WEBVTT 00:00:00.960 --> 00:00:03.320 The Joe Rogan experience. 00:00:03.520 --> 00:00:06.720 Are you aware at all of the current state 00:00:06.920 --> 00:00:12.560 of surveillance and what, if anything, has changed since your revelations? 00:00:12.760 --> 00:00:16.520 Yeah, I mean, the big thing that's changed 00:00:16.720 --> 00:00:22.040 since I was in in 2013 is now it's mobile. 00:00:22.240 --> 00:00:24.600 First, everything 00:00:25.400 --> 00:00:28.640 mobile was still a big deal, right. 00:00:28.840 --> 00:00:32.400 And the intelligence community was very much grappling 00:00:32.640 --> 00:00:35.600 to get its hands around it and to deal with it. 00:00:35.800 --> 00:00:41.600 But now people are much less likely to use laptop than use a desktop than than use, 00:00:41.800 --> 00:00:47.120 you know, got any kind of wired phone than they are to use a smartphone. 00:00:47.320 --> 00:00:52.080 And both Apple and Android devices, unfortunately, 00:00:52.280 --> 00:00:57.600 are not especially good in protecting your privacy, I think, right now. 00:00:59.720 --> 00:01:00.560 You got a smartphone, 00:01:00.760 --> 00:01:05.400 right? You might be listening to this on a train somewhere and in traffic right 00:01:05.600 --> 00:01:10.320 now, or you, Joe, right now you got a phone somewhere in the room, right? 00:01:11.360 --> 00:01:15.480 The phone is turned off for at least the screen is turned off, it's sitting there. 00:01:15.680 --> 00:01:17.880 It's powered on. 00:01:18.080 --> 00:01:22.960 And if somebody sends you a message, the screen blinks to life. 00:01:23.560 --> 00:01:28.600 How does that happen, but how is it that if someone from any 00:01:28.800 --> 00:01:32.760 corner of the Earth dials a number of your phone rings and nobody else's rings, 00:01:32.760 --> 00:01:35.680 how is that you can dial anybody else's number and only their phone rings? 00:01:35.680 --> 00:01:38.520 Right. Every smartphone, 00:01:38.720 --> 00:01:44.200 every phone at all is constantly connected to the nearest cellular tower. 00:01:44.400 --> 00:01:47.880 Every phone, even when the screen is off, you think it's doing nothing. 00:01:48.080 --> 00:01:51.800 You can't see it because radio frequency emissions are invisible. 00:01:52.120 --> 00:01:56.960 It's screaming in the air saying, here I am, here I am. 00:01:57.160 --> 00:01:59.400 Here is my IMEI. 00:01:59.600 --> 00:02:01.840 I think it's individual manufacturers, 00:02:02.040 --> 00:02:09.680 equipment, identity and IMEI individual manufacturers, subscriber identity. 00:02:09.880 --> 00:02:13.240 I could be wrong on the break out there, but the acronyms are 00:02:13.440 --> 00:02:17.040 the Emii and the emcee and you can search for these things. 00:02:17.240 --> 00:02:19.280 There are two globally unique identifiers 00:02:19.480 --> 00:02:23.880 that only exist anywhere in the world in one place. 00:02:23.880 --> 00:02:24.520 Right. 00:02:24.720 --> 00:02:27.360 And it makes your phone different than all the other phones. 00:02:27.560 --> 00:02:30.160 The IMEI is burned into the handset on your phone. 00:02:30.360 --> 00:02:32.880 No matter what SIM card you change to, 00:02:33.080 --> 00:02:35.520 it's always going to be the same and it's always going to be telling the phone 00:02:35.720 --> 00:02:42.000 network it's this physical handset, the Iame essi is in your SIM card. 00:02:42.040 --> 00:02:43.760 Right. And this is what holds your phone number. 00:02:43.760 --> 00:02:43.960 Right. 00:02:43.960 --> 00:02:46.960 Is that basically the key, the right to use that phone number? 00:02:47.160 --> 00:02:51.000 And so your phone is sitting there doing nothing you think, 00:02:51.200 --> 00:02:55.440 but it's constantly shouting and saying, I'm here who is closest to me? 00:02:55.640 --> 00:02:59.280 That's a cell phone tower and every cell phone tower with its big 00:02:59.480 --> 00:03:04.640 ears is listening for these little cries for help and going, oh, right. 00:03:04.840 --> 00:03:06.480 I see Joe Rogan's phone, right. 00:03:06.680 --> 00:03:08.120 I see Jamie's phone. 00:03:08.320 --> 00:03:11.800 I see all these phones that are here right now. 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:14.880 And it compares notes 00:03:15.080 --> 00:03:18.360 with the other network towers and your smartphone 00:03:18.560 --> 00:03:24.240 compares notes with them to go, who do I hear the loudest and who you hear 00:03:24.440 --> 00:03:29.160 the loudest is a proxy for proximity, for closeness, distance. 00:03:29.160 --> 00:03:29.800 Right. 00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:33.920 They go whoever I hear more loudly than anybody else, that's close to me. 00:03:34.120 --> 00:03:37.120 So you're going to be bound to this cell phone tower and that cell phone tower is 00:03:37.320 --> 00:03:42.520 going to make a note, a permanent record, saying this phone, 00:03:42.720 --> 00:03:48.640 this phone handset with this phone number at this time was connected to me. 00:03:48.840 --> 00:03:51.360 Right. And based on your phone handset and your 00:03:51.560 --> 00:03:55.920 phone number, they can get your identity right 00:03:56.120 --> 00:03:59.600 because you pay for this stuff with your credit card and everything like that. 00:03:59.800 --> 00:04:04.200 And even if you don't write, it's still active at your house overnight. 00:04:04.200 --> 00:04:06.520 It's still active, you know, on your nightstand when you're sleeping. 00:04:06.720 --> 00:04:08.840 It's still whatever 00:04:09.200 --> 00:04:11.760 the movements of your phone are, the movements of you as a person. 00:04:11.960 --> 00:04:15.000 And those are often quite uniquely identifying. 00:04:15.200 --> 00:04:16.280 It goes to your home. 00:04:16.380 --> 00:04:17.680 It goes to your workplace. 00:04:17.880 --> 00:04:20.440 Other people don't have it sorry 00:04:22.120 --> 00:04:23.880 in any way. It's constantly shutting this out. 00:04:23.880 --> 00:04:26.400 And then it compares notes with the other a parts network. 00:04:26.600 --> 00:04:28.200 And when somebody is trying to get 00:04:28.400 --> 00:04:32.360 to a phone, it compares notes of the network, compares notes to go. 00:04:32.560 --> 00:04:37.560 Where is this phone with this phone number in the world right now 00:04:37.760 --> 00:04:41.200 and to that cell phone tower that is closest to that phone. 00:04:41.400 --> 00:04:43.160 It sends out a signal saying, 00:04:43.360 --> 00:04:47.000 we have a call for you, make your phone start ringing so your 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:49.760 owner can answer it, and then it connects it across this whole path. 00:04:49.960 --> 00:04:51.240 But what this means 00:04:51.440 --> 00:04:54.640 is that whenever you carry a phone over, the phone is turned on. 00:04:54.840 --> 00:04:56.840 There's a record of your presence 00:04:57.040 --> 00:05:00.400 at that place that is being made and created by companies. 00:05:00.600 --> 00:05:02.760 It does not need to be kept forever. 00:05:02.760 --> 00:05:05.360 And in fact, there's no good argument for it to be kept forever. 00:05:05.560 --> 00:05:08.520 But these companies see that as valuable information, right? 00:05:08.620 --> 00:05:10.320 This is the whole big data problem 00:05:10.320 --> 00:05:14.000 that we're running into and all this information that used to be ephemeral. 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:14.320 Right. 00:05:14.520 --> 00:05:16.600 Where were you when you were eight years old? 00:05:16.800 --> 00:05:20.480 You know, where were where'd you go after you had a bad breakup? 00:05:20.680 --> 00:05:22.440 You know, who'd you spend the night with? Who'd you call? 00:05:22.640 --> 00:05:26.800 After all, this information used to be ephemeral, meaning it disappeared. 00:05:26.800 --> 00:05:29.640 Right. Like like the morning do it would be gone. 00:05:29.840 --> 00:05:32.760 No one would remember it. But now these things are stored. 00:05:32.850 --> 00:05:34.200 Now these things are saved. 00:05:34.240 --> 00:05:36.280 It doesn't matter whether you're doing anything wrong. 00:05:36.480 --> 00:05:40.000 Does it matter where you most ordinary person on Earth? 00:05:40.200 --> 00:05:42.680 Because that's how bulk collection, 00:05:42.880 --> 00:05:46.520 which is the government's euphemism for mass surveillance, works. 00:05:46.520 --> 00:05:50.400 They simply collect it all in advance in hopes that one day it will become useful. 00:05:50.600 --> 00:05:56.200 And that was just talking about how you connected the phone network. 00:05:56.400 --> 00:05:58.440 That's not talking about all those apps 00:05:58.640 --> 00:06:02.800 on your phone that are contacting the network even more frequently. 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:04.440 Right. 00:06:04.640 --> 00:06:06.320 How do you get a text message notification? 00:06:06.320 --> 00:06:10.040 How do you get an email notification? How is it the Facebook knows where you're at? 00:06:10.240 --> 00:06:14.040 You know, all of these things, these analytics, 00:06:14.600 --> 00:06:16.000 they are trying to keep track through 00:06:16.200 --> 00:06:20.880 location services on your phone to GPS, through even just wireless access points 00:06:20.880 --> 00:06:23.040 you're connected to because there's a global contact. 00:06:23.170 --> 00:06:26.720 The updated map, there's actually many of them of wireless access points 00:06:26.720 --> 00:06:29.920 in the world, because just like we talked about, every phone has a unique identifier 00:06:30.120 --> 00:06:33.720 that's globally unique, every wireless access point in the world. 00:06:33.720 --> 00:06:33.920 Right. 00:06:34.120 --> 00:06:37.080 You cable modem at home, whether it's in your laptop, 00:06:37.280 --> 00:06:43.920 every device that has a radio modem has a globally unique identifier in it. 00:06:44.200 --> 00:06:45.680 And this is standard term. 00:06:45.880 --> 00:06:46.920 You can look it up 00:06:47.120 --> 00:06:51.280 and these things can be mapped when they're broadcasting in the air because 00:06:51.480 --> 00:06:55.800 again, like your phone says to the cell phone tower, I have this identifier. 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:58.960 The cell phone tower responds and says, I have this identifier. 00:06:59.160 --> 00:07:02.520 And anybody who's listening, they can write these things down. 00:07:02.720 --> 00:07:05.440 And all those Google Street View cars that go back and forth. 00:07:05.440 --> 00:07:05.960 Right. 00:07:06.160 --> 00:07:11.400 They're keeping notes on whose Wi-Fi is active on this block. 00:07:11.400 --> 00:07:13.520 Right. And then they build a new GM app. 00:07:13.720 --> 00:07:16.280 So even if you have turned off right, 00:07:16.480 --> 00:07:20.920 as long as you connect to Wi-Fi, those apps can go well, 00:07:21.120 --> 00:07:26.080 I'm connected to Joe's Wi-Fi, but I can also see his neighbor's Wi-Fi here. 00:07:26.280 --> 00:07:27.680 And the other one in this apartment over 00:07:27.680 --> 00:07:29.480 here and the other one in the apartment here. 00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:32.960 And you should only be able to hear 00:07:33.160 --> 00:07:36.160 those four globally unique Wi-Fi access 00:07:36.360 --> 00:07:39.400 points from these points in physical space. 00:07:39.400 --> 00:07:42.320 Right. The intersection in between the spread's, 00:07:42.520 --> 00:07:45.720 the domes of all those wireless access points, 00:07:45.920 --> 00:07:49.000 it's a proxy for location and it just goes on and on and on. 00:07:49.040 --> 00:07:51.440 We can talk about this for more hours. We don't have that kind of time. 00:07:51.640 --> 00:07:55.200 Can I ask you this? Is there a way to mitigate any of this personally? I 00:07:55.400 --> 00:07:59.680 mean, is shutting your phone off doesn't even work, right? 00:07:59.880 --> 00:08:02.560 Well, so it does. In a way, it's yes. 00:08:02.560 --> 00:08:04.200 No, I'm the thing with shutting your phone 00:08:04.400 --> 00:08:08.360 off that is a risk is how do you know if phones actually turned off? 00:08:08.560 --> 00:08:14.640 It used to be when I was in Geneva, for example, working for the CIA, 00:08:15.760 --> 00:08:19.040 we would all carry like drug dealer phones. 00:08:19.240 --> 00:08:22.920 You know, the old smartphones are old dumb phones. 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:24.200 They're not smartphones. 00:08:24.400 --> 00:08:26.880 And the reason why was just because they 00:08:27.080 --> 00:08:30.800 had removal that from the banks where you could take the battery out. 00:08:30.800 --> 00:08:33.440 Right. And the one beautiful thing about 00:08:33.640 --> 00:08:35.920 technology is if there's no electricity in it. 00:08:35.920 --> 00:08:38.200 Right. If there's there's no go juice 00:08:38.400 --> 00:08:41.920 available to it, if there's no battery connected to it, it's not sending anything 00:08:41.920 --> 00:08:43.880 because you have to get power from somewhere. 00:08:44.080 --> 00:08:48.440 You have to have power in order to do work. 00:08:48.640 --> 00:08:51.640 But now your phones are all sealed and you can't take the batteries out. 00:08:51.840 --> 00:08:55.240 So there are potential ways that you can 00:08:55.300 --> 00:08:58.600 hack a phone where it appears to be off, but it's not actually off. 00:08:58.600 --> 00:09:00.040 It's just pretending to be off, 00:09:00.040 --> 00:09:02.520 whereas in fact, it's still listening in and doing all this stuff. 00:09:02.720 --> 00:09:06.000 But for the average person, that doesn't apply. 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:06.240 Right. 00:09:06.420 --> 00:09:09.920 And I got to tell you guys, they've been chasing me all over the place. 00:09:10.120 --> 00:09:12.120 I don't worry about that stuff. 00:09:12.120 --> 00:09:13.520 Right. 00:09:13.720 --> 00:09:16.720 And it's because if they're applying that level of effort to me, 00:09:16.920 --> 00:09:20.640 I don't probably get the same information through other routes. 00:09:20.840 --> 00:09:22.640 I am as careful as I can. 00:09:22.840 --> 00:09:26.040 And I use things like Faraday cages. I turn devices off. 00:09:26.240 --> 00:09:28.680 But if they're actually 00:09:28.880 --> 00:09:33.320 manipulating the way devices display, it's just too great a level of effort, 00:09:33.320 --> 00:09:36.160 even for someone like me to keep that up on a constant basis. 00:09:36.360 --> 00:09:41.120 Also, if they get me, I only trust phones so much. 00:09:41.120 --> 00:09:43.520 So there's only so much they can derive from the compromise. 00:09:43.720 --> 00:09:47.440 And this is how operational security works. 00:09:47.640 --> 00:09:49.280 And you think about what are the realistic 00:09:49.480 --> 00:09:52.320 threats that you're facing that you're trying to mitigate 00:09:52.520 --> 00:09:57.520 and the mitigation that you're trying to do is what would be the loss? What 00:09:57.720 --> 00:10:02.680 would be the damage done to you if this stuff was exploited? Much more 00:10:02.730 --> 00:10:06.080 realistic than worrying about these things that I call voodoo hacks. 00:10:06.080 --> 00:10:07.840 Right. Which are like next level stuff. 00:10:08.040 --> 00:10:10.120 And actually just a shout out for those 00:10:10.320 --> 00:10:13.320 of your readers who are interested in this stuff. 00:10:13.520 --> 00:10:16.360 I wrote a paper on this specific problem. 00:10:16.360 --> 00:10:18.320 How do you know when a phone is actually off? 00:10:18.320 --> 00:10:20.560 How do you know when it's actually not spying on you? 00:10:20.760 --> 00:10:24.800 With a brilliant, brilliant guy named Andrew Bunnie Huang. 00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:30.040 He's an MIT Ph.D. and I think electrical engineering 00:10:30.280 --> 00:10:32.800 called the Introspection Engine 00:10:33.000 --> 00:10:35.280 that was published in the Journal of Hope Engineering. 00:10:35.480 --> 00:10:37.440 You can find it online 00:10:37.920 --> 00:10:40.560 and it'll go as deep down in the weeds, I promise you, as you. 00:10:40.760 --> 00:10:42.800 Well, we take an iPhone six. 00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:44.960 This was back when it was fairly new 00:10:45.160 --> 00:10:50.480 and we modified it so we could actually not trust the device to report its own 00:10:50.480 --> 00:10:53.160 state, but physically monitor it state to see if it was spying on you. 00:10:53.360 --> 00:10:55.400 But for average people, right 00:10:55.600 --> 00:10:59.960 this academic night, that's not your primary threat. 00:11:00.160 --> 00:11:03.600 Your primary threats are these bulk collection programs. 00:11:03.670 --> 00:11:05.720 Your primary threat is the fact that your 00:11:05.920 --> 00:11:08.920 phone is constantly squawking to these cell phone towers. 00:11:08.920 --> 00:11:10.280 It's doing all of these things 00:11:10.480 --> 00:11:13.720 because we leave our phones in a state that is constantly on. 00:11:13.920 --> 00:11:16.120 You're constantly connected right now. 00:11:16.320 --> 00:11:19.720 Airplane mode doesn't even turn off Wi-Fi really anymore. 00:11:19.920 --> 00:11:22.880 Just turns off the cellular modem. 00:11:23.080 --> 00:11:25.360 The whole idea is 00:11:25.560 --> 00:11:29.320 we need to identify the problem and the central problem with smartphone 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. 00:11:33.600 --> 00:11:35.360 Like the phone has the screen off. 00:11:35.560 --> 00:11:36.840 You don't know what it's connected to. 00:11:36.840 --> 00:11:38.560 You don't know how frequently it's doing it. 00:11:38.760 --> 00:11:43.080 Apple and iOS, unfortunately, makes it impossible to see what kind 00:11:43.080 --> 00:11:46.960 of network connections are constantly made on the device and to intermediate them 00:11:47.160 --> 00:11:49.880 going, I don't want Facebook to be able to talk right now. 00:11:49.920 --> 00:11:52.080 You know, I don't want Google to be able to talk right now. 00:11:52.280 --> 00:11:56.120 I just want my secure messenger app to be able to talk. 00:11:56.320 --> 00:11:58.080 I just want my weather app to be able 00:11:58.280 --> 00:12:01.480 to talk, but I just check my weather and now I'm done with it. 00:12:01.480 --> 00:12:03.240 So I don't want that to be able to talk anymore. 00:12:03.440 --> 00:12:06.880 And we need to be able to make these intelligent decisions. 00:12:07.080 --> 00:12:11.160 Are not just an app by app basis, but a connection by connection basis, right. 00:12:11.360 --> 00:12:16.600 You want let's say you use Facebook because, you know, 00:12:16.800 --> 00:12:19.960 for whatever judgment we have, a lot of people might do it. 00:12:20.160 --> 00:12:24.040 You want to be able to connect to Facebook's content servers. 00:12:24.240 --> 00:12:26.000 You want to be able to message a friend. 00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:28.440 You want to be able to download a photograph or whatever, 00:12:28.640 --> 00:12:30.840 but you don't want it to be able to talk to an ad server. 00:12:31.040 --> 00:12:32.640 You don't want to talk to an analytics 00:12:32.640 --> 00:12:34.520 server that that's monitoring your behavior. 00:12:34.520 --> 00:12:36.000 Right. You don't want to talk to all these third 00:12:36.200 --> 00:12:40.360 party things because Facebook crams their garbage and almost every app that you 00:12:40.460 --> 00:12:44.160 download and you don't even know what's happening because you can't see it. 00:12:44.160 --> 00:12:44.400 Right. 00:12:44.600 --> 00:12:47.760 And this is the problem with the data collection used today 00:12:47.960 --> 00:12:52.280 is there is an industry that is built on keeping this invisible. 00:12:52.480 --> 00:12:54.680 And what we need to do is we need to make 00:12:54.880 --> 00:12:58.720 the activities of our devices, whether it's a phone, 00:12:58.920 --> 00:13:03.480 whether it's computer or whatever, are more visible and understandable 00:13:03.480 --> 00:13:05.720 to the average person and then give them control over it. 00:13:05.920 --> 00:13:08.480 So if you could see your phone right now 00:13:08.680 --> 00:13:10.680 and at the very center of it is a little green icon. 00:13:10.880 --> 00:13:14.680 That's your, you know, handset or it's a picture, your face, whatever. 00:13:14.880 --> 00:13:18.040 And you see all these little spokes coming off of it. 00:13:18.240 --> 00:13:20.160 That's every app that your phone is 00:13:20.360 --> 00:13:24.000 talking to right now or every app that is active on your phone 00:13:24.050 --> 00:13:26.600 right now and all the hosts that it's connecting to. 00:13:26.800 --> 00:13:30.200 And you can see right now, once every three seconds, 00:13:30.400 --> 00:13:34.760 your phone is checking into Facebook and you could just poke that app and then, 00:13:34.760 --> 00:13:36.320 boom, it's not talking to Facebook anymore. 00:13:36.360 --> 00:13:39.600 Facebook's not allowed Facebook speaking privileges have been revoked. 00:13:39.600 --> 00:13:41.680 Right. You would do that. 00:13:41.880 --> 00:13:45.520 We would all do that if there was a button on your phone that said, 00:13:45.720 --> 00:13:50.800 do what I want but not spy on me, you would press that button, right? 00:13:51.000 --> 00:13:53.800 That button is not does not exist right now. 00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:58.200 And both Google and Apple, unfortunately, Apple's a lot better at this than Google, 00:13:58.400 --> 00:14:03.280 but neither of them allow that button to exist. 00:14:03.280 --> 00:14:07.040 In fact, they actively interfere with it because they say it's a security risk. 00:14:07.240 --> 00:14:10.960 And from a particular perspective, they they actually aren't wrong there. 00:14:11.160 --> 00:14:13.520 But it's not enough to go. 00:14:13.680 --> 00:14:15.600 You know, we have to lock that capability 00:14:15.600 --> 00:14:18.640 off from people because we don't trust they would make the right decisions. 00:14:18.840 --> 00:14:21.360 We think it's too complicated for people to do this. 00:14:21.360 --> 00:14:23.520 We think there's too many connections being made. 00:14:23.720 --> 00:14:28.160 Well, that is actually a confession of the problem right there. 00:14:28.360 --> 00:14:30.120 If you think people can't understand it, 00:14:30.320 --> 00:14:32.520 if you think there are too many communications happening, 00:14:32.720 --> 00:14:36.560 if you think there's too much complexity in there, it needs to be simplified, 00:14:36.760 --> 00:14:39.280 just like the president can't control everything like that. 00:14:39.280 --> 00:14:42.640 If you have to be the president of the phone and the phone is as complex 00:14:42.640 --> 00:14:45.120 as the United States government, we have a problem. 00:14:45.320 --> 00:14:47.680 Guys, this should be much more simple process. 00:14:47.880 --> 00:14:48.840 It should be obvious. 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 00:14:53.480 --> 00:14:55.920 year, saying all your date has been breached here, 00:14:56.120 --> 00:15:00.360 this company's spying on you here is companies manipulating your purchases or 00:15:00.560 --> 00:15:05.320 your search results or they're hiding these things from your timeline 00:15:05.520 --> 00:15:09.400 or they're influencing you or manipulating you in all of these different ways. 00:15:09.600 --> 00:15:16.080 That happens as a result of a single problem. 00:15:16.280 --> 00:15:20.800 And that problem is in inequality of available information. 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:22.520 They can see everything about you. 00:15:22.560 --> 00:15:23.760 They can see everything about what your 00:15:23.760 --> 00:15:26.120 device is doing, and they can do whatever they want with your device. 00:15:26.320 --> 00:15:32.760 You, on the other hand, owned the device well, rather, you paid for the device. 00:15:32.960 --> 00:15:35.200 But increasingly these corporations own it. 00:15:35.200 --> 00:15:37.040 Increasingly, these governments own it. 00:15:37.240 --> 00:15:41.120 And increasingly, we are living in a world where we do all the work right. 00:15:41.320 --> 00:15:48.360 We pay all the taxes, we pay all the costs, but we own less and less. 00:15:48.360 --> 00:15:51.040 And nobody understands this better than the youngest generation. 00:15:51.240 --> 00:15:53.000 Well, it seems like our data became 00:15:53.200 --> 00:15:55.960 a commodity before we understood what it was. 00:15:56.160 --> 00:15:58.440 It became this thing that's insanely 00:15:58.640 --> 00:16:02.320 valuable to Google and Facebook and all these social media platforms. 00:16:02.520 --> 00:16:06.600 Before we understood what we were giving up, they were making billions of dollars. 00:16:06.800 --> 00:16:10.920 And then once that money is being earned and once everyone's accustomed 00:16:11.120 --> 00:16:14.200 to the situation, it's very difficult to pull the reins back. 00:16:14.400 --> 00:16:17.200 It's very difficult to turn that horse around 00:16:17.400 --> 00:16:19.880 precisely because the money then becomes part right. 00:16:20.080 --> 00:16:22.200 The information then becomes influence. 00:16:22.200 --> 00:16:23.640 That also seems to be the same sort 00:16:23.640 --> 00:16:26.360 of situation that would happen with these mass surveillance states. 00:16:26.560 --> 00:16:28.360 Once they have the access, 00:16:28.560 --> 00:16:32.920 it's going to be incredibly difficult for them to relinquish that, 00:16:33.120 --> 00:16:35.840 right? Yeah, no, you're exactly correct. 00:16:35.960 --> 00:16:37.760 And this is the subject of the book. 00:16:37.760 --> 00:16:40.640 I mean, this is the permanent record and this is where it came from. 00:16:40.840 --> 00:16:43.440 This is how it came to exist. 00:16:43.640 --> 00:16:50.800 The story of our lifetimes is how intentionally by design, 00:16:51.000 --> 00:16:55.480 a number of institutions, both governmental and corporate, 00:16:55.680 --> 00:17:00.480 realized it was in their mutual interest to conceal their data collection 00:17:00.680 --> 00:17:06.640 activities, to increase the breadth and depth of their sensor network. 00:17:06.840 --> 00:17:10.320 That were sort of spread out through society, rumor back in the day 00:17:10.520 --> 00:17:13.760 intelligence collection in the United States, even at Segan, 00:17:13.960 --> 00:17:18.880 used to mean sending an FBI agent right to put alligator clips on an embassy 00:17:19.080 --> 00:17:23.200 building or sending in somebody disguised as a workman. 00:17:23.400 --> 00:17:29.080 And they put a bug in a building or they built a satellite listening side. 00:17:29.080 --> 00:17:29.280 Right. 00:17:29.480 --> 00:17:33.080 We called these foreign set were foreign satellite collection. 00:17:33.320 --> 00:17:34.560 We're out in the desert somewhere. 00:17:34.760 --> 00:17:38.040 They built a big parabolic collector. 00:17:38.240 --> 00:17:40.560 And it's just listening to satellite missions. 00:17:40.560 --> 00:17:40.840 Right. 00:17:41.040 --> 00:17:46.440 But these satellite emmissions, these satellite links were owned by militaries. 00:17:46.440 --> 00:17:48.360 They were exclusive to governments. Right. 00:17:48.560 --> 00:17:51.400 It wasn't affecting everybody broadly. 00:17:51.600 --> 00:17:55.640 All surveillance was targeted because it had to be. 00:17:55.920 --> 00:17:57.560 What changed with technology is 00:17:57.760 --> 00:18:00.680 that surveillance could now become indiscriminate. 00:18:00.880 --> 00:18:02.560 It could become dragnet. 00:18:02.760 --> 00:18:06.920 It could become bulk collection, which should become one of the dirtiest 00:18:07.120 --> 00:18:10.920 phrases in the language if we have any kind of decency. 00:18:11.120 --> 00:18:14.600 But we were intentionally 00:18:14.800 --> 00:18:17.320 this was intentionally concealed from us. Right. 00:18:17.520 --> 00:18:18.200 The government did it. 00:18:18.400 --> 00:18:21.400 They used classification, companies did it. 00:18:21.600 --> 00:18:23.040 They intentionally didn't talk about it. 00:18:23.240 --> 00:18:25.320 They denied these things were going. 00:18:25.520 --> 00:18:30.080 They said you agreed to this and you didn't agree to nothing like this. 00:18:30.280 --> 00:18:31.280 I'm sorry. Right. 00:18:31.360 --> 00:18:33.760 Right. They go we put that terms of service page 00:18:33.960 --> 00:18:36.600 up and you click that, you click the button. 00:18:36.800 --> 00:18:38.080 That said, I agree 00:18:38.280 --> 00:18:42.120 because you were trying to open an account so you could talk to your friends. 00:18:42.320 --> 00:18:43.960 You were trying to get driving directions. 00:18:43.960 --> 00:18:45.280 You were trying to get an email account. 00:18:45.480 --> 00:18:47.760 You were trying to agree to some 600 page 00:18:47.960 --> 00:18:51.480 legal form that even if you read, you wouldn't understand. 00:18:51.680 --> 00:18:53.040 And it doesn't matter even if you did 00:18:53.040 --> 00:18:56.680 understand, because one of the very first paragraphs and it said this agreement can 00:18:56.880 --> 00:19:00.880 be changed at any time unilaterally without your consent by the company. 00:19:01.080 --> 00:19:02.360 Right. 00:19:02.560 --> 00:19:05.600 They have built a legal paradigm 00:19:05.800 --> 00:19:12.160 that presumes records collected about us do not belong to us. 00:19:12.360 --> 00:19:16.520 This is sort of one of the core principles on which mass surveillance 00:19:16.720 --> 00:19:19.840 from the government's perspective in the United States is legal. 00:19:20.040 --> 00:19:21.120 And you have to understand that all 00:19:21.120 --> 00:19:24.200 the stuff we talk about today, government says everything we do is legal. 00:19:24.400 --> 00:19:26.480 Right. And they go, so it's fine. 00:19:26.680 --> 00:19:30.560 Our perspective, the public should be well, that's actually the problem, 00:19:30.760 --> 00:19:34.320 because this is an OK, the scandal isn't how they're breaking 00:19:34.520 --> 00:19:38.480 the law, the scandals that they don't have to break the law. 00:19:38.680 --> 00:19:40.520 And the way they say they're not breaking 00:19:40.520 --> 00:19:43.080 the law is something called the third party doctrine. 00:19:43.280 --> 00:19:46.240 Third party doctrine is a. 00:19:47.640 --> 00:19:49.920 Legal principle derived from a case and I 00:19:50.120 --> 00:19:54.680 believe the 1970s called Smith versus Maryland 00:19:55.040 --> 00:19:58.080 and Smith was this knucklehead who was 00:19:58.280 --> 00:20:02.200 harassing this lady, making phone calls to her house. 00:20:02.400 --> 00:20:04.120 And when she would pick up, he just, 00:20:04.320 --> 00:20:08.600 I don't know, sit there, heavy breathing, whatever, like a classic creeper. 00:20:08.800 --> 00:20:11.520 And, you know, it was terrifying, this poor lady. 00:20:11.720 --> 00:20:13.840 So she calls the cops 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 00:20:18.720 --> 00:20:22.120 my house on the street and she got a license plate number. 00:20:22.320 --> 00:20:25.120 So she goes to the cops and she goes, is this the guy? 00:20:25.320 --> 00:20:26.280 And the cops? 00:20:26.480 --> 00:20:29.480 Again, they're trying to do a good thing here. 00:20:29.680 --> 00:20:35.040 They look up his license plate number and they find out where this guy is 00:20:35.040 --> 00:20:37.520 and then they go, what phone number is registered to that house? 00:20:37.520 --> 00:20:38.840 And they go to the phone company and they 00:20:38.840 --> 00:20:42.240 say, can you give us this record in the phone? Company says, yeah, sure. 00:20:42.440 --> 00:20:44.880 And it's the guy the cops got there, man. 00:20:44.920 --> 00:20:46.120 Right. 00:20:46.320 --> 00:20:47.640 So they go arrest this guy. 00:20:47.840 --> 00:20:52.800 And then in court, his lawyer brings all this stuff up and they go. 00:20:55.440 --> 00:20:56.840 A. 00:20:57.600 --> 00:21:02.080 You did this without a warrant that was sorry, that was that was the problem was 00:21:02.280 --> 00:21:04.520 they went to the phone company, they got the records without a warrant. 00:21:04.560 --> 00:21:06.480 They just asked for it or they subpoenaed it. 00:21:06.480 --> 00:21:08.960 Right. Some lower standard of legal review. 00:21:09.160 --> 00:21:13.680 And the company gave it to him and got the guy they marchmont in jail. 00:21:14.160 --> 00:21:16.680 And they could have gotten a warrant. Right. 00:21:16.680 --> 00:21:17.920 But it was just expedients. 00:21:17.920 --> 00:21:19.400 They just didn't want to take the time. 00:21:19.580 --> 00:21:22.080 Small town cops, you can understand how it happens. 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. 00:21:26.360 --> 00:21:28.480 And so they made a misstep with the government doesn't want to let go. 00:21:28.680 --> 00:21:32.280 They fight on this and they go. 00:21:33.000 --> 00:21:36.520 It wasn't actually they weren't his records, 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 00:21:42.960 --> 00:21:45.360 to demand a warrant be issued for them, 00:21:45.560 --> 00:21:49.040 they were the company's records and the company provided them voluntarily. 00:21:49.040 --> 00:21:51.080 And hence no warrant was required because 00:21:51.080 --> 00:21:54.520 you can give whatever you want without a warrant as long as it's yours. 00:21:54.720 --> 00:21:56.000 Now, here's the problem. 00:21:56.200 --> 00:22:01.400 The government extrapolated a principle in a single case of a single 00:22:01.600 --> 00:22:08.680 known suspected criminal who they had real good reasons to suspect was their guy 00:22:10.040 --> 00:22:14.320 and use that to go to a company and get records from them and establish 00:22:14.420 --> 00:22:17.120 a precedent that these records don't belong to the guy. 00:22:17.320 --> 00:22:18.240 They belong to the company. 00:22:18.440 --> 00:22:21.480 And then they said, well, if one person doesn't have 00:22:21.680 --> 00:22:26.080 a Fourth Amendment interest in records held by a company, no one does. 00:22:26.280 --> 00:22:28.600 And so the company then has absolute 00:22:28.600 --> 00:22:31.760 proprietary ownership of all of these records about all of our lives. 00:22:31.960 --> 00:22:33.840 And remember, this is back in the 1970s. 00:22:34.040 --> 00:22:38.040 You know, the Internet hardly exists in these kind of contexts. 00:22:38.090 --> 00:22:39.840 Smartphones, you know, don't exist. 00:22:40.040 --> 00:22:43.280 Modern society, modern communications don't exist. 00:22:43.480 --> 00:22:47.600 This is the very beginning of the technological era. 00:22:47.800 --> 00:22:53.040 And flash forward now, 40 years. 00:22:54.600 --> 00:22:56.880 And they are still relying on this 00:22:57.080 --> 00:23:00.440 precedent about this one, you know, pervy creeper to go. 00:23:00.480 --> 00:23:03.440 Nobody has a privacy right for anything that's held by a company. 00:23:03.640 --> 00:23:07.280 And so long as they do that, companies are going to be extraordinarily 00:23:07.280 --> 00:23:09.920 powerful and they're going to be extraordinarily abusive. 00:23:09.920 --> 00:23:11.440 And this is something that people don't get. 00:23:11.640 --> 00:23:14.280 They go, oh, well, it's Data-Collection, right? 00:23:14.480 --> 00:23:16.120 They're exploiting data. 00:23:16.320 --> 00:23:18.840 This is data about human lives. 00:23:19.040 --> 00:23:21.120 It is state about people. 00:23:21.320 --> 00:23:22.720 These records are about you. 00:23:22.920 --> 00:23:26.280 It's not data that's being exploited. 00:23:26.480 --> 00:23:28.320 It's people that are being exploited. 00:23:28.520 --> 00:23:32.560 It's not data that's being manipulated. 00:23:32.760 --> 00:23:33.760 It's you. 00:23:33.960 --> 00:23:36.520 It's being manipulated. 00:23:36.720 --> 00:23:39.480 And this this is this is something that I 00:23:39.680 --> 00:23:42.680 think a lot of people are beginning to understand. 00:23:42.880 --> 00:23:45.160 Now, the problem is the companies and the governments are still pretending 00:23:45.160 --> 00:23:47.240 they don't understand or disagreeing with this. 00:23:47.440 --> 00:23:52.960 And this reminds me of something that one of my old friends, John Perry Barlow, 00:23:53.800 --> 00:23:55.560 who served with me at the Freedom 00:23:55.760 --> 00:23:59.200 of Press Foundation, I'm the president of the board, 00:23:59.400 --> 00:24:01.640 used to say to me. 00:24:02.520 --> 00:24:06.120 Which is you can't awaken someone who's pretending to be asleep.