WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.778 (Cory Doctorow) Thank you very much 00:00:01.066 --> 00:00:05.420 So I'd like to start with something of a benediction or permission. 00:00:05.420 --> 00:00:07.740 I am one of nature's fast talkers 00:00:07.740 --> 00:00:10.620 and many of you are not native English speakers, or 00:00:10.620 --> 00:00:12.919 maybe not accustomed to my harsh Canadian accent 00:00:12.919 --> 00:00:15.919 in addition I've just come in from Australia 00:00:15.919 --> 00:00:19.166 and so like many of you I am horribly jetlagged and have drunkenough coffee 00:00:19.166 --> 00:00:20.736 this morning to kill a rhino. 00:00:22.112 --> 00:00:23.587 When I used to be at the United Nations 00:00:23.587 --> 00:00:27.023 I was known as the scourge of the simultaneous translation core 00:00:27.157 --> 00:00:29.528 I would stand up and speak as slowly as I could 00:00:29.576 --> 00:00:32.229 and turn around, and there they would be in their boots doing this 00:00:32.229 --> 00:00:35.136 (laughter) When I start to speak too fast, 00:00:35.136 --> 00:00:37.557 this is the universal symbol -- my wife invented it -- 00:00:37.557 --> 00:00:41.518 for "Cory, you are talking too fast". Please, don't be shy. 00:00:42.078 --> 00:00:45.790 So, I'm a parent , like many of you and I'm like I'm sure all of you 00:00:45.790 --> 00:00:48.850 who are parents, parenting takes my ass all the time. 00:00:50.030 --> 00:00:54.820 And there are many regrets I have about the mere seven and half years 00:00:54.820 --> 00:00:57.284 that I've been a parent but none ares so keenly felt 00:00:57.784 --> 00:01:00.878 as my regrets over what's happened when I've been wandering 00:01:00.878 --> 00:01:04.766 around the house and seen my daughter working on something 00:01:04.766 --> 00:01:08.697 that was beyond her abilities, that was right at the edge of what she could do 00:01:08.697 --> 00:01:12.759 and where she was doing something that she didn't have competence in yet 00:01:12.759 --> 00:01:17.019 and you know it's that amazing thing to see that frowning concentration, 00:01:17.019 --> 00:01:20.038 tongue stuck out: as a parent, your heart swells with pride 00:01:20.038 --> 00:01:21.332 and you can't help but go over 00:01:21.332 --> 00:01:23.280 and sort of peer over their shoulder what they are doing 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and those of you who are parents know what happens when you look too closely 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 at someone who is working beyond the age of their competence. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They go back to doing something they're already good at. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You interrupt a moment of genuine learning 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and you replace it with a kind of embarrassment 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 about what you're good at and what you're not. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, it matters a lot that our schools are increasingly surveilled environments, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 environments in which everything that our kids do is watched and recorded. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Because when you do that, you interfere with those moments of real learning. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Our ability to do things that we are not good at yet, that we are not proud of yet, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is negatively impacted by that kind of scrutiny. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And that scrutiny comes from a strange place. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We have decided that there are some programmatic means 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 by which we can find all the web page children shouldn't look at 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and we will filter our networks to be sure that they don't see them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Anyone who has ever paid attention knows that this doesn't work. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There are more web pages that kids shouldn't look at 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 than can ever be cataloged, and any attempt to catalog them 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 will always catch pages that kids must be looking at. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Any of you who have ever taught a unit on reproductive health 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 know the frustration of trying to get round a school network. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now, this is done in the name of digital protection 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but it flies in the face of digital literacy and of real learning. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Because the only way to stop kids from looking at web pages 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they shouldn't be looking at 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is to take all of the clicks that they make, all of the messages that they send, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 all of their online activity and offshore it to a firm 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that has some nonsensically arrived at list of the bad pages. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And so, what we are doing is that we're exfiltrating all of our students' data 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to unknown third parties. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now, most of these firms, their primary business is 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in serving the education sector. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Most of them service the government sector. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The primarily service governments in repressive autocratic regimes. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They help them make sure that their citizens aren't looking at 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Amnesty International web pages. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They repackage those tools and sell them to our educators. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So we are offshoring our children's clicks to war criminals. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And what our kids do, we know, is they just get around it, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because it's not hard to get around it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You know, never underestimate the power of a kid who is time-rich and cash-poor 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to get around our technological blockades. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But when they do this, they don't acquire the kind of digital literacy 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that we want them to do, they don't acquire real digital agency 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and moreover, they risk exclusion and in extreme cases, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they risk criminal prosecution. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So what if instead, those of us who are trapped in this system of teaching kids 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 where we're required to subject them to this kind of surveillance 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that flies in the face of their real learning, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 what if instead, we invented curricular units 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that made them real first class digital citizens, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in charge of trying to influence real digital problems? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Like what if we said to them: "We want you to catalog the web pages 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that this vendor lets through that you shouldn't be seeing. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We want you to catalog those pages that you should be seeing, that are blocked. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We want you to go and interview every teacher in the school 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 about all those lesson plans that were carefully laid out before lunch 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with a video and a web page, and over lunch, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the unaccountable distance center blocked these critical resources 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and left them handing out photographed worksheets in the afternoon 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 instead of the unit they prepared. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We want you to learn how to do the Freedom of Information Act's requests 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and find out what your school authority is spending 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to censor your internet access and surveil your activity. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We want you to learn to use the internet to research these companies and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we want you to present this to your parent-teacher association, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to your school authority, to your local newspaper." 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Because that's the kind of digital literacy 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that makes kids into first-class digital citizens, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that prepares them for a future in which they can participate fully 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in a world that's changing. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Kids are the beta-testers of the surveillance state. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The path of surveillance technology starts with prisoners, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 moves to asylum seekers, people in mental institutions 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and then to its first non-incarcerated population: children 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and then moves to blue-collar workers, government workers 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and white-collar workers. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And so, what we do to kids today is what we did to prisoners yesterday 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and what we're going to be doing to you tomorrow. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And so it matters, what we teach our kids. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If you want to see where this goes, this is a kid named Blake Robbins 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and he attended Lower Merion High School in Lower Merion Pennsylvania 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 outside f Philadelphia. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's the most affluent school district in America, so affluent 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that all the kids were issued Macbooks at the start of the year 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and they had to do their homework on their Macbooks, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they had to bring them to school every day and bring them home every night. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And the Macbooks had been fitted with Laptop Theft Recovery Software, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which is fancy word for a rootkit, that let the school administration 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 scovertly (check) operate the cameras and microphones on these computers 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and harvest files off of their hard drives 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 view all their clicks, and so on. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now Blake Robbins found out that the software existed 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and how it was being used because he and the head teacher 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 had been knocking heads for years, since he first got into the school, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and one day, the head teacher summoned him to his office 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and said: "Blake, I've got you now." 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and handed him a print-out of Blake in his bedroom the night before, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 taking what looked like a pill, and said: "You're taking drugs." 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And Blake Robbins said: "That's a candy, it's a Mike and Ike candy, I take them -- 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I eat them when I'm studying. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 How did you get a picture of me in my bedroom?" 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This head teacher had taken over 6000 photos of Blake Robbins: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 awake and asleep, dressed and undressed, in the presence of his family. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And in the ensuing lawsuit, the school settled for a large amount of money 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and promised that they wouldn't do it again 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 without informing the students that it was going on. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And increasingly, the practice is now 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that school administrations hand out laptops, because they're getting cheaper, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with exactly the same kind of software, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but they let the students know and t hey find that that works even better 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 at curbing the students' behavior, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because the students know that they're always on camera. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now, the surveillance state is moving from kids to the rest of the world. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's metastasizing. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Our devices are increasingly designed to treat us as attackers, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 as suspicious parties who can't be trusted 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because our devices' job is to do things that we don't want them to do. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now that's not because the vendors who make our technology 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 want to spy on us necessarily, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but they want to take the ink-jet printer business model 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and bring it into every other realm of the world. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So the ink-jet printer business model is where you sell someone a device 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and then you get a continuing revenue stream from that device 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 by making sure that competitors can't make consumables or parts 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or additional features or plugins for that device, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 without paying rent to the original manufacturer. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And that allows you to maintain monopoly margins on your devices. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now, in 1998, the American government passed a law called 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in 2001 the European Union introduced its own version, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the European Union Copyright Directive. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And these two laws, along with laws all around the world, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in Australia, Canada and elsewhere. These laws prohibit removing digital laws 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that are used to restrict access to copyrighted works 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and they were original envisioned as a way of making sure that Europeans didn't 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 bring cheap DVDs in from America, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or making sure that Australians didn't mport cheap DVDs from China. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And so you have a digital work, a DVD, and it has a lock on it and to unlock it, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you have to buy an authorized player 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and the player checks to make sure you are in region 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and making your own player that doesn't make that check 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is illegal because you'd have to remove the digital lock. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And that was the original intent, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it was to allow high rates to be maintained on removable media, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 DVDs and other entertainment content. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But it very quickly spread into new rounds. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, for example, auto manufacturers now lock up all of their cars' telemetry 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with digital locks. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If you're a mechanic and want to fix a car, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you have to get a reader from the manufacturer 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to make sure that you can see the telemetry 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and know what parts to order and how to fix it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And in order to get this reader, you have to promise the manufacturer 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that you will only buy parts from that manufacturer 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and not from third parties. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So the manufacturers can keep the repair costs high 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and get a secondary revenue stream out of the cars. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This year, the Chrysler corporation filed comments with the US Copyright Office, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to say that they believed that this was the right way to do it 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and that it should be a felony, punishable by 5 years in prison 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and a $500'000 fine, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to change the locks on a car that you own, so that you can choose who fixes it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It turned out that when they advertised 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 -- well, where is my slide here? Oh, there we go -- 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 when they advertised that it wasn't your father's Oldsmobile, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they weren't speaking metaphorically, they really meant 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that even though your father bought the Oldsmobile, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it remained their property in perpetuity. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And it's not just cars, it's every kind of device, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because every kind of device today has a computer in it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The John Deer Company, the world's leading seller of heavy equipment 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and agricultural equipment technologies, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they now view their tractors as information gathering platforms 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and they view the people who use them 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 as the kind of inconvenient gut flora of their ecosystem. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So if you are a farmer and you own a John Deer tractor, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 when you drive it around your fields, the torque centers on the wheels 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 conduct a centimeter-accurate soil density survey of your agricultural land. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That would be extremely useful to you when you're planting your seeds 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but that data is not available to you 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 unless unless you remove the digital lock from your John Deer tractor 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which again, is against the law everywhere in the world. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Instead, in order to get that data 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you have to buy a bundle with seeds from Monsanto, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 who are John Deer's seed partners. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 John Deer then takes this data that they aggregate across whole regions 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and they use it to gain insight into regional crop yields 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That they use to play the futures market. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 John Deer's tractors are really just a way of gathering information 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and the farmers are secondary to it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Just because you own it doesn't mean it's yours. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And it's not just the computers that we put our bodies into 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that have this business model. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's the computers that we put inside of our bodies. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If you're someone who is diabetic 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and you're fitted with a continuous glucose-measuring insulin pump, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that insulin pump is designed with a digital log 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that makes sure that your doctor can only use the manufacturer's software 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to read the data coming off of it 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and that software is resold on a rolling annual license 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and it can't be just bought outright. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And the digital locks are also used to make sure 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that you only buy the insulin that vendors approved 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and not generic insulin that might be cheaper. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We've literally turned human beings into ink-jet printers. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now, this has really deep implications beyond the economic implications. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Because the rules that prohibit breaking these digital locks 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 also prohibit telling people about flaws that programmers made 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because if you know about a flaw that a programmer made, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you can use it to break the digital lock. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And that means that the errors, the vulnerabilities, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the mistakes in our devices, they fester in them, they go on and on and on 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and our devices become these longlife reservoirs of digital pathogens. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And we've seen how that plays out. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 One of the reasons that Volkswagen was able to get away 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with their Diesel cheating for so long 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is because no one could independently alter their firmware. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's happening all over the place. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You may have seen -- you may have seen this summer 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that Chrysler had to recall 1.4 million jeeps 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because it turned out that they could be remotely controlled over the internet 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 while driving down a motorway and have their brakes and steering 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 commandeered by anyone, anywhere in the world, over the internet. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We only have one methodology for determining whether security works 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and that's to submit it to public scrutiny, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to allow for other people to see what assumptions you've made. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Anyone can design a security system 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that he himself can think of a way of breaking, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but all that means is that you've designed a security system 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that works against people who are stupider than you. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And in this regard, security is no different 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 from any other kind of knowledge creation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You know, before we had contemporary science and scholarship, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we had something that looked a lot like it, called alchemy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And for 500 years, alchemists kept what they thought they knew a secret. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And that meant that every alchemist was capable of falling prey 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to that most urgent of human frailties, which is our ability to fool ourselves. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And so, every alchemist discovered for himself in the hardest way possible 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that drinking mercury was a bad idea. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We call that 500-year period the Dark Ages 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and we call the moment at which they started publishing 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and submitting themselves to adversarial peer review, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which is when your friends tell you about the mistakes that you've made 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and your enemies call you an idiot for having made them, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we call that moment the Enlightenment. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now, this has profound implications. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The restriction of our ability to alter the security of our devices 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for our own surveillance society, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for our ability to be free people in society. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 At the height of the GDR, in 1989, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the STASI had one snitch for every 60 people in East Germany, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in order to surveil the entire country. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A couple of decades later, we found out through Edward Snowden 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that the NSA was spying on everybody in the world. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And the ratio of people who work at the NSA to people they are spying on 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is more like 1 in 10'000. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They've achieved a two and a half order of magnitude 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 productivity gain in surveillance. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And the way that they got there is in part by the fact that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we use devices that we're not allowed to alter, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that are designed to treat us as attackers 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and that gather an enormous amount of information on us. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If the government told you that you're required to carry on 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a small electronic rectangle that recorded all of your social relationships, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 all of your movements, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 all of your transient thoughts that you made known or ever looked up, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and would make that available to the state, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and you would have to pay for it, you would revolt. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But the phone companies have managed to convince us, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 along with the mobile phone vendors, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that we should foot the bill for our own surveillance. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's a bit like during the Cultural Revolution, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 where, after your family members were executed, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they sent you a bill for the bullet. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, this has big implications, as I said, for where we go as a society. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Because just as our kids have a hard time functioning 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in the presence of surveillance, and learning, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and advancing their own knowledge, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we as a society have a hard time progressing 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in the presence of surveillance. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In our own living memory, people who are today though of as normal and right 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 were doing something that a generation ago 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 would have been illegal and landed them in jail. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For example, you probably know someone 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 who's married to a partner of the same sex. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If you live in America, you may know someone who takes medical marijuana, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or if you live in the Netherlands. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And not that long ago, people who undertook these activities 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 could have gone to jail for them, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 could have faced enormous social exclusion for them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The way that we got from there to here was by having a private zone, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a place where people weren't surveilled, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in which they could advance their interest ideas, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 do things that were thought of as socially unacceptable 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and slowly change our social attitudes. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And in ........ (check) few things that in 50 years, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 your grandchildren will sit around the Christmas table, in 2065, and say: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 "How was it, grandma, how was it, grandpa, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that in 2015, you got it all right, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and we haven't had any social changes since then?" 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Then you have to ask yourself how in a world, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in which we are all under continuous surveillance, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we are going to find a way to improve this. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, our kids need ICT literacy, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but ICT literacy isn't just typing skills or learning how to use PowerPoing. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's learning how to think critically 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 about how they relate to the means of information, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 about whether they are its masters or servants. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Our networks are not the most important issue that we have. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There are much more important issues in society and in the world today. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The future of the internet is way less important 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 than the future of our climate, the future of gender equity, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the future of racial equity, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the future of the wage gap and the wealth gap in the world, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but everyone of those fights is going to be fought and won or lost 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 on the internet: it's our most foundational fight 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So weakened (check) computers can make us more free 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or they can take away our freedom. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It all comes down to how we regulate them and how we use them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And it's our job, as people who are training the next generation, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and whose next generation is beta-testing 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the surveillance technology that will be coming to us, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it's our job to teach them to seize the means of information, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to make themselves self-determinant in the way that they use their networks 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and to find ways to show them how to be critical and how to be smart 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and how to be, above all, subversive and how to use the technology around them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Thank you. (18:49) 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 (Applause) 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 (Moderator) Cory, thank you very much indeed. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 (Doctorow) Thank you (Moderator) And I've got a bundle 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of points which you've stimulated from many in the audience, which sent -- 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 (Doctorow) I'm shocked to hear that that was at all controversial, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but go on. (Moderator) I didn't say "controversial", 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you stimulated thinking, which is great. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But a lot of them resonate around violation of secrecy and security. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And this, for example, from Anneke Burgess (check) 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 "Is there a way for students to protect themselves 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 from privacy violations by institutions they are supposed to trust." 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think this is probably a question William Golding (check) as well, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 someone who is a senior figure in a major university, but 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 this issue of privacy violations and trust. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 (Doctorow) Well, I think that computers have a curious dual nature. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So on the one hand, they do expose us to an enormous amount of scrutiny, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 depending on how they are configured. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But on the other hand, computers have brought new powers to us 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that are literally new on the face of the world, right? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We have never had a reality in which normal people could have secrets 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 from powerful people. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But with the computer in your pocket, with that, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you can encrypt a message so thoroughly 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that if every hydrogen atom in the universe were turned into a computer 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and it did nothing until the heat death of the universe, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but try to guess what your key was, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we would run out of universe before we ran out of possible keys. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, computers do give us the power to have secrets. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The problem is that institutions prohibit the use of technology 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that allow you to take back your own privacy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's funny, right? Because we take kids and we say to them: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 "Your privacy is like your virginity: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 once you've lost it, you'll never get it back. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Watch out what you're putting on Facebook" 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 -- and I think they should watch what they're putting on Facebook, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'm a Facebook vegan, I don't even -- I don't use it, but we say: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 "Watch what you're putting on Facebook, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 don't send out dirty pictures of yourself on SnapChat." 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 All good advice. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But we do it while we are taking away all the private information 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that they have, all of their privacy and all of their agency. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You know, if a parent says to a kid: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 "You mustn't smoke because you'll get sick" 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and the parent says it while lighting a new cigarette 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 off the one that she's just put down in the ashtray, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the kid knows that what you're doing matters more than what you're saying. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 (Moderator) The point is deficit of trust. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It builds in the kind of work that David has been doing as well, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 this deficit of trust and privacy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And there is another point here: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 "Is the battle for privacy already lost? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Are we already too comfortable with giving away our data?" 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 (Doctorow) No, I don't think so at all. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In fact, I think that if anything, we've reached 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 peak indifference to surveillance, right? (21:25)