0:00:01.527,0:00:04.315
Something happened in the early morning hours

0:00:04.315,0:00:07.900
of May 2nd, 2000, that had a profound effect

0:00:07.900,0:00:10.206
on the way our society operates.

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Ironically, hardly anyone noticed at the time.

0:00:13.484,0:00:16.144
The change was silent, imperceptible,

0:00:16.144,0:00:18.989
unless you knew exactly what to look for.

0:00:18.989,0:00:21.340
On that morning, U.S. President Bill Clinton

0:00:21.340,0:00:23.612
ordered that a special switch be thrown

0:00:23.612,0:00:27.045
in the orbiting satellites of the Global Positioning System.

0:00:27.045,0:00:30.909
Instantaneously, every civilian GPS receiver

0:00:30.909,0:00:35.471
around the globe went from errors the size of a football field

0:00:35.471,0:00:39.406
to errors the size of a small room.

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It's hard to overstate the effect that this change

0:00:46.105,0:00:48.657
in accuracy has had on us.

0:00:48.657,0:00:50.904
Before this switch was thrown, we didn't have

0:00:50.904,0:00:53.163
in-car navigation systems giving turn-by-turn

0:00:53.163,0:00:55.755
directions, because back then, GPS couldn't tell you

0:00:55.755,0:00:58.449
what block you were on, let alone what street.

0:00:58.449,0:01:01.697
For geolocation, accuracy matters,

0:01:01.697,0:01:04.955
and things have only improved over the last 10 years.

0:01:04.955,0:01:07.074
With more base stations, more ground stations,

0:01:07.074,0:01:10.043
better receivers and better algorithms,

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GPS can now not only tell you what street you are on,

0:01:13.106,0:01:17.608
but what part of the street.

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This level of accuracy

0:01:19.854,0:01:22.780
has unleashed a firestorm of innovation.

0:01:22.780,0:01:25.451
In fact, many of you navigated here today

0:01:25.451,0:01:29.044
with the help of your TomTom or your smartphone.

0:01:29.044,0:01:32.269
Paper maps are becoming obsolete.

0:01:32.269,0:01:36.408
But we now stand on the verge of another revolution

0:01:36.408,0:01:38.403
in geolocation accuracy.

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What if I told you that the two-meter positioning

0:01:41.136,0:01:44.567
that our current cell phones and our TomToms give us

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is pathetic compared to what we could be getting?

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For some time now, it's been known that if you pay attention

0:01:51.297,0:01:53.832
to the carrier phase of the GPS signal,

0:01:53.832,0:01:56.313
and if you have an Internet connection,

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then you can go from meter level to centimeter level,

0:01:59.129,0:02:02.096
even millimeter-level positioning.

0:02:02.096,0:02:05.376
So why don't we have this capability on our phones?

0:02:05.376,0:02:09.746
Only, I believe, for a lack of imagination.

0:02:09.746,0:02:12.913
Manufacturers haven't built this carrier phase technique

0:02:12.913,0:02:15.019
into their cheap GPS chips

0:02:15.019,0:02:17.173
because they're not sure what the general public would do

0:02:17.173,0:02:20.749
with geolocation so accurate that you could pinpoint

0:02:20.749,0:02:24.587
the wrinkles in the palm of your hand.

0:02:24.587,0:02:26.974
But you and I and other innovators,

0:02:26.974,0:02:31.014
we can see the potential in this next leap in accuracy.

0:02:31.014,0:02:33.726
Imagine, for example, an augmented reality app

0:02:33.726,0:02:37.263
that overlays a virtual world to millimeter-level precision

0:02:37.263,0:02:39.271
on top of the physical world.

0:02:39.271,0:02:42.158
I could build for you a structure up here in 3D,

0:02:42.158,0:02:44.526
millimeter accurate, that only you could see,

0:02:44.526,0:02:47.419
or my friends at home.

0:02:47.419,0:02:51.934
So this level of positioning, this is what we're looking for,

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and I believe that, within the next few years, I predict,

0:02:55.858,0:03:00.841
that this kind of hyper-precise, carrier phase-based positioning

0:03:00.841,0:03:04.065
will become cheap and ubiquitous,

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and the consequences will be fantastic.

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The Holy Grail, of course, is the GPS dot.

0:03:11.266,0:03:13.946
Do you remember the movie "The Da Vinci Code?"

0:03:13.946,0:03:17.394
Here's Professor Langdon examining a GPS dot,

0:03:17.394,0:03:20.771
which his accomplice tells him is a tracking device

0:03:20.771,0:03:23.832
accurate within two feet anywhere on the globe,

0:03:23.832,0:03:26.738
but we know that in the world of nonfiction,

0:03:26.738,0:03:29.602
the GPS dot is impossible, right?

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For one thing, GPS doesn't work indoors,

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and for another, they don't make devices quite this small,

0:03:35.410,0:03:37.738
especially when those devices have to relay

0:03:37.738,0:03:40.713
their measurements back over a network.

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Well, these objections were perfectly reasonable

0:03:43.051,0:03:46.065
a few years ago, but things have changed.

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There's been a strong trend toward miniaturization,

0:03:48.921,0:03:52.640
better sensitivity, so much so that, a few years ago,

0:03:52.640,0:03:55.344
a GPS tracking device looked like this clunky box

0:03:55.344,0:03:57.520
to the left of the keys.

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Compare that with the device released just months ago

0:04:00.171,0:04:03.963
that's now packaged into something the size of a key fob,

0:04:03.963,0:04:06.516
and if you take a look at the state of the art

0:04:06.516,0:04:09.262
for a complete GPS receiver, which is only a centimeter

0:04:09.262,0:04:11.349
on a side and more sensitive than ever,

0:04:11.349,0:04:14.858
you realize that the GPS dot will soon move

0:04:14.858,0:04:19.257
from fiction to nonfiction.

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Imagine what we could do with a world full of GPS dots.

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It's not just that you'll never lose your wallet or your keys

0:04:26.405,0:04:30.976
anymore, or your child when you're at Disneyland.

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You'll buy GPS dots in bulk, and you'll stick them on

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everything you own worth more than a few tens of dollars.

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I couldn't find my shoes one recent morning,

0:04:41.196,0:04:44.564
and, as usual, had to ask my wife if she had seen them.

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But I shouldn't have to bother my wife with that kind of triviality.

0:04:48.356,0:04:50.967
I should be able to ask my house where my shoes are.

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(Laughter)

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Those of you who have made the switch to Gmail,

0:04:56.614,0:04:59.492
remember how refreshing it was to go from

0:04:59.492,0:05:03.636
organizing all of your email to simply searching it.

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The GPS dot will do the same for our possessions.

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Now, of course, there is a flip side to the GPS dot.

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I was in my office some months back

0:05:15.213,0:05:17.756
and got a telephone call.

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The woman on the other end of the line, we'll call her Carol,

0:05:21.377,0:05:23.456
was panicked.

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Apparently, an ex-boyfriend of Carol's from California

0:05:26.249,0:05:29.564
had found her in Texas and was following her around.

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So you might ask at this point why she's calling you.

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Well, so did I.

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But it turned out there was a technical twist to Carol's case.

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Every time her ex-boyfriend would show up,

0:05:41.525,0:05:45.875
at the most improbable times and the most improbable locations,

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he was carrying an open laptop,

0:05:48.571,0:05:51.414
and over time Carol realized that he had planted

0:05:51.414,0:05:53.962
a GPS tracking device on her car,

0:05:53.962,0:05:56.871
so she was calling me for help to disable it.

0:05:56.871,0:05:58.859
"Well, you should go to a good mechanic

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and have him look at your car," I said.

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"I already have," she told me.

0:06:04.847,0:06:06.991
"He didn't see anything obvious,

0:06:06.991,0:06:10.528
and he said he'd have to take the car apart piece by piece."

0:06:10.528,0:06:13.849
"Well then, you'd better go to the police," I said.

0:06:13.849,0:06:16.953
"I already have," she replied.

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"They're not sure this rises to the level of harassment,

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and they're not set up technically to find the device."

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"Okay, what about the FBI?"

0:06:24.658,0:06:28.821
"I've talked to them too, and same story."

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We then talked about her coming to my lab

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and us performing a radio sweep of her car,

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but I wasn't even sure that would work,

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given that some of these devices are configured

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to only transmit when they're inside safe zones

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or when the car is moving.

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So, there we were.

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Carol isn't the first, and certainly won't be the last,

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to find herself in this kind of fearsome environment,

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worrisome situation caused by GPS tracking.

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In fact, as I looked into her case,

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I discovered to my surprise that it's not clearly illegal

0:07:03.675,0:07:08.108
for you or me to put a tracking device on someone else's car.

0:07:08.108,0:07:11.988
The Supreme Court ruled last month that a policeman

0:07:11.988,0:07:16.320
has to get a warrant if he wants to do prolonged tracking,

0:07:16.320,0:07:19.836
but the law isn't clear about civilians doing this to one another,

0:07:19.836,0:07:22.466
so it's not just Big Brother we have to worry about,

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but Big Neighbor. (Laughter)

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There is one alternative that Carol could have taken,

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very effective. It's called the Wave Bubble.

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It's an open-source GPS jammer,

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developed by Limor Fried,

0:07:41.578,0:07:45.371
a graduate student at MIT, and Limor calls it

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"a tool for reclaiming our personal space."

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With a flip of the switch you create a bubble around you

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within which GPS signals can't reside.

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They get drowned out by the bubble.

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And Limor designed this, in part, because, like Carol,

0:07:59.771,0:08:02.417
she felt threatened by GPS tracking.

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Then she posted her design to the web,

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and if you don't have time to build your own,

0:08:08.735,0:08:09.509
you can buy one.

0:08:09.509,0:08:11.567
Chinese manufacturers now sell thousands

0:08:11.567,0:08:15.340
of nearly identical devices on the Internet.

0:08:15.340,0:08:19.492
So you might be thinking, the Wave Bubble sounds great.

0:08:19.492,0:08:23.145
I should have one. Might come in handy if somebody ever puts a tracking device on my car.

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But you should be aware that its use is very much illegal

0:08:26.927,0:08:28.726
in the United States.

0:08:28.726,0:08:29.473
And why is that?

0:08:29.473,0:08:32.566
Well, because it's not a bubble at all.

0:08:32.566,0:08:34.965
Its jamming signals don't stop at the edge

0:08:34.965,0:08:37.437
of your personal space or at the edge of your car.

0:08:37.437,0:08:43.673
They go on to jam innocent GPS receivers for miles around you. (Laughter)

0:08:43.673,0:08:46.424
Now, if you're Carol or Limor,

0:08:46.424,0:08:49.049
or someone who feels threatened by GPS tracking,

0:08:49.049,0:08:52.824
it might not feel wrong to turn on a Wave Bubble,

0:08:52.824,0:08:56.804
but in fact, the results can be disastrous.

0:08:56.804,0:08:59.524
Imagine, for example, you're the captain of a cruise ship

0:08:59.524,0:09:02.043
trying to make your way through a thick fog

0:09:02.043,0:09:05.883
and some passenger in the back turns on a Wave Bubble.

0:09:05.883,0:09:08.598
All of a sudden your GPS readout goes blank,

0:09:08.598,0:09:11.884
and now it's just you and the fog

0:09:11.884,0:09:14.484
and whatever you can pull off the radar system

0:09:14.484,0:09:17.608
if you remember how to work it.

0:09:17.608,0:09:23.544
They -- in fact, they don't update or upkeep lighthouses

0:09:23.544,0:09:28.197
anymore, and LORAN, the only backup to GPS,

0:09:28.197,0:09:30.617
was discontinued last year.

0:09:30.617,0:09:35.530
Our modern society has a special relationship with GPS.

0:09:35.530,0:09:37.800
We're almost blindly reliant on it.

0:09:37.800,0:09:41.451
It's built deeply into our systems and infrastructure.

0:09:41.451,0:09:45.079
Some call it "the invisible utility."

0:09:45.079,0:09:48.801
So, turning on a Wave Bubble might not just cause inconvenience.

0:09:48.801,0:09:53.171
It might be deadly.

0:09:53.171,0:09:57.379
But as it turns out, for purposes of protecting your privacy

0:09:57.379,0:10:00.868
at the expense of general GPS reliability,

0:10:00.868,0:10:03.028
there's something even more potent

0:10:03.028,0:10:06.820
and more subversive than a Wave Bubble,

0:10:06.820,0:10:10.209
and that is a GPS spoofer.

0:10:10.209,0:10:13.034
The idea behind the GPS spoofer is simple.

0:10:13.034,0:10:17.011
Instead of jamming the GPS signals, you fake them.

0:10:17.011,0:10:20.129
You imitate them, and if you do it right, the device

0:10:20.129,0:10:23.296
you're attacking doesn't even know it's being spoofed.

0:10:23.296,0:10:24.928
So let me show you how this works.

0:10:24.928,0:10:27.653
In any GPS receiver, there's a peak inside

0:10:27.653,0:10:30.288
that corresponds to the authentic signals.

0:10:30.288,0:10:33.103
These three red dots represent the tracking points

0:10:33.103,0:10:35.982
that try to keep themselves centered on that peak.

0:10:35.982,0:10:39.047
But if you send in a fake GPS signal,

0:10:39.047,0:10:43.513
another peak pops up, and if you can get these two peaks

0:10:43.513,0:10:48.231
perfectly aligned, the tracking points can't tell the difference,

0:10:48.231,0:10:51.542
and they get hijacked by the stronger counterfeit signal,

0:10:51.542,0:10:55.502
with the authentic peak getting forced off.

0:10:55.502,0:10:57.669
At this point, the game is over.

0:10:57.669,0:11:01.406
The fake signals now completely control this GPS receiver.

0:11:01.406,0:11:02.901
So is this really possible?

0:11:02.901,0:11:04.624
Can someone really manipulate

0:11:04.624,0:11:06.606
the timing and positioning of a GPS receiver

0:11:06.606,0:11:09.485
just like that, with a spoofer?

0:11:09.485,0:11:11.500
Well, the short answer is yes.

0:11:11.500,0:11:14.304
The key is that civil GPS signals

0:11:14.304,0:11:15.406
are completely open.

0:11:15.406,0:11:19.397
They have no encryption. They have no authentication.

0:11:19.397,0:11:22.892
They're wide open, vulnerable to a kind of spoofing attack.

0:11:22.892,0:11:25.467
Even so, up until very recently,

0:11:25.467,0:11:27.859
nobody worried about GPS spoofers.

0:11:27.859,0:11:29.837
People figured that it would be too complex

0:11:29.837,0:11:32.652
or too expensive for some hacker to build one.

0:11:32.652,0:11:36.604
But I, and a friend of mine from graduate school,

0:11:36.604,0:11:38.756
we didn't see it that way.

0:11:38.756,0:11:41.229
We knew it wasn't going to be so hard,

0:11:41.229,0:11:43.157
and we wanted to be the first to build one

0:11:43.157,0:11:45.237
so we could get out in front of the problem

0:11:45.237,0:11:49.343
and help protect against GPS spoofing.

0:11:49.343,0:11:52.688
I remember vividly the week it all came together.

0:11:52.688,0:11:56.137
We built it at my home, which means that

0:11:56.137,0:12:00.526
I got a little extra help from my three-year-old son Ramon.

0:12:00.526,0:12:02.944
Here's Ramon — (Laughter) —

0:12:02.944,0:12:06.629
looking for a little attention from Dad that week.

0:12:06.629,0:12:08.899
At first, the spoofer was just a jumble of cables

0:12:08.899,0:12:11.781
and computers, though we eventually got it packaged

0:12:11.781,0:12:13.453
into a small box.

0:12:13.453,0:12:16.262
Now, the Dr. Frankenstein moment,

0:12:16.262,0:12:18.989
when the spoofer finally came alive

0:12:18.989,0:12:21.590
and I glimpsed its awful potential,

0:12:21.590,0:12:24.326
came late one night when I tested the spoofer

0:12:24.326,0:12:26.412
against my iPhone.

0:12:26.412,0:12:28.029
Let me show you some actual footage from that

0:12:28.029,0:12:29.965
very first experiment.

0:12:29.965,0:12:33.559
I had come to completely trust this little blue dot

0:12:33.559,0:12:35.194
and its reassuring blue halo.

0:12:35.194,0:12:36.269
They seemed to speak to me.

0:12:36.269,0:12:40.929
They'd say, "Here you are. Here you are." (Laughter)

0:12:40.929,0:12:43.799
And "you can trust us."

0:12:43.799,0:12:48.917
So something felt very wrong about the world.

0:12:48.917,0:12:51.500
It was a sense, almost, of betrayal,

0:12:51.500,0:12:55.691
when this little blue dot started at my house,

0:12:55.691,0:12:57.303
and went running off toward the north

0:12:57.303,0:13:01.198
leaving me behind. I wasn't moving.

0:13:01.198,0:13:05.431
What I then saw in this little moving blue dot

0:13:05.431,0:13:08.149
was the potential for chaos.

0:13:08.149,0:13:12.291
I saw airplanes and ships veering off course, with the captain

0:13:12.291,0:13:16.565
learning only too late that something was wrong.

0:13:16.565,0:13:19.065
I saw the GPS-derived timing

0:13:19.065,0:13:20.796
of the New York Stock Exchange

0:13:20.796,0:13:22.746
being manipulated by hackers.

0:13:22.746,0:13:25.714
You can scarcely imagine the kind of havoc

0:13:25.714,0:13:28.364
you could cause if you knew what you were doing

0:13:28.364,0:13:31.717
with a GPS spoofer.

0:13:31.717,0:13:36.861
There is, though, one redeeming feature

0:13:36.861,0:13:39.317
of the GPS spoofer.

0:13:39.317,0:13:43.918
It's the ultimate weapon against an invasion of GPS dots.

0:13:43.918,0:13:47.005
Imagine, for example, you're being tracked.

0:13:47.005,0:13:49.529
Well, you can play the tracker for a fool,

0:13:49.529,0:13:52.490
pretending to be at work when you're really on vacation.

0:13:52.490,0:13:55.205
Or, if you're Carol, you could lure your ex-boyfriend

0:13:55.205,0:13:56.522
into some empty parking lot

0:13:56.522,0:13:58.823
where the police are waiting for him.

0:13:58.823,0:14:04.026
So I'm fascinated by this conflict, a looming conflict,

0:14:04.026,0:14:06.691
between privacy on the one hand

0:14:06.691,0:14:10.890
and the need for a clean radio spectrum on the other.

0:14:10.890,0:14:13.935
We simply cannot tolerate GPS jammers and spoofers,

0:14:13.935,0:14:17.671
and yet, given the lack of effective legal means

0:14:17.671,0:14:21.770
for protecting our privacy from the GPS dot,

0:14:21.770,0:14:23.642
can you really blame people for wanting to turn them on,

0:14:23.642,0:14:26.058
for wanting to use them?

0:14:26.058,0:14:29.111
I hold out hope that we'll be able to reconcile

0:14:29.111,0:14:32.297
this conflict with some sort of,

0:14:32.297,0:14:37.727
some yet uninvented technology.

0:14:37.727,0:14:40.853
But meanwhile, grab some popcorn,

0:14:40.853,0:14:42.980
because things are going to get interesting.

0:14:42.980,0:14:44.320
Within the next few years,

0:14:44.320,0:14:48.574
many of you will be the proud owner of a GPS dot.

0:14:48.574,0:14:50.922
Maybe you'll have a whole bag full of them.

0:14:50.922,0:14:54.374
You'll never lose track of your things again.

0:14:54.374,0:14:58.403
The GPS dot will fundamentally reorder your life.

0:14:58.403,0:15:01.085
But will you be able to resist the temptation

0:15:01.085,0:15:04.077
to track your fellow man?

0:15:04.077,0:15:05.909
Or will you be able to resist the temptation

0:15:05.909,0:15:09.204
to turn on a GPS spoofer or a Wave Bubble

0:15:09.204,0:15:11.972
to protect your own privacy?

0:15:11.972,0:15:15.604
So, as usual, what we see just beyond the horizon

0:15:15.604,0:15:18.944
is full of promise and peril.

0:15:18.944,0:15:22.132
It'll be fascinating to see how this all turns out.

0:15:22.132,0:15:24.766
Thanks. (Applause)