I want to talk about day I want to talk
about these connective technologies and
the data they were producing I mean when
we think about our computers our
electronic everything data is
fundamentally the byproduct of the
information society every time we
interact with a computer it produces
data whether we're browsing the Internet
or carrying a cell phone or making a
purchase or interacting with any of the
Internet of Things devices in our world
everything we do
produces data and this data is
increasingly stored and increasingly
used and this is really Moore's law in
operation the cost of data storage drops
to free the cost of data processing
drops to free and things that we used to
save so easy to throw away now we save I
mean you've been using email as long as
I have you remember this it used to be I
would carefully curate my email throw
away not important things put things in
lots of folders that stopped in 2006
after 2006 all my email us in one place
because for me for email in 2006 search
became cheaper than sort and that's
fundamentally true for forever for
everything it's easier to save
everything than to figure out what to
save that's fundamentally the promise of
big data save it all you'll figure out
later right and our uses of this data
has changed we used to use data to
remember the past for history we'd have
contracts so we look at what we said
what we agreed to now we use data to try
to predict the future we have a
different use of our data and this data
is fundamentally surveillance data right
it's a lot of its metadata which is data
about data data the system needs to
operate so if you think of an email the
content is the email message the
metadata is
the from line the to line the date and
time we can argue about the subject for
a cell phone call the data is the
conversation we're having the metadata
is my name your name my number your
number our locations how long the call
lasted and this metadata is
fundamentally surveillance data and you
can understand this by by by thinking in
terms of a story imagine I hired a
private investigator to spy on somebody
that investigator would have put would
put a bug in the person's home and
office and cart APIs telephone and I
would get a list of conversations that's
the data but imagine I took that same
private investigator and asked him to
put that person under surveillance I
would get a different report or a report
of where he went who he spoke to what he
looked at what he purchased that's all
surveillance data this metadata that
we're producing as we go through our
lives is fundamentally surveillance data
and we are living in the Golden Age of
surveillance because this data is
collected about us all the time my phone
knows I'm here our phones all know we're
here my phone knows when I landed it'll
know when I take off that location data
is necessary or the phone's not going to
ring when my wife calls but that's also
surveillance data and this ubiquitous
data makes surveillance very different
so it's incidental it's a byproduct of
these technologies we use it's covert we
don't see it when you browse the
internet you don't see the hundreds of
companies that are tracking you that are
watching every site you visit it happens
in the background it's hard to opt out
of
I can't not carry a cellphone I can't
not have an email address not have a
credit card and I can't be a fully
functioning adult in this world without
those things I mean I personally don't
use Gmail because I don't want Google
storing my email but last time I checked
Google has about 60% of my email because
well I don't use Gmail you all do
I can't opt out but and it's ubiquitous
it happens to us all the time wherever
we are now this data is being collected
and used by corporations but
fundamentally surveillance is the Bata
business model of the internet we've
built systems that spy on people in
exchange for services this is why Gmail
is free this is why Facebook is free
right I mean you have to remember that
you know in these systems you are the
product you're the product that's sold
to the advertisers there's a lot of
historical reasons why we did this when
we built the Internet originally there
was no obvious way to charge for things
the ethos was free so he built an
advertising model on top of the Internet
this dovetailed with a very robust
direct marketing mail-order business of
tracking individuals and dicing them
into different categories those two
merged to the personal advertising model
that we see today that's based on
surveillance and you know this is true
you search for something on the internet
and that product follows you around and
it follows you around from site to site
because that's the way these systems
work and so we have these systems that
make their business spying on you and
this data is collected for the purposes
of persuasion of advertising and
personalized ads personalized offers
to get us to do things and these
companies know an amazing amount about
us by just our cell phone right yields
an enormous about information about who
we are it knows where we live where we
work when we go to sleep when we wake up
because it's you know it's the first
thing and last thing you check we all
have one it knows who we sleep with you
think about Google
no one ever lies to their search engine
I used to say that Google knows more
about me than my wife does now that's
certainly true but Google knows more
about me than I do because Google
remembers it better make you know think
of who might know that we are here
certainly the cell phone companies if we
use Google Maps to get here they know
we're here any other smartphone apps if
we took an uber to get here
we used a credit card here we use an ATM
machine here right all of these systems
peg us here and in databases we're here
and government surveillance is largely
piggybacked on these capabilities right
when you read the NSA documents the NSA
uses these capabilities these corporate
capabilities to spy on people they use
cookies they use browser history
purchasing history all of these things
and this lets governments get away with
a level of surveillance we might never
allow otherwise I don't think we would
ever let the government demand that we
carry tracking devices with us 24/7 yet
we happily put these things in our
pockets every morning
or if we or if we're told we have to
alert the police when you make a new
friend we don't we just alerts Facebook
or that we have to leave a copy of our
correspondence with the authorities we
leave a copy with Google
and we do this because that's the way
the technologies work and what we've
seen here is a public private
surveillance partnership corporations
leveraging government data governments
leveraging corporate data there's a lot
of back-and-forth and of course this
data has less legal uses as well we're
seeing a very large rise in what we're
calling doxing which are individuals and
countries stealing data and publishing
it and this ranges from a lone hacker
that hacked a Panamanian law firm
published all their documents North
Korean government attacking Sony or we
saw against the Democratic National
Committee climate change researchers
Royals in the UK again and again we're
seeing this data being used to embarrass
to influence and of course it's being
stolen by criminals as well because the
data is valuable it's it's valuable for
impersonation for fraud it's valuable
for theft but buying and selling our
data on the black market is a
surprisingly big business you can make
money selling logins selling credit card
numbers selling credentials it matters
for reasons of political liberty and
justice I mean fundamentally we're
moving to a world where people can be
accused by data and data quality matters
here the applications where it's good
enough for advertising might not be good
enough for arresting someone or dropping
a drone on their house the data quality
that we use for determining if someone
should get government services
might be good enough for making
deportation decisions we're seeing
censorship based on surveillance we're
seeing chilling effects said
self-censorship based on surveillance
and we're seeing surveillance inhibiting
dissent inhibiting social change this
matters her reasons commercial fairness
and equity I mean do we want to live in
a world where we can be prejudged when
we walk into a store we're recognized by
facial recognition right our database
entries are pulled and the store knows
exactly what our ability to spend is and
we do we want to live in that world do
we want to be manipulated by our
preferences by our fears by our hopes I
mean I'm not sure I want advertising
that taps into my psyche in that way
this imagines reasons of business
competitiveness the United States tech
companies so a large drop in business
after the Snowden documents after was
believed that the NSA was reading most
of your email but as non Americans in
this room my privacy helps business and
it matters for security the data privacy
is one of the ways we are going to be
more secure in this connected world in
this world of cyber criminals in this
world where our data is valuable and can
be used against us and of course it
matters for privacy all right so how do
we fix it there's a lot here and there's
a lot we have to do I have a bunch of
principles that I like like to to touch
on first one is that security and
privacy
you often hear the debate couched as
security versus privacy and I think
that's a mistake but privacy is an
aspect of security we do not feel secure
in our privacy is violated and to get
privacy we need secure
these two things work hand-in-hand the
second is that we do prioritize security
over surveillance this debates happening
United States if you remember the FBI
versus Apple debates and those real law
enforcement we're saying we need to
violate the privacy of everybody to get
at criminals and I think this is a
long-term mistake as these technologies
move into our governments into our
critical infrastructures we need the
security I mean I worry about the
security of president Trump's cell phone
because it's in situations where that
security matters and we can't prioritize
surveillance over it
the third is transparency echoing what
we heard in the last last speaker one of
the ways we will navigate this complex
world of data is by knowing what's going
on the more what corporation is doing
what governments are doing is
transparent the more we can understand
what's happening and help steer this and
the longer that comes over oversight and
accountability it's not just knowing
what's going on but it's being able to
change things and to hold organizations
accountable for what they're doing and
these are battles where we're fighting
and we're very much in a world where we
leave companies alone let them collect
what they want for what they want my
guess is that's gonna change the next
few years and the last principle is that
we have one rule network one world and
one answer okay it's no longer the case
where a country can secure their things
and leave other countries vulnerable
because we're all using the same stuff
we're all using the same cell phones the
same computers same operating systems
the same internet the infrastructure we
build is for everyone it's not going to
be separate
and that's hard for us to understand
we're used to a much more balkanized
world and we're still trying to keep it
I mean you see that in the internet
mostly in censorship which is very
different across different countries and
that's largely failing because it goes
against the way the networks and we can
try but I think in the end we're gonna
lose and we just figure out how to lose
gracefully but there's a lot of
different solutions touch on a few of
them I think we need to in the world
separate espionage from surveillance
I think commingling of those two has
caused a lot of problems and then where
we can make those separate the better
will be I think we need comprehensive
data protection laws the kinds of things
we're seeing out of Europe I think when
you see more in the United States and
other countries and I think we see need
to see much more technological security
encryption I mean that's how we protect
our stuff and the real question is
what's up there how do we design systems
that benefit society as a whole well the
same time protecting people individually
and I think this is the fundamental
problem of the information age if you
think about it our data together has
enormous value to us collectively and
our data apart has enormous value to us
individually and you see this again and
again you see this in movement data
real-time traffic data based on every
car under surveillance yet every cars
under surveillance in behavioral data
for advertising getting these services
are free is valuable
yet personal we've seen in government
surveillance governments need to be able
to solve crimes this data is valuable
for that and medical data incredibly
valuable together incredibly personal
I mean I started by saying that the data
is a byproduct information society I
think it's really the pollution problem
of our age right all processes produce
it it stays around we are here
discussing secondary uses and my belief
is that as we look back at the previous
century at how our grandparents and
great-grandparents dealt with pollution
in their rush to build the industrial
age that we too will be judged in these
decades and how we dealt with data and I
think that's a challenge
it's a promise and it's a challenge
thank you
you