WEBVTT

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So I thought I'd talk about identity.

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That's sort of an interesting
enough topic to me.

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And the reason was,
because when I was asked to do this,

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I'd just read in one of the papers,
I can't remember,

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something from someone at Facebook saying,

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"Well, we need to make everybody
use their real names,

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and then that's basically
all the problems solved."

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And that's so wrong,

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that's such a fundamentally
reactionary view of identity,

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and it's going to get us
into all sorts of trouble.

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And so what I thought I'd do is,

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I'll explain four sort of
problems about it,

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and then I'll suggest a solution,

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which, hopefully,
you might find interesting.

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So just to frame the problem:

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What does "authenticity" mean?

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That's me,

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that's a camera phone picture
of me looking at a painting.

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[What's the Problem?]

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That's a painting that was painted
by a very famous forger,

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and because I'm not very good
at presentations,

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I already can't remember the name
that I wrote on my card.

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

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for forging masterpieces by,
I think, French Impressionists.

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

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everybody in prison,
the governor and whatever,

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wanted him to paint masterpieces
to put on the walls

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because they were so good.

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And so that's a masterpiece,
which is a fake of a masterpiece,

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

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if you see what I mean.

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(Laughter)

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So when we're talking about authenticity,

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it's a little more fractal
than it appears,

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and that's a good example to show it.

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

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So the first problem, I thought,
chip and PIN, right?

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[Banks and legacies
bringing down the system from within]

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[Offline solutions do not work online]

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Everyone's got a chip and PIN card, right?

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So why is that a good example?

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That's the example
of how legacy thinking about identity

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subverts the security
of a well-constructed system.

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That chip-and-PIN card
that's in your pocket

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has a little chip on it
that cost millions of pounds to develop,

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is extremely secure,

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you can put scanning
electron microscopes on it,

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you can try and grind it down,
blah blah blah.

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Those chips have never been broken,
whatever you read in the paper.

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And for a joke,
we take that supersecure chip,

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and we bond it to a trivially
counterfeitable magnetic stripe.

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And for very lazy criminals,
we still emboss the card.

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So if you're a criminal in a hurry
and you need to copy someone's card,

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

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just to speed things up.

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And even more amusingly,
and on my debit card, too,

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we print the name and the sort code
and everything else on the front.

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Why?

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There is no earthly reason why your name
is printed on a chip-and-PIN card.

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And if you think about it,

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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
from having the name on the card

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are criminals.

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You know what your name is, right?

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(Laughter)

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And when you go into a shop
and buy something,

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

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The only place you ever have to write
your name on the back

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is in America.

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Whenever I go to America,

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and I have to pay with a magstripe
on the back of the card,

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

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because if a transaction
ever gets disputed,

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and it comes back
and it says "Dave Birch,"

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I know it must have been a criminal,

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because I would never
sign it "Dave Birch."

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(Laughter)

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So if you drop your card in the street,

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

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

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and then they can go off
and buy stuff online.

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Why do we put the name on the card?

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Because we think identity
is something to do with names,

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

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which obsesses us.

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And I know it crashed and burned
a couple of years ago,

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but if you're someone in politics
or the Home Office or whatever,

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and you think about identity,

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

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And that's very subversive
in a modern world.

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So the second example I thought I'd use

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is chat rooms.

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[Chatrooms and Children]

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I'm very proud of that picture.

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That's my son playing
in his band with his friends

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for the first-ever gig,
I believe you call it, where he got paid.

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(Laughter)

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And I love that picture.

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

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(Laughter)

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I like that one for the moment.

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Why do I use that picture?

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

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So him and his friends,

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

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and they got all their friends
who had bands, got them together,

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and they do it all on Facebook,

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

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I was going to say "menu," that's
probably the wrong word for it, isn't it?

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The first band on the list of bands

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that appears at some
public music performance of some kind

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gets the sales from the first 20 tickets,

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then the next band gets the next 20,

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and so on.

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They were at the bottom
of the menu, like, fifth,

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I thought they had no chance.

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He actually got 20 quid. Fantastic, right?

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But my point is,
that all worked perfectly,

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except on the web.

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So they're sitting on Facebook,

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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?

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

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If only they were using real names,

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

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So when he says to me,

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"Oh, I want to go to a chat room
to talk about guitars" or something,

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I'm like, "Oh, well,
I don't want you to go into a chat room

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to talk about guitars,

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because they might
not all be your friends,

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and some of the people
that are in the chat room

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might be, you know, perverts
and teachers and vicars --"

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(Laughter)

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

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"So I want to know who all the people
in the chat room are.

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So, OK, you can go in the chat room,

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

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and they submit full copies
of their police report."

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(Laughter)

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But of course, if anybody
in the chat room asked for his real name,

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I'd say, "No. You can't
give them your real name,

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because what happens
if they turn out to be perverts

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and teachers and whatever?"

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So you have this odd sort of paradox

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

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if I know who everybody else is,

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

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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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So the chat room thing
doesn't work properly,

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

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Cheerleading ... 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.

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For some random reason I can't imagine,

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something about cheerleaders
turned up in my in-box.

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And 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 US.

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There were some cheerleaders
in a team at a high school in the US,

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and they said mean things
about their cheerleading coach,

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

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where even at some universities
and places of education,

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kids are forced to hand over
their Facebook passwords.

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So you have to give them
your Facebook password.

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So the kid -- she was a kid!
What she should have said is,

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"My lawyer will be calling
you first thing in the morning.

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It's an outrageous imposition
on my Fourth Amendment right to privacy.

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You'll be sued
for all the money you've got!"

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That's what she should have said.

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

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The teacher can't log in,

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because the school
has blocked access to Facebook.

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

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So the girl tells her friends,

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"Guess what happened?
The teacher logged in. She knows."

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So the girls all logged into Facebook
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,
you experiment with them.

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And if you have an identity you don't
like because it's subverted in some way

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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,

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and you have to stick with that identity
and use it in all places

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is absolutely wrong.

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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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It just doesn't work properly.

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And my fourth example is,

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there are some cases
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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I wasn't actually at the G20 protest,

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but I had a meeting at a bank
on the day of the G20 protest.

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And I got an email from the bank, saying,

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"Please don't wear a suit,
because it'll inflame the protesters."

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I look pretty good in a suit, frankly,

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so you can see why it would drive them
into an anticapitalist frenzy.

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(Laughter)

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So I thought, "Well, if I don't
want to inflame the protesters,

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the obvious thing to do
is go dressed as a protester."

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So I went dressed completely in black,
you know, black balaclava ...

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I had black gloves on but took them off
to sign the visitors' book.

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(Laughter)

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I'm wearing black trousers and boots,
I'm dressed completely in black.

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I go into the bank at 10am
and go, "Hi, I'm Dave Birch,

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I've got a 3 o'clock with so-and-so."

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"Sure!" And they sign me in.
There's my visitor's badge.

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(Laughter)

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So this nonsense about "you've got to have
real names on Facebook" and whatever,

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that gets you that kind of security.

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That gets you "security theater,"

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where there's no actual security,

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but people are sort of playing parts
in a play about security,

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and as long as everybody
learns their lines,

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everyone's happy.

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But it's not real security, right?

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Especially because I hate banks
more than the G20 protesters do,

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because I work for them.

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I know that things are actually worse
than these guys think.

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(Laughter)

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But suppose I worked
next to somebody in a bank

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who was doing something --

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you know, they were like people who take
the money from banks and don't ...

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you know, they take the money ...

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Oh -- "traders."
That's the word I was thinking of.

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Suppose I was sitting
next to a rogue trader,

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and I want to report it
to the boss of the bank.

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So I log on to do a little whistleblowing.

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I send a message,
"This guy's a rogue trader."

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That message is meaningless

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if you don't know
that I'm a trader at the bank.

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If that message just comes from anybody,

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it has zero information value.

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There's no point in sending that message.

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You have to know that I'm ...

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But if I have to prove who I am,

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I'll never send that message.

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It's just like the nurse in the hospital
reporting the drunk surgeon.

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That message will only happen
if I'm anonymous.

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So the system has to have ways
of providing anonymity in it,

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otherwise, we don't get
where we want to get to.

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So, four issues.

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So what are we going to do about it?

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Well, what we tend to do about it

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is we think about Orwell space.

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And we try to make electronic versions
of the identity card

00:10:38.569 --> 00:10:40.141
that we got rid of in 1953.

00:10:40.165 --> 00:10:42.696
So we think if we had a card --

00:10:42.720 --> 00:10:44.134
call it a Facebook login --

00:10:44.158 --> 00:10:45.354
which proves who you are,

00:10:45.378 --> 00:10:47.159
and I make you carry it all the time,

00:10:47.183 --> 00:10:48.339
that solves the problem.

00:10:48.363 --> 00:10:51.593
And of course, for all those
reasons I've just outlined, it doesn't,

00:10:51.617 --> 00:10:53.443
and it might make some problems worse.

00:10:53.467 --> 00:10:56.069
The more times you're forced
to use your real identity,

00:10:56.093 --> 00:10:57.672
certainly in transactional terms,

00:10:57.696 --> 00:11:00.593
the more likely that identity
is to get stolen and subverted.

00:11:00.617 --> 00:11:02.770
The goal is to stop people
from using identity

00:11:02.794 --> 00:11:04.815
in transactions which don't need identity,

00:11:04.839 --> 00:11:07.097
which is actually almost all transactions.

00:11:07.121 --> 00:11:11.175
Almost all of the transactions you do
are not "Who are you?"

00:11:11.199 --> 00:11:13.269
They're "Are you allowed
to drive the car?"

00:11:13.293 --> 00:11:15.807
"Are you allowed in the building?"
"Are you over 18?"

00:11:15.831 --> 00:11:17.784
etcetera, etcetera.

00:11:17.808 --> 00:11:19.495
So my suggestion -- I, like James,

00:11:19.519 --> 00:11:22.540
think that there should be
a resurgence of interest in R and D.

NOTE Paragraph

00:11:22.564 --> 00:11:24.238
I think this is a solvable problem.

00:11:24.262 --> 00:11:25.746
It's something we can do about.

00:11:25.770 --> 00:11:28.799
Naturally, in these circumstances,
I turn to Doctor Who.

00:11:28.823 --> 00:11:29.976
Because in this --

NOTE Paragraph

00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:31.001
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:11:31.025 --> 00:11:32.690
as in so many other walks of life,

00:11:32.714 --> 00:11:35.413
Doctor Who has already
shown us the answer.

00:11:35.437 --> 00:11:38.610
So I should say,
for some of our foreign visitors:

00:11:38.634 --> 00:11:42.390
Doctor Who is the greatest
living scientist in England --

NOTE Paragraph

00:11:42.414 --> 00:11:44.079
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:11:44.103 --> 00:11:46.909
and a beacon of truth
and enlightenment to all of us.

00:11:46.933 --> 00:11:49.948
And this is Doctor Who
with his "psychic paper."

00:11:49.972 --> 00:11:52.919
Come on, you guys must have seen
Doctor Who's "psychic paper."

00:11:52.943 --> 00:11:54.886
You're not nerds if you say yes.

00:11:54.910 --> 00:11:57.196
Who's seen Doctor Who's psychic paper?

00:11:57.220 --> 00:12:00.429
Oh right, you were in the library
the whole time studying, I guess.

00:12:00.453 --> 00:12:02.234
Is that what you're going to tell us?

00:12:02.258 --> 00:12:03.702
Doctor Who's psychic paper is:

00:12:03.726 --> 00:12:05.393
when you hold up the psychic paper,

00:12:05.417 --> 00:12:06.764
the person, in their brain,

00:12:06.788 --> 00:12:08.915
sees the thing that they need to see.

00:12:08.939 --> 00:12:11.341
So I want to show you a British passport,

00:12:11.365 --> 00:12:12.717
I hold up the psychic paper,

00:12:12.741 --> 00:12:14.056
you see a British passport.

00:12:14.080 --> 00:12:15.707
I want to get into a party,

00:12:15.731 --> 00:12:17.115
I hold up the psychic paper,

00:12:17.139 --> 00:12:18.569
I show you a party invitation.

00:12:18.593 --> 00:12:20.526
You see what you want to see.

00:12:20.550 --> 00:12:23.840
So what I'm saying is, we need
to make an electronic version of that,

00:12:23.864 --> 00:12:26.070
but with one tiny, tiny change,

00:12:26.094 --> 00:12:28.667
which is that it'll only show you
the British passport

00:12:28.691 --> 00:12:29.884
if I've actually got one.

00:12:29.908 --> 00:12:32.911
It'll only show you the party invitation
if I actually have one.

00:12:32.935 --> 00:12:35.981
It will only show you that I'm over 18
if I actually am over 18.

00:12:36.005 --> 00:12:37.237
But nothing else.

00:12:37.998 --> 00:12:42.804
So you're the bouncer at the pub,
you need to know that I'm over 18.

00:12:42.828 --> 00:12:44.849
Instead of showing you my driving license,

00:12:44.873 --> 00:12:46.598
which shows you I know how to drive,

00:12:46.622 --> 00:12:49.392
what my name is, my address,
all these kind of things,

00:12:49.416 --> 00:12:50.905
I show you my psychic paper,

00:12:50.929 --> 00:12:53.362
and all it tells you is,
am I over 18 or not.

00:12:54.051 --> 00:12:55.395
Right.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:55.419 --> 00:12:56.893
Is that just a pipe dream?

00:12:56.917 --> 00:12:59.495
Of course not, otherwise
I wouldn't be here talking.

00:12:59.519 --> 00:13:01.575
So, in order to build that
and make it work,

00:13:01.599 --> 00:13:04.362
I'm only going to name these things,
I'll not go into them:

00:13:04.386 --> 00:13:05.825
we need a plan,

00:13:05.849 --> 00:13:08.484
which is, we're going to build
this as an infrastructure

00:13:08.508 --> 00:13:10.959
for everybody to use
to solve all of these problems.

00:13:10.983 --> 00:13:12.611
We're going to make a utility.

00:13:12.635 --> 00:13:15.412
The utility has to be universal,
you can use it everywhere.

00:13:15.436 --> 00:13:18.647
I'm just giving you little flashes
of the technology as we go along.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:18.671 --> 00:13:19.831
That's a Japanese ATM,

00:13:19.855 --> 00:13:22.633
the fingerprint template
is stored inside the mobile phone.

00:13:22.657 --> 00:13:24.363
So when you want to draw money out,

00:13:24.387 --> 00:13:26.793
you put the phone on the ATM
and touch your finger,

00:13:26.817 --> 00:13:28.828
your fingerprint
goes through to the phone,

00:13:28.852 --> 00:13:30.662
the phone says, "Yes, that's whoever,"

00:13:30.686 --> 00:13:32.508
and the ATM then gives you some money.

00:13:32.532 --> 00:13:35.543
It has to be a utility
that you can use everywhere.

00:13:35.567 --> 00:13:37.406
It has to be absolutely convenient.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:37.430 --> 00:13:40.574
That's me going into the pub.

00:13:40.598 --> 00:13:43.487
All the device on the door
of the pub is allowed is:

00:13:43.511 --> 00:13:47.161
Is this person over 18
and not barred from the pub?

00:13:47.185 --> 00:13:50.339
And so the idea is,
you touch your ID card to the door,

00:13:50.363 --> 00:13:52.377
and if I'm allowed in,
it shows my picture,

00:13:52.401 --> 00:13:53.974
if I'm not, it shows a red cross.

00:13:53.998 --> 00:13:56.001
It doesn't disclose any other information.

00:13:56.025 --> 00:13:57.648
It has to have no special gadgets.

00:13:57.672 --> 00:14:00.727
That can only mean one thing,
following on from Ross's statement,

00:14:00.751 --> 00:14:03.664
which I agree with completely:
if it means no special gadgets,

00:14:03.688 --> 00:14:05.214
it has to run on a mobile phone.

00:14:05.238 --> 00:14:08.287
That's the only choice we have,
to make it work on mobile phones.

00:14:08.311 --> 00:14:10.613
There are 6.6 billion
mobile phone subscriptions.

00:14:10.637 --> 00:14:14.231
My favorite statistic of all time:
only 4 billion toothbrushes in the world.

00:14:14.255 --> 00:14:16.160
That means something. I don't know what.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:16.184 --> 00:14:17.252
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:17.276 --> 00:14:19.476
I rely on our futurologists to tell me.

00:14:19.500 --> 00:14:21.581
It has to be a utility
which is extensible.

00:14:21.605 --> 00:14:24.138
So it has to be something
that anybody could build on.

00:14:24.162 --> 00:14:26.505
Anybody should be able
to use this infrastructure;

00:14:26.529 --> 00:14:28.783
you don't need permissions,
licenses, whatever.

00:14:28.807 --> 00:14:32.539
Anyone should be able
to write some code to do this.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:33.427 --> 00:14:36.656
Well, you know what symmetry is,
so you don't need a picture of it.

00:14:36.680 --> 00:14:38.262
This is how we're going to do it.

00:14:38.286 --> 00:14:40.872
We're going to do it using phones
and mobile proximity.

00:14:40.896 --> 00:14:42.361
I'm going to suggest to you

00:14:42.385 --> 00:14:45.857
the technology to implement Doctor Who's
psychic paper is already here,

00:14:45.881 --> 00:14:48.846
and if any of you have got
one of the new Barclay's debit cards

00:14:48.870 --> 00:14:50.641
with the contactless interface on it,

00:14:50.665 --> 00:14:52.865
you've already got that technology.

00:14:52.889 --> 00:14:55.825
Have you ever been up to the big city
and used an Oyster card?

00:14:55.849 --> 00:14:57.003
Does that ring a bell?

00:14:57.027 --> 00:14:58.465
The technology already exists.

00:14:58.489 --> 00:15:00.973
The first phones that have
the technology built in --

00:15:00.997 --> 00:15:03.550
the Google Nexus, the S II,
the [Samsung Wave 578] --

00:15:03.574 --> 00:15:07.503
the first phones that have the technology
built into them are already in the shops.

00:15:07.527 --> 00:15:10.421
So the idea that the gasman
can turn up at my mum's door,

00:15:10.445 --> 00:15:12.376
and he can show my mum his phone,

00:15:12.400 --> 00:15:14.110
and she can tap it with her phone,

00:15:14.134 --> 00:15:17.003
and it'll come up with green
if he really is from British Gas

00:15:17.027 --> 00:15:18.183
and allowed in,

00:15:18.207 --> 00:15:20.644
and will come up with red
if he isn't, end of story.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:20.668 --> 00:15:22.294
We have the technology to do that.

00:15:22.318 --> 00:15:23.471
And what's more,

00:15:23.495 --> 00:15:26.262
although some of those things
sound a bit counterintuitive,

00:15:26.286 --> 00:15:28.631
like proving I'm over 18
without proving who I am,

00:15:28.655 --> 00:15:30.711
the cryptography to do that
not only exists,

00:15:30.735 --> 00:15:32.889
it's extremely well-known
and well-understood.

00:15:32.913 --> 00:15:35.840
Digital signatures, the blinding
of public key certificates --

00:15:35.864 --> 00:15:38.118
these technologies
have been around for a while,

00:15:38.142 --> 00:15:40.152
we've just had no way
of packaging them up.

00:15:40.176 --> 00:15:41.760
So the technology already exists.

00:15:41.784 --> 00:15:45.084
We know it works.

00:15:45.108 --> 00:15:47.591
There are a few examples
of the technology being used

00:15:47.615 --> 00:15:48.850
in experimental places.

00:15:48.874 --> 00:15:50.179
That's London Fashion Week,

00:15:50.203 --> 00:15:52.054
where we built a system with O2.

00:15:52.078 --> 00:15:54.694
That's for the Wireless
Festival in Hyde Park.

00:15:54.718 --> 00:15:57.382
You can see the person's
walking in with their VIP band,

00:15:57.406 --> 00:16:00.321
it's being checked by the Nokia phone
that's reading the band.

00:16:00.345 --> 00:16:03.326
I'm only putting those up to show you
these things are prosaic,

00:16:03.350 --> 00:16:05.209
this stuff works in these environments.

00:16:05.233 --> 00:16:06.663
They don't need to be special.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:06.687 --> 00:16:12.168
So finally, I know that you can do this,

00:16:12.192 --> 00:16:16.789
because if you saw
the Easter special of Doctor Who,

00:16:16.813 --> 00:16:20.352
where he went to Mars in a bus --

00:16:20.376 --> 00:16:22.553
I should say, again,
for our foreign students:

00:16:22.577 --> 00:16:24.344
that doesn't happen in every episode.

00:16:24.368 --> 00:16:25.782
This was a very special case.

00:16:25.806 --> 00:16:28.730
So in the episode where he goes
to Mars in a London bus --

00:16:28.754 --> 00:16:30.002
I can't show you the clip,

00:16:30.026 --> 00:16:33.104
due to the outrageous restrictions
of Queen Anne-style copyright

00:16:33.128 --> 00:16:34.414
by the BBC --

00:16:34.438 --> 00:16:37.360
but in the episode where he goes
to Mars in a London bus,

00:16:37.384 --> 00:16:41.419
Doctor Who is clearly shown
getting onto the bus

00:16:41.443 --> 00:16:42.885
with the Oyster card reader

00:16:42.909 --> 00:16:44.471
using his psychic paper.

00:16:44.495 --> 00:16:47.947
Which proves that psychic paper
has an NFC interface.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:47.971 --> 00:16:49.146
Thank you very much.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:49.170 --> 00:16:50.396
(Applause)