18,274
So finally, I know that you can do this,

404
00:16:19,499 --> 00:16:22,403
because if you saw
the episode of Doctor Who,

405
00:16:22,403 --> 00:16:24,303
the Easter special of Doctor Who,

406
00:16:24,303 --> 00:16:27,646
where he went to Mars in a bus,

407
00:16:27,646 --> 00:16:29,801
I should say again
for our foreign students,

408
00:16:29,801 --> 00:16:31,534
that doesn't happen every episode.

409
00:16:31,534 --> 00:16:33,025
This was a very special case.

410
00:16:33,025 --> 00:16:35,786
So in the episode where he goes
to Mars in a London bus,

411
00:16:35,786 --> 00:16:37,299
I can't show you the clip,

412
00:16:37,299 --> 00:16:40,398
due to the outrageous restrictions
of Queen Anne-style copyright

413
00:16:40,398 --> 00:16:41,999
by the BBC,

414
00:16:41,999 --> 00:16:44,833
but in the episode where he goes
to Mars in a London bus,

415
00:16:44,833 --> 00:16:49,089
Doctor Who is clearly shown
getting on to the bus

416
00:16:49,089 --> 00:16:50,389
with the Oyster card reader

417
00:16:50,389 --> 00:16:51,957
using his psychic paper.

418
00:16:51,957 --> 00:16:54,049
Which proves that psychic paper

419
00:16:54,049 --> 00:16:55,764
has an MSE interface.

420
00:16:55,764 --> 00:16:57,774
Thank you very much.
(Applause)