[00:00.000 --> 00:07.220] Thank you very much. 22 years is a long time to watch this grow from what it was to what it [00:07.220 --> 00:13.340] is. We used to be able to say what it was. We don't know how to say what it is. Because [00:13.340 --> 00:20.100] there's so many minor cons going on. And the industry has exploded. And as long as we [00:20.100 --> 00:24.700] keep selling something that we don't deliver, it's going to just get bigger. So I think it's [00:24.700 --> 00:31.600] important to keep selling security to people who keep needing it. Kind of like self-help [00:31.600 --> 00:41.380] books. If they worked, there wouldn't be another one. But that's just an aside. It's great to [00:41.380 --> 00:46.040] be here. I do want to mention just briefly the last year when I spoke, I addressed a pretty [00:46.040 --> 00:52.060] serious issue, which was the traumatic impact of security work and intelligence work on [00:52.060 --> 00:56.680] professionals who do it over a long period of time. And it was the first time I heard people [00:56.680 --> 01:04.840] crying at DEF CON. Because it brought forth what some of you have experienced over many, [01:04.840 --> 01:09.500] many years. And I'm just sharing that to say, if you look at the YouTube video, it's [01:09.500 --> 01:14.380] online and a lot of people looked at it. It's a serious subject that is seldom addressed [01:14.380 --> 01:21.760] directly and successfully inside the agencies or often by corporate. And yet it gets bigger [01:21.760 --> 01:27.460] and bigger as the space gets bigger and bigger. So I invite you, if you have any insight or [01:27.460 --> 01:33.360] anything to share with me, to please follow up on that. It continues to plague people. I got [01:33.360 --> 01:39.360] an e‑mail just last week from a good friend, long‑time friend at NSA, who said they were [01:39.360 --> 01:44.260] advised to be sure they watch each other's backs. That's the kind of advice that's easy to [01:44.260 --> 01:49.160] give and impossible to take because it's not very specific. But the reason he found out was [01:49.160 --> 01:56.860] because three people had committed suicide that week and one the week before. And I did [01:56.860 --> 02:04.920] quote a friend, well, a fellow at CIA, who said he bears through his life 23 suicides. And [02:04.920 --> 02:09.560] they were inordinately proud of having the highest rate of suicide, alcoholism, divorce and [02:09.560 --> 02:17.120] adultery in the government. That was the DO, the Director of Operations. That's the sobering [02:17.120 --> 02:24.680] part of the talk. Keep in mind, it's an uphill climb to get people to look at it, including [02:24.680 --> 02:30.020] people who are suffering from it, because there are antidotes. We all bear scars, but there are [02:30.020 --> 02:35.180] ways we can live with them more successfully than some other ways. So that's what that's [02:35.180 --> 02:41.300] about, is looking at all the different things we can do to ameliorate the impact of what it [02:41.300 --> 02:47.440] does to us over time to do this work and to engage with people who are on the cutting edge. [02:47.660 --> 02:52.980] But what I want to do today, it's not a very sexy topic, privacy, why it's gone. Everybody [02:52.980 --> 03:00.440] knows it's gone. And you can do a very short speech on that. I was in Amsterdam not long ago [03:00.440 --> 03:05.740] and I was talking to a friend who works at a pretty high level and asked if we will ever get [03:05.740 --> 03:11.940] back any semblance of protection of freedoms from intrusion and privacy. And she said in a [03:11.940 --> 03:18.640] tone I'll never forget, Richard, of course not. Of course not. Because the technologies of [03:18.640 --> 03:25.560] intrusion and surveillance are so deeply embedded in all of our means of working, living and [03:25.560 --> 03:29.440] communicating with one another today, and it is so profitable to have them and so [03:29.840 --> 03:34.680] unprofitable to remove them, that we will never get back the freedoms that we thought we had. [03:34.680 --> 03:41.960] She sounded like Michael Corleone in The Godfather when Kay said, Michael, senators don't [03:41.960 --> 03:51.520] kill people. And Corleone said, okay, who is being naive now? Implying that senators did indeed [03:51.520 --> 03:56.140] kill people. I should ask at this point, because it's something that just happened to me, how [03:56.140 --> 04:03.500] many of you know what I mean when I say The Godfather? How many of you? Okay. Good. Good. Let [04:03.500 --> 04:07.980] me do a test, because if it happens here, then I know I've got to make some changes. I was [04:07.980 --> 04:16.420] doing a talk for a pretty sizable audience, and in Montreal, and I referred to Chinatown. Jake [04:16.420 --> 04:23.520] said, come on, it's Chinatown, Jake, it's Chinatown. And someone came up and said, nobody knows [04:23.520 --> 04:30.140] what you mean. How many of you have seen the movie Chinatown? Okay. That's pretty good. How [04:30.140 --> 04:35.880] many of you have seen the movie The Conversation? Fewer. Okay. I encourage you to see The [04:35.880 --> 04:42.020] Conversation and see what it's like. It's a terrific movie with Gene Hackman about [04:42.020 --> 04:46.820] surveillance. But the point is, I like to be able to refer to popular culture markers and [04:46.820 --> 04:52.580] signals that people recognize. And I learned my lesson when Adam Shostak got up after me, and [04:52.580 --> 04:57.120] all he had were slides from Star Wars and Rogue One, and everybody knew exactly what he was [04:57.120 --> 05:03.940] talking about whenever he used them. We'll touch on that a little later. So everybody knows [05:03.940 --> 05:07.880] that privacy in the way I just referred to it is gone, but that's the view on the ground. And I [05:07.880 --> 05:14.200] want to take this up to maybe 30, 40, 50, 60,000 feet to look at what it really means that [05:14.200 --> 05:20.280] privacy is gone, because of what it means that our identity has so radically been altered by [05:20.280 --> 05:25.900] the digitalization and other factors in the world of the 21st century, that privacy is [05:25.900 --> 05:31.860] literally nonexistent. It's not whether we can recapture it or have it. It's that it doesn't [05:31.860 --> 05:37.660] exist in the same way that it existed, and I want to talk about why that is with a broad view [05:37.660 --> 05:43.460] over what's happened to society, including a look at a few things like words over the last [05:43.460 --> 05:50.400] few hundred years. Privacy is defined as freedom from damaging publicity, public scrutiny, [05:50.400 --> 05:55.740] secret surveillance, unauthorized disclosure of one's personal data or information, as by a [05:55.740 --> 06:00.820] government corporation or individual, as if ordinary citizens have a right to privacy. When I [06:00.820 --> 06:06.340] read that definition, it's laughable, because all of that is gone. We do not have that [06:06.340 --> 06:11.900] freedom. We are not free from any of those things, and I don't think we will be. But what I [06:11.900 --> 06:16.360] want to do is try to get us to see that the 20th century framework within which we think [06:16.360 --> 06:21.740] about these things and our identity is effectively ending, and it's very important to know [06:21.740 --> 06:30.380] who you are so you can determine what you do with effectiveness and some clarity. When the VGA [06:30.380 --> 06:38.740] cable comes, if it ever comes, I'll put a picture up or two, but let me get into the talk. I'm [06:38.740 --> 06:42.420] going to start with a quote from Nietzsche. You like to do that at DEF CON, because [06:42.420 --> 06:47.700] everybody reads Nietzsche, right? He said, with the unknown, one is confronted with [06:47.700 --> 06:51.300] danger. In other words, somebody says something to you that's totally unknown, it's [06:51.300 --> 06:57.060] dangerous. It causes discomfort and great care. The first instinct is to abolish the pain of [06:57.060 --> 07:02.760] being in those states. So this is his first principle. Any explanation is better than none. [07:03.360 --> 07:08.200] And since at bottom, what you really want to do is get rid of the oppressive information or [07:08.200 --> 07:13.300] representation, you're not too particular about the means of getting rid of them. So the first [07:13.300 --> 07:19.240] representation, the first idea, the first theory that explains everything, explains the [07:19.240 --> 07:26.680] unknown in a familiar way, using the categories of the past, it feels so good that you call it [07:26.680 --> 07:34.400] true. You say we consider that true. The proof of pleasure is the criterion of truth. In other [07:34.400 --> 07:38.620] words, does it alleviate your cognitive dissonance? Does it downplay your anxiety? Does it [07:38.620 --> 07:45.180] make you feel better in the face of the fearfulness of the unknown and the new? And so the [07:45.180 --> 07:53.160] fear is the real problem that confronts us. And therefore we have to abolish that feeling. And [07:53.160 --> 07:58.200] the strange and the new and the hitherto unexperienced must disappear into habitual, [07:58.200 --> 08:04.780] comfortable, familiar explanations. And that's why he says, too, we must tell stories that are [08:04.780 --> 08:10.820] untimely, by which he means the consensus reality in which we live at any given moment is our [08:10.820 --> 08:16.220] time, but the truths that are coming at us faster and faster of the kind I'm speaking are [08:16.220 --> 08:20.880] untimely. We are speaking to a future state which is already here, but as Gibson said, [08:20.880 --> 08:27.940] unevenly distributed. In other words, truths, the deepest truths you believe about who you are and [08:27.940 --> 08:32.580] your identity are illusions that we have comfortably and conveniently forgot were illusions [08:32.580 --> 08:38.380] in order to live with them. And truths held collectively by a group or organization have to be [08:38.380 --> 08:46.160] confronted on behalf of a future people that will not hold those truths naively. So we often [08:46.160 --> 08:50.300] embrace truths by which we live because they make us feel better and alleviate cognitive [08:50.300 --> 08:55.840] dissonance, but they're not true. What's true is what's real. And as Philip K. Dick said, [08:55.840 --> 09:01.500] reality is that which when we refuse to believe in it won't go away. And here we are living [09:01.500 --> 09:07.480] inside of Philip K. Dick. How many of you know who Philip K. Dick is? Okay, pretty savvy [09:07.480 --> 09:13.480] crowd on edge thinkers. Now, I spoke in Canada about privacy about four years ago and I [09:13.480 --> 09:17.400] thought I don't have to ever change the speech I give in Canada because it's the same [09:17.400 --> 09:25.340] issues year after year after year. And I spoke for the ministers of privacy not long ago, tried [09:25.340 --> 09:30.320] to give a different slant on it, and one of the ministers of privacy from British Columbia [09:30.320 --> 09:35.720] said, that was a very provocative keynote, but let us hope it's not true. And did not realize [09:35.720 --> 09:41.580] she was a proof of concept of that Nietzschean statement I just made, which is, it's [09:41.580 --> 09:46.400] provocative, but I don't want it to be true, and therefore, because my job is to be the [09:46.400 --> 09:56.340] minister of privacy, I have to treat it as if it is not true, even though I know it is. Okay? [09:56.340 --> 10:05.260] Man's plugging stuff in here. Let me make sure the soft porn is not... [10:14.180 --> 10:25.800] Okay? So that's going to be my image for the hour, that DEF CON image, I guess. Somebody is [10:25.800 --> 10:31.560] probably doing something to try to get the other image up. Okay. So one of the ministers of [10:31.560 --> 10:36.320] privacy got up and gave a very, very passionate speech about all the restrictions they have [10:36.320 --> 10:43.040] on the government and on society to try to save privacy, and I asked if they really work for [10:43.040 --> 10:47.000] the intelligence community, do they really adhere to these things? And she said, well, in [10:47.000 --> 10:53.040] theory. In theory. And all you can say is, in theory, theory and practice are the same, but in [10:53.040 --> 10:59.060] practice, they're not. Okay. So privacy and security. Matt Blaze once said a long time [10:59.060 --> 11:03.760] ago, the weakest link in the security chain is frequently the definition of the problem, and [11:03.760 --> 11:09.140] the definition of the problem is often not what we think. That applies to privacy, too, and [11:09.140 --> 11:14.080] we're going to see how, because these are difficult concepts I'm trying to advance, because [11:14.080 --> 11:18.860] they, like the Zen Buddha say, enlightenment is a nightmare in daylight, and when you [11:18.860 --> 11:23.380] grasp it, suddenly everything else explodes, and you have nothing but space to create new [11:23.380 --> 11:30.140] possibilities if you can stand it. And that's what we're talking about. We're living by 20th [11:30.140 --> 11:34.960] century concepts, and they don't fit anymore, and therefore we talk about privacy and [11:34.960 --> 11:41.780] security, actually. As if we know the definitions of the problems, but they're not what we [11:41.780 --> 11:47.980] think. A wise person under these conditions steers their course by the torchlight of doubt and [11:47.980 --> 11:52.120] chaos, and as Niels Bohr said of quantum physics, anybody who isn't confused doesn't [11:52.120 --> 11:58.940] understand what's going on. I think that's true about privacy and security as well. Okay, now [11:58.940 --> 12:04.960] let me provide some history. Printing press with movable type was introduced to Europe by [12:04.960 --> 12:11.440] Gutenberg in 1439. It played an unimaginably huge role in the development of the [12:11.440 --> 12:15.680] Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the whole scientific revolution, [12:15.680 --> 12:21.660] because now it could share standardized tables and data for the first time in history. It [12:21.660 --> 12:26.300] laid the material basis for our knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the [12:26.300 --> 12:30.580] masses. You cannot overstate the importance of the printing press. And it was [12:30.580 --> 12:36.400] revolutionary in England when William Caxton brought the printing press there in 1476. [12:37.160 --> 12:42.700] When something changes the world so radically, we exaggerate the impact. Think of what we [12:42.700 --> 12:46.840] said about the Internet when it first came, but in the long term we always underestimate the [12:46.840 --> 12:51.960] impact. Again, think of the Internet. The printing press, like the Internet, like digital [12:52.620 --> 12:57.540] reality, is an engine of revolution that is now a catalyst for revolution in all the other [12:57.540 --> 13:05.820] areas as well, bio and nano and space technologies and material science. And the [13:05.820 --> 13:11.820] acceleration of change has made change happen faster and faster. So we usually respond to [13:11.820 --> 13:16.940] this the way Virginia said we do to grief. First by denying it, then we get angry about it, [13:16.940 --> 13:24.100] then we get depressed, then we negotiate with it and finally we accept it. But remnants of [13:24.100 --> 13:29.600] past behaviors... no, you're not getting an image. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. [13:30.780 --> 13:38.840] It was beautiful and it was very important, but don't worry about it. I'll look at it. It's the [13:38.840 --> 13:45.140] cover of my... the third volume of my novel, Foam, and it says, Identity is Destiny. And it shows a [13:45.140 --> 13:50.000] man standing before the universe. It's a gorgeous picture. It really is a gorgeous picture. And I [13:50.000 --> 13:54.720] mentioned that only because I will be signing a few books that I brought after the talk at 2.30 and [13:54.720 --> 14:00.200] 3.00 in the vendor space. The other one was going to be just a picture of mind games, because [14:00.200 --> 14:04.820] those are the kind of games I'm playing with you. And I was also going to show you a picture of the [14:04.820 --> 14:09.960] UFOs in government book, because I continue to get feedback from numerous sources about the [14:09.960 --> 14:15.920] accuracy of our historical analysis of how the government responded to that phenomena over 60 [14:15.920 --> 14:24.020] years. But I won't show you those pictures. We'll just leave that aside. The remnants of past [14:24.020 --> 14:29.940] behavior persist and how prior technology socialized us and taught us to behave as they framed [14:29.940 --> 14:34.560] our lives. Then they went in the background. But they're still there. We just don't see them. [14:34.560 --> 14:39.260] Like the electric grid, you didn't see the lights. You saw by the lights when you came in here. You [14:39.260 --> 14:44.480] see by virtue of the lights illuminating. But electric lights like these are only 125 years old. [14:44.480 --> 14:50.280] We're barely up from the swamp. We're new creatures in the galaxy and so arrogant and proud like a [14:50.280 --> 14:56.100] toddler. But it's new. But you still don't see the power grid. You don't plug in all of your [14:56.100 --> 15:01.680] equipment and say I'm going on power grid now. So shh, quiet, I'm on the power grid. You don't [15:01.680 --> 15:05.120] even see the power grid. But if somebody came back here from the 19th century and looked at the [15:05.120 --> 15:10.400] landscape around us, probably the first thing they would notice is all the lines and dynamos that [15:10.400 --> 15:14.560] are emblems of the power grid that they never experienced. And it goes into the background. The [15:14.560 --> 15:22.360] first automobiles had sockets in the dashboard for buggy whips. Because buggies drawn by horses [15:22.360 --> 15:30.100] had sockets in which to put the buggy whips. Then after a while they stopped making cars with [15:30.100 --> 15:38.240] holes for buggy whips. A friend remembers when, this was some time ago, this historical [15:38.240 --> 15:45.960] statement, when they were firing cannons, it was during World War I, that's how far back I go, [15:45.960 --> 15:50.400] right? And there were people standing there when they fired the cannons with their arms out like [15:50.400 --> 15:54.720] this at attention. He said, what are they doing? They're holding the horses. Because the [15:54.720 --> 15:59.160] cannons spooked the horses and they have to hold the bridle. He said, but we don't have any [15:59.160 --> 16:05.920] horses anymore. It's all mechanized. And there was that dull look of, oh. So the people [16:05.920 --> 16:11.560] holding the horses stayed long after the horses were gone. That's what we do. And when [16:11.560 --> 16:16.600] Caxton brought the printing press to England, printing revolutionized the world and the social [16:16.600 --> 16:20.220] worlds in which people lived. The religious world, the scientific world, the cultural world, [16:20.220 --> 16:26.040] everything. They had to choose a dialect in which to print. And that became what we called [16:26.040 --> 16:31.220] standard English. And as standard English permeated a larger and larger group, it [16:31.220 --> 16:37.060] permeated what we later called England, which did not exist yet until the social institutions [16:37.060 --> 16:42.020] that supported it had been created by the technologies which people no longer saw as [16:42.020 --> 16:48.760] causal but were. So the language printing imposed homogenized the culture over time and [16:48.760 --> 16:53.980] political and economic and social consequences followed. So it changed how we thought. It [16:53.980 --> 17:02.960] changed more fundamentally who we were. Now, we need the language to use to understand who [17:02.960 --> 17:09.500] we have become that we are in the process now of inventing. You can't think what you can't [17:09.500 --> 17:15.840] say. And the language of the past is inadequate to describe what a human being has become [17:15.840 --> 17:21.800] today by virtue of technologies. I'll give you an example of words that you use all the time [17:21.800 --> 17:29.500] that were invented during a very fecund period, a very fertile period, 1918 to 1923 after [17:29.500 --> 17:36.240] World War I when the flapper era exploded and the good feeling era followed before the [17:36.240 --> 17:46.480] depression. These are words which did not exist before then. Cool, extrovert, fascist, mass [17:46.480 --> 17:53.500] media, debunk, encode, hyper-modern, multipurpose, power play, teenage, which was invented as a [17:53.500 --> 18:01.280] stage of life at the same time. Post-feminist, biracial, slinky, sadomasochistic, homosexuality, [18:01.280 --> 18:08.140] fundamentalism, psyching, devalue. One of my favorites, I can't imagine a Samuel L. Jackson [18:08.140 --> 18:14.740] movie without it. The word motherfucker came into play in 1918 for the first time. One can [18:14.740 --> 18:25.160] only imagine the circumstances under which that took place. French kiss, fuck off. I'm not [18:25.160 --> 18:30.620] telling you to fuck off. I'm telling you that's a phrase. Deflationary, merchant bank, [18:30.620 --> 18:36.280] arbitrary. I can go on and on and on. These did not exist, but now we can say them and think [18:36.280 --> 18:41.940] them because the language emerged to describe new social and cultural realities that [18:41.940 --> 18:47.400] previously we had no way of identifying. It's like hacker. You know what's happened to the [18:47.400 --> 18:53.300] word hacker right over time. It used to mean a hacker. When I first started speaking at [18:53.300 --> 19:00.240] DEF CON, DEF CON 4, it was a convention of hackers. Now there are some. We used to play [19:00.240 --> 19:08.360] spot the fed here. Now you're all fed, so we play spot the hacker. It's a more appropriate [19:08.360 --> 19:13.560] game. What is a hacker today? You hear black hat hacker, gray hat hacker and white hat [19:13.560 --> 19:22.140] hacker. Black hat hacker is a hacker. A gray hat hacker is a hacker who put the truth down [19:22.140 --> 19:27.140] somewhere but knows where he put it. A white hat hacker is someone who put the truth down [19:27.140 --> 19:33.840] somewhere and forgot where it is. In other words, I haven't met yet a white hat hacker who [19:33.840 --> 19:39.060] is only a white hat hacker. It's a definition of convenience. Because in the old days, at [19:39.060 --> 19:43.860] any rate, the only way you learned by hacking, the only way you learned to hack was by [19:43.860 --> 19:49.600] hacking. And it was a passionate commitment to doing anything you needed to do to look at [19:49.600 --> 19:54.460] things in a new way and learn from them. We need new language to articulate what we [19:54.460 --> 19:59.380] experience and grasp the nature of the context in which we live. We need new language today to [19:59.380 --> 20:05.940] discuss ethics, spirituality and identity and privacy. The weakest link in discussions of [20:05.940 --> 20:11.700] privacy is the definition of privacy. And the definition of privacy is not what we think. Let us [20:11.700 --> 20:18.480] give true props to what this technology has done. When we invent a technology like this, [20:18.480 --> 20:24.900] computer scientists said, society also invents the kinds of people who will use it. Older [20:24.900 --> 20:30.360] practices, relationships and ways of defining identities fall by the wayside. New practices, [20:30.360 --> 20:35.000] relationships and identities take root. In case after case, the move to computerize and [20:35.000 --> 20:40.340] digitize means preexisting cultural forms have suddenly gone liquid like an ice cube in your [20:40.340 --> 20:46.120] hand. Losing their former shape as they are restructured for computerized expression. And as [20:46.120 --> 20:51.020] these new patterns solidify, both useful artifacts and the texture of human relations [20:51.020 --> 20:55.380] that surround them will be much different than what existed previously. In other words, I'm [20:55.380 --> 21:00.960] trying to emphasize how big this really is and yet our minds keep it small in order to let us [21:00.960 --> 21:07.800] live in it day by day. It wasn't long ago that people spoke of going on the Internet. I mean [21:07.800 --> 21:14.220] really not long ago. But I talk to children today who don't know what it means to go on the [21:14.220 --> 21:20.280] Internet because they are always on the Internet. And I could show you a picture if they could [21:20.280 --> 21:27.200] get the technology to work. It's very complicated. A recent dinner, I moved to Minneapolis, great [21:27.200 --> 21:33.840] city, and my wife and daughter and two grandchildren were sitting and eating and every [21:33.840 --> 21:39.200] single person except me who had a digital camera to take the picture was on an iPad or an [21:39.200 --> 21:44.900] iPhone in the booth. And I have to believe some of them were texting each other so that the [21:45.500 --> 21:50.840] communication among the family was not totally down. But from the bleeps and squeaks of the [21:50.840 --> 21:56.480] games their kids were playing, I don't think that's what was happening. So new technology [21:56.480 --> 22:03.120] socializes to their context. Telephone voices sounded weird back when the telephone was [22:03.120 --> 22:07.480] invented. They sounded unnatural. And yet when the Internet first came forward, somebody at a [22:07.480 --> 22:12.700] radio station wanted to interview me about all this and she said, call me, don't send me an [22:12.700 --> 22:18.640] email, I want to speak to a real person. And I had to explain how telephones work. It was [22:18.640 --> 22:24.200] electronic signal, blah, blah, blah, wasn't a real person. And yet today you get an email or text [22:24.200 --> 22:29.440] from a real person, you assume it's real. Well, and then there's that whole other problem that it [22:29.440 --> 22:35.000] often isn't. But that's a totally different question. Okay. So I talked about England briefly [22:35.000 --> 22:38.960] in order to introduce that subject. And when I used the words English and England, I bet you [22:38.960 --> 22:42.940] thought we had a common understanding of what we meant. But in fact, what we mean when we say [22:42.940 --> 22:49.980] the name of any nation state is no longer what it used to be. It isn't the same because the [22:49.980 --> 22:54.240] boundaries around nation states have become first semipermeable and porous and then they went [22:54.240 --> 22:58.760] down. In the 90s when I was talking to people in the intelligence community about the impact this [22:58.760 --> 23:04.280] had on the work CIA and NSA and others were doing, because they've got to be well ahead of us. [23:04.280 --> 23:09.020] When I talk to people at CIA about scientific biological stuff is keep in mind that anything I [23:09.020 --> 23:15.340] tell you was 20 years ago. And anything anybody knows out there is going to be 20 years ago. [23:15.340 --> 23:25.260] Because we're working a little further ahead than that. And so how many of you have been to a [23:25.260 --> 23:33.600] Shakespeare play in the last year? Really? What a group, honest to God. I mean, it's wonderful. How [23:33.600 --> 23:41.280] many of you have seen a Star Wars movie? Oh, more than went to a Shakespeare play. Okay. When [23:41.280 --> 23:45.620] you're going to a Shakespeare play, we think we are understanding Elizabethan English, which is [23:45.620 --> 23:51.360] being spoken, unless it's been changed to make it more palatable. But at least 25% of the words [23:51.360 --> 23:57.180] being used mean something different than what you think they mean. In other words, language is a [23:57.180 --> 24:01.940] dynamic process in which meanings are constantly changing, adding, disappearing and morphing. And [24:01.940 --> 24:09.560] it's a matrix, a social cultural matrix that evolves evolutionarily as we do. And yet we think [24:09.560 --> 24:14.700] that what we say and what we see by virtue of what we say is what's real and what's always been. [24:14.700 --> 24:20.540] And I'm trying to make the point that it isn't. And the word I want to emphasize is individual. When [24:20.540 --> 24:26.500] you hear the word individual, as Shakespeare used it, it meant something, some quality that was [24:26.500 --> 24:34.020] unified or indivisible. Now, we're talking about the late 1500s, early 1600s. It did not mean an [24:34.020 --> 24:39.700] individual person. When you say I'm an individual, you think of yourself as an individual human [24:39.700 --> 24:48.900] being. That didn't show up for another couple of hundred years. Until the 17th century, 18th [24:48.900 --> 24:54.980] century, the definition of individuality meant, quote, the state or quality of being indivisible [24:54.980 --> 25:02.500] and inseparable. It didn't mean a human being. In other words, the notion and the appropriation of [25:02.500 --> 25:07.620] the notion of what it meant to be a human being, an individual human being, emerged as an [25:07.620 --> 25:11.820] emergent property from the cultural and social changes the technologies of the time and [25:11.820 --> 25:18.600] especially the printing press, which I'll get back to, were occasioning. So the change in the [25:18.600 --> 25:23.380] meaning of the word individuality is related to the breakup of the entire medieval social, [25:23.380 --> 25:28.320] economic and religious order. We think that is a historical event, but at the time it was [25:28.320 --> 25:35.740] monumental and transformational and so is our own. But if we look at it in too granular way, we [25:35.740 --> 25:41.880] don't see what's happening. The new use of individual helped define a person's place in a [25:41.880 --> 25:47.580] society that was emerging into reality as well. Because an individual human can live [25:47.580 --> 25:53.020] independently of society and make his or her own decisions. The person has enough knowledge to [25:53.020 --> 25:57.980] exist alone without clinging to society and therefore what it meant to be human [25:57.980 --> 26:04.680] fundamentally changed from being just part of a whole to having a boundary around you, which [26:04.680 --> 26:09.320] defined your identity in the same way that the boundaries around nation states grew during the [26:09.320 --> 26:17.500] 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and defined nation states up until Westphalia and the treaty that [26:17.500 --> 26:21.800] helped define them in a way that no longer holds. I got a good example of this when I was [26:21.800 --> 26:29.240] speaking for the FBI and I was talking about how places, entities invented for this country or [26:29.240 --> 26:34.920] to work in this country and to work abroad used to be distinctive. But now foreign and [26:34.920 --> 26:40.520] domestic no longer have the same meanings. Any more than natural and artificial have the [26:40.520 --> 26:45.900] same meanings. We've blurred those lines so much and the head of the office, the agent in [26:45.900 --> 26:51.240] charge of the Chicago office of the FBI said, bingo, that explains why I'm getting the [26:51.240 --> 26:56.280] reactions I am. What he was talking about was, now the FBI was set up as a police organization in [26:56.280 --> 27:02.040] this country. The CIA was set up to do espionage in every other country. That's why at that [27:02.040 --> 27:07.340] first talk I gave at DEF CON 4 I could say, you want to hack? Come on in. Come in under the [27:07.340 --> 27:11.920] umbrella. You get the best tools, the best techniques and the best mentors in the business if [27:11.920 --> 27:17.920] you come into the agency and you get a get out of jail free card as well. Because all of the [27:17.920 --> 27:23.020] hacking that you know is just part of the vast subset of hacking that we have developed, as [27:23.020 --> 27:30.440] many people now know more than they did in more detail, to hack other countries. We don't [27:30.440 --> 27:37.320] have any friends, someone said, deputy director of SIGINT actually at NSA. We have only [27:37.320 --> 27:43.520] targets. And he was trying to calm down the guy who said, the English are special friends. We [27:43.520 --> 27:47.940] have a special relationship. He said, we have no friends. We have only targets. And it's [27:47.940 --> 27:53.700] everybody else. So CIA was set up to be that way in 1947. It's what our security world, our [27:53.700 --> 27:58.520] national security state has developed as a necessity. I'm not criticizing that, I'm just saying [27:58.520 --> 28:03.020] it's what's so. So the FBI was supposed to be here and the CIA was supposed to be there, but [28:03.020 --> 28:08.060] here and there no longer mean the same thing. So the FBI works all over the world now. And [28:08.060 --> 28:13.480] CIA is, of course, operating overtly now as, for example, with the New York Police [28:13.480 --> 28:20.120] Department by design. Statements are by design to make a point, but the CIA is all over the [28:20.120 --> 28:25.220] place inside as well. Because the boundaries are down and the nature of the information state [28:25.220 --> 28:31.240] that we inhabit means you have to go where the information goes and see where it comes from. And [28:31.240 --> 28:35.440] nation state boundaries don't matter anymore. What the FBI man was saying is that the real [28:35.440 --> 28:41.620] sources of power and influence on us, on our lives, that which directs our behavior are [28:41.620 --> 28:47.840] transnational. They are sometimes entities that, again, have no names, that don't have names, but [28:47.840 --> 28:53.060] they're not just nation states. So we kind of coexist like a parallax view between seeing nation [28:53.060 --> 28:57.380] state as operative and knowing that the real source of our behavior is something else. How much [28:57.380 --> 29:02.280] business does Microsoft or Apple do somewhere else? Much more than 50%. We think they're [29:02.280 --> 29:06.440] American companies. They're not. They're companies. And they have their own independence and [29:06.440 --> 29:12.580] their own operations and their influence and power on us supersedes that which we think is [29:12.580 --> 29:16.960] patriotic. And that's what the FBI special agent was trying to say. I used to be able to invite [29:16.960 --> 29:24.760] people to cooperate with the FBI and they always did out of patriotic motivation, he said. But now [29:24.760 --> 29:30.600] more and more I'll get the answer, I'd like to help you, but. And that but is the instantiation [29:30.600 --> 29:37.920] of they know that the true source of their power is not the country in the same way that it was, [29:37.920 --> 29:44.300] which is why the political rhetoric we're hearing today, which is so 20th century or before, the [29:44.300 --> 29:49.620] political rhetoric is a 20th century framework that's not describing any of the realities that are [29:49.620 --> 29:54.320] impacting people's lives. And that's why the solutions defined in 20th century terms can't work [29:54.320 --> 30:01.220] in the 21st century because we're a totally different kind of economy and society. Well, why [30:01.220 --> 30:08.140] am I bothering going into all this? Well, because privacy, as we have used the word, has meaning [30:08.140 --> 30:15.400] only for an individual. Which was an emergent property, I say. Only for an individual. Privacy [30:15.400 --> 30:21.200] is something that an individual has. And this meaning of individual no longer applies to [30:21.200 --> 30:29.320] humans today. Not in the same way. Not really. We always knew we were cells in a body, but we used [30:29.320 --> 30:36.400] to emphasize the fact that we were cells, individuals. Now we have to see bodiness. And [30:36.400 --> 30:42.160] when digitalization took over, people experienced themselves more powerfully as nodes in a network, [30:42.160 --> 30:48.880] and it restructured how we had to work in teams. You never heard of work teams or, in the same way, [30:48.880 --> 30:54.620] you never heard of teachers having to teach people how to work in teams. In my day, when we [30:54.620 --> 31:00.200] tried to work cooperatively, I was usually nailed for cheating. Because that's what we called it [31:00.200 --> 31:06.600] then. You were told to do your work alone. Individually. Don't look at anybody else's work. [31:06.600 --> 31:12.860] That's been totally transformed by the technology of learning and action. So what does privacy [31:12.860 --> 31:18.660] mean in this new world? And what is contingent on it? And why does it matter? Well, Andrew [31:18.660 --> 31:25.720] Grove, one of the founders of Intel, said privacy is the big problem of the electronic age. At [31:25.720 --> 31:29.580] the heart of the Internet culture is a force that wants to find out everything about you. And [31:29.580 --> 31:34.000] once it has found out everything about you and 200 million others, that's a pretty valuable [31:34.000 --> 31:38.700] asset. So people will be tempted. Isn't that naive? They'll be tempted. Today they do it all [31:38.700 --> 31:43.560] the time. To trade and do commerce with the asset, which is the information about you, that you [31:43.560 --> 31:50.120] have freely given them on Facebook, et cetera, all unknowingly given them the commodity that is [31:50.120 --> 31:58.120] yourself in terms of the data that you provide simply by existing in that online world. That [31:58.120 --> 32:02.060] wasn't the information that people were thinking of, he said, when they called this the [32:02.060 --> 32:08.300] information age. Commentators said we think of privacy as tremendously valuable. We call it a [32:08.300 --> 32:12.500] human right. But we live in the Facebook age and the only thing more cherished than privacy is [32:12.500 --> 32:18.240] publicity. We share personal data in flagrant ways, but believe we have a right to privacy [32:18.240 --> 32:23.900] when we choose to keep things private, which we cannot do anymore. So privacy is a human [32:23.900 --> 32:30.360] right. Well, privacy became real around the same time that rights became real. You know the [32:30.360 --> 32:35.640] people before this transformation of society, you lived in one room. I mean, you didn't say I'm [32:35.640 --> 32:39.740] going upstairs to have sex now. Everything took place, the animals lived with you. Look at the [32:39.740 --> 32:46.800] castle keep in the winter. Everybody lived in one place. The idea of we entitled Americans [32:46.800 --> 32:51.280] saying I want a room of my own, every child gets a room of their own, it was literally [32:51.280 --> 32:57.360] unthinkable. Because nobody did that. Well, privacy emerged at the same time that rights [32:57.360 --> 33:01.220] emerged. In other words, they became cognitive artifacts, what I call the structures we have [33:01.220 --> 33:07.240] internally that we believe in as if they are real, but which have emerged as a response to the [33:07.240 --> 33:13.940] changes in society and above all the information flow which defines and limits them. So [33:13.940 --> 33:20.760] rights, we say rights came from the Magna Carta, but until they were conceived as we do [33:20.760 --> 33:25.720] recently, we didn't see the Magna Carta that way at all. The people doing the Magna Carta did [33:25.720 --> 33:31.520] not see it as an instantiation of rights. Intellectual property and intellectual property [33:31.520 --> 33:37.220] rights only became possible after the printing press externalized the products of our thinking [33:37.220 --> 33:42.600] as if they were artifacts with boundaries around them. And boundaries, as I keep saying, [33:42.600 --> 33:47.580] determine identity, and boundaries are on everything from individuals to nation states, and I [33:47.580 --> 33:53.620] suggest planetary culture are going down. Everybody knows we're not alone in the universe. But we [33:53.620 --> 33:58.760] don't know that we know it. Because the authoritative voice continues to refuse to validate [33:58.760 --> 34:05.160] the observations of thousands of people that suggests something else is going on. But that's [34:05.220 --> 34:11.180] a whole other talk. The fact is we are not alone in the universe. We are part of a sentient web [34:11.180 --> 34:16.760] of intelligence that spans galaxies, and we have been thinking we're the apple of God's eye and [34:16.760 --> 34:21.580] the product of a special intelligence that only wanted us on this earth to evolve the way we did. [34:22.140 --> 34:32.100] So vain. As the president would say, sad. Sad. Doesn't speak in paragraphs. Gets his point across [34:32.100 --> 34:41.580] though. Paragraphs are going the way of cursive writing, honestly. Richard Stallman, who many of [34:41.580 --> 34:47.800] you know, a great GNU guru, defending open source software, said there's no intrinsic right to [34:47.800 --> 34:52.840] intellectual property. The idea of copyright did not exist before when authors copied everything [34:52.840 --> 34:58.020] from one another. And you know that. If you look at manuscripts made in monasteries, you see [34:58.020 --> 35:02.520] people wrote in the margins all the time, copied each other. There was no thought I'm stealing. [35:03.000 --> 35:06.860] And I tried to get some professors I once consulted with to understand this. They were very [35:06.860 --> 35:11.300] upset about plagiarism, which their students were doing, but in a cut and paste world where pieces [35:11.300 --> 35:17.080] of information came and went without identity, without source, without retribution or [35:17.080 --> 35:24.800] attribution, plagiarism was ceasing to mean what it did when things were defined in a textual [35:24.800 --> 35:31.480] environment. Substitute privacy for Stallman's statement, copyright. There's no intrinsic right [35:31.480 --> 35:36.560] to privacy. Because the forces that made it viable, social, economic, religious, legal forces [35:36.560 --> 35:42.660] have been transformed and are blurring and disappearing. And so printing changed everything. [35:42.980 --> 35:48.060] That's my point. And so has the Internet. And so are the other domains of advancement to which I [35:48.060 --> 35:53.520] can only allude, like bio. The revolution in information and communication is the axis around [35:53.520 --> 35:59.740] which our 21st century world turns right now. Privacy is honored in lip service, but not in the [35:59.740 --> 36:05.900] marketplace where it is violated or taken away every single day. It's not honored in intelligence [36:05.900 --> 36:15.320] operations, certainly. We all know that. It can't be. It can't be. And it's not honored in how [36:15.320 --> 36:20.100] computers and softwares are built. A rock star once said, if voting were important, they [36:20.100 --> 36:26.600] wouldn't let us do it. Well, if privacy was important, it would be honored, in fact. And it [36:26.600 --> 36:31.840] isn't. I mean, you have to take a good look sometimes, look at the vendor space sometimes, [36:32.080 --> 36:35.820] a thing like Black Hat. A friend of mine who's been in the business a long time looked out and [36:35.820 --> 36:40.280] he said, every single one of these people is selling something they cannot deliver, because [36:40.280 --> 36:44.380] they guarantee they are going to ensure safety and security for the enterprise, and they cannot [36:44.380 --> 36:56.470] do that. But that's an aside. Someone said, well, I said that. Other things are much more [36:56.470 --> 37:02.150] important than privacy. Power is more important and money is more important. The Onion once [37:02.150 --> 37:08.850] ran an article saying, customers are our second most important factor. Of course, [37:08.850 --> 37:13.670] everybody says customers are the most important, but they mean after money. After money. The [37:13.670 --> 37:17.210] Internet of Things, you know what it's like. We've got a village dedicated to hacking all the [37:17.210 --> 37:22.110] aspects of it here. It ignores privacy. A software company is doing a rush to market. I [37:22.110 --> 37:26.310] remember Bill Gates saying years ago, show me something I can fix, I'll spend a million [37:26.310 --> 37:31.890] dollars to do it. Show me something that makes me two days late to market, forget it. Time to [37:31.890 --> 37:37.930] get to market when there's more. Privacy advocates, and they're all over here, [37:37.930 --> 37:45.190] well-meaning, righteous, and sincere, are fighting a rear-guard reaction, action with reality [37:45.190 --> 37:54.390] itself. And reality always wins. So children today are growing up without an expectation of [37:54.390 --> 38:00.450] privacy, and without an understanding of what we mean by privacy, because their social [38:00.450 --> 38:06.990] world has taught them a different way of being, which is, it's all out there. Sure, you can [38:06.990 --> 38:13.290] have great movies about living off the grid, but try it. You wind up looking like the [38:13.290 --> 38:20.010] Unabomber, right? And even he had to use a bus to get his bombs to San Francisco so he could [38:20.010 --> 38:25.010] trust others to mail them. You can't really live off the grid unless you're living with [38:25.010 --> 38:31.170] wolves in a cave. I said in a forecast of security issues I was asked to identify years ago, [38:31.170 --> 38:37.370] 20 years ago, that the only way to protect data is not to collect it in the first place. That [38:37.370 --> 38:43.090] was true. It's still true, and it's totally ignored. We give it away, or we allow it to be [38:43.090 --> 38:47.770] taken, as if it is of no account, because we cannot see or feel the ends to which data [38:47.770 --> 38:52.510] analytics put our little biographical bits, every daily choice that we make. And everyone who [38:52.510 --> 38:57.130] can collects data, and everyone who knows how to do it, parses it together, not data but [38:57.130 --> 39:02.470] information. Information, remember Claude Shannon said, is the difference that makes a [39:02.470 --> 39:07.270] difference. Well, this information makes a huge difference. Not the noise, but the data that [39:07.270 --> 39:11.130] creates information, the signal, and it gives those who know how to extract it from the [39:11.130 --> 39:20.430] data leverage, power and money. The bits of data that make up us, our gestalt, our identity, [39:20.430 --> 39:26.510] they now are combined at that level of abstraction in different ways. And they see [39:26.510 --> 39:32.390] something different when they look at us than we see ourselves. The point of this talk, if [39:32.390 --> 39:38.290] you want to take away, is that the level of abstraction at which you can view either an [39:38.290 --> 39:44.290] entity, an organization, or a human being, determines what you believe is real. And [39:44.290 --> 39:49.930] people who do data analytics are looking at a level of abstraction which is so very real, as [39:50.510 --> 39:57.030] we all know. But we act as if we are still the 20th century selves that emerged when we were [39:57.030 --> 40:02.670] children or growing up. And we haven't really grasped that we are known better than we know [40:02.670 --> 40:09.190] ourselves. It's like the Zen statements about the illusion of the self. Well, we believe in [40:09.190 --> 40:14.930] ourselves. We believe ourselves are ourselves. And I'm trying to make the point. It's very [40:14.930 --> 40:18.250] hard to get. This is why it's a nightmare in daylight if you really grasp it, that the [40:18.250 --> 40:25.270] fundamental assumptions we make about damn near everything are no longer workable in the [40:25.270 --> 40:30.270] frame we have unknowingly created by participating, as all of us have in this room, in this [40:30.270 --> 40:37.190] new technological society. We are not the same people we once were. And so defining who we [40:37.190 --> 40:41.230] are and our prerogatives and needs has to be done in light of who we have become. We're [40:41.230 --> 40:47.170] talking about identity in Blade Runner. I was looking at the photographs. I know you know that [40:47.170 --> 40:51.390] movie. And he said, memories. You're talking about memories. Well, now we know we can [40:51.390 --> 40:55.090] create memories in different ways. And when I talk on biohacking, one of the things I [40:55.090 --> 40:59.970] looked at, which my friend at CIA helped me understand, was that we really are working [40:59.970 --> 41:06.150] seriously on implanting memories, implanting memories of someone else's experience, not [41:06.150 --> 41:12.170] just using techniques to face memory the way we have in the past, which is what media [41:12.170 --> 41:17.650] does. Media creates memory. And then we share a memory as if it's real. And if it [41:17.650 --> 41:25.170] comforts us, we become a voting block. All right? So Walter Ong looked at all this some time [41:25.170 --> 41:30.350] ago, looking at orality and literacy and the technologizing of the word. And he said, [41:30.350 --> 41:34.320] the shift from morality to literacy and onto electronic processing engages social, [41:34.320 --> 41:38.260] economic, political, religious, and other structures and creates an entire difference in [41:38.260 --> 41:43.460] mentality, in who we think we are, he said, in who we experience ourselves to be. Writing [41:44.140 --> 41:49.680] restructured consciousness, you see. Writing transformed human consciousness. Oral cultures [41:49.680 --> 41:55.020] contained human beings who were not the same humans who began to write. And the printing [41:55.020 --> 42:00.540] press did it again. And engaging as we do immersively in the digital world is doing it one [42:00.540 --> 42:08.560] more time. Our consciousness is literally being restructured in a different way. So all the [42:08.560 --> 42:12.100] arguments against computerization were the same ones they used against the printing press [42:12.100 --> 42:16.040] and writing. Plato said the same things when the oral culture was ending. It's going to [42:16.040 --> 42:21.340] destroy humanity. No, it's going to transform humanity. And the humanity you thought you [42:21.340 --> 42:26.940] were a part of is no longer going to exist. Kids today are criticized because they can't [42:26.940 --> 42:32.460] multiply in their heads or write cursive. They use Google instead of remembering things. But [42:32.460 --> 42:37.640] they don't know any loss from their experience. They experience no loss. Why should I write [42:37.640 --> 42:43.980] cursive when I can tap with my thumb or make black letters? Why should I multiply? All I have [42:43.980 --> 42:48.980] to do is enter the data and it multiplies it for me. Why should I remember something which is so [42:48.980 --> 42:54.560] ready at hand? Why should I ask somebody how to get to grandma's house when all I have to do is [42:54.560 --> 43:01.140] point to the clock, watch, where are we? Wrap it up. You told me you were going to tell me when I [43:01.140 --> 43:07.640] had ten minutes. You should have put it in my presentation. I would have seen it on the [43:07.640 --> 43:24.540] screen. Well, sorry. He's telling me to stop. I hate to stop because I love to talk. But I'm [43:25.720 --> 43:31.340] just going to quote a couple of people and then I'm going to wrap it up. This is an old quote, but [43:31.340 --> 43:36.860] it still tells you how they were thinking at MIT some years ago. When we do the kind of data [43:36.860 --> 43:41.680] analysis I was talking about, we get a God's eye view of human behavior. We can tell how they're [43:41.680 --> 43:46.280] going to vote. We can tell when they're getting sick. We've turned society into a laboratory [43:46.280 --> 43:51.620] where behavior can be effectively followed, but also we're affecting and changing behavior and [43:51.620 --> 43:57.240] you think you have privacy. We're getting genetic sniffers that when you walk through the space [43:57.240 --> 44:01.580] you inhabit, someone will be able to pick up your DNA from the shed skin cells that you are [44:01.580 --> 44:06.260] effusing into the air and they will be able to do a DNA analysis as we increase our ability to do [44:06.260 --> 44:15.360] that quickly and cheaply. There is no place to hide. So the good news that someone wanted is that [44:15.360 --> 44:20.440] it's real. And we can always deal with what's real, but we have to grasp who we really are in [44:20.440 --> 44:25.860] terms of what I've been describing. The world cannot be talked about as if it's a 20th century [44:25.860 --> 44:33.660] world. Not politics, not ethics, not religions, not anything. And the good news is we can become [44:33.660 --> 44:40.000] conscious of this, as we have in the past, and then make reasonable, powerful decisions about [44:40.000 --> 44:45.360] who we are in light of it and rethink what it means to be ethical. Rethink what it means to be [44:45.360 --> 44:50.800] human. Because humans have always had a different definition of self-understanding in different [44:50.800 --> 44:55.340] cultures and it's no different now. It's just a different kind of challenge because it continues [44:55.340 --> 45:00.940] to change so radically and so rapidly. So those who want to be in the cutting edge will at least [45:00.940 --> 45:07.440] know how to surf the waves of information that restore sanity and wholeness and health to the [45:07.440 --> 45:13.800] being who is doing this. And that, here more than anywhere else that I go, is you men and women. [45:13.800 --> 45:15.480] Thank you for your attention.