1 00:00:00,051 --> 00:00:01,490 So I thought I'd talk about identity. 2 00:00:01,490 --> 00:00:04,270 That's sort of an interesting enough topic to me. 3 00:00:04,270 --> 00:00:07,448 And the reason was, because when I was asked to do this, 4 00:00:07,448 --> 00:00:11,011 I'd just read, in one of the papers, I can't remember, 5 00:00:11,011 --> 00:00:14,414 something from someone at Facebook saying, well, 6 00:00:14,414 --> 00:00:16,054 "we need to make everybody use their real names." 7 00:00:16,054 --> 00:00:18,315 and then that's basically all the problems solved. 8 00:00:18,315 --> 00:00:20,357 And that's so wrong, 9 00:00:20,357 --> 00:00:24,300 that's such a fundamentally, reactionary view of identity, 10 00:00:24,300 --> 00:00:26,402 and it's going to get us into all sorts of trouble. 11 00:00:26,402 --> 00:00:27,643 And so what I thought I'd do 12 00:00:27,643 --> 00:00:32,068 is I'll explain four sort of problems about it, 13 00:00:32,068 --> 00:00:34,031 and then I'll suggest a solution, 14 00:00:34,031 --> 00:00:35,861 which hopefully you might find interesting. 15 00:00:35,861 --> 00:00:38,154 So just to frame the problem, 16 00:00:38,154 --> 00:00:39,744 what does authenticity mean? 17 00:00:39,744 --> 00:00:44,834 That's me, that's a camera phone picture of me 18 00:00:44,834 --> 00:00:45,814 looking at a painting. 19 00:00:45,814 --> 00:00:46,579 [What's the Problem?] 20 00:00:46,579 --> 00:00:47,711 That's a painting that was painted 21 00:00:47,711 --> 00:00:49,753 by a very famous forger, 22 00:00:49,753 --> 00:00:51,616 and because I'm not very good at presentations, 23 00:00:51,616 --> 00:00:54,327 I already can't remember the name that I wrote on my card. 24 00:00:54,327 --> 00:00:58,633 And he was incarcerated in, I think, Wakefield Prison 25 00:00:58,633 --> 00:01:02,199 for forging masterpieces by, I think, French Impressionists. 26 00:01:02,199 --> 00:01:05,378 And he's so good at it, that when he was in prison, 27 00:01:05,378 --> 00:01:06,754 everybody in prison, the governor and whatever, 28 00:01:06,754 --> 00:01:09,601 wanted him to paint masterpieces to put on the walls, 29 00:01:09,601 --> 00:01:10,893 because they were so good. 30 00:01:10,893 --> 00:01:12,277 And so that's a masterpiece, 31 00:01:12,277 --> 00:01:14,276 which is a fake of a masterpiece, 32 00:01:14,276 --> 00:01:20,939 and bonded into the canvas is a chip which identifies that as a real fake, 33 00:01:20,939 --> 00:01:22,471 if you see what I mean. 34 00:01:22,471 --> 00:01:23,663 (Laughter) 35 00:01:23,663 --> 00:01:25,906 So when we're talking about authenticity, 36 00:01:25,906 --> 00:01:31,368 it's a little more fractal than it appears and that's a good example to show it. 37 00:01:31,368 --> 00:01:35,349 I tried to pick four problems that will frame the issue properly. 38 00:01:35,349 --> 00:01:36,728 So the first problem, I thought, 39 00:01:36,728 --> 00:01:38,449 Chip and PIN, right? 40 00:01:38,449 --> 00:01:39,963 [Banks and legacies bringing down the system from within] 41 00:01:39,963 --> 00:01:40,835 [Offline solutions do not work online] 42 00:01:40,835 --> 00:01:43,451 I'm guessing everyone's got a chip and PIN card, right? 43 00:01:43,451 --> 00:01:45,217 So why is that a good example? 44 00:01:45,217 --> 00:01:48,692 That's the example of how legacy thinking about identity 45 00:01:48,692 --> 00:01:51,610 subverts the security of a well-constructed system. 46 00:01:51,610 --> 00:01:54,401 That chip and PIN card that's in your pocket 47 00:01:54,401 --> 00:01:57,643 has a little chip on it that cost millions of pounds to develop, 48 00:01:57,643 --> 00:01:59,220 is extremely secure, 49 00:01:59,220 --> 00:02:01,385 you can put scanning electron microscopes on it, 50 00:02:01,385 --> 00:02:03,561 you can try and grind it down, blah blah blah. 51 00:02:03,561 --> 00:02:07,148 Those chips have never been broken, whatever you read in the paper. 52 00:02:07,148 --> 00:02:10,382 And for a joke, we take that super-secure chip 53 00:02:10,382 --> 00:02:13,896 and we bond it to a trivially counterfeitable magnetic stripe 54 00:02:13,896 --> 00:02:17,518 and for very lazy criminals, we still emboss the card. 55 00:02:17,518 --> 00:02:21,025 So if you're a criminal in a hurry and you need to copy someone's card, 56 00:02:21,025 --> 00:02:23,226 you can just stick a piece of paper on it and rub a pencil over it 57 00:02:23,226 --> 00:02:25,109 just to sort of speed things up. 58 00:02:25,109 --> 00:02:28,205 And even more amusingly, and on my debit card too, 59 00:02:28,205 --> 00:02:30,596 we print the name and the SALT code and everything else on the front too. 60 00:02:30,596 --> 00:02:33,935 Why? 61 00:02:33,935 --> 00:02:38,044 There is no earthly reason why your name is printed on a chip and PIN card. 62 00:02:38,044 --> 00:02:39,679 And if you think about it, 63 00:02:39,679 --> 00:02:42,797 it's even more insidious and perverse than it seems at first. 64 00:02:42,797 --> 00:02:44,611 Because the only people that benefit 65 00:02:44,611 --> 00:02:47,185 from having the name on the card are criminals. 66 00:02:47,185 --> 00:02:48,826 You know what your name is, right? 67 00:02:48,826 --> 00:02:49,727 (Laughter) 68 00:02:49,727 --> 00:02:51,979 And when you go into a shop and buy something, 69 00:02:51,979 --> 00:02:54,939 it's a PIN, he doesn't care what the name is. 70 00:02:54,939 --> 00:02:57,598 The only place where you ever have to write your name on the back 71 00:02:57,598 --> 00:02:58,768 is in America at the moment. 72 00:02:58,768 --> 00:02:59,979 And whenever I go to America, 73 00:02:59,979 --> 00:03:01,779 and I have to pay with a mag stripe on the back of the card, 74 00:03:01,779 --> 00:03:03,581 I always sign it Carlos Tethers anyway, 75 00:03:03,581 --> 00:03:05,469 just as a security mechanism, 76 00:03:05,469 --> 00:03:07,707 because if a transaction ever gets disputed, 77 00:03:07,707 --> 00:03:09,627 and it comes back and it says Dave Birch, 78 00:03:09,627 --> 00:03:10,798 I know it must have been a criminal, 79 00:03:10,798 --> 00:03:14,258 because I would never sign it Dave Birch. 80 00:03:14,258 --> 00:03:15,948 (Laughter) 81 00:03:15,948 --> 00:03:17,739 So if you drop your card in the street, 82 00:03:17,739 --> 00:03:19,511 it means a criminal can pick it up and read it. 83 00:03:19,511 --> 00:03:20,216 They know the name, 84 00:03:20,216 --> 00:03:21,801 from the name they can find the address, 85 00:03:21,801 --> 00:03:24,216 and then they can go off and buy stuff online. 86 00:03:24,216 --> 00:03:26,772 Why do we put the name on the card? 87 00:03:26,772 --> 00:03:30,491 Because we think identity is something to do with names, 88 00:03:30,491 --> 00:03:34,186 and because we're rooted in the idea of the identity card, 89 00:03:34,186 --> 00:03:35,302 which obsesses us. 90 00:03:35,302 --> 00:03:37,856 And I know it crashed and burned a couple of years ago, 91 00:03:37,856 --> 00:03:42,453 but if you're someone in politics or the home office or whatever, 92 00:03:42,453 --> 00:03:43,671 and you think about identity, 93 00:03:43,671 --> 00:03:46,809 you can only think of identity in terms of cards with names on them. 94 00:03:46,809 --> 00:03:50,219 And that's very subversive in a modern world. 95 00:03:50,219 --> 00:03:52,475 So the second example I thought I'd use 96 00:03:52,475 --> 00:03:54,541 is chatrooms. 97 00:03:54,541 --> 00:03:55,345 [Chatrooms and Children] 98 00:03:55,345 --> 00:03:57,535 I'm very proud of that picture, that's my son 99 00:03:57,535 --> 00:04:01,611 playing in his band with his friends for the first-ever gig, 100 00:04:01,611 --> 00:04:03,580 I believe you call it, where he got paid. 101 00:04:03,580 --> 00:04:04,367 (Laughter) 102 00:04:04,367 --> 00:04:06,245 And I love that picture. 103 00:04:06,245 --> 00:04:09,011 I like the picture of him getting into medical school a lot better, 104 00:04:09,011 --> 00:04:09,711 (Laughter) 105 00:04:09,711 --> 00:04:11,824 I like that picture for the moment. 106 00:04:11,824 --> 00:04:12,799 Why do I use that picture? 107 00:04:12,799 --> 00:04:17,888 Because that was very interesting, watching that experience as an old person. 108 00:04:17,888 --> 00:04:19,331 So him and his friends, 109 00:04:19,331 --> 00:04:22,209 they get together, they booked a room, like a church hall, 110 00:04:22,209 --> 00:04:24,059 and they got all their friends who had bands, 111 00:04:24,059 --> 00:04:25,340 and they got them together, 112 00:04:25,340 --> 00:04:26,777 and they do it all on Facebook, 113 00:04:26,777 --> 00:04:30,668 and then they sell tickets, and the first band on the - 114 00:04:30,668 --> 00:04:31,553 I was going to say "menu," 115 00:04:31,553 --> 00:04:33,312 that's probably the wrong word for it, isn't it? 116 00:04:33,312 --> 00:04:35,793 The first band on the list of bands 117 00:04:35,793 --> 00:04:40,350 that appears at some public music performance of some kind 118 00:04:40,350 --> 00:04:42,519 gets the sales from the first 20 tickets, 119 00:04:42,519 --> 00:04:44,339 then the next band gets the next 20, 120 00:04:44,339 --> 00:04:45,325 and so on. 121 00:04:45,325 --> 00:04:46,661 They were at the bottom of the menu, 122 00:04:46,661 --> 00:04:48,779 they were like fifth, I thought they had no chance. 123 00:04:48,779 --> 00:04:51,041 He actually got 20 quid. Fantastic, right? 124 00:04:51,041 --> 00:04:53,138 But my point is, that all worked perfectly, 125 00:04:53,138 --> 00:04:55,919 except on the web. 126 00:04:55,919 --> 00:04:58,112 So they're sitting on Facebook, 127 00:04:58,112 --> 00:05:00,978 and they're sending these messages and arranging things 128 00:05:00,978 --> 00:05:03,297 and they don't know who anybody is, right? 129 00:05:03,297 --> 00:05:04,928 That's the big problem we're trying to solve. 130 00:05:04,928 --> 00:05:06,895 If only they were using the real names, 131 00:05:06,895 --> 00:05:09,096 Then you wouldn't be worried about them on the internet. 132 00:05:09,096 --> 00:05:10,341 And so when he says to me, 133 00:05:10,341 --> 00:05:15,197 "oh, I want to go to a chatroom to talk about guitars" or something, 134 00:05:15,197 --> 00:05:18,446 I'm like, "oh, well, I don't want you to go into a chatroom 135 00:05:18,446 --> 00:05:21,804 to talk about guitars, because they might not all be your friends, 136 00:05:21,804 --> 00:05:23,757 and some of the people that are in the chatroom 137 00:05:23,757 --> 00:05:27,624 might be perverts and teachers and vicars." 138 00:05:27,624 --> 00:05:29,449 (Laughter) 139 00:05:29,449 --> 00:05:32,071 I mean, they generally are, when you look in the paper, right? 140 00:05:32,071 --> 00:05:35,434 So I want to know who all the people in the chatroom are. 141 00:05:35,434 --> 00:05:36,987 So okay, you can go in the chatroom, 142 00:05:36,987 --> 00:05:39,435 but only if everybody in the chatroom is using their real names, 143 00:05:39,435 --> 00:05:44,562 and they submit full copies of their police report. 144 00:05:44,562 --> 00:05:47,498 But of course, if anybody in the chatroom asked for his real name, 145 00:05:47,498 --> 00:05:49,924 I'd say no. You can't give them your real name. 146 00:05:49,924 --> 00:05:52,624 Because what happens if they turn out to be perverts, 147 00:05:52,624 --> 00:05:55,297 and teachers and whatever. 148 00:05:55,297 --> 00:05:56,708 So you have this odd sort of paradox 149 00:05:56,708 --> 00:05:59,039 where I'm happy for him to go into this space 150 00:05:59,039 --> 00:06:01,309 if I know who everybody else is, 151 00:06:01,309 --> 00:06:03,672 but I don't want anybody else to know who he is. 152 00:06:03,672 --> 00:06:05,848 And so you get this sort of logjam around identity 153 00:06:05,848 --> 00:06:07,484 where you want full disclosure from everybody else, 154 00:06:07,484 --> 00:06:08,779 but not from yourself. 155 00:06:08,779 --> 00:06:10,786 And there's no progress, we get stuck. 156 00:06:10,786 --> 00:06:12,669 And so the chatroom thing doesn't work properly, 157 00:06:12,669 --> 00:06:17,461 and it's a very bad way of thinking about identity. 158 00:06:17,461 --> 00:06:20,396 So on my RSS feed, I saw this thing about - 159 00:06:20,396 --> 00:06:22,964 I just said something bad about my RSS feed, didn't I? 160 00:06:22,964 --> 00:06:24,747 I should stop saying it like that. 161 00:06:24,747 --> 00:06:26,280 For some random reason, I can't imagine, 162 00:06:26,280 --> 00:06:28,436 something about cheerleaders turned up in my inbox. 163 00:06:28,436 --> 00:06:30,134 And I read this story about cheerleaders, 164 00:06:30,134 --> 00:06:31,862 and it's a fascinating story. 165 00:06:31,862 --> 00:06:33,800 This happened a couple of years ago in the U.S. 166 00:06:33,800 --> 00:06:36,802 There were some cheerleaders in a team at a high school 167 00:06:36,802 --> 00:06:39,685 in the U.S., and they said mean things 168 00:06:39,685 --> 00:06:40,871 about their cheerleading coach, 169 00:06:40,871 --> 00:06:43,082 as I'm sure kids do about all of their teachers 170 00:06:43,082 --> 00:06:44,409 all of the time, 171 00:06:44,409 --> 00:06:46,489 and somehow the cheerleading coach found out about this. 172 00:06:46,489 --> 00:06:47,953 She was very upset. 173 00:06:47,953 --> 00:06:50,120 And so she went to one of the girls, and said, 174 00:06:50,120 --> 00:06:52,132 "you have to give me your Facebook password." 175 00:06:52,132 --> 00:06:55,929 I read this all the time, where even at some universities 176 00:06:55,929 --> 00:06:56,829 and places of education, 177 00:06:56,829 --> 00:06:58,558 kids are forced to hand over their Facebook passwords. 178 00:06:58,558 --> 00:07:01,313 So you've got to give them your Facebook password. 179 00:07:01,313 --> 00:07:02,186 She was a kid! 180 00:07:02,186 --> 00:07:03,372 What she should have said 181 00:07:03,372 --> 00:07:04,602 is, "my lawyer will be calling you 182 00:07:04,602 --> 00:07:05,392 first thing in the morning. 183 00:07:05,392 --> 00:07:07,513 It's an outrageous imposition 184 00:07:07,513 --> 00:07:09,372 on my 4th Amendment right to privacy, 185 00:07:09,372 --> 00:07:10,157 and you're going to be sued 186 00:07:10,157 --> 00:07:10,752 for all the money you've got." 187 00:07:10,752 --> 00:07:11,808 That's what she should have said. 188 00:07:11,808 --> 00:07:12,787 But she's a kid, 189 00:07:12,787 --> 00:07:14,606 so she hands over the password. 190 00:07:14,606 --> 00:07:16,656 The teacher can't log into Facebook, 191 00:07:16,656 --> 00:07:19,828 because the school has blocked access to Facebook. 192 00:07:19,828 --> 00:07:21,741 So the teacher can't log into Facebook until she gets home. 193 00:07:21,741 --> 00:07:23,439 So the girl tells her friends, 194 00:07:23,439 --> 00:07:24,000 guess what happened? 195 00:07:24,000 --> 00:07:25,321 The teacher logged in, she knows. 196 00:07:25,321 --> 00:07:27,162 So the girls just all logged into Facebook on their phones, 197 00:07:27,162 --> 00:07:29,304 and deleted their profiles. 198 00:07:29,304 --> 00:07:32,189 And so when the teacher logged in, there was nothing there. 199 00:07:32,189 --> 00:07:37,841 My point is, those identities, they don't think about them the same way. 200 00:07:37,841 --> 00:07:41,570 Identity is, especially when you're a teenager, a fluid thing. 201 00:07:41,570 --> 00:07:43,175 You have lots of identities. 202 00:07:43,175 --> 00:07:45,425 And you can have an identity, you don't like it, 203 00:07:45,425 --> 00:07:48,407 because it's subverted in some way, or it's insecure, or it's inappropriate, 204 00:07:48,407 --> 00:07:51,103 you just delete it and get another one. 205 00:07:51,103 --> 00:07:54,427 The idea that you have an identity that's given to you by someone, 206 00:07:54,427 --> 00:07:55,246 the government or whatever, 207 00:07:55,246 --> 00:07:57,365 and you have to stick with that identity and use it in all places, 208 00:07:57,365 --> 00:07:59,073 that's absolutely wrong. 209 00:07:59,073 --> 00:08:02,105 Why would you want to really know who someone was on Facebook, 210 00:08:02,105 --> 00:08:04,695 unless you wanted to abuse them and harass them in some way? 211 00:08:04,695 --> 00:08:07,618 And it just doesn't work properly. 212 00:08:07,618 --> 00:08:09,832 And my fourth example is there are some cases 213 00:08:09,832 --> 00:08:12,265 where you really want to be - 214 00:08:12,265 --> 00:08:15,835 In case you're wondering, that's me at the G20 protest. 215 00:08:15,835 --> 00:08:19,511 I wasn't actually at the G20 protest, but I had a meeting at a bank 216 00:08:19,511 --> 00:08:22,944 on the day of the G20 protest, and I got an email from the bank 217 00:08:22,944 --> 00:08:27,505 saying please don't wear a suit, because it'll inflame the protestors. 218 00:08:27,505 --> 00:08:29,279 I look pretty good in a suit, frankly, 219 00:08:29,279 --> 00:08:30,969 so you can see why it would drive them 220 00:08:30,969 --> 00:08:32,304 into an anti-capitalist frenzy. 221 00:08:32,304 --> 00:08:33,005 (Laughter) 222 00:08:33,005 --> 00:08:33,934 So I thought, well, look. 223 00:08:33,934 --> 00:08:37,103 If I don't want to inflame the protestors, 224 00:08:37,103 --> 00:08:38,019 the obvious thing to do 225 00:08:38,019 --> 00:08:39,345 is go dressed as a protestor. 226 00:08:39,345 --> 00:08:41,442 So I went dressed completely in black, 227 00:08:41,442 --> 00:08:43,326 you know, with a black balaclava, 228 00:08:43,326 --> 00:08:44,160 I had black gloves on, 229 00:08:44,160 --> 00:08:45,797 but I've taken them off to sign the visitor's book. 230 00:08:45,797 --> 00:08:46,369 (Laughter) 231 00:08:46,369 --> 00:08:48,552 I'm wearing black trousers, black boots, 232 00:08:48,552 --> 00:08:49,958 I'm dressed completely in black. 233 00:08:49,958 --> 00:08:51,132 I go into the bank at 10 o'clock, 234 00:08:51,132 --> 00:08:52,097 go, "Hi, I'm Dave Birch, 235 00:08:52,097 --> 00:08:53,373 I've got a 3 o'clock with so and so there." 236 00:08:53,373 --> 00:08:54,814 Sure. They sign me in. 237 00:08:54,814 --> 00:08:57,585 There's my visitor's badge. 238 00:08:57,585 --> 00:08:58,476 (Laughter) 239 00:08:58,476 --> 00:08:59,794 So this nonsense 240 00:08:59,794 --> 00:09:01,848 about you've got to have real names on Facebook and whatever, 241 00:09:01,848 --> 00:09:04,083 that gets you that kind of security. 242 00:09:04,083 --> 00:09:08,602 That gets you security theater, where there's no actual security, 243 00:09:08,602 --> 00:09:11,940 but people are sort of playing parts in a play about security. 244 00:09:11,940 --> 00:09:13,065 And as long as everybody learns their lines, 245 00:09:13,065 --> 00:09:14,601 everyone's happy. 246 00:09:14,601 --> 00:09:17,465 But it's not real security. 247 00:09:17,465 --> 00:09:20,707 Especially because I hate banks more than the G20 protestors do, 248 00:09:20,707 --> 00:09:21,892 because I work for them. 249 00:09:21,892 --> 00:09:24,719 I know that things are actually worse than these guys think. 250 00:09:24,719 --> 00:09:26,492 (Laughter) 251 00:09:28,082 --> 00:09:33,176 But suppose I worked next to somebody in a bank 252 00:09:33,176 --> 00:09:36,184 who was doing something. 253 00:09:42,954 --> 00:09:45,144 Suppose I was sitting next to a rogue trader, 254 00:09:45,144 --> 00:09:47,447 and I want to report it to the boss of the bank. 255 00:09:47,447 --> 00:09:48,863 So I log on to do a little bit of whistleblowing. 256 00:09:48,863 --> 00:09:51,328 I send a message, this guy's a rogue trader. 257 00:09:51,328 --> 00:09:53,126 That message is meaningless 258 00:09:53,126 --> 00:09:56,074 if you don't know that I'm a trader at the bank. 259 00:09:56,074 --> 00:09:57,754 If that message just comes from anybody, 260 00:09:57,754 --> 00:10:00,660 it has zero information value. 261 00:10:00,660 --> 00:10:03,129 There's no point in sending that message. 262 00:10:04,673 --> 00:10:07,440 But if I have to prove who I am, 263 00:10:07,440 --> 00:10:08,641 I'll never send that message. 264 00:10:08,641 --> 00:10:12,698 It's just like the nurse in the hospital reporting the drunk surgeon. 265 00:10:12,698 --> 00:10:15,619 That message will only happen if I'm anonymous. 266 00:10:15,619 --> 00:10:20,410 So the system has to have ways of providing anonymity there, 267 00:10:20,410 --> 00:10:22,061 otherwise we don't get where we want to get to. 268 00:10:22,061 --> 00:10:25,343 So four issues. So what are we going to do about it? 269 00:10:25,343 --> 00:10:30,030 Well, what we tend to do about it 270 00:10:30,030 --> 00:10:32,418 is we think about Orwell space. 271 00:10:32,418 --> 00:10:35,564 And we try to make electronic versions 272 00:10:35,564 --> 00:10:37,871 of the identity card that we got rid of in 1953. 273 00:10:37,871 --> 00:10:40,628 So we think if we had a card, 274 00:10:40,628 --> 00:10:41,967 call it a Facebook login, 275 00:10:41,967 --> 00:10:43,264 which proves who you are, 276 00:10:43,264 --> 00:10:45,155 and I make you carry it all the time, 277 00:10:45,155 --> 00:10:45,973 that solves the problem. 278 00:10:45,973 --> 00:10:48,131 And of course, for all those reasons I've just outlined, 279 00:10:48,131 --> 00:10:49,123 it doesn't, and it might, actually, 280 00:10:49,123 --> 00:10:50,195 make some problems worse. 281 00:10:50,195 --> 00:10:53,018 The more times you're forced to use your real identity, 282 00:10:53,018 --> 00:10:55,258 certainly in transactional terms, 283 00:10:55,258 --> 00:10:57,878 the more likely that identity is to get stolen and subverted. 284 00:10:57,878 --> 00:11:00,404 The goal is to stop people from using identity 285 00:11:00,404 --> 00:11:02,581 in transactions which don't need identity, 286 00:11:02,581 --> 00:11:05,090 which is actually almost all transactions. 287 00:11:05,090 --> 00:11:07,387 Almost all of the transactions you do 288 00:11:07,387 --> 00:11:09,075 are not, who are you? 289 00:11:09,075 --> 00:11:11,209 They're, are you allowed to drive the car, 290 00:11:11,209 --> 00:11:12,444 are you allowed in the building, 291 00:11:12,444 --> 00:11:13,301 are you over 18, 292 00:11:13,301 --> 00:11:15,729 etcetera, etcetera. 293 00:11:15,729 --> 00:11:17,560 So my suggestion- I, like James, 294 00:11:17,560 --> 00:11:20,721 think that there should be a resurgence of interest in R & D. 295 00:11:20,721 --> 00:11:21,506 I think this is a solvable problem. 296 00:11:21,506 --> 00:11:23,326 It's something we can do about. 297 00:11:23,326 --> 00:11:25,274 Naturally, in these circumstances, 298 00:11:25,274 --> 00:11:26,648 I turn to Doctor Who. 299 00:11:26,648 --> 00:11:28,784 Because in this, 300 00:11:28,784 --> 00:11:30,282 as in so many other walks of life, 301 00:11:30,282 --> 00:11:33,381 Doctor Who has already shown us the answer. 302 00:11:33,381 --> 00:11:34,195 So I should say, 303 00:11:34,195 --> 00:11:36,526 for some of our foreign visitors, 304 00:11:36,526 --> 00:11:40,380 Doctor Who is the greatest living scientist in England, 305 00:11:40,380 --> 00:11:41,957 (Laughter) 306 00:11:41,957 --> 00:11:44,757 and a beacon of truth and enlightenment to all of us. 307 00:11:44,757 --> 00:11:48,827 And this is Doctor Who with his psychic paper. 308 00:11:48,827 --> 00:11:50,997 Come on, you guys must have seen Doctor Who's psychic paper. 309 00:11:50,997 --> 00:11:52,997 You're not nerds if you say yes. 310 00:11:52,997 --> 00:11:55,133 Who's seen Doctor Who's psychic paper? 311 00:11:55,133 --> 00:11:57,563 Oh right, you were in the library the whole time studying I guess. 312 00:11:57,563 --> 00:11:59,633 Is that what you're going to tell us? 313 00:11:59,633 --> 00:12:00,895 Doctor Who's psychic paper 314 00:12:00,895 --> 00:12:03,015 is when you hold up the psychic paper, 315 00:12:03,015 --> 00:12:04,553 the person, in their brain, 316 00:12:04,553 --> 00:12:06,902 sees the thing that they need to see. 317 00:12:06,902 --> 00:12:09,261 So I want to show you a British passport, 318 00:12:09,261 --> 00:12:10,287 I hold up the psychic paper, 319 00:12:10,287 --> 00:12:11,767 you see a British passport. 320 00:12:11,767 --> 00:12:13,563 I want to get into a party, 321 00:12:13,563 --> 00:12:15,170 I hold up the psychic paper, 322 00:12:15,170 --> 00:12:16,534 I show you a party invitation. 323 00:12:16,534 --> 00:12:18,698 You see what you want to see. 324 00:12:18,698 --> 00:12:21,527 So what I'm saying is we need to make an electronic version of that, 325 00:12:21,527 --> 00:12:24,110 but with one tiny, tiny change, 326 00:12:24,110 --> 00:12:26,224 which is that it'll only show you the British passport 327 00:12:26,224 --> 00:12:27,922 if I've actually got one. 328 00:12:27,922 --> 00:12:29,141 It'll only show you the party invitation 329 00:12:29,141 --> 00:12:30,538 if I actually have one. 330 00:12:30,538 --> 00:12:33,455 It will only show you that I'm over 18 if I actually am over 18. 331 00:12:33,455 --> 00:12:35,886 But nothing else. 332 00:12:35,886 --> 00:12:40,661 So you're the bouncer at the pub, you need to know that I'm over 18, 333 00:12:40,661 --> 00:12:42,277 instead of showing you my driving license, 334 00:12:42,277 --> 00:12:44,526 which shows you I know how to drive, 335 00:12:44,526 --> 00:12:46,982 what my name is, my address, all these kind of things, 336 00:12:46,982 --> 00:12:48,701 I show you my psychic paper, 337 00:12:48,701 --> 00:12:51,867 and all it tells you is am I over 18 or not. 338 00:12:51,867 --> 00:12:53,303 Right. 339 00:12:53,303 --> 00:12:54,641 Is that just a pipe dream? 340 00:12:54,641 --> 00:12:56,334 Of course not, otherwise I wouldn't be here talking to you. 341 00:12:56,334 --> 00:12:59,418 So in order to build that and make it work, 342 00:12:59,418 --> 00:13:02,189 I'm only going to name these things, I'll not go into them, 343 00:13:02,189 --> 00:13:03,366 we need a plan, 344 00:13:03,366 --> 00:13:04,615 which is we're going to build this 345 00:13:04,615 --> 00:13:06,611 as an infrastructure for everybody to use, 346 00:13:06,611 --> 00:13:08,493 to solve all of these problems. 347 00:13:08,493 --> 00:13:10,541 We're going to make a utility, 348 00:13:10,541 --> 00:13:12,089 the utility has to be universal, 349 00:13:12,089 --> 00:13:12,972 you can use it everywhere, 350 00:13:12,972 --> 00:13:15,613 I'm just giving you little flashes of the technology as we go along. 351 00:13:15,613 --> 00:13:17,570 That's a Japanese ATM, 352 00:13:17,570 --> 00:13:20,678 the fingerprint template is stored inside the mobile phone. 353 00:13:20,678 --> 00:13:21,665 So when you want to draw money out, 354 00:13:21,665 --> 00:13:23,162 you put the mobile phone on the ATM, 355 00:13:23,162 --> 00:13:24,427 and touch your finger, 356 00:13:24,427 --> 00:13:26,327 your fingerprint goes through to the phone, 357 00:13:26,327 --> 00:13:27,947 the phone says yes, that's whoever, 358 00:13:27,947 --> 00:13:30,394 and the ATM then gives you some money. 359 00:13:30,394 --> 00:13:33,431 It has to be a utility that you can use everywhere. 360 00:13:33,431 --> 00:13:35,217 It has to be absolutely convenient, 361 00:13:35,217 --> 00:13:38,384 that's me going into the pub. 362 00:13:38,384 --> 00:13:41,177 All the device on the door of the pub is allowed is, 363 00:13:41,177 --> 00:13:44,850 is this person over 18 and not barred from the pub? 364 00:13:44,850 --> 00:13:48,180 And so the idea is, you touch your ID card to the door, 365 00:13:48,180 --> 00:13:50,139 and if I am allowed in, it shows my picture, 366 00:13:50,139 --> 00:13:51,600 if I'm not allowed in, it shows a red cross. 367 00:13:51,600 --> 00:13:53,215 It doesn't disclose any other information. 368 00:13:53,215 --> 00:13:55,127 It has to have no special gadgets. 369 00:13:55,127 --> 00:13:56,762 That can only mean one thing, 370 00:13:56,762 --> 00:13:58,347 following on from Ross's statement, 371 00:13:58,347 --> 00:13:59,931 which I agree with completely. 372 00:13:59,931 --> 00:14:01,043 If it means no special gadgets, 373 00:14:01,043 --> 00:14:02,417 it has to run on a mobile phone. 374 00:14:02,417 --> 00:14:03,520 That's the only choice we have, 375 00:14:03,520 --> 00:14:05,399 we have to make it work on mobile phones. 376 00:14:05,399 --> 00:14:06,333 There are 6.6 billion 377 00:14:06,333 --> 00:14:07,257 mobile phone subscriptions. 378 00:14:07,257 --> 00:14:09,293 My favorite statistic of all time, 379 00:14:09,293 --> 00:14:11,212 only 4 billion toothbrushes in the world. 380 00:14:11,212 --> 00:14:12,329 That means something, 381 00:14:12,329 --> 00:14:13,586 I don't know what. 382 00:14:13,586 --> 00:14:13,964 (Laughter) 383 00:14:13,964 --> 00:14:17,427 I rely on our futurologists to tell me. 384 00:14:17,427 --> 00:14:19,137 It has to be a utility which is extensible. 385 00:14:19,137 --> 00:14:20,422 So it has to be something 386 00:14:20,422 --> 00:14:22,012 that anybody could build on. 387 00:14:22,012 --> 00:14:23,900 Anybody should be able to use this infrastructure, 388 00:14:23,900 --> 00:14:26,354 you don't need permissions, licenses, whatever, 389 00:14:26,354 --> 00:14:29,521 anyone should be able to write some code to do this. 390 00:14:31,386 --> 00:14:32,651 You know what symmetry is, 391 00:14:32,651 --> 00:14:34,998 so you don't need a picture of it. 392 00:14:34,998 --> 00:14:36,162 This is how we're going to do it. 393 00:14:36,162 --> 00:14:37,196 We're going to do it using phones, 394 00:14:37,196 --> 00:14:37,822 and we're going to do it 395 00:14:37,822 --> 00:14:38,978 using mobile proximity. 396 00:14:38,978 --> 00:14:40,114 I'm going to suggest to you 397 00:14:40,114 --> 00:14:41,450 the technology to implement 398 00:14:41,450 --> 00:14:42,736 Doctor Who's psychic paper 399 00:14:42,736 --> 00:14:44,283 is already here, and if any of you 400 00:14:44,283 --> 00:14:46,859 have got one of the new Barclay's debit cards 401 00:14:46,859 --> 00:14:48,088 with the contactless interface on it, 402 00:14:48,088 --> 00:14:49,378 you've already got that technology. 403 00:14:49,378 --> 00:14:51,703 If you've ever been up to the big city, 404 00:14:51,703 --> 00:14:53,175 and used an Oyster card at all, 405 00:14:53,175 --> 00:14:55,299 does that ring any bells to anybody? 406 00:14:55,299 --> 00:14:56,045 The technology already exists. 407 00:14:56,045 --> 00:14:57,435 The first phones 408 00:14:57,435 --> 00:14:58,065 that have the technology built in, 409 00:14:58,065 --> 00:15:00,364 the Google Nexus, the S2, 410 00:15:00,364 --> 00:15:01,073 the Samsung Wifi 7.9, 411 00:15:01,073 --> 00:15:02,565 the first phones that have 412 00:15:02,565 --> 00:15:03,657 the technology built into them 413 00:15:03,657 --> 00:15:04,491 are already in the shops. 414 00:15:04,491 --> 00:15:06,203 So the idea that the gas man 415 00:15:06,203 --> 00:15:08,395 can turn up at my mom's door 416 00:15:08,395 --> 00:15:10,597 and he can show my mom his phone, 417 00:15:10,597 --> 00:15:11,932 and she can tap it with her phone, 418 00:15:11,932 --> 00:15:14,239 and it will come up with green if he really is from British Gas 419 00:15:14,239 --> 00:15:15,451 and allowed in, 420 00:15:15,451 --> 00:15:17,121 and it'll come up with red if he isn't, 421 00:15:17,121 --> 00:15:17,731 end of story. 422 00:15:17,731 --> 00:15:19,581 We have the technology to do that. 423 00:15:19,581 --> 00:15:20,816 And what's more, 424 00:15:20,816 --> 00:15:22,961 although some of those things sounded a bit counter-intuitive, 425 00:15:22,961 --> 00:15:25,749 like proving I'm over 18 without proving who I am, 426 00:15:25,749 --> 00:15:27,974 the cryptography to do that not only exists, 427 00:15:27,974 --> 00:15:30,203 it's extremely well-known and well-understood. 428 00:15:30,203 --> 00:15:32,858 Digital signatures, the blinding of public key certificates, 429 00:15:32,858 --> 00:15:34,602 these technologies have been around for a while, 430 00:15:34,602 --> 00:15:36,461 we've just had no way of packaging them up. 431 00:15:36,461 --> 00:15:39,391 So the technology already exists. 432 00:15:39,391 --> 00:15:43,079 We know it works, 433 00:15:43,079 --> 00:15:44,827 There are a few examples of the technology being used 434 00:15:44,827 --> 00:15:46,497 in experimental places. 435 00:15:46,497 --> 00:15:47,825 That's London Fashion Week, 436 00:15:47,825 --> 00:15:49,699 where we built a system with O2, 437 00:15:49,699 --> 00:15:52,466 that's for the Wireless Festival in Hyde Park, 438 00:15:52,466 --> 00:15:53,589 you can see the persons 439 00:15:53,589 --> 00:15:55,350 walking in with their VIP band, 440 00:15:55,350 --> 00:15:55,834 it's just being checked 441 00:15:55,834 --> 00:15:56,934 by the Nokia phone that's reading the band. 442 00:15:56,934 --> 00:15:58,632 I'm only putting those up to show you 443 00:15:58,632 --> 00:15:59,861 these things are prosaic, 444 00:15:59,861 --> 00:16:01,590 this stuff works in these environments. 445 00:16:01,590 --> 00:16:02,961 They don't need to be special. 446 00:16:02,961 --> 00:16:09,009 So finally, I know that you can do this, 447 00:16:09,999 --> 00:16:12,903 because if you saw the episode of Doctor Who, 448 00:16:12,903 --> 00:16:14,803 the Easter special of Doctor Who, 449 00:16:14,803 --> 00:16:18,179 where he went to Mars in a bus, 450 00:16:18,179 --> 00:16:19,741 I should say again for our foreign students, 451 00:16:19,741 --> 00:16:21,414 that doesn't happen every episode. 452 00:16:21,414 --> 00:16:22,885 This was a very special case. 453 00:16:22,885 --> 00:16:26,126 So in the episode where he goes to Mars in a London bus, 454 00:16:26,126 --> 00:16:27,799 I can't show you the clip, 455 00:16:27,799 --> 00:16:30,578 due to the outrageous restrictions of Queen Anne-style copyright 456 00:16:30,578 --> 00:16:32,716 by the BBC, 457 00:16:32,716 --> 00:16:35,333 but in the episode where he goes to Mars in a London bus, 458 00:16:35,333 --> 00:16:39,589 Doctor Who is clearly shown getting on to the bus 459 00:16:39,589 --> 00:16:40,889 with the Oyster card reader 460 00:16:40,889 --> 00:16:42,457 using his psychic paper. 461 00:16:42,457 --> 00:16:44,549 Which proves that psychic paper 462 00:16:44,549 --> 00:16:46,264 has an MSE interface. 463 00:16:46,264 --> 00:16:48,274 Thank you very much.