Your phone company is watching
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0:01 - 0:09Hi. This is my mobile phone.
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0:09 - 0:16A mobile phone can change your life,
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0:16 - 0:25and a mobile phone gives you individual freedom.
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0:25 - 0:27With a mobile phone,
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0:27 - 0:32you can shoot a crime against humanity in Syria.
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0:32 - 0:34With a mobile phone,
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0:34 - 0:36you can tweet a message
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0:36 - 0:42and start a protest in Egypt.
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0:42 - 0:45And with a mobile phone,
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0:45 - 0:47you can record a song, load it up to
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0:47 - 0:50SoundCloud and become famous.
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0:50 - 0:54All this is possible with your mobile phone.
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0:54 - 0:57I'm a child of 1984,
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0:57 - 1:00and I live in the city of Berlin.
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1:00 - 1:06Let's go back to that time, to this city.
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1:06 - 1:07Here you can see
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1:07 - 1:09how hundreds of thousands of people
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1:09 - 1:13stood up and protested for change.
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1:13 - 1:16This is autumn 1989,
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1:16 - 1:21and imagine that all those people standing up
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1:21 - 1:24and protesting for change had a
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1:24 - 1:27mobile phone in their pocket.
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1:27 - 1:29Who in the room has a mobile phone with you?
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1:29 - 1:30Hold it up.
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1:30 - 1:33Hold your phones up, hold your phones up!
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1:33 - 1:36Hold it up. An Android, a Blackberry, wow.
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1:36 - 1:42That's a lot. Almost everybody today has a mobile phone.
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1:42 - 1:47But today I will talk about me and my mobile phone,
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1:47 - 1:50and how it changed my life.
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1:50 - 1:54And I will talk about this.
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1:54 - 1:59These are 35,830 lines of information.
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1:59 - 2:02Raw data.
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2:02 - 2:06And why are these informations there?
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2:06 - 2:09Because in the summer of 2006,
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2:09 - 2:13the E.U. Commission tabled a directive.
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2:13 - 2:17This directive [is] called Data Retention Directive.
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2:17 - 2:22This directive says that each phone company in Europe,
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2:22 - 2:26each Internet service company all over Europe,
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2:26 - 2:32has to store a wide range of information about the users.
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2:32 - 2:35Who calls whom? Who sends whom an email?
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2:35 - 2:37Who sends whom a text message?
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2:37 - 2:41And if you use your mobile phone, where you are.
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2:41 - 2:46All this information is stored for at least six months,
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2:46 - 2:49up to two years by your phone company
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2:49 - 2:55or your Internet service provider.
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2:55 - 2:59And all over Europe, people stood up and said,
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2:59 - 3:01"We don't want this."
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3:01 - 3:05They said, we don't want this data retention.
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3:05 - 3:08We want self-determination in the digital age,
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3:08 - 3:11and we don't want that phone companies and Internet companies
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3:11 - 3:15have to store all this information about us.
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3:15 - 3:17They were lawyers, journalists, priests,
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3:17 - 3:20they all said: "We don't want this."
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3:20 - 3:23And here you can see, like 10 thousands of people
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3:23 - 3:26went out on the streets of Berlin and said,
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3:26 - 3:29"Freedom, not fear."
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3:29 - 3:34And some even said, this would be Stasi 2.0.
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3:34 - 3:40Stasi was the secret police in East Germany.
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3:40 - 3:44And I also ask myself, does it really work?
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3:44 - 3:48Can they really store all this information about us?
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3:48 - 3:51Every time I use my mobile phone?
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3:51 - 3:55So I asked my phone company, Deutsche Telekom,
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3:55 - 3:59which was at that time the largest phone company in Germany,
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3:59 - 4:00and I asked them, please,
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4:00 - 4:05send me all the information you have stored about me.
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4:05 - 4:07And I asked them once, and I asked them again,
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4:07 - 4:10and I got no real answer. It was only blah blah answers.
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4:10 - 4:13But then I said, I want to have this information,
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4:13 - 4:18because this is my life you are protocoling.
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4:18 - 4:22So I decided to start a lawsuit against them,
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4:22 - 4:25because I wanted to have this information.
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4:25 - 4:27But Deutsche Telekom said, no,
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4:27 - 4:30we will not give you this information.
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4:30 - 4:34So at the end, I had a settlement with them.
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4:34 - 4:35I'll put down the lawsuit
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4:35 - 4:38and they will send me all the information I ask for.
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4:38 - 4:40Because in the mean time,
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4:40 - 4:42the German Constitutional Court ruled
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4:42 - 4:46that the implementation of this E.U. directive
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4:46 - 4:50into German law was unconstitutional.
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4:50 - 4:52So I got this ugly brown envelope
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4:52 - 4:55with a C.D. inside.
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4:55 - 4:58And on the C.D., this was on.
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4:58 - 5:03Thirty-five thousand eight hundred thirty lines of information.
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5:03 - 5:06At first I saw it, and I said, okay,
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5:06 - 5:09it's a huge file. Okay.
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5:09 - 5:11But then after a while I realized,
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5:11 - 5:14this is my life.
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5:14 - 5:16This is six months of my life,
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5:16 - 5:20into this file.
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5:20 - 5:24So I was a little bit skeptical, what should I do with it?
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5:24 - 5:27Because you can see where I am,
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5:27 - 5:29where I sleep at night,
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5:29 - 5:34what I am doing.
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5:34 - 5:39But then I said, I want to go out with this information.
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5:39 - 5:41I want to make them public.
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5:41 - 5:45Because I want to show the people what does data retention mean.
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5:45 - 5:50So together with Zeit Online and Open Data City, I did this.
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5:50 - 5:54This is a visualization of six months of my life.
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5:54 - 5:56You can zoom in and zoom out,
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5:56 - 5:59you can wind back and fast forward.
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5:59 - 6:02You can see every step I take.
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6:02 - 6:04And you can even see
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6:04 - 6:07how I go from Frankfurt by train
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6:07 - 6:12to Cologne, and how often I call in between.
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6:12 - 6:16All this is possible with this information.
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6:16 - 6:22That's a little bit scary.
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6:22 - 6:27But it is not only about me.
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6:27 - 6:30It's about all of us.
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6:30 - 6:35First, it's only like, I call my wife and she calls me,
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6:35 - 6:37and we talk to each other a couple of times.
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6:37 - 6:40And then there are some friends calling me,
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6:40 - 6:42and they call each other.
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6:42 - 6:44And after a while you are calling you,
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6:44 - 6:46and you are calling you, and you have this great
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6:46 - 6:48communication network.
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6:48 - 6:53But you can see how your people are communicating with each other,
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6:53 - 6:56what times they call each other, when they go to bed.
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6:56 - 6:58You can see all of this.
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6:58 - 7:02You can see the hubs, like who are the leaders in the group.
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7:02 - 7:06If you have access to this information,
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7:06 - 7:10you can see what your society is doing.
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7:10 - 7:12If you have access to this information,
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7:12 - 7:17you can control your society.
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7:17 - 7:22This is a blueprint for countries like China and Iran.
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7:22 - 7:26This is a blueprint how to survey your society,
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7:26 - 7:28because you know who talks to whom,
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7:28 - 7:31who sends whom an email, all this is possible
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7:31 - 7:34if you have access to this information.
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7:34 - 7:37And this information is stored for at least six months
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7:37 - 7:42in Europe, up to two years.
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7:42 - 7:44Like I said at the beginning,
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7:44 - 7:47imagine that all those people on the streets of Berlin
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7:47 - 7:50in autumn of 1989
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7:50 - 7:53had a mobile phone in their pocket.
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7:53 - 7:57And the Stasi would have known who took part at this protest,
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7:57 - 7:58and if the Stasi would have known
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7:58 - 8:02who are the leaders behind it,
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8:02 - 8:05this may never have happened.
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8:05 - 8:08The fall of the Berlin Wall would maybe not [have been] there.
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8:08 - 8:12And in the aftermath, also not the fall of the Iron Curtain.
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8:12 - 8:16Because today, state agencies and companies
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8:16 - 8:21want to store as much information as they can get about us,
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8:21 - 8:22online and offline.
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8:22 - 8:27They want to have the possibility to track our lives,
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8:27 - 8:30and they want to store them for all time.
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8:30 - 8:35But self-determination and living in the digital age
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8:35 - 8:38is no contradiction.
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8:38 - 8:43But you have to fight for your self-determination today.
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8:43 - 8:47You have to fight for it every day.
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8:47 - 8:50So, when you go home,
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8:50 - 8:51tell your friends
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8:51 - 8:56that privacy is a value of the 21st century,
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8:56 - 8:58and it's not outdated.
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8:58 - 9:02When you go home, tell your representative
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9:02 - 9:07only because companies and state agencies have the possibility
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9:07 - 9:12to store certain information, they don't have to do it.
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9:12 - 9:14And if you don't believe me,
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9:14 - 9:22ask your phone company what information they store about you.
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9:22 - 9:29So, in the future, every time you use your mobile phone,
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9:29 - 9:32let it be a reminder to you
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9:32 - 9:36that you have to fight for self-determination in the digital age.
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9:36 - 9:37Thank you.
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9:37 - 9:40(Applause)
- Title:
- Your phone company is watching
- Speaker:
- Malte Spitz
- Description:
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What kind of data is your cell phone company collecting? Malte Spitz wasn’t too worried when he asked his operator in Germany to share information stored about him. Multiple unanswered requests and a lawsuit later, Spitz received 35,830 lines of code -- a detailed, nearly minute-by-minute account of half a year of his life.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 09:56
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Natta Yantasri edited English subtitles for Your phone company is watching | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Your phone company is watching | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Your phone company is watching | ||
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Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Your phone company is watching |