 It's funny when I first heard this topic of reimagining the future of the internet surveillance and privacy Things that came to mind were like enemy of the state and minority report, you know this kind of pop culture notion of The ways in which kind of big brother or somebody is always watching And so I'd like to during this conversation to really dig a bit deeper when we consider Where we are right now with the state of technology what the internet is doing and how These particular ideas of surveillance and privacy what that interplay is like I am Humble to be up here with people who are far more intelligent than I am And so I will not bore you with too many of my thoughts But really keep the conversation on these guys, but I'm joined by Barton Gellman Who's a journalist and blogger based at the Century Foundation in New York who covered the Snowden papers Extensively for the Washington Post. He's also the author of the best-selling angler the Cheney vice presidency We have Madeline Ashby who is so cute and adorable and so fun and smart and wonderful I am a new fan because I was blog stalking you the other day You just find that you make me smile, but Madeline is a science fiction writer and strategic foresight consultant She's the author of vn and id both part of her machine dynasty series and the author of by the time we get to Arizona a story in Hieroglyph stories and visions for a better future and Kevin Bankston who is the policy director of the Open Technology Institute with New America Foundation And he was previously senior counsel at and the director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology Sorry, I don't have crushes on you Barton I'm gonna let you go So I mean I want to Step back first and kind of just have you each say a bit about the landscape we're incurring currently You know, there's reality and then there's a science fiction side of things But would love to hear each of your takes and I'll start with you Bart Where are we now the state of the internet surveillance and privacy? What's the picture looking like? Well, what interests me most in my reporting on on most subjects and certainly on technology and privacy and surveillance is the question of power We all understand that information is power and so you have an intersection of secrecy on the part of the of these large powerful entities that are gathering data about us and And Sort of more and more new levels of sort of extreme spooky kinds of penetration into our personal lives As it's been said several times today, they know us in some ways better than we know ourselves And so we're inside this one-way mirror and I'm also interested in looking for some inspiration from science fiction and from from imaginative writers about What could be the forces that would tend to? empower individuals against large Central entities rich companies and governments In order to defend themselves and the issue with technology is whether it's really working for you Or whether it's working for someone else So the point of my question earlier about privacy implications of technology is fundamentally You know, we look at these smartphones for example as if there's some kind of Supercharged version of Joan on Mad Men just serve, you know, has the answer to everything Ultra-competent tells you what you need to know just when you need to know it and that would be fantastic if she was working for you But she's not I mean you get some side benefits of it some amazing things that I wouldn't really like to live without But she's ultimately working for somebody else. She's following you around and running down what you do in sending it back home except in real time And so I'm interested in in what would limit Powerful people or what would limit societies from taking the incentives of the powerful all the way to their To their culminating points. So as a as a parallel here for a science fiction-loving audience Decades ago Larry Niven imagined a world just at the very beginning of organ transplants in which The technology would get so good that you could extend your life, you know hundreds of years potentially with a constant supply of fresh organs that of course there's going to be a Societal shortage of those and so someone gets the bright idea of Taking Executed prisoners and just disassembling them into the organ bank and there's still a shortage And so the logical culmination is that everything becomes a capital offense and I'm not even sure he saw that as dystopia I mean if you read the gill the arm series, but We didn't go there. We haven't gone there And so what is it that what is it that stops the society from going that far? And I mean I'm interested in inspiration on that Both technically and also in terms of communal values Madeline as you answer that I want you to also pick up on this another This other theme which is you know, we live in this Self-select we self-select ourselves into this kind of selfie culture, right? You know and Bart talks about yeah, well, who's who's Siri or whoever who's working? How's that all working together? So talk a bit as well about how our behavior in terms of how we self-select into this culture How that impacts the picture? well, everyone is under the delusion that they're special and And you think that the things that you post to Facebook are unique because they have your name over them And that avatar that you chose from that vacation that you took that is the same vacation than millions of other people took And and stuff so there's this idea that if I just edit it together in the right way if I just edit and curate and craft and Manufacture this narrative about myself that it'll be somehow different I will somehow be different from from everyone else and in fact to the eyes in the eyes of surveillance in in in the Large red how I that is operated by by governments and corporations across the world. You're not you are ones and zeros and and and data that comes in about sales and likes and Preferences and times that you were at certain places and things that you checked into and all of that is just sort of stuff That you leave behind you like pixie dust that that they use to fly into new profit margins the the you know that's sort of the The the other grand illusion of this system is that you know You you think that you are crafting a certain amount of information that you're sharing and you're doing it strategically in order to Create a personal brand which is what we teach kids to do now is create a personal brand because they're not going to work in the same Fields, they're not going to have the same job for 30 years anymore. They're going to move jobs every like four years if they're lucky In the meantime, they have to have one constant and it'll be their brand the so there's this idea that if if we just create this thing and we maintain it and keep it going then You know that then they'll only know that if I perform my identity well enough Then they'll only you know, then that's the thing that will that will be enduring No, no, no one on the other side of the camera cares If they care, you know, they care if you've committed a crime or they suspect you of having committed a crime Or they or or they want to find a reason for you to have committed a crime or reason to have to suspect you of having committed a crime Or a reason to to profile you that's what they care about and so I think that there's this there's this tension between opt-in culture and and Selfie culture and the the needs and the desire of of of a system that essentially Trolls for data in the way that we troll for fish And they look the same right that you know We troll for fish in order to get salmon what we pick up is like 10% salmon and 90% Small fish and fry and and what are called in the industry garbage fish? Yeah And and stuff and and in and in the process of incidental collection all of those pictures that you took for your boyfriend are in there I Would not at all be surprised if if we later found out that these were where leaks of like Jennifer Lawrence's photos came from so the So in in all of that is your is your life? And I think like the the overall the question that we're gonna find You know ourselves answering or other people answering for us over time is how do we sift? You know how are algorithms going to sift the the gold from the silt as time moves as time moves on because we are only Creating more inputs the more wearables you put on your body the more data You are generating the more the the more facts there are for them to sift through to to find out more things about you And that creates a huge amount of sort of data to be sifted and people won't be looking at that like Algorithms will and they'll determine like it'll it'll it'll it'll be decided by by things that are not that are hopefully not Ruled by the same biases as people are that's actually it's probably a better solution that way So Kevin Kevin what where's the good news? We'll get to that Meals introductory comments and the themes of the book and the event this idea of hieroglyphs We're talking about these positive hieroglyphs and science fiction that have inspired us to do big things whether it's Heinlein's rockets or Asimov's robots or Gibson cyberspace or whatever But you know, I'm one of those fans of dystopia that Neil was talking about earlier I believe in the power also of the negative here of life I believe in the power of the cautionary tale that tells us what we need to avoid and I think the single most powerful science fiction work. We've had at a policy level Easily is 1984 because it is given this hieroglyph this touch point This code for saying what we're worried about when we're worried about state surveillance in a way that everyone immediately Understands and I want to see more of that. So like I fully support this idea of a second volume. That's all really scary stuff So but I want to talk about we can talk about today's surveillance in contrast in comparison with 1984 I think I think you know, I think in some ways Or well got some things really wrong like for example in 1984 the idea of state surveillance power involved You knowing that you were surveilled big brother is watching. He is either watching or he has the power to watch That is what's going to control you and chill you That is the case. I think with the internet in China or Iran, for example, that's not the case here Here are the surveillance is subtle here. The surveillance is unknown sometimes lied about sometimes hidden And so one of the things he got right was the idea of new speak to the extent that we have an intelligence apparatus that has kept it a secret from us that we are all being swept up in there, you know in their tuninette and And now when they're they're challenged on it they say things like well sure We're like we're collecting it all but we're not Collecting it all because it really only counts if we look at it and and that's the kind of Evasion and the kind of like don't worry. We're not actually surveilling you that I think that I think or well didn't really anticipate but one other thing he did anticipate in which Ryan Ryan alluded to earlier in which I and Our friend and colleague Ashken Sultani who also works with Barton on a lot of his NSA reporting have talked about in a paper is The rapidly falling cost of surveillance the fact that with changes in technology the capacity to Not target someone for surveillance, but go ahead and surveil everybody and pick your targets afterward Has become the rule not the exception We have moved from retail to wholesale surveillance, and it is the dropping cost of technology that is allowed that And so I'll get to a positive vision and a positive hieroglyph at some point And it'll involve how do we raise the costs of that surveillance, but I'm going to say that well I know what's interesting about it right because on one hand on a very commercial level We talk about all the magic that new technologies bring right? We're all hyper connected I cannot leave the house without three devices part of it is fueled by the fact that have a very cute one-year-old Well, I have to stay in contact con you know constant contact with But you know that that's still being the case I think about what you're saying now about all of the ways in which we self-select right and all the information We willingly put out there so even if the costs of surveillance are high or you know So what if we're putting everything out on Facebook on Twitter? We're using all the wearable devices. What's that balancing point? I'd actually like to address that because I Profoundly disagree with with some of the statements about this idea of our the voluntariness of Our self-disclosure that was mooted on a previous panel That is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding about the way the data economy works Hey, it's not true that young people aren't interested in their privacy They their norms about how what they talk about and how they talk among themselves are different than ours may have been But they but it's a relational Decision they care very much about not having their parents find out stuff and so they talk in code to each other with song lyrics and And and in symbolic postings that they understand. I hope their teachers and principals don't I They make efforts, but Incompetent efforts to control the privacy settings Because there's the privacy settings are designed to fail there and I Don't know what the percentage is it's possible that no one does but some very large Majority of what Facebook knows about me for example is not that anything that I voluntarily disclosed If you look at their terms of service and privacy policy, they talk about what they gather About you and they say we gather certain kinds of information from your devices but that's not very helpful and It turns out that if you're logged into Facebook and then you're browsing somewhere else They can see that you went to the you know, WebMD and looked up syphilis and they know my cell phone number even though I've never told it to them because Lots of my friends most of them not even realizing what they're doing Click okay to the do you want to upload your whole address book to us? So now they probably have 75 copies of my cell phone number, which I would not voluntarily have given to them and so And and they they work very hard as does the US government and other governments and other companies to conceal from us How transparent we've become they work hard. I mean to to the point of Of lawsuits of obscuring technology of outright refusal to Give truthful answers and so To me because I'm in the Nonfiction side of this in the of the information business what I value is transparency I think what the more you know and I think the snowed disclosures have showed this the more you know The more you have the ability to decide for yourself where you want to draw the line so the the the piece that the Kevin and Ashkahn wrote about the diminishing cost of surveillance raised the question is Is the traditional expense of following someone around which requires Three teams of four people around the clock to do properly. Is that a bug or a feature? It it and and what they raise very interestingly is is the idea that you don't actually want a perfectly efficient law enforcement or national security state because you give up way too much if you go there Yeah, I'd also like to echo the point that that there's this idea floating around that kids are not concerned with privacy And if that and if that were true girls who were cyber bullied wouldn't commit suicide they care They they it's important to them It's just not in the people think it's not important to them because they talk about sex and That was somehow that used to somehow be verbatim The so I think that there's one I think we need to let go of that delusion and further I think that Western culture has habituated us to the idea of there being constant surveillance anyway It is the it is the foremost tenet of most religions that someone is always watching you Sees everything that you do He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good So you be good for goodness sake. So I think that you know, we've we've Grown up with this idea that there's always this thing. I always feel like somebody's watching me And so I think that it's inevitable that we would having sustained this long cultural Expectation of observation. We have made it real and and increasingly we're building up and building up and building up to get to this point of of Creating multiple personas that are watching us all the time. We have not one God that watches us but several it's like a pantheon of of things that are constantly observing us and and Somehow we're okay with it and I can only look at the legacy sort of the legacy code within our culture that makes that possible Further we've we use like the data that we sort of willingly Let out there aside from the stuff that Facebook is culling from you every day that you have that you have no No idea about we use all of that information that we that we share about ourselves and that others share with us to be incredibly judgmental and And to and to do terrible things to each other and to share terrible secrets and to create drama And and so on so I think that there's There is a we have always as a species have a fascination with observing What's interesting to me is that we don't really have a critical language Aside like aside from journalism and aside from just getting the facts now that we have more of the facts Thanks to people like you We we now I think need to develop a critical language for a vet for sort of theorizing Surveillance in general what's weird is how how how those How looking at surveillance and looking at sort of film theory fall together, right? They're all about the power of the gaze and we've actually been talking about that for a very very long time We just didn't know that we were talking about what was being done to us rather than what Alfred Hitchcock was doing to tippy-head So can I just key off one thing she said and I don't want to take out your time But you mentioned sex and and from the evidence of your stories. Oh, that's That's something you think a lot a lot and And what's fascinating to me is I mean this is supposed to be the optimistic volume, right? there's supposed to be the inspirational one and And the two stories that I've come across so far that that have the most to do with surveillance The the the tiny little note of optimism in each one comes from some sort of you know very exceptional and personalized human interaction and so it basically all of the counter surveillance In your story to caricature just a little bit happens below the waist, right? So it's it's it's You know, it's it's almost like a manual for the next surveillance despot to invent the you know better toilet monitoring technology shower cams and Not to leave the desert uncovered because you think someone's having outdoor sex or you're gonna miss something important but that that The idea that Ingenious exceptional individuals by taking advantage of the furry the the the fruitery of the nanny state can find some little enclave of privacy Gosh, I hope I hope I hope we come up with a better Actually, that's and actually that's not true That's a that's sort of a that's that's actually kind of more hopeful on my part because I think it was in Marin County a couple of years ago Students had been given iPads or laptops or something like that for you know, it was Marin, of course They got laptops the and and for school that was they were issued these devices Those were loaded with spyware that could turn on at any time to see if kids were actually on task And kids were watched over the cameras. So the operators of this software started turning them on at night While kids were getting dressed While teenage girls were getting dressed so and that didn't stop them at the only reason that it came up that that we learned this is because a Principle at one of the schools saw someone eating those hot tamale candies and assumed that they were like second All or something like that or pills and said oh that kid's doing drugs that kids doing don't bring him in And it's like his parents then asked well, wait, how how did you know? What why would that occur to you show us show us the evidence and that was the evidence and it blew open wide this site This realization that all of the things that you can be issued even to minors even can can be used for for whatever Whatever purposes The the individuals behind them might well want to use them for spinning off of below the waist Newtie pictures and the unwanted gaze You know we have this event that just happened that in many ways I think is gonna prove as important all not as important as the stone revelations But like this huge and we shouldn't call it leak this huge theft and publication of all these celebrities nude photos Yeah, is a really good example of how They and we and the people who bring these microphones and cameras into our lives and in fact use them to mediate our sex lives Right we are trusting these things to be private It's not that we're giving away our privacy in many instances We are believing these things to be private and then they end up not being private and that's a problem But one that there are potential solutions for I mean I think in many ways we do need to focus and this is sort of the positive hearing lift for me Is on securing the internet in our devices as a means of protecting privacy? not just as a means of being worried about the Chinese or the Russians or Whatever, but also just in terms of protecting our personal privacy against any attacker whether it's people on 4chan who want nudie pictures or You know economic espionage and this isn't actually fantasy or science fiction The Stoden revelations have actually begun prompting I think a seismic shift in the security of the internet you are seeing the major corporate actors begin to spend resources on Encrypting more of everything encrypting the traffic between us and their websites between their mail servers and their data links We're seeing Apple and Google Give us default encryption finally on our portable devices To match the security we've long had available on our laptops This is my positive hearing lift for the privacy debate is the the fully encrypted internet and and We're now seeing in response to the Apple and Google story There's finally government pushback on that and I think we're gonna have to have a debate That we really already had in the 90s when the intelligence community in law enforcement wanted Backdoors in new crypto systems then and they wanted basically a system where everyone would hand over their keys And those would be trust kept with a trusted third party And then the government could come get those keys with a warrant And the conclusion after many years of fighting over this was that actually know if we want a Secure information economy that has to rely on Secure information devices and if we build backdoors into these devices or into these networks to facilitate law enforcement or intelligence We're actually shooting our future in the foot so so I mean really quickly, you know, it's interesting because This conversation is focused a lot on kind of government surveillance, you know the big surveillance But we take it to even current events right the flip side so in DC Washington DC now, you know cops are using these little cop Cameras that they have to wear In terms of whenever they got on the street or if you think about, you know What kind of took the news by storm over the past several weeks out in Ferguson, Missouri What happened with Michael Brown and like over time? We've seen on several instances more recently of cases of brutality profiling Popping up from a standpoint of citizen surveillance, right? So is there a role for creating a narrative around how? Citizens can use better leverage technology to do some of what you're saying change some of those power dynamics, right? Because if you are all powerful and you're the only one who has a view on what's happening You can do what you want versus if there's some concern that oh somebody else might be watching and citizens may get outraged Discussion of power information that's power the idea of a one-way mirror the government has no private right of privacy against Who is supposed to be representing and so when you turn the camera around so to see that actually that actually tends towards improving the quality of democratic accountability and decision-making and so technology can can be part of an answer offensively if you want to put it that way monitoring our monitor, you know, monitoring our watching our watchers Just as it can defensively, but I've become increasingly skeptical of the power of technology to give Small groups or individuals sufficient leverage in counter force to to large institutions So I'm an enthusiastic user of encryption and anonymity tools And have been for a while and if I weren't I would not have been able to talk to Ed Snowden over a period of months before the first Disclosures came out But it's quite clear to me now that no matter how good Your calm second your up second imagine how much of this stuff you learn and there's a big tax on your time to do that Which I now find worth paying but But most people wouldn't no matter how much of that you do you cannot beat people who have billions of dollars in budgets or economic incentives To get past you and so they don't you know, you say no one can defeat my uncrackable encryption, but you know, it's sort of like story that In newsrooms is called and this is a joke to go to check I haven't actually checked this but what I seem to recall learning once is that a Genghis Khan did not Did not succeed in invading China by breaking down the Great Wall obviously He bribed the guards and put up ladders and that's what in in the security business. They call a side channel attack You know in no matter no matter how good a wall you build here. Someone's gonna find a way around it if you don't have legal or political or Market or other forces that are pushing back hard Sorry, I want to see Kevin because you yeah, we're in the middle well So I think I agree with Barton in several ways. This reminds me of a book by a science fiction author I'm gonna keep trying to bring it back to sci-fi Name David Brynn his book is called the Transparent Society early 90s and the basic thesis Which I fear may be true But still sucks is that the technology is getting so cheap and so available that You know and he focuses a lot on like tiny little drones That can come in your house or whatever that trying to stop the spread of it and trying to stop spying on each other Is just not gonna work as a policy option And so instead we should focus on ensuring that everyone has access to the technology so that at least we can equalize power And so that so it's not a situation where like the state or the corporation or the whatever has a monopoly on this ability And that by the way in his book that the the disfavored in this case convicts Explicitly had had less Privilege of having knowledge than everyone else so they all wore glasses, but he couldn't see you you could see him Yeah, no, there's there's actually a debate going on between Brynn and a writer who I greatly respect in the door Peter Watts who appears a marine biologist my training and sort of Is also a can it has also had a terrible terrible experience with this country and and as such You know set it sort of said, you know this You know this this idea that if we just watch them back They'll suddenly start behaving that presumes Inequality of risk it assumes that they can be shamed by our gaze in the way that we are shamed by theirs That's not how it works when when a bigger animal is looking at a smaller animal the smaller animal runs away And and stuff there's there is something to be said for things like protective coloring And camouflage and so on to borrow his metaphor these are these are his ideas and not mine So you can look it up. It became a kind of kerfuffle. Yeah, I just wanted to finish the thought Peter Watts is freaking awesome. You should read his stuff. Yeah But when it comes to the Transparent Society, I you know, I fault the thesis to the extent that like I'm never gonna be able to get a spy drone into the FISA court that's authorizing all this surveillance You know, like the government is always going to be better at this game We're not gonna perfectly equalize it But also there's this aspect of it to me that and and I credit this thought to Dana Boyd a social scientist in this area It's very easy for an empowered white man to say Let's just all be transparent and eventually we'll all get over our differences and be tolerant of diversity You know, it's very easy for that person to say that it's very easy for Mark Zuckerberg to say I think it's unethical for you to have different aspects of your personality that you present in different ways I think a totally transparent society, you know could lead I mean like I don't know why we would assume that it would lead to a kumbaya moment rather than like people ending up in camps There's the the the novel that swept all the awards this year within the science fiction community and and like he's ancillary justice Actually takes on this idea it posts it in a very far future where there is a complete lack of privacy And and there is one civilization that rules everything and they are not very kind. They're very civilized But they are not very kind They are not what we would call they're human to our inhumane and and so even at the level of like the very far future We people science fiction writers are still considering this as an option as we we're gonna keep the conversation going But I do want to open up the floor to questions if there are any Have one back here Madeline at the New York event you said that That the code for security has become surveillance, you know Yeah, I mean, you know security is just code for surveillance and in DC We really need actual security because they are out to get us and And And in some way, you know with the secrets are risk-and-all recently Can you talk about that and how that it's by by by saying you're getting security when you're actually doing surveillance We're actually really putting everybody at risk. Yeah, because surveillance is a can be a really passive behavior because it's watching It's observing It is there in some ways so that you can either build a case Or so that you will have evidence to build a case later, right? It's so it's there when you know, the London tube is full of surveillance and it's there So that if someone bombs it they'll know who did it The the and and was done after after opa So there I think that there's a difference between actively pursuing safety for other people And sort of passively observing and I think that we've fallen under this Delusion that if we just passively observe if we just if we just have all the information if we have what is called total information Awareness then we'll be safe if I just know more if I just if I just find all the things if I just do all the research if I just keep watching the feeds which is in fact cargo cultism if I just keep doing this one thing I'll get exactly what I want if I just perform the behavior that that that has worked in the past then it will continue working in the Future because the world never changes So I think that we have to actually start thinking about what actually makes people safe the things that make people safe The things that make neighborhoods safe the things that that that make other countries like us more are things like economic security Getting kids in school making sure that they're fed making sure that that people don't go bankrupt from from financing cancer treatments those are like basic human needs that That can be sort of fostered everywhere that really calm a lot of people down and make them want to behave well And that makes nations secure. That's what brings people together So that's that's sort of what I would work on I know we have I saw three questions here, and we have two over there And I think one in the back but while we run through all of these at Kevin. I'd like you to think about What is the policy fix that helps us the policy fix? Only one All-encompassing all-powerful, but I want to you incorporate those thoughts Well, I mean there's there's code as a fix There's law as a fix. There's custom and norms as a fix I mean right now we are actually in the midst of a legislative process trying to pass a Bill that would restrain some of the NSA conduct that we're most worried about It's been a tough slog and it only addresses one sliver of what they're doing I don't think legislation will move fast enough to address these problems Then the question comes well, what can we do technologically as I mentioned? There are a lot of things a lot of people are doing technologically to try and You know do self-help against surveillance by all-comers whether it's the NSA or the Chinese or you know your everyday hacker hacker and But I to sort of pivot the question and to bring up another science fiction novel There's a great book called quantum thief by a guy named Hanu Rajanemi that posits in many ways What is a privacy utopia where we all have basically have these things in our heads that? Negotiate agreements with everybody else and their things in their heads to agree on a level of privacy So I can have a conversation with you and we can automatically negotiate basically a contract that You're gonna forget this part of it and I'm gonna forget this part of it Or we're both gonna forget it or we're both gonna record it forever And we can do the same thing in public space the public space has been negotiated It's either semi-public you know where you know it's viewable But it's ephemeral or it's fully private or it's fully public and everyone knows and everyone Has agency the question then becomes though What if that system gets hacked? What if that system that you were relying on to be secure is insecure and so When I come back to the policy response, I'm gonna come back to my positive here gliff Which is not only do we need laws that are going to? Ensure better congressional or judicial oversight of the executive branch in its surveillance and ensure that constitutional You know principles are followed we also need laws to ensure that we can have and continue to have and build and continue to build secure technologies rather than having say mandated backdoors into our technologies or Mandated retention of data for the use of law enforcement if they decide they ever need it or other You know legally mandated in you know insecurity mandates. I think I think and so in that way It's a defensive action. We need to actually prevent that and that's one of the key fixes I was wondering if you can comment on something that seems to be happening now and that is that we Trust people less and trust machines more So the machines are unbiased and the data they record is accurate people are fallible and manipulative so I Don't ask you what you've been doing I look at the record of where you've been and what you were doing and I will trust that before I will trust what you have to say That seems to be accelerating that does not Seem to be slowing down in any way And I'm wondering what that means for us as people as humans as we become more and more connected in more and more ways I Think I'd rather hear with these guys I'm not sure I accept the premise but I don't know I kind of do accept the premise But I don't see it as bad most of a lot of the literature of from the past centuries is about how living in a small town What you can't get out of is really awful And and that living in communities that you don't like is really awful. There are a lot of people who don't like interacting with people And and that's fine. They're introverted or they just or or they know that people are judging them or or frankly They're marginalized people who know that they are being judged So I think there's there is something to be said about the objectivity of random data What what the the mark against that is the lack of context? We talk about deep person the depersonalization of data What we mean is that there's a lack of context that would make all of these behaviors make perfect sense So that so that you know The machine doesn't have to be like BBC Sherlock assigning all of these logic chains to two events and then delivering some sort of diagnosis or prognosis or analysis of behavior You know, we understand context where context seeking animals Machines are not on the other hand The the the nice thing about machines is that you actually have to program the racism in It doesn't just come with the model So we have that was a great great way to launch into our lightning round We have I have one here in the blue shirt and so we're going to do Lightning round questions and responses because we want to get as many people as we can in the next five minutes When I first started on the internet back when it still had, you know strings and tin cans We were told to be pseudonymous. Yes. I set up with a pseudonym My back door into giving up my privacy was Amazon So I want commentary on that the brave new world side rather than the 1984 site We can make that a compound question unless someone has a burning response. I Think we I think we want to be both. I I I'm a writer I want people to read me so I want to be myself on the net in for some purposes And I want to be completely anonymous for others and I'm not going to be talking about those except for Except for the part where I'm a investigative reporter and I need confidential relationships to do my job. I Think it's important to have both to have the option of both and that's why for example It's a good thing that now Google plus which previously pushed you to use a real name No longer requires you to use a real name Facebook still requires you to use a real name But then again there are other other networks that you can use like Twitter where you can be synonymous, but um, I Was gonna plug another sci-fi book, but I'm gonna let it go Yeah, this did it digital panopticon that you're talking about was getting ready for a major upgrade with the convergence of a mobile internet GPS technology Cheap sensors big data analytics and the explosion of social media my question in terms of a foresight Where all this technology is leading to? It is going to an internet of things that will act like your personal assistant all the time It's going to it's going to a life where everything around you is alive It'll be like all the like it'll be like a Disney film It'll be like snow white and I would come in just watching you Custino's story the same volume Johnny Appledrone gives you pretty good interesting ideas as does a Madeline story about where it might be going This is sort of in the positive high low hieroglyph idea Not too long ago I think it was the rhizome seven on seven where they put technologists and artists together one of the projects was called My girlfriend cares way more about my data than the NSA does Hmm, and I just wonder I mean this has been for understandable reasons kind of a bummer But is there do do you guys see any potential really cool stuff that could be happening with the data in terms of? healthcare information and Oh, or whatever all kinds of cool stuff that could happen with big data, but it's not my job to pimp that it's My job to worry about it. I would think I'm actually more interested in interesting things in art and culture and fashion There's been this trend We've seen a variety of designs of clothing and makeup and hairdos to defeat surveillance I wish I had some good Google like keywords to give you or or Bing or whatever To find this but it's like there's this weird like hairdos and makeup and weird clothing that like resists thermal You know detection and stuff that's taking like the idea of anti surveillance into something fashionable That makes like if we all dress like this it looked like Blade Runner or something which actually One last science fiction book I will promote And it's a graphic novel called private I by Brian Vaughan in a future where we stored all of our stuff in the cloud And then the cloud burst one day and all the data got out and it ruined everybody's lives basically And so now in that post cloud burst future People one don't use the internet to they all dress in really outlandish costumes and masks whenever they're in public I have a It's free choose your own price google for Brian Vaughan private on I have a 20 second answer to you They're huge benefits to big data and the question is how we collectively want to draw boundaries And so small example my building in New York City and every other residential building has a little gray box That measures energy flows Which so a big data approach to understanding the way the grid is actually functioning hugely valuable Money and other things But the box is also recording a very granular level apartment by apartment circuit by circuit What's being tripped and when and they're storing it and networking it and associating it You know apartment 12a with my name And that has huge surveillance implications And nothing to do with the big data mission Can I just quickly answer that I know that we have to stop but um I think that there's I think yeah that you imagine being able to know Uh, which of of the parents in your neighborhood were idiots enough not to vaccinate their children against measles Those the neighbor kids walked through your door and suddenly there was a there was an alarm clacks on and they're like no You don't play with him anymore You know the that that could become very real very easily with labs on chips Right and and stuff and I think that there is hope I think I think if I could change any one thing about the nsa right now it would be that they just hire more women You know No We could talk forever about this, but we have to But thank you all so much you it's wonderful