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The Joe Rogan experience.

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Are you aware at all of the current state

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of surveillance and what, if anything,
has changed since your revelations?

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Yeah, I mean, the big thing that's changed

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since I was in in 2013 is now it's mobile.

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First, everything

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mobile was still a big deal, right.

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And the intelligence community
was very much grappling

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to get its hands around
it and to deal with it.

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But now people are much less likely to use
laptop than use a desktop than than use,

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you know, got any kind of wired phone
than they are to use a smartphone.

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And both Apple and Android
devices, unfortunately,

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are not especially good in protecting
your privacy, I think, right now.

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You got a smartphone,

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right? You might be listening to this
on a train somewhere and in traffic right

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now, or you, Joe, right now you got
a phone somewhere in the room, right?

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The phone is turned off for at least the
screen is turned off, it's sitting there.

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It's powered on.

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And if somebody sends you a message,
the screen blinks to life.

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How does that happen,
but how is it that if someone from any

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corner of the Earth dials a number of your
phone rings and nobody else's rings,

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how is that you can dial anybody else's
number and only their phone rings?

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Right.
Every smartphone,

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every phone at all is constantly
connected to the nearest cellular tower.

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Every phone, even when the screen is off,
you think it's doing nothing.

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You can't see it because radio
frequency emissions are invisible.

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It's screaming in the air
saying, here I am, here I am.

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Here is my IMEI.

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I think it's individual manufacturers,

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equipment, identity and IMEI individual
manufacturers, subscriber identity.

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I could be wrong on the break out there,
but the acronyms are

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the Emii and the emcee and you
can search for these things.

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There are two globally unique identifiers

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that only exist anywhere
in the world in one place.

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Right.

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And it makes your phone different
than all the other phones.

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The IMEI is burned
into the handset on your phone.

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No matter what SIM card you change to,

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it's always going to be the same and it's
always going to be telling the phone

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network it's this physical handset,
the Iame essi is in your SIM card.

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Right.
And this is what holds your phone number.

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Right.

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Is that basically the key,
the right to use that phone number?

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And so your phone is sitting there doing
nothing you think,

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but it's constantly shouting and saying,
I'm here who is closest to me?

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That's a cell phone tower
and every cell phone tower with its big

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ears is listening for these little
cries for help and going, oh, right.

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I see Joe Rogan's phone, right.

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I see Jamie's phone.

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I see all these phones
that are here right now.

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And it compares notes

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with the other
network towers and your smartphone

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compares notes with them to go,
who do I hear the loudest and who you hear

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the loudest is a proxy for
proximity, for closeness, distance.

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Right.

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They go whoever I hear more loudly
than anybody else, that's close to me.

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So you're going to be bound to this cell
phone tower and that cell phone tower is

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going to make a note, a permanent record,
saying this phone,

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this phone handset with this phone number
at this time was connected to me.

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Right.
And based on your phone handset and your

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phone number,
they can get your identity right

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because you pay for this stuff with your
credit card and everything like that.

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And even if you don't write, it's
still active at your house overnight.

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It's still active, you know,
on your nightstand when you're sleeping.

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It's still whatever

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the movements of your phone are,
the movements of you as a person.

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And those are often
quite uniquely identifying.

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It goes to your home.

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It goes to your workplace.

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Other people don't have it sorry

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in any way.
It's constantly shutting this out.

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And then it compares notes
with the other a parts network.

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And when somebody is trying to get

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to a phone, it compares notes
of the network, compares notes to go.

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Where is this phone with this phone number
in the world right now

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and to that cell phone tower
that is closest to that phone.

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It sends out a signal saying,

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we have a call for you,
make your phone start ringing so your

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owner can answer it, and then it
connects it across this whole path.

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But what this means

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is that whenever you carry a phone over,
the phone is turned on.

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There's a record of your presence

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at that place that is being
made and created by companies.

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It does not need to be kept forever.

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And in fact, there's no good
argument for it to be kept forever.

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But these companies see that as
valuable information, right?

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This is the whole big data problem

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that we're running into and all this
information that used to be ephemeral.

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Right.

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Where were you when you
were eight years old?

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You know, where were where'd you
go after you had a bad breakup?

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You know, who'd you spend the night with?
Who'd you call?

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After all, this information used to be
ephemeral, meaning it disappeared.

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Right.
Like like the morning do it would be gone.

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No one would remember it.
But now these things are stored.

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Now these things are saved.

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It doesn't matter whether
you're doing anything wrong.

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Does it matter where you most
ordinary person on Earth?

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Because that's how bulk collection,

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which is the government's euphemism
for mass surveillance, works.

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They simply collect it all in advance in
hopes that one day it will become useful.

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And that was just talking about how
you connected the phone network.

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That's not talking about all those apps

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on your phone that are contacting
the network even more frequently.

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Right.

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How do you get a text
message notification?

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How do you get an email notification? How
is it the Facebook knows where you're at?

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You know, all of these things,
these analytics,

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they are trying to keep track through

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location services on your phone to GPS,
through even just wireless access points

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you're connected to because
there's a global contact.

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The updated map, there's actually many
of them of wireless access points

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in the world, because just like we talked
about, every phone has a unique identifier

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that's globally unique,
every wireless access point in the world.

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Right.

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You cable modem at home,
whether it's in your laptop,

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every device that has a radio modem
has a globally unique identifier in it.

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And this is standard term.

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You can look it up

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and these things can be mapped when
they're broadcasting in the air because

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again, like your phone says to the cell
phone tower, I have this identifier.

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The cell phone tower responds and says,
I have this identifier.

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And anybody who's listening,
they can write these things down.

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And all those Google Street View
cars that go back and forth.

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Right.

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They're keeping notes on whose Wi-Fi
is active on this block.

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Right.
And then they build a new GM app.

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So even if you have turned off right,

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as long as you connect to Wi-Fi,
those apps can go well,

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I'm connected to Joe's Wi-Fi, but I can
also see his neighbor's Wi-Fi here.

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And the other one in this apartment over

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here and the other one
in the apartment here.

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And you should only be able to hear

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those four globally unique Wi-Fi access

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points from these points
in physical space.

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Right.
The intersection in between the spread's,

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the domes of all those
wireless access points,

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it's a proxy for location
and it just goes on and on and on.

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We can talk about this for more hours.
We don't have that kind of time.

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Can I ask you this? Is there a way
to mitigate any of this personally? I

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mean, is shutting your phone
off doesn't even work, right?

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Well, so it does.
In a way, it's yes.

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No, I'm the thing with shutting your phone

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off that is a risk is how do you
know if phones actually turned off?

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It used to be when I was in Geneva,
for example, working for the CIA,

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we would all carry like
drug dealer phones.

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You know, the old smartphones
are old dumb phones.

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They're not smartphones.

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And the reason why was just because they

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had removal that from the banks where
you could take the battery out.

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Right.
And the one beautiful thing about

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technology is if there's
no electricity in it.

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Right.
If there's there's no go juice

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available to it, if there's no battery
connected to it, it's not sending anything

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because you have to get
power from somewhere.

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You have to have power
in order to do work.

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But now your phones are all sealed
and you can't take the batteries out.

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So there are potential ways that you can

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hack a phone where it appears to be off,
but it's not actually off.

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It's just pretending to be off,

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whereas in fact, it's still listening
in and doing all this stuff.

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But for the average person,
that doesn't apply.

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Right.

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And I got to tell you guys, they've
been chasing me all over the place.

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I don't worry about that stuff.

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Right.

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And it's because if they're applying
that level of effort to me,

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I don't probably get the same
information through other routes.

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I am as careful as I can.

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And I use things like Faraday cages.
I turn devices off.

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But if they're actually

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manipulating the way devices display,
it's just too great a level of effort,

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even for someone like me to keep
that up on a constant basis.

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Also, if they get me,
I only trust phones so much.

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So there's only so much they
can derive from the compromise.

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And this is how operational
security works.

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And you think about what are the realistic

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threats that you're facing
that you're trying to mitigate

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and the mitigation that you're trying
to do is what would be the loss? What

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would be the damage done to you
if this stuff was exploited? Much more

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realistic than worrying about these
things that I call voodoo hacks.

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Right.
Which are like next level stuff.

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00:10:08,040 --> 00:10:10,120
And actually just a shout out for those

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00:10:10,320 --> 00:10:13,320
of your readers who are
interested in this stuff.

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I wrote a paper on this specific problem.

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How do you know when
a phone is actually off?

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How do you know when it's
actually not spying on you?

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00:10:20,760 --> 00:10:24,800
With a brilliant, brilliant
guy named Andrew Bunnie Huang.

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He's an MIT Ph.D. and I
think electrical engineering

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called the Introspection Engine

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00:10:33,000 --> 00:10:35,280
that was published in the Journal
of Hope Engineering.

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You can find it online

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and it'll go as deep down in the weeds,
I promise you, as you.

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00:10:40,760 --> 00:10:42,800
Well, we take an iPhone six.

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This was back when it was fairly new

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and we modified it so we could actually
not trust the device to report its own

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state, but physically monitor it
state to see if it was spying on you.

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00:10:53,360 --> 00:10:55,400
But for average people, right

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00:10:55,600 --> 00:10:59,960
this academic night,
that's not your primary threat.

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00:11:00,160 --> 00:11:03,600
Your primary threats are these
bulk collection programs.

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00:11:03,670 --> 00:11:05,720
Your primary threat is the fact that your

202
00:11:05,920 --> 00:11:08,920
phone is constantly squawking
to these cell phone towers.

203
00:11:08,920 --> 00:11:10,280
It's doing all of these things

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00:11:10,480 --> 00:11:13,720
because we leave our phones
in a state that is constantly on.

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00:11:13,920 --> 00:11:16,120
You're constantly connected right now.

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00:11:16,320 --> 00:11:19,720
Airplane mode doesn't even
turn off Wi-Fi really anymore.

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00:11:19,920 --> 00:11:22,880
Just turns off the cellular modem.

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00:11:23,080 --> 00:11:25,360
The whole idea is

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00:11:25,560 --> 00:11:29,320
we need to identify the problem
and the central problem with smartphone

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00:11:29,520 --> 00:11:33,400
use today is you have no idea what
the hell it's doing at any given time.

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00:11:33,600 --> 00:11:35,360
Like the phone has the screen off.

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00:11:35,560 --> 00:11:36,840
You don't know what it's connected to.

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00:11:36,840 --> 00:11:38,560
You don't know how
frequently it's doing it.

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00:11:38,760 --> 00:11:43,080
Apple and iOS, unfortunately,
makes it impossible to see what kind

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00:11:43,080 --> 00:11:46,960
of network connections are constantly made
on the device and to intermediate them

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00:11:47,160 --> 00:11:49,880
going, I don't want Facebook
to be able to talk right now.

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00:11:49,920 --> 00:11:52,080
You know, I don't want Google
to be able to talk right now.

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00:11:52,280 --> 00:11:56,120
I just want my secure messenger
app to be able to talk.

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00:11:56,320 --> 00:11:58,080
I just want my weather app to be able

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00:11:58,280 --> 00:12:01,480
to talk, but I just check my weather
and now I'm done with it.

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00:12:01,480 --> 00:12:03,240
So I don't want that to be
able to talk anymore.

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00:12:03,440 --> 00:12:06,880
And we need to be able to make
these intelligent decisions.

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00:12:07,080 --> 00:12:11,160
Are not just an app by app basis, but a
connection by connection basis, right.

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00:12:11,360 --> 00:12:16,600
You want let's say you use
Facebook because, you know,

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00:12:16,800 --> 00:12:19,960
for whatever judgment we have,
a lot of people might do it.

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00:12:20,160 --> 00:12:24,040
You want to be able to connect
to Facebook's content servers.

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00:12:24,240 --> 00:12:26,000
You want to be able to message a friend.

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00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:28,440
You want to be able to download
a photograph or whatever,

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00:12:28,640 --> 00:12:30,840
but you don't want it to be
able to talk to an ad server.

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00:12:31,040 --> 00:12:32,640
You don't want to talk to an analytics

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00:12:32,640 --> 00:12:34,520
server that that's
monitoring your behavior.

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Right.
You don't want to talk to all these third

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00:12:36,200 --> 00:12:40,360
party things because Facebook crams their
garbage and almost every app that you

234
00:12:40,460 --> 00:12:44,160
download and you don't even know what's
happening because you can't see it.

235
00:12:44,160 --> 00:12:44,400
Right.

236
00:12:44,600 --> 00:12:47,760
And this is the problem
with the data collection used today

237
00:12:47,960 --> 00:12:52,280
is there is an industry that is
built on keeping this invisible.

238
00:12:52,480 --> 00:12:54,680
And what we need to do is we need to make

239
00:12:54,880 --> 00:12:58,720
the activities of our devices,
whether it's a phone,

240
00:12:58,920 --> 00:13:03,480
whether it's computer or whatever,
are more visible and understandable

241
00:13:03,480 --> 00:13:05,720
to the average person and then
give them control over it.

242
00:13:05,920 --> 00:13:08,480
So if you could see your phone right now

243
00:13:08,680 --> 00:13:10,680
and at the very center of it
is a little green icon.

244
00:13:10,880 --> 00:13:14,680
That's your, you know, handset or
it's a picture, your face, whatever.

245
00:13:14,880 --> 00:13:18,040
And you see all these little
spokes coming off of it.

246
00:13:18,240 --> 00:13:20,160
That's every app that your phone is

247
00:13:20,360 --> 00:13:24,000
talking to right now
or every app that is active on your phone

248
00:13:24,050 --> 00:13:26,600
right now and all the hosts
that it's connecting to.

249
00:13:26,800 --> 00:13:30,200
And you can see right now,
once every three seconds,

250
00:13:30,400 --> 00:13:34,760
your phone is checking into Facebook
and you could just poke that app and then,

251
00:13:34,760 --> 00:13:36,320
boom, it's not talking
to Facebook anymore.

252
00:13:36,360 --> 00:13:39,600
Facebook's not allowed Facebook
speaking privileges have been revoked.

253
00:13:39,600 --> 00:13:41,680
Right.
You would do that.

254
00:13:41,880 --> 00:13:45,520
We would all do that if there was a button
on your phone that said,

255
00:13:45,720 --> 00:13:50,800
do what I want but not spy on me,
you would press that button, right?

256
00:13:51,000 --> 00:13:53,800
That button is not does
not exist right now.

257
00:13:54,000 --> 00:13:58,200
And both Google and Apple, unfortunately,
Apple's a lot better at this than Google,

258
00:13:58,400 --> 00:14:03,280
but neither of them allow
that button to exist.

259
00:14:03,280 --> 00:14:07,040
In fact, they actively interfere with it
because they say it's a security risk.

260
00:14:07,240 --> 00:14:10,960
And from a particular perspective,
they they actually aren't wrong there.

261
00:14:11,160 --> 00:14:13,520
But it's not enough to go.

262
00:14:13,680 --> 00:14:15,600
You know, we have to lock that capability

263
00:14:15,600 --> 00:14:18,640
off from people because we don't trust
they would make the right decisions.

264
00:14:18,840 --> 00:14:21,360
We think it's too complicated
for people to do this.

265
00:14:21,360 --> 00:14:23,520
We think there's too many
connections being made.

266
00:14:23,720 --> 00:14:28,160
Well, that is actually a confession
of the problem right there.

267
00:14:28,360 --> 00:14:30,120
If you think people can't understand it,

268
00:14:30,320 --> 00:14:32,520
if you think there are too many
communications happening,

269
00:14:32,720 --> 00:14:36,560
if you think there's too much complexity
in there, it needs to be simplified,

270
00:14:36,760 --> 00:14:39,280
just like the president can't
control everything like that.

271
00:14:39,280 --> 00:14:42,640
If you have to be the president
of the phone and the phone is as complex

272
00:14:42,640 --> 00:14:45,120
as the United States government,
we have a problem.

273
00:14:45,320 --> 00:14:47,680
Guys, this should be much
more simple process.

274
00:14:47,880 --> 00:14:48,840
It should be obvious.

275
00:14:49,040 --> 00:14:53,480
And the fact that it's not and the fact
that we read story after story year after

276
00:14:53,480 --> 00:14:55,920
year, saying all your date has been
breached here,

277
00:14:56,120 --> 00:15:00,360
this company's spying on you here is
companies manipulating your purchases or

278
00:15:00,560 --> 00:15:05,320
your search results or they're hiding
these things from your timeline

279
00:15:05,520 --> 00:15:09,400
or they're influencing you or manipulating
you in all of these different ways.

280
00:15:09,600 --> 00:15:16,080
That happens as a result of a single
problem.

281
00:15:16,280 --> 00:15:20,800
And that problem is in inequality
of available information.

282
00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:22,520
They can see everything about you.

283
00:15:22,560 --> 00:15:23,760
They can see everything about what your

284
00:15:23,760 --> 00:15:26,120
device is doing, and they can do
whatever they want with your device.

285
00:15:26,320 --> 00:15:32,760
You, on the other hand, owned the device
well, rather, you paid for the device.

286
00:15:32,960 --> 00:15:35,200
But increasingly these
corporations own it.

287
00:15:35,200 --> 00:15:37,040
Increasingly, these governments own it.

288
00:15:37,240 --> 00:15:41,120
And increasingly, we are living in a world
where we do all the work right.

289
00:15:41,320 --> 00:15:48,360
We pay all the taxes, we pay all
the costs, but we own less and less.

290
00:15:48,360 --> 00:15:51,040
And nobody understands this better
than the youngest generation.

291
00:15:51,240 --> 00:15:53,000
Well, it seems like our data became

292
00:15:53,200 --> 00:15:55,960
a commodity before we
understood what it was.

293
00:15:56,160 --> 00:15:58,440
It became this thing that's insanely

294
00:15:58,640 --> 00:16:02,320
valuable to Google and Facebook
and all these social media platforms.

295
00:16:02,520 --> 00:16:06,600
Before we understood what we were giving
up, they were making billions of dollars.

296
00:16:06,800 --> 00:16:10,920
And then once that money is being earned
and once everyone's accustomed

297
00:16:11,120 --> 00:16:14,200
to the situation, it's very
difficult to pull the reins back.

298
00:16:14,400 --> 00:16:17,200
It's very difficult
to turn that horse around

299
00:16:17,400 --> 00:16:19,880
precisely because the money
then becomes part right.

300
00:16:20,080 --> 00:16:22,200
The information then becomes influence.

301
00:16:22,200 --> 00:16:23,640
That also seems to be the same sort

302
00:16:23,640 --> 00:16:26,360
of situation that would happen
with these mass surveillance states.

303
00:16:26,560 --> 00:16:28,360
Once they have the access,

304
00:16:28,560 --> 00:16:32,920
it's going to be incredibly difficult
for them to relinquish that,

305
00:16:33,120 --> 00:16:35,840
right?
Yeah, no, you're exactly correct.

306
00:16:35,960 --> 00:16:37,760
And this is the subject of the book.

307
00:16:37,760 --> 00:16:40,640
I mean, this is the permanent record
and this is where it came from.

308
00:16:40,840 --> 00:16:43,440
This is how it came to exist.

309
00:16:43,640 --> 00:16:50,800
The story of our lifetimes is how
intentionally by design,

310
00:16:51,000 --> 00:16:55,480
a number of institutions,
both governmental and corporate,

311
00:16:55,680 --> 00:17:00,480
realized it was in their mutual interest
to conceal their data collection

312
00:17:00,680 --> 00:17:06,640
activities, to increase the breadth
and depth of their sensor network.

313
00:17:06,840 --> 00:17:10,320
That were sort of spread out through
society, rumor back in the day

314
00:17:10,520 --> 00:17:13,760
intelligence collection
in the United States, even at Segan,

315
00:17:13,960 --> 00:17:18,880
used to mean sending an FBI agent right
to put alligator clips on an embassy

316
00:17:19,080 --> 00:17:23,200
building or sending in somebody
disguised as a workman.

317
00:17:23,400 --> 00:17:29,080
And they put a bug in a building or
they built a satellite listening side.

318
00:17:29,080 --> 00:17:29,280
Right.

319
00:17:29,480 --> 00:17:33,080
We called these foreign set were
foreign satellite collection.

320
00:17:33,320 --> 00:17:34,560
We're out in the desert somewhere.

321
00:17:34,760 --> 00:17:38,040
They built a big parabolic collector.

322
00:17:38,240 --> 00:17:40,560
And it's just listening
to satellite missions.

323
00:17:40,560 --> 00:17:40,840
Right.

324
00:17:41,040 --> 00:17:46,440
But these satellite emmissions, these
satellite links were owned by militaries.

325
00:17:46,440 --> 00:17:48,360
They were exclusive to governments.
Right.

326
00:17:48,560 --> 00:17:51,400
It wasn't affecting everybody broadly.

327
00:17:51,600 --> 00:17:55,640
All surveillance was targeted
because it had to be.

328
00:17:55,920 --> 00:17:57,560
What changed with technology is

329
00:17:57,760 --> 00:18:00,680
that surveillance could
now become indiscriminate.

330
00:18:00,880 --> 00:18:02,560
It could become dragnet.

331
00:18:02,760 --> 00:18:06,920
It could become bulk collection,
which should become one of the dirtiest

332
00:18:07,120 --> 00:18:10,920
phrases in the language
if we have any kind of decency.

333
00:18:11,120 --> 00:18:14,600
But we were intentionally

334
00:18:14,800 --> 00:18:17,320
this was intentionally concealed from us.
Right.

335
00:18:17,520 --> 00:18:18,200
The government did it.

336
00:18:18,400 --> 00:18:21,400
They used classification,
companies did it.

337
00:18:21,600 --> 00:18:23,040
They intentionally didn't talk about it.

338
00:18:23,240 --> 00:18:25,320
They denied these things were going.

339
00:18:25,520 --> 00:18:30,080
They said you agreed to this and you
didn't agree to nothing like this.

340
00:18:30,280 --> 00:18:31,280
I'm sorry.
Right.

341
00:18:31,360 --> 00:18:33,760
Right.
They go we put that terms of service page

342
00:18:33,960 --> 00:18:36,600
up and you click that,
you click the button.

343
00:18:36,800 --> 00:18:38,080
That said, I agree

344
00:18:38,280 --> 00:18:42,120
because you were trying to open an account
so you could talk to your friends.

345
00:18:42,320 --> 00:18:43,960
You were trying to get driving directions.

346
00:18:43,960 --> 00:18:45,280
You were trying to get an email account.

347
00:18:45,480 --> 00:18:47,760
You were trying to agree to some 600 page

348
00:18:47,960 --> 00:18:51,480
legal form that even if you read,
you wouldn't understand.

349
00:18:51,680 --> 00:18:53,040
And it doesn't matter even if you did

350
00:18:53,040 --> 00:18:56,680
understand, because one of the very first
paragraphs and it said this agreement can

351
00:18:56,880 --> 00:19:00,880
be changed at any time unilaterally
without your consent by the company.

352
00:19:01,080 --> 00:19:02,360
Right.

353
00:19:02,560 --> 00:19:05,600
They have built a legal paradigm

354
00:19:05,800 --> 00:19:12,160
that presumes records collected about us
do not belong to us.

355
00:19:12,360 --> 00:19:16,520
This is sort of one of the core principles
on which mass surveillance

356
00:19:16,720 --> 00:19:19,840
from the government's perspective
in the United States is legal.

357
00:19:20,040 --> 00:19:21,120
And you have to understand that all

358
00:19:21,120 --> 00:19:24,200
the stuff we talk about today, government
says everything we do is legal.

359
00:19:24,400 --> 00:19:26,480
Right.
And they go, so it's fine.

360
00:19:26,680 --> 00:19:30,560
Our perspective, the public should be
well, that's actually the problem,

361
00:19:30,760 --> 00:19:34,320
because this is an OK,
the scandal isn't how they're breaking

362
00:19:34,520 --> 00:19:38,480
the law, the scandals that they
don't have to break the law.

363
00:19:38,680 --> 00:19:40,520
And the way they say they're not breaking

364
00:19:40,520 --> 00:19:43,080
the law is something called
the third party doctrine.

365
00:19:43,280 --> 00:19:46,240
Third party doctrine is a.

366
00:19:47,640 --> 00:19:49,920
Legal principle derived from a case and I

367
00:19:50,120 --> 00:19:54,680
believe the 1970s called
Smith versus Maryland

368
00:19:55,040 --> 00:19:58,080
and Smith was this knucklehead who was

369
00:19:58,280 --> 00:20:02,200
harassing this lady,
making phone calls to her house.

370
00:20:02,400 --> 00:20:04,120
And when she would pick up, he just,

371
00:20:04,320 --> 00:20:08,600
I don't know, sit there, heavy breathing,
whatever, like a classic creeper.

372
00:20:08,800 --> 00:20:11,520
And, you know, it was terrifying,
this poor lady.

373
00:20:11,720 --> 00:20:13,840
So she calls the cops

374
00:20:14,040 --> 00:20:18,520
and says, one day I got one of these phone
calls and I see this car creep past

375
00:20:18,720 --> 00:20:22,120
my house on the street
and she got a license plate number.

376
00:20:22,320 --> 00:20:25,120
So she goes to the cops and she goes,
is this the guy?

377
00:20:25,320 --> 00:20:26,280
And the cops?

378
00:20:26,480 --> 00:20:29,480
Again, they're trying
to do a good thing here.

379
00:20:29,680 --> 00:20:35,040
They look up his license plate number
and they find out where this guy is

380
00:20:35,040 --> 00:20:37,520
and then they go, what phone number
is registered to that house?

381
00:20:37,520 --> 00:20:38,840
And they go to the phone company and they

382
00:20:38,840 --> 00:20:42,240
say, can you give us this record
in the phone? Company says, yeah, sure.

383
00:20:42,440 --> 00:20:44,880
And it's the guy the cops got there, man.

384
00:20:44,920 --> 00:20:46,120
Right.

385
00:20:46,320 --> 00:20:47,640
So they go arrest this guy.

386
00:20:47,840 --> 00:20:52,800
And then in court, his lawyer brings
all this stuff up and they go.

387
00:20:55,440 --> 00:20:56,840
A.

388
00:20:57,600 --> 00:21:02,080
You did this without a warrant that was
sorry, that was that was the problem was

389
00:21:02,280 --> 00:21:04,520
they went to the phone company,
they got the records without a warrant.

390
00:21:04,560 --> 00:21:06,480
They just asked for it
or they subpoenaed it.

391
00:21:06,480 --> 00:21:08,960
Right.
Some lower standard of legal review.

392
00:21:09,160 --> 00:21:13,680
And the company gave it to him and
got the guy they marchmont in jail.

393
00:21:14,160 --> 00:21:16,680
And they could have gotten a warrant.
Right.

394
00:21:16,680 --> 00:21:17,920
But it was just expedients.

395
00:21:17,920 --> 00:21:19,400
They just didn't want to take the time.

396
00:21:19,580 --> 00:21:22,080
Small town cops, you can
understand how it happens.

397
00:21:22,160 --> 00:21:25,560
They know the guy's a creep or they
just want to get him off to jail.

398
00:21:26,360 --> 00:21:28,480
And so they made a misstep with the
government doesn't want to let go.

399
00:21:28,680 --> 00:21:32,280
They fight on this and they go.

400
00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:36,520
It wasn't actually
they weren't his records,

401
00:21:36,720 --> 00:21:42,760
and so because they didn't belong to him,
he didn't have a Fourth Amendment right

402
00:21:42,960 --> 00:21:45,360
to demand a warrant be issued for them,

403
00:21:45,560 --> 00:21:49,040
they were the company's records and
the company provided them voluntarily.

404
00:21:49,040 --> 00:21:51,080
And hence no warrant was required because

405
00:21:51,080 --> 00:21:54,520
you can give whatever you want without
a warrant as long as it's yours.

406
00:21:54,720 --> 00:21:56,000
Now, here's the problem.

407
00:21:56,200 --> 00:22:01,400
The government extrapolated
a principle in a single case of a single

408
00:22:01,600 --> 00:22:08,680
known suspected criminal who they had real
good reasons to suspect was their guy

409
00:22:10,040 --> 00:22:14,320
and use that to go to a company and get
records from them and establish

410
00:22:14,420 --> 00:22:17,120
a precedent that these records
don't belong to the guy.

411
00:22:17,320 --> 00:22:18,240
They belong to the company.

412
00:22:18,440 --> 00:22:21,480
And then they said, well,
if one person doesn't have

413
00:22:21,680 --> 00:22:26,080
a Fourth Amendment interest in records
held by a company, no one does.

414
00:22:26,280 --> 00:22:28,600
And so the company then has absolute

415
00:22:28,600 --> 00:22:31,760
proprietary ownership of all of these
records about all of our lives.

416
00:22:31,960 --> 00:22:33,840
And remember, this is back in the 1970s.

417
00:22:34,040 --> 00:22:38,040
You know, the Internet hardly
exists in these kind of contexts.

418
00:22:38,090 --> 00:22:39,840
Smartphones, you know, don't exist.

419
00:22:40,040 --> 00:22:43,280
Modern society, modern
communications don't exist.

420
00:22:43,480 --> 00:22:47,600
This is the very beginning
of the technological era.

421
00:22:47,800 --> 00:22:53,040
And flash forward now, 40 years.

422
00:22:54,600 --> 00:22:56,880
And they are still relying on this

423
00:22:57,080 --> 00:23:00,440
precedent about this one,
you know, pervy creeper to go.

424
00:23:00,480 --> 00:23:03,440
Nobody has a privacy right
for anything that's held by a company.

425
00:23:03,640 --> 00:23:07,280
And so long as they do that,
companies are going to be extraordinarily

426
00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:09,920
powerful and they're going
to be extraordinarily abusive.

427
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:11,440
And this is something
that people don't get.

428
00:23:11,640 --> 00:23:14,280
They go, oh, well,
it's Data-Collection, right?

429
00:23:14,480 --> 00:23:16,120
They're exploiting data.

430
00:23:16,320 --> 00:23:18,840
This is data about human lives.

431
00:23:19,040 --> 00:23:21,120
It is state about people.

432
00:23:21,320 --> 00:23:22,720
These records are about you.

433
00:23:22,920 --> 00:23:26,280
It's not data that's being exploited.

434
00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:28,320
It's people that are being exploited.

435
00:23:28,520 --> 00:23:32,560
It's not data that's being manipulated.

436
00:23:32,760 --> 00:23:33,760
It's you.

437
00:23:33,960 --> 00:23:36,520
It's being manipulated.

438
00:23:36,720 --> 00:23:39,480
And this this is this is something that I

439
00:23:39,680 --> 00:23:42,680
think a lot of people
are beginning to understand.

440
00:23:42,880 --> 00:23:45,160
Now, the problem is the companies
and the governments are still pretending

441
00:23:45,160 --> 00:23:47,240
they don't understand or
disagreeing with this.

442
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:52,960
And this reminds me of something that one
of my old friends, John Perry Barlow,

443
00:23:53,800 --> 00:23:55,560
who served with me at the Freedom

444
00:23:55,760 --> 00:23:59,200
of Press Foundation,
I'm the president of the board,

445
00:23:59,400 --> 00:24:01,640
used to say to me.

446
00:24:02,520 --> 00:24:06,120
Which is you can't awaken someone
who's pretending to be asleep.