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(Cory Doctorow) Thank you very much

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So I'd like to start with something of a
benediction or permission.

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I am one of nature's fast talkers

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and many of you are not 
native English speakers, or

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maybe not accustomed 
to my harsh Canadian accent

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in addition I've just come in 
from Australia

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and so like many of you I am horribly
jetlagged and have drunk enough coffee

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this morning to kill a rhino.

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When I used to be at the United Nations

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I was known as the scourge of the
simultaneous translation core

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I would stand up and speak 
as slowly as I could

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and turn around, and there they
would be in their boots doing this

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(laughter)
When I start to speak too fast,

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this is the universal symbol --
my wife invented it --

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for "Cory, you are talking too fast".
Please, don't be shy.

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So, I'm a parent , like many of you 
and I'm like I'm sure all of you

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who are parents, parenting takes my ass 
all the time.

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And there are many regrets I have
about the mere seven and half years

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that I've been a parent 
but none ares so keenly felt

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as my regrets over what's happened 
when I've been wandering

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around the house and seen my
daughter working on something

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that was beyond her abilities, that was 
right at the edge of what she could do

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and where she was doing something 
that she didn't have competence in yet

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and you know it's that amazing thing 
to see that frowning concentration,

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tongue stuck out: as a parent, your
heart swells with pride

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and you can't help but go over

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and sort of peer over their shoulder
what they are doing

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and those of you who are parents know 
what happens when you look too closely

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at someone who is working 
beyond the age of their competence.

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They go back to doing something
they're already good at.

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You interrupt a moment 
of genuine learning

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and you replace it with 
a kind of embarrassment

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about what you're good at 
and what you're not.

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So, it matters a lot that our schools are
increasingly surveilled environments,

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environments in which everything that 
our kids do is watched and recorded.

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Because when you do that, you interfere
with those moments of real learning.

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Our ability to do things that we are not 
good at yet, that we are not proud of yet,

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is negatively impacted 
by that kind of scrutiny.

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And that scrutiny comes 
from a strange place.

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We have decided that there are 
some programmatic means

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by which we can find all the web page
children shouldn't look at

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and we will filter our networks
to be sure that they don't see them.

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Anyone who has ever paid attention
knows that this doesn't work.

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There are more web pages 
that kids shouldn't look at

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than can ever be cataloged, 
and any attempt to catalog them

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will always catch pages that kids
must be looking at.

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Any of you who have ever taught 
a unit on reproductive health

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know the frustration of trying 
to get round a school network.

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Now, this is done in the name of
digital protection

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but it flies in the face of digital
literacy and of real learning.

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Because the only way to stop kids 
from looking at web pages

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they shouldn't be looking at

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is to take all of the clicks that they 
make, all of the messages that they send,

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all of their online activity 
and offshore it to a firm

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that has some nonsensically arrived at
list of the bad pages.

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And so, what we are doing is that we're 
exfiltrating all of our students' data

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to unknown third parties.

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Now, most of these firms, 
their primary business isn't

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serving the education sector.

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Most of them service 
the government sectors.

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They primarily service governments in
repressive autocratic regimes.

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They help them ensure that 
their citizens aren't looking at

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Amnesty International web pages.

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They repackage those tools 
and sell them to our educators.

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So we are offshoring our children's clicks
to war criminals.

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And what our kids do, now,
is they just get around it,

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because it's not hard to get around it.

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You know, never underestimate the power
of a kid who is time-rich and cash-poor

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to get around our 
technological blockades.

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But when they do this, they don't acquire
the kind of digital literacy

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that we want them to do, they don't 
acquire real digital agency

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and moreover, they risk exclusion 
and in extreme cases,

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they risk criminal prosecution.

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So what if instead, those of us who are
trapped in this system of teaching kids

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where we're required to subject them
to this kind of surveillance

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that flies in the face 
of their real learning,

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what if instead, we invented 
curricular units

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that made them real first class
digital citizens,

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in charge of trying to influence
real digital problems?

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Like what if we said to them: 
"We want you to catalog the web pages

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that this vendor lets through 
that you shouldn't be seeing.

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We want you to catalog those pages that 
you should be seeing, that are blocked.

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We want you to go and interview 
every teacher in the school

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about all those lesson plans that were
carefully laid out before lunch

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with a video and a web page, 
and over lunch,

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the unaccountable distance center
blocked these critical resources

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and left them handing out photographed 
worksheets in the afternoon

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instead of the unit they prepared.

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We want you to learn how to do the Freedom
of Information Act requests

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and find out what your 
school authority is spending

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to censor your internet access 
and surveil your activity.

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We want you to learn to use the internet 
to research these companies

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and we want you to present this 
to your parent-teacher association,

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to your school authority,
to your local newspaper."

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Because that's the kind 
of digital literacy

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that makes kids into first-class
digital citizens,

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that prepares them for a future 
in which they can participate fully

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in a world that's changing.

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Kids are the beta-testers 
of the surveillance state.

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The path of surveillance technology
starts with prisoners,

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moves to asylum seekers, 
people in mental institutions

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and then to its first non-incarcerated 
population: children

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and then moves to blue-collar workers,
government workers

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and white-collar workers.

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And so, what we do to kids today
is what we did to prisoners yesterday

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and what we're going to be doing 
to you tomorrow.

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And so it matters, what we teach our kids.

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If you want to see where this goes, this
is a kid named Blake Robbins

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and he attended Lower Merion High School 
in Lower Merion Pennsylvania

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outside f Philadelphia.

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It's the most affluent public school 
district in America, so affluent

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that all the kids were issued Macbooks
at the start of the year

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and they had to do their homework on
their Macbooks,

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and bring them to school every day
and bring them home every night.

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And the Macbooks had been fitted with
Laptop Theft Recovery Software,

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which is fancy word for a rootkit, that
let the school administration

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covertly (check) operate the cameras
and microphones on these computers

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and harvest files off 
of their hard drives

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view all their clicks, and so on.

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Now Blake Robbins found out 
that the software existed

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and how it was being used 
because he and the head teacher

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had been knocking heads for years, 
since he first got into the school,

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and one day, the head teacher 
summoned him to his office

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and said: "Blake, I've got you now."

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and handed him a print-out of Blake
in his bedroom the night before,

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taking what looked like a pill, 
and said: "You're taking drugs."

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And Blake Robbins said: "That's a candy,
it's a Mike and Ike candy, I take them --

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I eat them when I'm studying.

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How did you get a picture 
of me in my bedroom?"

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This head teacher had taken 
over 6000 photos of Blake Robbins:

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awake and asleep, dressed and undressed,
in the presence of his family.

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And in the ensuing lawsuit, the school
settled for a large amount of money

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and promised that 
they wouldn't do it again

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without informing the students 
that it was going on.

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And increasingly, the practice is now

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that school administrations hand out 
laptops, because they're getting cheaper,

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with exactly the same kind of software,

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but they let the students know and t
hey find that that works even better

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at curbing the students' behavior,

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because the students know that 
they're always on camera.

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Now, the surveillance state is moving
from kids to the rest of the world.

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It's metastasizing.

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Our devices are increasingly designed
to treat us as attackers,

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as suspicious parties 
who can't be trusted

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because our devices' job is to do things
that we don't want them to do.

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Now that's not because the vendors 
who make our technology

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want to spy on us necessarily,

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but they want to take 
the ink-jet printer business model

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and bring it into every other realm
of the world.

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So the ink-jet printer business model
is where you sell someone a device

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and then you get a continuing 
revenue stream from that device

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by making sure that competitors can't make 
consumables or parts

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or additional features 
or plugins for that device,

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without paying rent 
to the original manufacturer.

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And that allows you to maintain 
monopoly margins on your devices.

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Now, in 1998, the American government 
passed a law called

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the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,

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in 2001 the European Union 
introduced its own version,

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the European Union Copyright Directive.

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And these two laws, along with laws
all around the world,

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in Australia, Canada and elsewhere.
These laws prohibit removing digital laws

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that are used to restrict 
access to copyrighted works

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and they were original envisioned as a way
of making sure that Europeans didn't

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bring cheap DVDs in from America,

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or making sure that Australians didn't 
mport cheap DVDs from China.

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And so you have a digital work, a DVD,
and it has a lock on it and to unlock it,

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you have to buy an authorized player

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and the player checks to make sure 
you are in region

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and making your own player 
that doesn't make that check

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is illegal because you'd have 
to remove the digital lock.

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And that was the original intent,

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it was to allow high rates to be 
maintained on removable media,

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DVDs and other entertainment content.

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But it very quickly spread 
into new rounds.

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So, for example, auto manufacturers now 
lock up all of their cars' telemetry

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with digital locks.

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If you're a mechanic 
and want to fix a car,

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you have to get a reader 
from the manufacturer

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to make sure that you can 
see the telemetry

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and know what parts to order 
and how to fix it.

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And in order to get this reader, 
you have to promise the manufacturer

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that you will only buy parts 
from that manufacturer

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and not from third parties.

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So the manufacturers can keep 
the repair costs high

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and get a secondary revenue stream
out of the cars.

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This year, the Chrysler corporation filed 
comments with the US Copyright Office,

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to say that they believed that 
this was the right way to do it

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and that it should be a felony, 
punishable by 5 years in prison

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and a $500'000 fine,

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to change the locks on a car that you own,
so that you can choose who fixes it.

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It turned out that when they advertised

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-- well, where is my slide here?
Oh, there we go --

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when they advertised that 
it wasn't your father's Oldsmobile,

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they weren't speaking metaphorically, 
they really meant

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that even though your father 
bought the Oldsmobile,

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it remained their property in perpetuity.

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And it's not just cars, 
it's every kind of device,

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because every kind of device today 
has a computer in it.

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The John Deer Company, the world's leading seller of heavy equipment

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and agricultural equipment technologies,

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they now view their tractors as 
information gathering platforms

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and they view the people who use them

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as the kind of inconvenient gut flora
of their ecosystem.

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So if you are a farmer 
and you own a John Deer tractor,

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when you drive it around your fields, 
the torque centers on the wheels

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conduct a centimeter-accurate soil 
density survey of your agricultural land.

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That would be extremely useful to you
when you're planting your seeds

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but that data is not available to you

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unless unless you remove the digital lock 
from your John Deer tractor

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which again, is against the law 
everywhere in the world.

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Instead, in order to get that data

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you have to buy a bundle with seeds 
from Monsanto,

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who are John Deer's seed partners.

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John Deer then takes this data that they 
aggregate across whole regions

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and they use it to gain insight 
into regional crop yields

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That they use to play the futures market.

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John Deer's tractors are really just 
a way of gathering information

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and the farmers are secondary to it.

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Just because you own it 
doesn't mean it's yours.

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And it's not just the computers 
that we put our bodies into

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that have this business model.

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It's the computers that we put 
inside of our bodies.

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If you're someone who is diabetic

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and you're fitted with a continuous 
glucose-measuring insulin pump,

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that insulin pump is designed 
with a digital log

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that makes sure that your doctor 
can only use the manufacturer's software

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to read the data coming off of it

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and that software is resold 
on a rolling annual license

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and it can't be just bought outright.

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And the digital locks are also 
used to make sure

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that you only buy the insulin 
that vendors approved

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and not generic insulin 
that might be cheaper.

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We've literally turned human beings 
into ink-jet printers.

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Now, this has really deep implications
beyond the economic implications.

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Because the rules that prohibit 
breaking these digital locks

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also prohibit telling people 
about flaws that programmers made

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because if you know about a flaw
that a programmer made,

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you can use it to break the digital lock.

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And that means that the errors,
the vulnerabilities,

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the mistakes in our devices, they fester 
in them, they go on and on and on

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and our devices become these longlife 
reservoirs of digital pathogens.

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And we've seen how that plays out.

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One of the reasons that Volkswagen 
was able to get away

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with their Diesel cheating for so long

245
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is because no one could independently
alter their firmware.

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It's happening all over the place.

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You may have seen -- 
you may have seen this summer

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that Chrysler had to recall 
1.4 million jeeps

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because it turned out that they could be
remotely controlled over the internet

250
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while driving down a motorway 
and have their brakes and steering

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commandeered by anyone, anywhere 
in the world, over the internet.

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We only have one methodology 
for determining whether security works

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and that's to submit it 
to public scrutiny,

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to allow for other people to see 
what assumptions you've made.

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Anyone can design a security system

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that he himself can think 
of a way of breaking,

257
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but all that means is that you've 
designed a security system

258
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that works against people 
who are stupider than you.

259
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And in this regard, security 
is no different

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from any other kind of knowledge creation.

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You know, before we had 
contemporary science and scholarship,

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we had something that looked 
a lot like it, called alchemy.

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And for 500 years, alchemists kept
what they thought they knew a secret.

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And that meant that every alchemist
was capable of falling prey

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to that most urgent of human frailties,
which is our ability to fool ourselves.

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And so, every alchemist discovered 
for himself in the hardest way possible

267
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that drinking mercury was a bad idea.

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We call that 500-year period the Dark Ages

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and we call the moment at which 
they started publishing

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and submitting themselves 
to adversarial peer review,

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which is when your friends tell you 
about the mistakes that you've made

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and your enemies call you an idiot
for having made them,

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we call that moment the Enlightenment.

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Now, this has profound implications.

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The restriction of our ability to alter 
the security of our devices

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for our own surveillance society,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
for our ability to be free people
in society.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
At the height of the GDR, in 1989,

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the STASI had one snitch for every 
60 people in East Germany,

280
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in order to surveil the entire country.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
A couple of decades later, we found out 
through Edward Snowden

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that the NSA was spying 
on everybody in the world.

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And the ratio of people who work 
at the NSA to people they are spying on

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is more like 1 in 10'000.

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They've achieved a two and a half 
order of magnitude

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productivity gain in surveillance.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And the way that they got there 
is in part by the fact that

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we use devices that 
we're not allowed to alter,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that are designed to treat us as attackers

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and that gather an enormous 
amount of information on us.

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If the government told you that you're 
required to carry on

292
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a small electronic rectangle that 
recorded all of your social relationships,

293
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
all of your movements,

294
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all of your transient thoughts that
you made known or ever looked up,

295
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and would make that 
available to the state,

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and you would have to pay for it,
you would revolt.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But the phone companies have 
managed to convince us,

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along with the mobile phone vendors,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that we should foot the bill 
for our own surveillance.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It's a bit like during 
the Cultural Revolution,

301
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
where, after your family members 
were executed,

302
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they sent you a bill for the bullet.

303
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, this has big implications, as I said, 
for where we go as a society.

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Because just as our kids have 
a hard time functioning

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in the presence of surveillance,
and learning,

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and advancing their own knowledge,

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we as a society have a hard time 
progressing

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in the presence of surveillance.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
In our own living memory, people who are 
today though of as normal and right

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were doing something that 
a generation ago

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
would have been illegal 
and landed them in jail.

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For example, you probably know someone

313
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
who's married to a partner 
of the same sex.

314
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
If you live in America, you may know 
someone who takes medical marijuana,

315
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
or if you live in the Netherlands.

316
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And not that long ago, people 
who undertook these activities

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could have gone to jail for them,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
could have faced enormous 
social exclusion for them.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The way that we got from there to here
was by having a private zone,

320
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a place where people weren't surveilled,

321
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in which they could advance 
their interest ideas,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
do things that were thought of as
socially unacceptable

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and slowly change our social attitudes.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And in ........ (check) few things 
that in 50 years,

325
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
your grandchildren will sit around 
the Christmas table, in 2065, and say:

326
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
"How was it, grandma, 
how was it, grandpa,

327
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that in 2015, you got it all right,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and we haven't had 
any social changes since then?"

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Then you have to ask yourself 
how in a world,

330
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in which we are all 
under continuous surveillance,

331
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we are going to find a way 
to improve this.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, our kids need ICT literacy,

333
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but ICT literacy isn't just typing skills
or learning how to use PowerPoing.

334
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It's learning how to think critically

335
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
about how they relate 
to the means of information,

336
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
about whether they are its masters 
or servants.

337
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Our networks are not 
the most important issue that we have.

338
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
There are much more important issues
in society and in the world today.

339
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The future of the internet is 
way less important

340
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
than the future of our climate,
the future of gender equity,

341
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the future of racial equity,

342
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the future of the wage gap 
and the wealth gap in the world,

343
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but everyone of those fights is going
to be fought and won or lost

344
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
on the internet:
it's our most foundational fight

345
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So weakened (check) computers
can make us more free

346
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
or they can take away our freedom.

347
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It all comes down to how we regulate them 
and how we use them.

348
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And it's our job, as people who are 
training the next generation,

349
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and whose next generation 
is beta-testing

350
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the surveillance technology 
that will be coming to us,

351
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it's our job to teach them to seize 
the means of information,

352
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to make themselves self-determinant
in the way that they use their networks

353
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and to find ways to show them 
how to be critical and how to be smart

354
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and how to be, above all, subversive
and how to use the technology around them.

355
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Thank you. (18:49)

356
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
(Applause)

357
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
(Moderator) Cory, thank you very much 
indeed.

358
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
(Doctorow) Thank you
(Moderator) And I've got a bundle

359
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
of points which you've stimulated 
from many in the audience, which sent --

360
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
(Doctorow) I'm shocked to hear that 
that was at all controversial,

361
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but go on.
(Moderator) I didn't say "controversial",

362
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
you stimulated thinking, which is great.

363
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But a lot of them resonate around
violation of secrecy and security.

364
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And this, for example, 
from Anneke Burgess (check)

365
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
"Is there a way for students 
to protect themselves

366
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
from privacy violations by institutions
they are supposed to trust."

367
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I think this is probably a question
William Golding (check) as well,

368
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
someone who is a senior figure
in a major university, but

369
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
this issue of privacy violations and trust.

370
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
(Doctorow) Well, I think that computers
have a curious dual nature.

371
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So on the one hand, they do expose us
to an enormous amount of scrutiny,

372
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
depending on how they are configured.

373
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But on the other hand, computers 
have brought new powers to us

374
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that are literally new 
on the face of the world, right?

375
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We have never had a reality in which
normal people could have secrets

376
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
from powerful people.

377
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But with the computer in your pocket,
with that,

378
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
you can encrypt a message so thoroughly

379
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that if every hydrogen atom in the 
universe were turned into a computer

380
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and it did nothing until 
the heat death of the universe,

381
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but try to guess what your key was,

382
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we would run out of universe 
before we ran out of possible keys.

383
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, computers do give us 
the power to have secrets.

384
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The problem is that institutions 
prohibit the use of technology

385
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that allow you to take back 
your own privacy.

386
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It's funny, right? Because we take kids
and we say to them:

387
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
"Your privacy is like your virginity:

388
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
once you've lost it, 
you'll never get it back.

389
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Watch out what you're 
putting on Facebook"

390
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
-- and I think they should watch
what they're putting on Facebook,

391
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:

392
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
"Watch what you're putting on Facebook,

393
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
don't send out dirty pictures 
of yourself on SnapChat."

394
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
All good advice.

395
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But we do it while we are taking away 
all the private information

396
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that they have, all of their privacy
and all of their agency.

397
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
You know, if a parent says to a kid:

398
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
"You mustn't smoke 
because you'll get sick"

399
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and the parent says it 
while lighting a new cigarette

400
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
off the one that she's just put down
in the ashtray,

401
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the kid knows that what you're doing
matters more than what you're saying.

402
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
(Moderator) The point is deficit of trust.

403
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It builds in the kind of work that 
David has been doing as well,

404
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
this deficit of trust and privacy.

405
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And there is another point here:

406
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
"Is the battle for privacy already lost?

407
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Are we already too comfortable 
with giving away our data?"

408
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
(Doctorow) No, I don't think so at all.

409
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
In fact, I think that if anything, 
we've reached

410
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
peak indifference to surveillance, right? (21:25)