start	end	text
0	7220	Thank you very much. 22 years is a long time to watch this grow from what it was to what it
7220	13340	is. We used to be able to say what it was. We don't know how to say what it is. Because
13340	20100	there's so many minor cons going on. And the industry has exploded. And as long as we
20100	24700	keep selling something that we don't deliver, it's going to just get bigger. So I think it's
24700	31600	important to keep selling security to people who keep needing it. Kind of like self-help
31600	41380	books. If they worked, there wouldn't be another one. But that's just an aside. It's great to
41380	46040	be here. I do want to mention just briefly the last year when I spoke, I addressed a pretty
46040	52060	serious issue, which was the traumatic impact of security work and intelligence work on
52060	56680	professionals who do it over a long period of time. And it was the first time I heard people
56680	64840	crying at DEF CON. Because it brought forth what some of you have experienced over many,
64840	69500	many years. And I'm just sharing that to say, if you look at the YouTube video, it's
69500	74380	online and a lot of people looked at it. It's a serious subject that is seldom addressed
74380	81760	directly and successfully inside the agencies or often by corporate. And yet it gets bigger
81760	87460	and bigger as the space gets bigger and bigger. So I invite you, if you have any insight or
87460	93360	anything to share with me, to please follow up on that. It continues to plague people. I got
93360	99360	an e‑mail just last week from a good friend, long‑time friend at NSA, who said they were
99360	104260	advised to be sure they watch each other's backs. That's the kind of advice that's easy to
104260	109160	give and impossible to take because it's not very specific. But the reason he found out was
109160	116860	because three people had committed suicide that week and one the week before. And I did
116860	124920	quote a friend, well, a fellow at CIA, who said he bears through his life 23 suicides. And
124920	129560	they were inordinately proud of having the highest rate of suicide, alcoholism, divorce and
129560	137120	adultery in the government. That was the DO, the Director of Operations. That's the sobering
137120	144680	part of the talk. Keep in mind, it's an uphill climb to get people to look at it, including
144680	150020	people who are suffering from it, because there are antidotes. We all bear scars, but there are
150020	155180	ways we can live with them more successfully than some other ways. So that's what that's
155180	161300	about, is looking at all the different things we can do to ameliorate the impact of what it
161300	167440	does to us over time to do this work and to engage with people who are on the cutting edge.
167660	172980	But what I want to do today, it's not a very sexy topic, privacy, why it's gone. Everybody
172980	180440	knows it's gone. And you can do a very short speech on that. I was in Amsterdam not long ago
180440	185740	and I was talking to a friend who works at a pretty high level and asked if we will ever get
185740	191940	back any semblance of protection of freedoms from intrusion and privacy. And she said in a
191940	198640	tone I'll never forget, Richard, of course not. Of course not. Because the technologies of
198640	205560	intrusion and surveillance are so deeply embedded in all of our means of working, living and
205560	209440	communicating with one another today, and it is so profitable to have them and so
209840	214680	unprofitable to remove them, that we will never get back the freedoms that we thought we had.
214680	221960	She sounded like Michael Corleone in The Godfather when Kay said, Michael, senators don't
221960	231520	kill people. And Corleone said, okay, who is being naive now? Implying that senators did indeed
231520	236140	kill people. I should ask at this point, because it's something that just happened to me, how
236140	243500	many of you know what I mean when I say The Godfather? How many of you? Okay. Good. Good. Let
243500	247980	me do a test, because if it happens here, then I know I've got to make some changes. I was
247980	256420	doing a talk for a pretty sizable audience, and in Montreal, and I referred to Chinatown. Jake
256420	263520	said, come on, it's Chinatown, Jake, it's Chinatown. And someone came up and said, nobody knows
263520	270140	what you mean. How many of you have seen the movie Chinatown? Okay. That's pretty good. How
270140	275880	many of you have seen the movie The Conversation? Fewer. Okay. I encourage you to see The
275880	282020	Conversation and see what it's like. It's a terrific movie with Gene Hackman about
282020	286820	surveillance. But the point is, I like to be able to refer to popular culture markers and
286820	292580	signals that people recognize. And I learned my lesson when Adam Shostak got up after me, and
292580	297120	all he had were slides from Star Wars and Rogue One, and everybody knew exactly what he was
297120	303940	talking about whenever he used them. We'll touch on that a little later. So everybody knows
303940	307880	that privacy in the way I just referred to it is gone, but that's the view on the ground. And I
307880	314200	want to take this up to maybe 30, 40, 50, 60,000 feet to look at what it really means that
314200	320280	privacy is gone, because of what it means that our identity has so radically been altered by
320280	325900	the digitalization and other factors in the world of the 21st century, that privacy is
325900	331860	literally nonexistent. It's not whether we can recapture it or have it. It's that it doesn't
331860	337660	exist in the same way that it existed, and I want to talk about why that is with a broad view
337660	343460	over what's happened to society, including a look at a few things like words over the last
343460	350400	few hundred years. Privacy is defined as freedom from damaging publicity, public scrutiny,
350400	355740	secret surveillance, unauthorized disclosure of one's personal data or information, as by a
355740	360820	government corporation or individual, as if ordinary citizens have a right to privacy. When I
360820	366340	read that definition, it's laughable, because all of that is gone. We do not have that
366340	371900	freedom. We are not free from any of those things, and I don't think we will be. But what I
371900	376360	want to do is try to get us to see that the 20th century framework within which we think
376360	381740	about these things and our identity is effectively ending, and it's very important to know
381740	390380	who you are so you can determine what you do with effectiveness and some clarity. When the VGA
390380	398740	cable comes, if it ever comes, I'll put a picture up or two, but let me get into the talk. I'm
398740	402420	going to start with a quote from Nietzsche. You like to do that at DEF CON, because
402420	407700	everybody reads Nietzsche, right? He said, with the unknown, one is confronted with
407700	411300	danger. In other words, somebody says something to you that's totally unknown, it's
411300	417060	dangerous. It causes discomfort and great care. The first instinct is to abolish the pain of
417060	422760	being in those states. So this is his first principle. Any explanation is better than none.
423360	428200	And since at bottom, what you really want to do is get rid of the oppressive information or
428200	433300	representation, you're not too particular about the means of getting rid of them. So the first
433300	439240	representation, the first idea, the first theory that explains everything, explains the
439240	446680	unknown in a familiar way, using the categories of the past, it feels so good that you call it
446680	454400	true. You say we consider that true. The proof of pleasure is the criterion of truth. In other
454400	458620	words, does it alleviate your cognitive dissonance? Does it downplay your anxiety? Does it
458620	465180	make you feel better in the face of the fearfulness of the unknown and the new? And so the
465180	473160	fear is the real problem that confronts us. And therefore we have to abolish that feeling. And
473160	478200	the strange and the new and the hitherto unexperienced must disappear into habitual,
478200	484780	comfortable, familiar explanations. And that's why he says, too, we must tell stories that are
484780	490820	untimely, by which he means the consensus reality in which we live at any given moment is our
490820	496220	time, but the truths that are coming at us faster and faster of the kind I'm speaking are
496220	500880	untimely. We are speaking to a future state which is already here, but as Gibson said,
500880	507940	unevenly distributed. In other words, truths, the deepest truths you believe about who you are and
507940	512580	your identity are illusions that we have comfortably and conveniently forgot were illusions
512580	518380	in order to live with them. And truths held collectively by a group or organization have to be
518380	526160	confronted on behalf of a future people that will not hold those truths naively. So we often
526160	530300	embrace truths by which we live because they make us feel better and alleviate cognitive
530300	535840	dissonance, but they're not true. What's true is what's real. And as Philip K. Dick said,
535840	541500	reality is that which when we refuse to believe in it won't go away. And here we are living
541500	547480	inside of Philip K. Dick. How many of you know who Philip K. Dick is? Okay, pretty savvy
547480	553480	crowd on edge thinkers. Now, I spoke in Canada about privacy about four years ago and I
553480	557400	thought I don't have to ever change the speech I give in Canada because it's the same
557400	565340	issues year after year after year. And I spoke for the ministers of privacy not long ago, tried
565340	570320	to give a different slant on it, and one of the ministers of privacy from British Columbia
570320	575720	said, that was a very provocative keynote, but let us hope it's not true. And did not realize
575720	581580	she was a proof of concept of that Nietzschean statement I just made, which is, it's
581580	586400	provocative, but I don't want it to be true, and therefore, because my job is to be the
586400	596340	minister of privacy, I have to treat it as if it is not true, even though I know it is. Okay?
596340	605260	Man's plugging stuff in here. Let me make sure the soft porn is not...
614180	625800	Okay? So that's going to be my image for the hour, that DEF CON image, I guess. Somebody is
625800	631560	probably doing something to try to get the other image up. Okay. So one of the ministers of
631560	636320	privacy got up and gave a very, very passionate speech about all the restrictions they have
636320	643040	on the government and on society to try to save privacy, and I asked if they really work for
643040	647000	the intelligence community, do they really adhere to these things? And she said, well, in
647000	653040	theory. In theory. And all you can say is, in theory, theory and practice are the same, but in
653040	659060	practice, they're not. Okay. So privacy and security. Matt Blaze once said a long time
659060	663760	ago, the weakest link in the security chain is frequently the definition of the problem, and
663760	669140	the definition of the problem is often not what we think. That applies to privacy, too, and
669140	674080	we're going to see how, because these are difficult concepts I'm trying to advance, because
674080	678860	they, like the Zen Buddha say, enlightenment is a nightmare in daylight, and when you
678860	683380	grasp it, suddenly everything else explodes, and you have nothing but space to create new
683380	690140	possibilities if you can stand it. And that's what we're talking about. We're living by 20th
690140	694960	century concepts, and they don't fit anymore, and therefore we talk about privacy and
694960	701780	security, actually. As if we know the definitions of the problems, but they're not what we
701780	707980	think. A wise person under these conditions steers their course by the torchlight of doubt and
707980	712120	chaos, and as Niels Bohr said of quantum physics, anybody who isn't confused doesn't
712120	718940	understand what's going on. I think that's true about privacy and security as well. Okay, now
718940	724960	let me provide some history. Printing press with movable type was introduced to Europe by
724960	731440	Gutenberg in 1439. It played an unimaginably huge role in the development of the
731440	735680	Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the whole scientific revolution,
735680	741660	because now it could share standardized tables and data for the first time in history. It
741660	746300	laid the material basis for our knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the
746300	750580	masses. You cannot overstate the importance of the printing press. And it was
750580	756400	revolutionary in England when William Caxton brought the printing press there in 1476.
757160	762700	When something changes the world so radically, we exaggerate the impact. Think of what we
762700	766840	said about the Internet when it first came, but in the long term we always underestimate the
766840	771960	impact. Again, think of the Internet. The printing press, like the Internet, like digital
772620	777540	reality, is an engine of revolution that is now a catalyst for revolution in all the other
777540	785820	areas as well, bio and nano and space technologies and material science. And the
785820	791820	acceleration of change has made change happen faster and faster. So we usually respond to
791820	796940	this the way Virginia said we do to grief. First by denying it, then we get angry about it,
796940	804100	then we get depressed, then we negotiate with it and finally we accept it. But remnants of
804100	809600	past behaviors... no, you're not getting an image. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.
810780	818840	It was beautiful and it was very important, but don't worry about it. I'll look at it. It's the
818840	825140	cover of my... the third volume of my novel, Foam, and it says, Identity is Destiny. And it shows a
825140	830000	man standing before the universe. It's a gorgeous picture. It really is a gorgeous picture. And I
830000	834720	mentioned that only because I will be signing a few books that I brought after the talk at 2.30 and
834720	840200	3.00 in the vendor space. The other one was going to be just a picture of mind games, because
840200	844820	those are the kind of games I'm playing with you. And I was also going to show you a picture of the
844820	849960	UFOs in government book, because I continue to get feedback from numerous sources about the
849960	855920	accuracy of our historical analysis of how the government responded to that phenomena over 60
855920	864020	years. But I won't show you those pictures. We'll just leave that aside. The remnants of past
864020	869940	behavior persist and how prior technology socialized us and taught us to behave as they framed
869940	874560	our lives. Then they went in the background. But they're still there. We just don't see them.
874560	879260	Like the electric grid, you didn't see the lights. You saw by the lights when you came in here. You
879260	884480	see by virtue of the lights illuminating. But electric lights like these are only 125 years old.
884480	890280	We're barely up from the swamp. We're new creatures in the galaxy and so arrogant and proud like a
890280	896100	toddler. But it's new. But you still don't see the power grid. You don't plug in all of your
896100	901680	equipment and say I'm going on power grid now. So shh, quiet, I'm on the power grid. You don't
901680	905120	even see the power grid. But if somebody came back here from the 19th century and looked at the
905120	910400	landscape around us, probably the first thing they would notice is all the lines and dynamos that
910400	914560	are emblems of the power grid that they never experienced. And it goes into the background. The
914560	922360	first automobiles had sockets in the dashboard for buggy whips. Because buggies drawn by horses
922360	930100	had sockets in which to put the buggy whips. Then after a while they stopped making cars with
930100	938240	holes for buggy whips. A friend remembers when, this was some time ago, this historical
938240	945960	statement, when they were firing cannons, it was during World War I, that's how far back I go,
945960	950400	right? And there were people standing there when they fired the cannons with their arms out like
950400	954720	this at attention. He said, what are they doing? They're holding the horses. Because the
954720	959160	cannons spooked the horses and they have to hold the bridle. He said, but we don't have any
959160	965920	horses anymore. It's all mechanized. And there was that dull look of, oh. So the people
965920	971560	holding the horses stayed long after the horses were gone. That's what we do. And when
971560	976600	Caxton brought the printing press to England, printing revolutionized the world and the social
976600	980220	worlds in which people lived. The religious world, the scientific world, the cultural world,
980220	986040	everything. They had to choose a dialect in which to print. And that became what we called
986040	991220	standard English. And as standard English permeated a larger and larger group, it
991220	997060	permeated what we later called England, which did not exist yet until the social institutions
997060	1002020	that supported it had been created by the technologies which people no longer saw as
1002020	1008760	causal but were. So the language printing imposed homogenized the culture over time and
1008760	1013980	political and economic and social consequences followed. So it changed how we thought. It
1013980	1022960	changed more fundamentally who we were. Now, we need the language to use to understand who
1022960	1029500	we have become that we are in the process now of inventing. You can't think what you can't
1029500	1035840	say. And the language of the past is inadequate to describe what a human being has become
1035840	1041800	today by virtue of technologies. I'll give you an example of words that you use all the time
1041800	1049500	that were invented during a very fecund period, a very fertile period, 1918 to 1923 after
1049500	1056240	World War I when the flapper era exploded and the good feeling era followed before the
1056240	1066480	depression. These are words which did not exist before then. Cool, extrovert, fascist, mass
1066480	1073500	media, debunk, encode, hyper-modern, multipurpose, power play, teenage, which was invented as a
1073500	1081280	stage of life at the same time. Post-feminist, biracial, slinky, sadomasochistic, homosexuality,
1081280	1088140	fundamentalism, psyching, devalue. One of my favorites, I can't imagine a Samuel L. Jackson
1088140	1094740	movie without it. The word motherfucker came into play in 1918 for the first time. One can
1094740	1105160	only imagine the circumstances under which that took place. French kiss, fuck off. I'm not
1105160	1110620	telling you to fuck off. I'm telling you that's a phrase. Deflationary, merchant bank,
1110620	1116280	arbitrary. I can go on and on and on. These did not exist, but now we can say them and think
1116280	1121940	them because the language emerged to describe new social and cultural realities that
1121940	1127400	previously we had no way of identifying. It's like hacker. You know what's happened to the
1127400	1133300	word hacker right over time. It used to mean a hacker. When I first started speaking at
1133300	1140240	DEF CON, DEF CON 4, it was a convention of hackers. Now there are some. We used to play
1140240	1148360	spot the fed here. Now you're all fed, so we play spot the hacker. It's a more appropriate
1148360	1153560	game. What is a hacker today? You hear black hat hacker, gray hat hacker and white hat
1153560	1162140	hacker. Black hat hacker is a hacker. A gray hat hacker is a hacker who put the truth down
1162140	1167140	somewhere but knows where he put it. A white hat hacker is someone who put the truth down
1167140	1173840	somewhere and forgot where it is. In other words, I haven't met yet a white hat hacker who
1173840	1179060	is only a white hat hacker. It's a definition of convenience. Because in the old days, at
1179060	1183860	any rate, the only way you learned by hacking, the only way you learned to hack was by
1183860	1189600	hacking. And it was a passionate commitment to doing anything you needed to do to look at
1189600	1194460	things in a new way and learn from them. We need new language to articulate what we
1194460	1199380	experience and grasp the nature of the context in which we live. We need new language today to
1199380	1205940	discuss ethics, spirituality and identity and privacy. The weakest link in discussions of
1205940	1211700	privacy is the definition of privacy. And the definition of privacy is not what we think. Let us
1211700	1218480	give true props to what this technology has done. When we invent a technology like this,
1218480	1224900	computer scientists said, society also invents the kinds of people who will use it. Older
1224900	1230360	practices, relationships and ways of defining identities fall by the wayside. New practices,
1230360	1235000	relationships and identities take root. In case after case, the move to computerize and
1235000	1240340	digitize means preexisting cultural forms have suddenly gone liquid like an ice cube in your
1240340	1246120	hand. Losing their former shape as they are restructured for computerized expression. And as
1246120	1251020	these new patterns solidify, both useful artifacts and the texture of human relations
1251020	1255380	that surround them will be much different than what existed previously. In other words, I'm
1255380	1260960	trying to emphasize how big this really is and yet our minds keep it small in order to let us
1260960	1267800	live in it day by day. It wasn't long ago that people spoke of going on the Internet. I mean
1267800	1274220	really not long ago. But I talk to children today who don't know what it means to go on the
1274220	1280280	Internet because they are always on the Internet. And I could show you a picture if they could
1280280	1287200	get the technology to work. It's very complicated. A recent dinner, I moved to Minneapolis, great
1287200	1293840	city, and my wife and daughter and two grandchildren were sitting and eating and every
1293840	1299200	single person except me who had a digital camera to take the picture was on an iPad or an
1299200	1304900	iPhone in the booth. And I have to believe some of them were texting each other so that the
1305500	1310840	communication among the family was not totally down. But from the bleeps and squeaks of the
1310840	1316480	games their kids were playing, I don't think that's what was happening. So new technology
1316480	1323120	socializes to their context. Telephone voices sounded weird back when the telephone was
1323120	1327480	invented. They sounded unnatural. And yet when the Internet first came forward, somebody at a
1327480	1332700	radio station wanted to interview me about all this and she said, call me, don't send me an
1332700	1338640	email, I want to speak to a real person. And I had to explain how telephones work. It was
1338640	1344200	electronic signal, blah, blah, blah, wasn't a real person. And yet today you get an email or text
1344200	1349440	from a real person, you assume it's real. Well, and then there's that whole other problem that it
1349440	1355000	often isn't. But that's a totally different question. Okay. So I talked about England briefly
1355000	1358960	in order to introduce that subject. And when I used the words English and England, I bet you
1358960	1362940	thought we had a common understanding of what we meant. But in fact, what we mean when we say
1362940	1369980	the name of any nation state is no longer what it used to be. It isn't the same because the
1369980	1374240	boundaries around nation states have become first semipermeable and porous and then they went
1374240	1378760	down. In the 90s when I was talking to people in the intelligence community about the impact this
1378760	1384280	had on the work CIA and NSA and others were doing, because they've got to be well ahead of us.
1384280	1389020	When I talk to people at CIA about scientific biological stuff is keep in mind that anything I
1389020	1395340	tell you was 20 years ago. And anything anybody knows out there is going to be 20 years ago.
1395340	1405260	Because we're working a little further ahead than that. And so how many of you have been to a
1405260	1413600	Shakespeare play in the last year? Really? What a group, honest to God. I mean, it's wonderful. How
1413600	1421280	many of you have seen a Star Wars movie? Oh, more than went to a Shakespeare play. Okay. When
1421280	1425620	you're going to a Shakespeare play, we think we are understanding Elizabethan English, which is
1425620	1431360	being spoken, unless it's been changed to make it more palatable. But at least 25% of the words
1431360	1437180	being used mean something different than what you think they mean. In other words, language is a
1437180	1441940	dynamic process in which meanings are constantly changing, adding, disappearing and morphing. And
1441940	1449560	it's a matrix, a social cultural matrix that evolves evolutionarily as we do. And yet we think
1449560	1454700	that what we say and what we see by virtue of what we say is what's real and what's always been.
1454700	1460540	And I'm trying to make the point that it isn't. And the word I want to emphasize is individual. When
1460540	1466500	you hear the word individual, as Shakespeare used it, it meant something, some quality that was
1466500	1474020	unified or indivisible. Now, we're talking about the late 1500s, early 1600s. It did not mean an
1474020	1479700	individual person. When you say I'm an individual, you think of yourself as an individual human
1479700	1488900	being. That didn't show up for another couple of hundred years. Until the 17th century, 18th
1488900	1494980	century, the definition of individuality meant, quote, the state or quality of being indivisible
1494980	1502500	and inseparable. It didn't mean a human being. In other words, the notion and the appropriation of
1502500	1507620	the notion of what it meant to be a human being, an individual human being, emerged as an
1507620	1511820	emergent property from the cultural and social changes the technologies of the time and
1511820	1518600	especially the printing press, which I'll get back to, were occasioning. So the change in the
1518600	1523380	meaning of the word individuality is related to the breakup of the entire medieval social,
1523380	1528320	economic and religious order. We think that is a historical event, but at the time it was
1528320	1535740	monumental and transformational and so is our own. But if we look at it in too granular way, we
1535740	1541880	don't see what's happening. The new use of individual helped define a person's place in a
1541880	1547580	society that was emerging into reality as well. Because an individual human can live
1547580	1553020	independently of society and make his or her own decisions. The person has enough knowledge to
1553020	1557980	exist alone without clinging to society and therefore what it meant to be human
1557980	1564680	fundamentally changed from being just part of a whole to having a boundary around you, which
1564680	1569320	defined your identity in the same way that the boundaries around nation states grew during the
1569320	1577500	17th, 18th and 19th centuries and defined nation states up until Westphalia and the treaty that
1577500	1581800	helped define them in a way that no longer holds. I got a good example of this when I was
1581800	1589240	speaking for the FBI and I was talking about how places, entities invented for this country or
1589240	1594920	to work in this country and to work abroad used to be distinctive. But now foreign and
1594920	1600520	domestic no longer have the same meanings. Any more than natural and artificial have the
1600520	1605900	same meanings. We've blurred those lines so much and the head of the office, the agent in
1605900	1611240	charge of the Chicago office of the FBI said, bingo, that explains why I'm getting the
1611240	1616280	reactions I am. What he was talking about was, now the FBI was set up as a police organization in
1616280	1622040	this country. The CIA was set up to do espionage in every other country. That's why at that
1622040	1627340	first talk I gave at DEF CON 4 I could say, you want to hack? Come on in. Come in under the
1627340	1631920	umbrella. You get the best tools, the best techniques and the best mentors in the business if
1631920	1637920	you come into the agency and you get a get out of jail free card as well. Because all of the
1637920	1643020	hacking that you know is just part of the vast subset of hacking that we have developed, as
1643020	1650440	many people now know more than they did in more detail, to hack other countries. We don't
1650440	1657320	have any friends, someone said, deputy director of SIGINT actually at NSA. We have only
1657320	1663520	targets. And he was trying to calm down the guy who said, the English are special friends. We
1663520	1667940	have a special relationship. He said, we have no friends. We have only targets. And it's
1667940	1673700	everybody else. So CIA was set up to be that way in 1947. It's what our security world, our
1673700	1678520	national security state has developed as a necessity. I'm not criticizing that, I'm just saying
1678520	1683020	it's what's so. So the FBI was supposed to be here and the CIA was supposed to be there, but
1683020	1688060	here and there no longer mean the same thing. So the FBI works all over the world now. And
1688060	1693480	CIA is, of course, operating overtly now as, for example, with the New York Police
1693480	1700120	Department by design. Statements are by design to make a point, but the CIA is all over the
1700120	1705220	place inside as well. Because the boundaries are down and the nature of the information state
1705220	1711240	that we inhabit means you have to go where the information goes and see where it comes from. And
1711240	1715440	nation state boundaries don't matter anymore. What the FBI man was saying is that the real
1715440	1721620	sources of power and influence on us, on our lives, that which directs our behavior are
1721620	1727840	transnational. They are sometimes entities that, again, have no names, that don't have names, but
1727840	1733060	they're not just nation states. So we kind of coexist like a parallax view between seeing nation
1733060	1737380	state as operative and knowing that the real source of our behavior is something else. How much
1737380	1742280	business does Microsoft or Apple do somewhere else? Much more than 50%. We think they're
1742280	1746440	American companies. They're not. They're companies. And they have their own independence and
1746440	1752580	their own operations and their influence and power on us supersedes that which we think is
1752580	1756960	patriotic. And that's what the FBI special agent was trying to say. I used to be able to invite
1756960	1764760	people to cooperate with the FBI and they always did out of patriotic motivation, he said. But now
1764760	1770600	more and more I'll get the answer, I'd like to help you, but. And that but is the instantiation
1770600	1777920	of they know that the true source of their power is not the country in the same way that it was,
1777920	1784300	which is why the political rhetoric we're hearing today, which is so 20th century or before, the
1784300	1789620	political rhetoric is a 20th century framework that's not describing any of the realities that are
1789620	1794320	impacting people's lives. And that's why the solutions defined in 20th century terms can't work
1794320	1801220	in the 21st century because we're a totally different kind of economy and society. Well, why
1801220	1808140	am I bothering going into all this? Well, because privacy, as we have used the word, has meaning
1808140	1815400	only for an individual. Which was an emergent property, I say. Only for an individual. Privacy
1815400	1821200	is something that an individual has. And this meaning of individual no longer applies to
1821200	1829320	humans today. Not in the same way. Not really. We always knew we were cells in a body, but we used
1829320	1836400	to emphasize the fact that we were cells, individuals. Now we have to see bodiness. And
1836400	1842160	when digitalization took over, people experienced themselves more powerfully as nodes in a network,
1842160	1848880	and it restructured how we had to work in teams. You never heard of work teams or, in the same way,
1848880	1854620	you never heard of teachers having to teach people how to work in teams. In my day, when we
1854620	1860200	tried to work cooperatively, I was usually nailed for cheating. Because that's what we called it
1860200	1866600	then. You were told to do your work alone. Individually. Don't look at anybody else's work.
1866600	1872860	That's been totally transformed by the technology of learning and action. So what does privacy
1872860	1878660	mean in this new world? And what is contingent on it? And why does it matter? Well, Andrew
1878660	1885720	Grove, one of the founders of Intel, said privacy is the big problem of the electronic age. At
1885720	1889580	the heart of the Internet culture is a force that wants to find out everything about you. And
1889580	1894000	once it has found out everything about you and 200 million others, that's a pretty valuable
1894000	1898700	asset. So people will be tempted. Isn't that naive? They'll be tempted. Today they do it all
1898700	1903560	the time. To trade and do commerce with the asset, which is the information about you, that you
1903560	1910120	have freely given them on Facebook, et cetera, all unknowingly given them the commodity that is
1910120	1918120	yourself in terms of the data that you provide simply by existing in that online world. That
1918120	1922060	wasn't the information that people were thinking of, he said, when they called this the
1922060	1928300	information age. Commentators said we think of privacy as tremendously valuable. We call it a
1928300	1932500	human right. But we live in the Facebook age and the only thing more cherished than privacy is
1932500	1938240	publicity. We share personal data in flagrant ways, but believe we have a right to privacy
1938240	1943900	when we choose to keep things private, which we cannot do anymore. So privacy is a human
1943900	1950360	right. Well, privacy became real around the same time that rights became real. You know the
1950360	1955640	people before this transformation of society, you lived in one room. I mean, you didn't say I'm
1955640	1959740	going upstairs to have sex now. Everything took place, the animals lived with you. Look at the
1959740	1966800	castle keep in the winter. Everybody lived in one place. The idea of we entitled Americans
1966800	1971280	saying I want a room of my own, every child gets a room of their own, it was literally
1971280	1977360	unthinkable. Because nobody did that. Well, privacy emerged at the same time that rights
1977360	1981220	emerged. In other words, they became cognitive artifacts, what I call the structures we have
1981220	1987240	internally that we believe in as if they are real, but which have emerged as a response to the
1987240	1993940	changes in society and above all the information flow which defines and limits them. So
1993940	2000760	rights, we say rights came from the Magna Carta, but until they were conceived as we do
2000760	2005720	recently, we didn't see the Magna Carta that way at all. The people doing the Magna Carta did
2005720	2011520	not see it as an instantiation of rights. Intellectual property and intellectual property
2011520	2017220	rights only became possible after the printing press externalized the products of our thinking
2017220	2022600	as if they were artifacts with boundaries around them. And boundaries, as I keep saying,
2022600	2027580	determine identity, and boundaries are on everything from individuals to nation states, and I
2027580	2033620	suggest planetary culture are going down. Everybody knows we're not alone in the universe. But we
2033620	2038760	don't know that we know it. Because the authoritative voice continues to refuse to validate
2038760	2045160	the observations of thousands of people that suggests something else is going on. But that's
2045220	2051180	a whole other talk. The fact is we are not alone in the universe. We are part of a sentient web
2051180	2056760	of intelligence that spans galaxies, and we have been thinking we're the apple of God's eye and
2056760	2061580	the product of a special intelligence that only wanted us on this earth to evolve the way we did.
2062140	2072100	So vain. As the president would say, sad. Sad. Doesn't speak in paragraphs. Gets his point across
2072100	2081580	though. Paragraphs are going the way of cursive writing, honestly. Richard Stallman, who many of
2081580	2087800	you know, a great GNU guru, defending open source software, said there's no intrinsic right to
2087800	2092840	intellectual property. The idea of copyright did not exist before when authors copied everything
2092840	2098020	from one another. And you know that. If you look at manuscripts made in monasteries, you see
2098020	2102520	people wrote in the margins all the time, copied each other. There was no thought I'm stealing.
2103000	2106860	And I tried to get some professors I once consulted with to understand this. They were very
2106860	2111300	upset about plagiarism, which their students were doing, but in a cut and paste world where pieces
2111300	2117080	of information came and went without identity, without source, without retribution or
2117080	2124800	attribution, plagiarism was ceasing to mean what it did when things were defined in a textual
2124800	2131480	environment. Substitute privacy for Stallman's statement, copyright. There's no intrinsic right
2131480	2136560	to privacy. Because the forces that made it viable, social, economic, religious, legal forces
2136560	2142660	have been transformed and are blurring and disappearing. And so printing changed everything.
2142980	2148060	That's my point. And so has the Internet. And so are the other domains of advancement to which I
2148060	2153520	can only allude, like bio. The revolution in information and communication is the axis around
2153520	2159740	which our 21st century world turns right now. Privacy is honored in lip service, but not in the
2159740	2165900	marketplace where it is violated or taken away every single day. It's not honored in intelligence
2165900	2175320	operations, certainly. We all know that. It can't be. It can't be. And it's not honored in how
2175320	2180100	computers and softwares are built. A rock star once said, if voting were important, they
2180100	2186600	wouldn't let us do it. Well, if privacy was important, it would be honored, in fact. And it
2186600	2191840	isn't. I mean, you have to take a good look sometimes, look at the vendor space sometimes,
2192080	2195820	a thing like Black Hat. A friend of mine who's been in the business a long time looked out and
2195820	2200280	he said, every single one of these people is selling something they cannot deliver, because
2200280	2204380	they guarantee they are going to ensure safety and security for the enterprise, and they cannot
2204380	2216470	do that. But that's an aside. Someone said, well, I said that. Other things are much more
2216470	2222150	important than privacy. Power is more important and money is more important. The Onion once
2222150	2228850	ran an article saying, customers are our second most important factor. Of course,
2228850	2233670	everybody says customers are the most important, but they mean after money. After money. The
2233670	2237210	Internet of Things, you know what it's like. We've got a village dedicated to hacking all the
2237210	2242110	aspects of it here. It ignores privacy. A software company is doing a rush to market. I
2242110	2246310	remember Bill Gates saying years ago, show me something I can fix, I'll spend a million
2246310	2251890	dollars to do it. Show me something that makes me two days late to market, forget it. Time to
2251890	2257930	get to market when there's more. Privacy advocates, and they're all over here,
2257930	2265190	well-meaning, righteous, and sincere, are fighting a rear-guard reaction, action with reality
2265190	2274390	itself. And reality always wins. So children today are growing up without an expectation of
2274390	2280450	privacy, and without an understanding of what we mean by privacy, because their social
2280450	2286990	world has taught them a different way of being, which is, it's all out there. Sure, you can
2286990	2293290	have great movies about living off the grid, but try it. You wind up looking like the
2293290	2300010	Unabomber, right? And even he had to use a bus to get his bombs to San Francisco so he could
2300010	2305010	trust others to mail them. You can't really live off the grid unless you're living with
2305010	2311170	wolves in a cave. I said in a forecast of security issues I was asked to identify years ago,
2311170	2317370	20 years ago, that the only way to protect data is not to collect it in the first place. That
2317370	2323090	was true. It's still true, and it's totally ignored. We give it away, or we allow it to be
2323090	2327770	taken, as if it is of no account, because we cannot see or feel the ends to which data
2327770	2332510	analytics put our little biographical bits, every daily choice that we make. And everyone who
2332510	2337130	can collects data, and everyone who knows how to do it, parses it together, not data but
2337130	2342470	information. Information, remember Claude Shannon said, is the difference that makes a
2342470	2347270	difference. Well, this information makes a huge difference. Not the noise, but the data that
2347270	2351130	creates information, the signal, and it gives those who know how to extract it from the
2351130	2360430	data leverage, power and money. The bits of data that make up us, our gestalt, our identity,
2360430	2366510	they now are combined at that level of abstraction in different ways. And they see
2366510	2372390	something different when they look at us than we see ourselves. The point of this talk, if
2372390	2378290	you want to take away, is that the level of abstraction at which you can view either an
2378290	2384290	entity, an organization, or a human being, determines what you believe is real. And
2384290	2389930	people who do data analytics are looking at a level of abstraction which is so very real, as
2390510	2397030	we all know. But we act as if we are still the 20th century selves that emerged when we were
2397030	2402670	children or growing up. And we haven't really grasped that we are known better than we know
2402670	2409190	ourselves. It's like the Zen statements about the illusion of the self. Well, we believe in
2409190	2414930	ourselves. We believe ourselves are ourselves. And I'm trying to make the point. It's very
2414930	2418250	hard to get. This is why it's a nightmare in daylight if you really grasp it, that the
2418250	2425270	fundamental assumptions we make about damn near everything are no longer workable in the
2425270	2430270	frame we have unknowingly created by participating, as all of us have in this room, in this
2430270	2437190	new technological society. We are not the same people we once were. And so defining who we
2437190	2441230	are and our prerogatives and needs has to be done in light of who we have become. We're
2441230	2447170	talking about identity in Blade Runner. I was looking at the photographs. I know you know that
2447170	2451390	movie. And he said, memories. You're talking about memories. Well, now we know we can
2451390	2455090	create memories in different ways. And when I talk on biohacking, one of the things I
2455090	2459970	looked at, which my friend at CIA helped me understand, was that we really are working
2459970	2466150	seriously on implanting memories, implanting memories of someone else's experience, not
2466150	2472170	just using techniques to face memory the way we have in the past, which is what media
2472170	2477650	does. Media creates memory. And then we share a memory as if it's real. And if it
2477650	2485170	comforts us, we become a voting block. All right? So Walter Ong looked at all this some time
2485170	2490350	ago, looking at orality and literacy and the technologizing of the word. And he said,
2490350	2494320	the shift from morality to literacy and onto electronic processing engages social,
2494320	2498260	economic, political, religious, and other structures and creates an entire difference in
2498260	2503460	mentality, in who we think we are, he said, in who we experience ourselves to be. Writing
2504140	2509680	restructured consciousness, you see. Writing transformed human consciousness. Oral cultures
2509680	2515020	contained human beings who were not the same humans who began to write. And the printing
2515020	2520540	press did it again. And engaging as we do immersively in the digital world is doing it one
2520540	2528560	more time. Our consciousness is literally being restructured in a different way. So all the
2528560	2532100	arguments against computerization were the same ones they used against the printing press
2532100	2536040	and writing. Plato said the same things when the oral culture was ending. It's going to
2536040	2541340	destroy humanity. No, it's going to transform humanity. And the humanity you thought you
2541340	2546940	were a part of is no longer going to exist. Kids today are criticized because they can't
2546940	2552460	multiply in their heads or write cursive. They use Google instead of remembering things. But
2552460	2557640	they don't know any loss from their experience. They experience no loss. Why should I write
2557640	2563980	cursive when I can tap with my thumb or make black letters? Why should I multiply? All I have
2563980	2568980	to do is enter the data and it multiplies it for me. Why should I remember something which is so
2568980	2574560	ready at hand? Why should I ask somebody how to get to grandma's house when all I have to do is
2574560	2581140	point to the clock, watch, where are we? Wrap it up. You told me you were going to tell me when I
2581140	2587640	had ten minutes. You should have put it in my presentation. I would have seen it on the
2587640	2604540	screen. Well, sorry. He's telling me to stop. I hate to stop because I love to talk. But I'm
2605720	2611340	just going to quote a couple of people and then I'm going to wrap it up. This is an old quote, but
2611340	2616860	it still tells you how they were thinking at MIT some years ago. When we do the kind of data
2616860	2621680	analysis I was talking about, we get a God's eye view of human behavior. We can tell how they're
2621680	2626280	going to vote. We can tell when they're getting sick. We've turned society into a laboratory
2626280	2631620	where behavior can be effectively followed, but also we're affecting and changing behavior and
2631620	2637240	you think you have privacy. We're getting genetic sniffers that when you walk through the space
2637240	2641580	you inhabit, someone will be able to pick up your DNA from the shed skin cells that you are
2641580	2646260	effusing into the air and they will be able to do a DNA analysis as we increase our ability to do
2646260	2655360	that quickly and cheaply. There is no place to hide. So the good news that someone wanted is that
2655360	2660440	it's real. And we can always deal with what's real, but we have to grasp who we really are in
2660440	2665860	terms of what I've been describing. The world cannot be talked about as if it's a 20th century
2665860	2673660	world. Not politics, not ethics, not religions, not anything. And the good news is we can become
2673660	2680000	conscious of this, as we have in the past, and then make reasonable, powerful decisions about
2680000	2685360	who we are in light of it and rethink what it means to be ethical. Rethink what it means to be
2685360	2690800	human. Because humans have always had a different definition of self-understanding in different
2690800	2695340	cultures and it's no different now. It's just a different kind of challenge because it continues
2695340	2700940	to change so radically and so rapidly. So those who want to be in the cutting edge will at least
2700940	2707440	know how to surf the waves of information that restore sanity and wholeness and health to the
2707440	2713800	being who is doing this. And that, here more than anywhere else that I go, is you men and women.
2713800	2715480	Thank you for your attention.