WEBVTT 00:00:00.161 --> 00:00:01.960 So I thought I'd talk about identity. 00:00:01.960 --> 00:00:04.599 That's sort of an interesting enough topic to me. 00:00:04.880 --> 00:00:07.778 And the reason was, because when I was asked to do this, 00:00:07.778 --> 00:00:11.351 I'd just read, in one of the papers, I can't remember, 00:00:11.351 --> 00:00:14.414 something from someone at Facebook saying, well, 00:00:14.414 --> 00:00:16.574 we need to make everybody use their real names 00:00:16.574 --> 00:00:19.025 and then that's basically all the problems solved. 00:00:19.025 --> 00:00:20.837 And that's so wrong, 00:00:20.837 --> 00:00:24.300 that's such a fundamentally, reactionary view of identity, 00:00:24.300 --> 00:00:26.682 and it's going to get us into all sorts of trouble. 00:00:26.682 --> 00:00:28.043 And so what I thought I'd do 00:00:28.043 --> 00:00:31.688 is I'll explain four sort of problems about it, 00:00:31.688 --> 00:00:34.391 and then I'll suggest a solution, 00:00:34.391 --> 00:00:36.471 which hopefully you might find interesting. 00:00:36.471 --> 00:00:38.154 So just to frame the problem, 00:00:38.154 --> 00:00:40.194 what does authenticity mean? 00:00:40.194 --> 00:00:44.604 That's me, that's a camera phone picture of me 00:00:44.604 --> 00:00:45.664 looking at a painting. 00:00:45.664 --> 00:00:46.729 [What's the Problem?] 00:00:46.769 --> 00:00:48.591 That's a painting that was painted 00:00:48.591 --> 00:00:50.273 by a very famous forger, 00:00:50.273 --> 00:00:52.546 and because I'm not very good at presentations, 00:00:52.546 --> 00:00:55.267 I already can't remember the name that I wrote on my card. 00:00:55.267 --> 00:00:58.923 And he was incarcerated in, I think, Wakefield Prison 00:00:58.923 --> 00:01:02.439 for forging masterpieces by, I think, French Impressionists. 00:01:02.439 --> 00:01:05.098 And he's so good at it, that when he was in prison, 00:01:05.098 --> 00:01:07.774 everybody in prison, the governor and whatever, 00:01:07.774 --> 00:01:10.281 wanted him to paint masterpieces to put on the walls, 00:01:10.281 --> 00:01:11.833 because they were so good. 00:01:11.833 --> 00:01:13.377 And so that's a masterpiece, 00:01:13.377 --> 00:01:14.966 which is a fake of a masterpiece, 00:01:14.966 --> 00:01:20.939 and bonded into the canvas is a chip which identifies that as a real fake, 00:01:20.939 --> 00:01:22.471 if you see what I mean. 00:01:22.471 --> 00:01:23.713 (Laughter) 00:01:23.713 --> 00:01:26.376 So when we're talking about authenticity, 00:01:26.376 --> 00:01:30.158 it's a little more fractal than it appears and that's a good example to show it. 00:01:30.158 --> 00:01:35.349 I tried to pick four problems that will frame the issue properly. 00:01:35.349 --> 00:01:36.908 So the first problem, I thought, 00:01:36.908 --> 00:01:37.859 Chip and PIN, right? 00:01:37.859 --> 00:01:40.433 [Banking legacies Bringing down the system from within] 00:01:40.433 --> 00:01:42.215 [Offline solutions do not work online] 00:01:42.225 --> 00:01:44.801 I'm guessing everyone's got a chip and PIN card, right? 00:01:44.801 --> 00:01:46.237 So why is that a good example? 00:01:46.237 --> 00:01:49.162 That's the example of how legacy thinking about identity 00:01:49.162 --> 00:01:51.610 subverts the security of a well-constructed system. 00:01:51.610 --> 00:01:54.631 That chip and PIN card that's in your pocket 00:01:54.631 --> 00:01:57.643 has a little chip on it that cost millions of pounds to develop, 00:01:57.643 --> 00:01:58.610 is extremely secure, 00:01:58.610 --> 00:02:01.385 you can put scanning electron microscopes on it, 00:02:01.385 --> 00:02:03.561 you can try and grind it down, blah blah blah. 00:02:03.561 --> 00:02:06.708 Those chips have never been broken, whatever you read in the paper. 00:02:06.708 --> 00:02:09.782 And for a joke, we take that super-secure chip 00:02:09.782 --> 00:02:13.896 and we bond it to a trivially counterfeitable magnetic stripe 00:02:13.896 --> 00:02:17.228 and for very lazy criminals, we still emboss the card. 00:02:17.228 --> 00:02:20.845 So if you're a criminal in a hurry, and you need to copy someone's card, 00:02:20.845 --> 00:02:23.926 you can just stick a piece of paper on it and rub a pencil over it 00:02:23.926 --> 00:02:25.839 just to sort of speed things up. 00:02:25.839 --> 00:02:28.175 And even more amusingly, and on my debit card too, 00:02:28.175 --> 00:02:31.646 we print the name and the SALT code and everything else on the front too. 00:02:31.646 --> 00:02:32.395 Why? 00:02:32.395 --> 00:02:37.954 There is no earthly reason why your name is printed on a chip and PIN card. 00:02:37.954 --> 00:02:39.809 And if you think about it, 00:02:39.809 --> 00:02:43.177 it's even more insidious and perverse than it seems at first. 00:02:43.177 --> 00:02:44.891 Because the only people that benefit 00:02:44.891 --> 00:02:47.375 from having the name on the card are criminals. 00:02:47.375 --> 00:02:49.306 You know what your name is, right? 00:02:49.306 --> 00:02:50.127 (Laughter) 00:02:50.127 --> 00:02:52.289 And when you go into a shop and buy something, 00:02:52.289 --> 00:02:54.539 It's a PIN, he doesn't care what the name is. 00:02:54.539 --> 00:02:57.598 The only place where you ever have to write your name on the back 00:02:57.598 --> 00:02:58.938 is in America at the moment. 00:02:58.938 --> 00:03:00.329 And whenever I go to America, 00:03:00.339 --> 00:03:03.149 and I have to pay with a mag stripe on the back of the card, 00:03:03.159 --> 00:03:05.091 I always sign it Carlos Tethers anyway, 00:03:05.091 --> 00:03:06.491 just as a security mechanism, 00:03:06.499 --> 00:03:08.597 because if a transaction ever gets disputed, 00:03:08.597 --> 00:03:10.547 and it comes back and it says Dave Birch, 00:03:10.547 --> 00:03:12.288 I know it must have been a criminal, 00:03:12.288 --> 00:03:14.258 because I would never sign it Dave Birch. 00:03:14.258 --> 00:03:15.498 (Laughter) 00:03:15.768 --> 00:03:17.739 So if you drop your card in the street, 00:03:17.739 --> 00:03:19.981 it means a criminal can pick it up and read it. 00:03:19.981 --> 00:03:20.916 They know the name, 00:03:20.916 --> 00:03:22.861 from the name they can find the address, 00:03:22.861 --> 00:03:25.066 and then they can go off and buy stuff online. 00:03:25.066 --> 00:03:26.772 Why do we put the name on the card? 00:03:26.772 --> 00:03:30.491 Because we think identity is something to do with names, 00:03:30.491 --> 00:03:34.856 and because we're rooted in the idea of the identity card, 00:03:34.856 --> 00:03:36.082 which obsesses us. 00:03:36.082 --> 00:03:38.776 And I know it crashed and burned a couple of years ago, 00:03:38.776 --> 00:03:42.453 but if you're someone in politics or the home office or whatever, 00:03:42.453 --> 00:03:43.981 and you think about identity, 00:03:43.981 --> 00:03:47.359 you can only think of identity in terms of cards with names on them. 00:03:47.359 --> 00:03:50.659 And that's very subversive in a modern world. 00:03:50.659 --> 00:03:52.475 So the second example I thought I'd use 00:03:52.475 --> 00:03:54.721 is chatrooms. 00:03:54.721 --> 00:03:56.585 [Chatrooms and Children] 00:03:56.585 --> 00:03:58.695 I'm very proud of that picture, that's my son 00:03:58.695 --> 00:04:01.611 playing in his band with his friends for the first-ever gig, 00:04:01.611 --> 00:04:03.580 I believe you call it, where he got paid. 00:04:03.580 --> 00:04:04.707 (Laughter) 00:04:05.037 --> 00:04:06.245 And I love that picture. 00:04:06.245 --> 00:04:09.451 I like the picture of him getting into medical school a lot better, 00:04:09.451 --> 00:04:10.221 (Laughter) 00:04:10.221 --> 00:04:12.264 I like that picture for the moment. 00:04:12.264 --> 00:04:13.529 Why do I use that picture? 00:04:13.529 --> 00:04:17.238 Because that was very interesting, watching that experience as an old person. 00:04:18.538 --> 00:04:20.051 So him and his friends, 00:04:20.051 --> 00:04:22.799 they get together, they booked a room, like a church hall, 00:04:22.799 --> 00:04:24.909 and they got all their friends who had bands, 00:04:24.909 --> 00:04:26.200 and they got them together, 00:04:26.200 --> 00:04:27.737 and they do it all on Facebook, 00:04:27.737 --> 00:04:30.338 and then they sell tickets, and the first band on the - 00:04:30.338 --> 00:04:31.633 I was going to say "menu," 00:04:31.633 --> 00:04:33.932 that's probably the wrong word for it, isn't it? 00:04:33.932 --> 00:04:36.293 The first band on the list of bands 00:04:36.293 --> 00:04:40.350 that appears at some public music performance of some kind 00:04:40.350 --> 00:04:42.759 gets the sales from the first 20 tickets, 00:04:42.759 --> 00:04:44.609 then the next band gets the next 20, 00:04:44.609 --> 00:04:45.325 and so on. 00:04:45.325 --> 00:04:47.081 They were at the bottom of the menu, 00:04:47.081 --> 00:04:49.459 they were like fifth, I thought they had no chance. 00:04:49.459 --> 00:04:51.431 He actually got 20 quid. Fantastic, right? 00:04:51.431 --> 00:04:53.478 But my point is, that all worked perfectly 00:04:53.478 --> 00:04:56.559 except on the web. 00:04:56.559 --> 00:04:58.382 So they're sitting on Facebook, 00:04:58.382 --> 00:05:00.978 and they're sending these messages and arranging things 00:05:00.978 --> 00:05:03.297 and they don't know who anybody is. 00:05:03.297 --> 00:05:05.528 That's the big problem we're trying to solve. 00:05:05.528 --> 00:05:07.425 If only they were using the real names, 00:05:07.425 --> 00:05:10.106 Then you wouldn't be worried about them on the internet. 00:05:10.106 --> 00:05:11.481 And so when he says to me, 00:05:11.481 --> 00:05:14.617 oh, I want to go to a chatroom to talk about guitars or something, 00:05:14.617 --> 00:05:18.446 I'm like, oh, well, I don't want you to go into a chatroom 00:05:18.446 --> 00:05:21.804 to talk about guitars, because they might not all be your friends, 00:05:21.804 --> 00:05:24.157 and some of the people that are in the chatroom 00:05:24.157 --> 00:05:27.624 might be perverts and teachers and vicars. 00:05:27.624 --> 00:05:28.649 (Laughter) 00:05:28.649 --> 00:05:32.441 I mean, they generally are, when you look in the paper, right? 00:05:32.441 --> 00:05:35.294 So I want to know who all the people in the chatroom are. 00:05:35.294 --> 00:05:37.487 So okay, you can go in the chatroom, 00:05:37.487 --> 00:05:40.495 but only if everybody in the chatroom is using their real names, 00:05:40.495 --> 00:05:43.042 and they submit full copies of their police report. 00:05:43.042 --> 00:05:47.878 But of course, if anybody in the chatroom asked for his real name, 00:05:47.878 --> 00:05:49.924 I'd say no. You can't give them your real name. 00:05:49.924 --> 00:05:52.624 Because what happens if they turn out to be perverts, 00:05:52.624 --> 00:05:54.207 and teachers and whatever, 00:05:54.207 --> 00:05:57.068 So you have this odd sort of paradox, 00:05:57.068 --> 00:05:59.549 where I'm happy for him to go into this space 00:05:59.549 --> 00:06:01.809 if I know who everybody else is, 00:06:01.809 --> 00:06:04.052 but I don't want anybody else to know who he is. 00:06:04.052 --> 00:06:06.438 And so you get this sort of logjam around identity 00:06:06.438 --> 00:06:08.874 where you want full disclosure from everybody else, 00:06:08.874 --> 00:06:09.939 but not from yourself. 00:06:09.939 --> 00:06:11.756 And there's no progress, we get stuck. 00:06:11.756 --> 00:06:14.039 And so the chatroom thing doesn't work properly, 00:06:14.039 --> 00:06:16.501 and it's a very bad way of thinking about identity. 00:06:16.501 --> 00:06:20.396 So on my RSS feed, I saw this thing about - 00:06:20.396 --> 00:06:22.964 I just said something bad about my RSS feed, didn't I? 00:06:22.964 --> 00:06:24.593 I should stop saying it like that. 00:06:24.937 --> 00:06:26.760 For some random reason I can't imagine, 00:06:26.760 --> 00:06:29.146 something about cheerleaders turned up in my inbox. 00:06:29.146 --> 00:06:31.094 And I read this story about cheerleaders, 00:06:31.094 --> 00:06:32.482 and it's a fascinating story. 00:06:32.482 --> 00:06:34.750 This happened a couple of years ago in the U.S. 00:06:34.750 --> 00:06:37.452 There were some cheerleaders in a team at a high school 00:06:37.452 --> 00:06:39.685 in the U.S., and they said mean things 00:06:39.685 --> 00:06:41.451 about their cheerleading coach, 00:06:41.451 --> 00:06:43.642 as I'm sure kids do about all of their teachers 00:06:43.642 --> 00:06:44.409 all of the time, 00:06:44.409 --> 00:06:47.039 and somehow the cheerleading coach found out about this. 00:06:47.039 --> 00:06:47.953 She was very upset. 00:06:47.953 --> 00:06:50.120 And so she went to one of the girls, and said, 00:06:50.120 --> 00:06:52.132 you have to give me your Facebook password. 00:06:52.132 --> 00:06:55.929 I read this all the time, where even at some universities, 00:06:55.929 --> 00:06:57.089 and places of education, 00:06:57.089 --> 00:06:59.668 kids are forced to hand over their Facebook passwords. 00:06:59.668 --> 00:07:02.073 So you've got to give them your Facebook password. 00:07:02.073 --> 00:07:02.786 She was a kid! 00:07:02.786 --> 00:07:04.002 What she should have said 00:07:04.002 --> 00:07:05.532 is my lawyer will be calling you 00:07:05.542 --> 00:07:06.832 first thing in the morning. 00:07:06.832 --> 00:07:08.223 It's an outrageous imposition 00:07:08.223 --> 00:07:09.942 on my 4th Amendment right to privacy, 00:07:09.942 --> 00:07:11.237 and you're going to be sued 00:07:11.237 --> 00:07:12.632 for all the money you've got. 00:07:12.632 --> 00:07:14.218 That's what she should have said. 00:07:14.218 --> 00:07:15.147 But she's a kid, 00:07:15.147 --> 00:07:16.646 so she hands over the password. 00:07:16.646 --> 00:07:18.366 The teacher can't log into Facebook, 00:07:18.366 --> 00:07:20.758 because the school has blocked access to Facebook. 00:07:20.758 --> 00:07:23.531 So the teacher can't log into Facebook until she gets home. 00:07:23.531 --> 00:07:24.959 So the girl tells her friends, 00:07:24.959 --> 00:07:25.880 guess what happened, 00:07:25.880 --> 00:07:27.461 the teacher logged in, she knows. 00:07:27.461 --> 00:07:30.222 So the girls just all logged into Facebook on their phones, 00:07:30.222 --> 00:07:31.514 and deleted their profiles. 00:07:31.514 --> 00:07:34.299 And so when the teacher logged in, there was nothing there. 00:07:34.299 --> 00:07:37.681 My point is, those identities, they don't think about them the same way. 00:07:37.681 --> 00:07:41.800 Identity is, especially when you're a teenager, a fluid thing. 00:07:41.800 --> 00:07:43.175 You have lots of identities. 00:07:43.175 --> 00:07:45.425 And you can have an identity, you don't like it, 00:07:45.425 --> 00:07:49.157 because it's subverted in some way, or it's insecure, or it's inappropriate, 00:07:49.157 --> 00:07:51.633 you just delete it and get another one. 00:07:51.633 --> 00:07:54.737 The idea that you have an identity that's given to you by someone, 00:07:54.737 --> 00:07:56.036 the government or whatever, 00:07:56.036 --> 00:07:59.125 and you have to stick with that identity and use it in all places, 00:07:59.125 --> 00:08:00.293 that's absolutely wrong. 00:08:00.293 --> 00:08:03.195 Why would you want to really know who someone was on Facebook, 00:08:03.195 --> 00:08:06.055 unless you wanted to abuse them and harass them in some way? 00:08:06.055 --> 00:08:07.728 And it just doesn't work properly. 00:08:07.728 --> 00:08:09.832 And my fourth example is there are some cases 00:08:09.832 --> 00:08:11.275 where you really want to be - 00:08:11.275 --> 00:08:14.945 In case you're wondering, that's me at the G20 protest. 00:08:14.945 --> 00:08:19.901 I wasn't actually at the G20 protest, but I had a meeting at a bank, 00:08:19.901 --> 00:08:23.554 on the day of the G20 protest, and I got an email from the bank 00:08:23.554 --> 00:08:27.075 saying please don't wear a suit, because it'll inflame the protestors. 00:08:27.075 --> 00:08:29.559 I look pretty good in a suit, frankly, 00:08:29.559 --> 00:08:31.429 so you can see why it would drive them 00:08:31.429 --> 00:08:33.174 into an anti-capitalist frenzy. 00:08:33.174 --> 00:08:33.885 (Laughter) 00:08:33.885 --> 00:08:35.094 So I thought, well, look. 00:08:35.094 --> 00:08:37.103 If I don't want to inflame the protestors, 00:08:37.103 --> 00:08:38.219 the obvious thing to do 00:08:38.219 --> 00:08:39.625 is go dressed as a protestor. 00:08:39.625 --> 00:08:41.442 So I went dressed completely in black, 00:08:41.442 --> 00:08:43.056 You know, with a black balaclava, 00:08:43.056 --> 00:08:44.160 I had black gloves on, 00:08:44.160 --> 00:08:46.617 but I've taken them off to sign the visitor's book. 00:08:46.617 --> 00:08:47.329 (Laughter) 00:08:47.329 --> 00:08:49.212 I'm wearing black trousers, black boots, 00:08:49.212 --> 00:08:50.768 I'm dressed completely in black. 00:08:50.768 --> 00:08:52.352 I go into the bank at 10 o'clock, 00:08:52.352 --> 00:08:53.407 go hi, I'm Dave Birch, 00:08:53.407 --> 00:08:55.413 I've got a 3 o'clock with so and so there. 00:08:55.413 --> 00:08:56.464 Sure. They sign me in. 00:08:56.464 --> 00:08:57.765 There's my visitor's badge. 00:08:57.765 --> 00:08:58.476 (Laughter) 00:08:58.476 --> 00:08:59.794 So this nonsense 00:08:59.794 --> 00:09:02.688 about you've got to have real names on Facebook and whatever, 00:09:02.688 --> 00:09:05.313 that gets you that kind of security. 00:09:05.313 --> 00:09:08.602 That gets you security theater, where there's no actual security, 00:09:08.602 --> 00:09:11.940 but people are sort of playing parts in a play about security. 00:09:11.940 --> 00:09:14.145 And as long as everybody learns their lines, 00:09:14.145 --> 00:09:15.261 everyone's happy. 00:09:15.261 --> 00:09:17.015 But it's not real security. 00:09:17.015 --> 00:09:21.107 Especially because I hate banks more than the G20 protestors do, 00:09:21.107 --> 00:09:22.812 because I work for them. 00:09:22.812 --> 00:09:25.649 I know that things are actually worse than these guys think. 00:09:25.649 --> 00:09:26.492 (Laughter) 00:09:28.732 --> 00:09:32.736 But suppose I worked next to somebody in a bank 00:09:32.736 --> 00:09:35.034 who was doing something. 00:09:42.564 --> 00:09:45.144 Suppose I was sitting next to a rogue trader, 00:09:45.144 --> 00:09:47.447 and I want to report it to the boss of the bank. 00:09:47.447 --> 00:09:49.803 So I log on to do a little bit of whistleblowing. 00:09:49.803 --> 00:09:51.848 I send a message, this guy's a rogue trader. 00:09:51.888 --> 00:09:53.756 That message is meaningless 00:09:53.756 --> 00:09:56.074 if you don't know that I'm a trader at the bank. 00:09:56.074 --> 00:09:58.364 If that message just comes from anybody, 00:09:58.364 --> 00:10:00.660 it has zero information value. 00:10:00.660 --> 00:10:02.839 There's no point in sending that message. 00:10:04.233 --> 00:10:07.400 But if I have to prove who I am, 00:10:07.400 --> 00:10:09.001 I'll never send that message. 00:10:09.001 --> 00:10:12.238 It's just like the nurse in the hospital reporting the drunk surgeon. 00:10:12.238 --> 00:10:16.159 That message will only happen if I'm anonymous. 00:10:16.159 --> 00:10:20.410 So the system has to have ways of providing anonymity there, 00:10:20.410 --> 00:10:22.771 otherwise we don't get where we want to get to. 00:10:22.771 --> 00:10:26.013 So four issues. So what are we going to do about it? 00:10:26.013 --> 00:10:29.360 Well, what we tend to do about it 00:10:29.360 --> 00:10:32.968 is we think about Orwell space. 00:10:32.968 --> 00:10:35.564 And we try to make electronic versions 00:10:35.564 --> 00:10:38.534 of the identity card that we got rid of in 1953. 00:10:38.601 --> 00:10:40.628 So we think if we had a card, 00:10:40.628 --> 00:10:41.967 call it a Facebook login, 00:10:41.967 --> 00:10:43.264 which proves who you are, 00:10:43.264 --> 00:10:45.155 and I make you carry it all the time, 00:10:45.155 --> 00:10:46.333 that solves the problem. 00:10:46.333 --> 00:10:48.961 And of course, for all those reasons I've just outlined, 00:10:48.961 --> 00:10:50.673 it doesn't, and it might, actually, 00:10:50.673 --> 00:10:51.885 make some problems worse. 00:10:51.885 --> 00:10:54.468 The more times you're forced to use your real identity, 00:10:54.468 --> 00:10:56.048 certainly in transactional terms, 00:10:56.048 --> 00:10:58.998 the more likely that identity is to get stolen and subverted. 00:10:58.998 --> 00:11:01.244 The goal is to stop people from using identity 00:11:01.244 --> 00:11:03.301 in transactions which don't need identity, 00:11:03.301 --> 00:11:05.670 which is actually almost all transactions. 00:11:05.670 --> 00:11:07.587 Almost all of the transactions you do 00:11:07.587 --> 00:11:09.695 are not, who are you? 00:11:09.695 --> 00:11:11.729 They're, are you allowed to drive the car, 00:11:11.729 --> 00:11:13.284 are you allowed in the building, 00:11:13.284 --> 00:11:14.241 are you over 18, 00:11:14.241 --> 00:11:15.729 etcetera, etcetera. 00:11:15.729 --> 00:11:17.810 So my suggestion- I, like James, 00:11:17.810 --> 00:11:20.721 think that there should be a resurgence of interest in R & D. 00:11:20.721 --> 00:11:22.396 I think this is a solvable problem. 00:11:22.396 --> 00:11:23.876 It's something we can do about. 00:11:23.876 --> 00:11:25.514 Naturally, in these circumstances, 00:11:25.514 --> 00:11:27.108 I turn to Doctor Who. 00:11:27.108 --> 00:11:28.784 Because in this, 00:11:28.784 --> 00:11:30.652 as in so many other walks of life, 00:11:30.652 --> 00:11:33.381 Doctor Who has already shown us the answer. 00:11:33.381 --> 00:11:34.815 So I should say, 00:11:34.815 --> 00:11:36.526 for some of our foreign visitors, 00:11:36.526 --> 00:11:39.920 Doctor Who is the greatest living scientist in England, 00:11:39.920 --> 00:11:41.137 (Laughter) 00:11:41.137 --> 00:11:45.177 and a beacon of truth and enlightenment to all of us. 00:11:45.197 --> 00:11:47.467 And this is Doctor Who with his psychic paper. 00:11:47.467 --> 00:11:50.397 Come on, you guys must have seen Doctor Who's psychic paper. 00:11:50.397 --> 00:11:52.997 You're not nerds if you say yes. 00:11:52.997 --> 00:11:55.133 Who's seen Doctor Who's psychic paper? 00:11:55.133 --> 00:11:58.263 Oh right, you were in the library the whole time studying I guess. 00:11:58.263 --> 00:12:00.313 Is that what you're going to tell us? 00:12:00.313 --> 00:12:01.575 Doctor Who's psychic paper 00:12:01.575 --> 00:12:03.445 is when you hold up the psychic paper, 00:12:03.445 --> 00:12:04.883 the person, in their brain, 00:12:04.883 --> 00:12:07.132 sees the thing that they need to see. 00:12:07.132 --> 00:12:09.441 So I want to show you a British passport, 00:12:09.441 --> 00:12:10.807 I hold up the psychic paper, 00:12:10.807 --> 00:12:12.207 you see a British passport. 00:12:12.207 --> 00:12:13.963 I want to get into a party, 00:12:13.963 --> 00:12:15.520 I hold up the psychic paper, 00:12:15.520 --> 00:12:16.974 I show you a party invitation. 00:12:16.974 --> 00:12:18.688 You see what you want to see. 00:12:18.688 --> 00:12:21.947 So what I'm saying is we need to make an electronic version of that, 00:12:21.947 --> 00:12:24.110 but with one tiny, tiny change, 00:12:24.110 --> 00:12:26.714 which is that it'll only show you the British passport 00:12:26.714 --> 00:12:27.922 if I've actually got one. 00:12:27.922 --> 00:12:29.861 It'll only show you the party invitation 00:12:29.861 --> 00:12:31.008 if I actually have one. 00:12:31.008 --> 00:12:34.065 It will only show you that I'm over 18 if I actually am over 18. 00:12:34.065 --> 00:12:35.886 But nothing else. 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, 00:12:40.661 --> 00:12:42.847 instead of showing you my driving license, 00:12:42.847 --> 00:12:44.726 which shows you I know how to drive, 00:12:44.726 --> 00:12:47.532 what my name is, my address, all these kind of things, 00:12:47.532 --> 00:12:49.171 I show you my psychic paper, 00:12:49.171 --> 00:12:51.357 and all it tells you is am I over 18 or not. 00:12:51.357 --> 00:12:52.803 Right. 00:12:52.803 --> 00:12:54.641 Is that just a pipe dream? 00:12:54.641 --> 00:12:57.414 Of course not, otherwise I wouldn't be here talking to you. 00:12:57.414 --> 00:12:59.418 So in order to build that and make it work, 00:12:59.418 --> 00:13:02.189 I'm only going to name these things, I'll not go into them, 00:13:02.189 --> 00:13:03.366 we need a plan, 00:13:03.366 --> 00:13:05.025 which is we're going to build this 00:13:05.025 --> 00:13:06.991 as an infrastructure for everybody to use, 00:13:06.991 --> 00:13:08.993 to solve all of these problems. 00:13:08.993 --> 00:13:10.541 We're going to make a utility, 00:13:10.541 --> 00:13:12.159 the utility has to be universal, 00:13:12.159 --> 00:13:13.422 you can use it everywhere, 00:13:13.422 --> 00:13:16.643 I'm just giving you little flashes of the technology as we go along. 00:13:16.643 --> 00:13:17.890 That's a Japanese ATM, 00:13:17.890 --> 00:13:20.678 the fingerprint template is stored inside the mobile phone. 00:13:20.678 --> 00:13:22.355 So when you want to draw money out, 00:13:22.355 --> 00:13:24.102 you put the mobile phone on the ATM, 00:13:24.102 --> 00:13:25.187 and touch your finger, 00:13:25.187 --> 00:13:27.237 your fingerprint goes through to the phone, 00:13:27.237 --> 00:13:28.907 the phone says yes, that's whoever, 00:13:28.907 --> 00:13:30.834 and the ATM then gives you some money. 00:13:31.084 --> 00:13:33.741 It has to be a utility that you can use everywhere. 00:13:33.741 --> 00:13:35.707 It has to be absolutely convenient, 00:13:35.707 --> 00:13:37.104 that's me going into the pub. 00:13:37.104 --> 00:13:41.177 All the device on the door of the pub is allowed is, 00:13:41.177 --> 00:13:44.240 is this person over 18 and not barred from the pub? 00:13:44.240 --> 00:13:48.080 And so the idea is, you touch your ID card to the door, 00:13:48.080 --> 00:13:50.139 and if I am allowed in, it shows my picture, 00:13:50.139 --> 00:13:52.190 if I'm not allowed in, it shows a red cross. 00:13:52.190 --> 00:13:54.195 It doesn't disclose any other information. 00:13:54.195 --> 00:13:55.827 It has to have no special gadgets. 00:13:55.827 --> 00:13:57.212 That can only mean one thing, 00:13:57.212 --> 00:13:58.877 following on from Ross's statement, 00:13:58.877 --> 00:14:00.311 which I agree with completely. 00:14:00.311 --> 00:14:01.803 If it means no special gadgets, 00:14:01.803 --> 00:14:03.327 it has to run on a mobile phone. 00:14:03.327 --> 00:14:04.800 That's the only choice we have, 00:14:04.800 --> 00:14:06.889 we have to make it work on mobile phones. 00:14:06.889 --> 00:14:07.893 There are 6.6 billion 00:14:07.893 --> 00:14:09.177 mobile phone subscriptions. 00:14:09.177 --> 00:14:10.793 My favorite statistic of all time, 00:14:10.793 --> 00:14:12.742 only 4 billion toothbrushes in the world. 00:14:12.742 --> 00:14:13.749 That means something, 00:14:13.749 --> 00:14:14.656 I don't know what. 00:14:14.656 --> 00:14:15.364 (Laughter) 00:14:15.364 --> 00:14:17.427 I rely on our futurologists to tell me. 00:14:17.427 --> 00:14:19.827 It has to be a utility which is extensible. 00:14:19.827 --> 00:14:21.042 So it has to be something 00:14:21.042 --> 00:14:22.392 that anybody could build on. 00:14:22.392 --> 00:14:24.800 Anybody should be able to use this infrastructure, 00:14:24.800 --> 00:14:27.004 you don't need permissions, licenses, whatever, 00:14:27.004 --> 00:14:29.521 anyone should be able to write some code to do this. 00:14:31.786 --> 00:14:33.091 You know what symmetry is, 00:14:33.091 --> 00:14:34.758 so you don't need a picture of it. 00:14:34.858 --> 00:14:36.452 This is how we're going to do it. 00:14:36.452 --> 00:14:38.086 We're going to do it using phones, 00:14:38.086 --> 00:14:39.282 and we're going to do it 00:14:39.282 --> 00:14:40.378 using mobile proximity. 00:14:40.378 --> 00:14:41.684 I'm going to suggest to you 00:14:41.684 --> 00:14:42.990 the technology to implement 00:14:42.990 --> 00:14:44.236 Doctor Who's psychic paper 00:14:44.236 --> 00:14:45.883 is already here, and if any of you 00:14:45.883 --> 00:14:47.999 have got one of the new Barclay's debit cards 00:14:47.999 --> 00:14:49.798 with the contactless interface on it, 00:14:49.798 --> 00:14:51.478 you've already got that technology. 00:14:51.478 --> 00:14:53.343 If you've ever been up to the big city, 00:14:53.343 --> 00:14:54.835 and used an Oyster card at all, 00:14:54.835 --> 00:14:56.559 does that ring any bells to anybody? 00:14:56.559 --> 00:14:58.015 The technology already exists. 00:14:58.015 --> 00:14:58.845 The first phones 00:14:58.845 --> 00:15:00.465 that have the technology built in, 00:15:00.465 --> 00:15:01.674 the Google Nexus, the S2, 00:15:01.674 --> 00:15:02.683 the Samsung Wifi 7.9, 00:15:02.683 --> 00:15:03.745 the first phones that have 00:15:03.745 --> 00:15:05.227 the technology built into them 00:15:05.227 --> 00:15:06.461 are already in the shops. 00:15:06.461 --> 00:15:07.803 So the idea that the gas man 00:15:07.803 --> 00:15:09.165 can turn up at my mom's door 00:15:09.165 --> 00:15:10.767 and he can show my mom his phone, 00:15:10.767 --> 00:15:12.402 and she can tap it with her phone, 00:15:12.402 --> 00:15:15.369 and it will come up with green if he really is from British Gas 00:15:15.369 --> 00:15:16.101 and allowed in, 00:15:16.101 --> 00:15:18.021 and it'll come up with red if he isn't, 00:15:18.021 --> 00:15:18.741 end of story. 00:15:18.741 --> 00:15:20.361 We have the technology to do that. 00:15:20.361 --> 00:15:21.136 And what's more, 00:15:21.136 --> 00:15:24.101 although some of those things sounded a bit counter-intuitive, 00:15:24.101 --> 00:15:26.489 like proving I'm over 18 without proving who I am, 00:15:26.489 --> 00:15:28.614 the cryptography to do that not only exists, 00:15:28.614 --> 00:15:30.813 it's extremely well-known and well-understood. 00:15:30.813 --> 00:15:33.618 Digital signatures, the blinding of public key certificates, 00:15:33.618 --> 00:15:35.862 these technologies have been around for a while, 00:15:35.862 --> 00:15:37.921 we've just had no way of packaging them up. 00:15:37.921 --> 00:15:39.511 So the technology already exists. 00:15:39.511 --> 00:15:40.359 We know it works, 00:15:40.359 --> 00:15:44.827 There are a few examples of the technology being used 00:15:44.827 --> 00:15:46.007 in experimental places. 00:15:46.007 --> 00:15:47.335 That's London Fashion Week, 00:15:47.335 --> 00:15:48.909 where we built a system with O2, 00:15:48.909 --> 00:15:51.866 that's for the Wireless Festival in Hyde Park, 00:15:51.866 --> 00:15:52.999 you can see the persons 00:15:52.999 --> 00:15:54.500 walking in with their VIP band, 00:15:54.500 --> 00:15:55.644 it's just being checked 00:15:55.644 --> 00:15:57.794 by the Nokia phone that's reading the band. 00:15:57.794 --> 00:15:59.582 I'm only putting those up to show you 00:15:59.582 --> 00:16:00.921 these things are prosaic, 00:16:00.921 --> 00:16:02.830 this stuff works in these environments. 00:16:02.830 --> 00:16:04.291 They don't need to be special. 00:16:04.291 --> 00:16:09.009 So finally, I know that you can do this, 00:16:10.579 --> 00:16:13.473 Because if you saw the episode of Doctor Who, 00:16:13.473 --> 00:16:15.193 the Easter special of Doctor Who, 00:16:15.193 --> 00:16:17.409 where he went to Mars in a bus, 00:16:17.409 --> 00:16:19.741 I should say again for our foreign students, 00:16:19.741 --> 00:16:21.594 that doesn't happen every episode. 00:16:21.594 --> 00:16:23.275 This was a very special case. 00:16:23.275 --> 00:16:26.206 So in the episode where he goes to Mars in a London bus, 00:16:26.206 --> 00:16:27.799 I can't show you the clip, 00:16:27.799 --> 00:16:30.838 due to the outrageous restrictions of Queen Anne-style copyright 00:16:30.838 --> 00:16:32.276 by the BBC, 00:16:32.276 --> 00:16:35.583 but in the episode where he goes to Mars in a London bus, 00:16:35.583 --> 00:16:39.369 Doctor Who is clearly shown getting on to the bus 00:16:39.369 --> 00:16:41.529 with the Oyster card reader 00:16:41.529 --> 00:16:43.157 using his psychic paper. 00:16:43.157 --> 00:16:45.029 Which proves that psychic paper 00:16:45.029 --> 00:16:46.804 has an MSE interface. 00:16:46.804 --> 00:16:48.274 Thank you very much.