WEBVTT

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So we are in the middle of 
an epic battle for power in cyberspace.

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On the one side,
it's traditional power,

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think of organized institutional powers

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like governments and large
multi-international corporations.

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On the other side,
think of distributed power,

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both the good part 
and the bad part:

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grassroots movements,
dissidents' groups,

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hackers, 
criminals...

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Initially, the Internet gave 
power to the distributed.

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It gave them 
coordination and efficiency

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and made them seem unbeatable.

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Today, traditional powers are back
and they're winning big.

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What I wanna do here is tell the story
of those two powers fighting.

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Who wins and
how our society survives their battle.

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So back in the early days 
of the Internet,

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there was a lot of talk 
about its natural laws.

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Censorship was impossible,
anonymity was easy,

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police were clueless 
about cybercrime...

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The Internet was
fundamentally international

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and it would be a new world order.

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Traditional power blocks are bended,

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masses empowered,
freedom spread throughout the world,

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and this will all be inevitable.

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It was a utopian vision,

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but some of it 
did actually come to pass:

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in marketing,
entertainment, mass-media,

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political organizing, crowd funding
and crowd sourcing...

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The changes were dramatic.

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eBay really did normalize
the world's attics.

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(Laughter)

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And Facebook and twitter really
did help topple governments.

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But that was just one side of
the Internet's disruptive character.

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It's also made traditional power 
more powerful.

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On the corporate world,

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there are two trends
that are currently feeling this:

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First, the rise of cloud computing

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means we no longer have 
control of our data:

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our email, photos, calendar,
address book, messages, documents,

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they're now on servers
belonging to Google, Apple,

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Microsoft, Facebook and others.

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And second, we are increasingly
accessing our data

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using devices that are tightly
controlled by vendors.

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Think of your iPhone, your iPad,
your Android phone,

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your Kindle, your Chromebook...

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And even the new computer OSs,
Microsoft and Apple,

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are heading in this direction,
with less user control.

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And both of these trends
increase corporate power

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by giving them more control 
of our data and therefore of us.

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Government power is also
increasing on the Internet.

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There's more government
surveillance than ever before.

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We know now the NSA
is eavesdropping on the entire planet.

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(Laughter)

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There's more censorship 
than ever before.

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There's more propaganda.

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More governments are controlling
what the users

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can and cannot do on the Internet.

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Totalitarian governments are embracing
the Internet as a means for control.

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And many countries are pushing cyberwar
as a reason of a control.

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On both the corporate 
and the government side,

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traditional power 
on the Internet is huge.

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And in many cases, 
the interests are aligning.

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Surveillance is
the business model of the Internet,

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and business surveillance 
gives governments access to data

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it couldn't get otherwise.

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But you could think of it

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as a public-private 
surveillance partnership.

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So what happened?

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How in those early Internet years
did we get the future so wrong?

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The truth is that technology
magnifies power in general,

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but the rates of adoption are different.

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The distributed can make
use of new technologies faster.

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They're small but nimble,
they're not hindered by bureaucracy,

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and some of these are not
by laws or ethics,

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and they can adapt faster.

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And when those groups 
discovered the Internet,

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suddenly they had power.

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It was a change in kind.

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We saw that in e-commerce.

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Can you remember, 
as soon as the Internet

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started being used for commerce,

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a new bread of cyber criminal 
emerged, like out of the ground,

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immediately able 
to take advantage.

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And the police who are like
trained on Agatha Christie novels

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(Laughter)

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took about a decade to catch up.

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(Laughter)

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We also saw it on social media:

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right marginalized groups 
started to

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immediately use 
the Internet's organizing power.

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it took corporations, what, a decade
to figure out how to co-opt it.

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But when big institutions
finally figured it out,

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they had more raw power

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to magnify and they got 
even more powerful.

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So that's the difference.

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The distributed are more nimble and
quicker to make use their new power.

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The institutional are slower but
able to use power more effectively.

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So all the Syrian dissidents
used Facebook to organize.

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The Syrian government used Facebook
to identify and arrest dissidents.

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So who wins?

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Is the quick or the strong?

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Which type of power dominates
in the coming decades?

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Right now, it looks like
traditional power.

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It's much easier for the NSA
to spy on everyone

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than it is for anyone
to maintain privacy.

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China has an easier time 
blocking content

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than its citizen have
getting around those blocks.

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And even though it's still easy to
circumvent digital copy protection,

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most users can't do it.

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And this is because leveraging Internet
power requires technical expertise.

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Those with sufficient ability can
always stay ahead of institutional power.

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Whether it's setting up
your own email server or

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using encryption or
breaking copy protection,

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the technologies are there.

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This is why cyber crime 
is still pervasive

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even as police power gets better,

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this is why whistle-blowers
can still do so much damage,

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this is why organization like 
Anonymous are still viable forces,

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and this is why social movements
still thrive on the Internet.

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Most of us though
are stuck in the middle.

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We don't have the technical
ability to evade

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the large governments and
corporations on one side,

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with the criminal hacker
groups on the other.

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We can't join any dissident movements.

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We have no choice but to accept

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the default configuration options,
the arbitrator terms of service,

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the NSA installed back doors

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or the occasional complete loss 
of our data for some inexplicable reason.

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(Laughter)

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And we get isolated as
government corporate powers align,

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and we get trampled 
when the powers fight.

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Where there's Facebook,
Google, Apple and Amazon

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fighting it out in the marketplace,

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or the US, EU, China and Russia
fighting out in the world,

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or US vs. the terrorists or
the media industry vs. the pirates,

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or China vs. its dissidents.

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And this will only get worse
as technology improves.

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In the battle between
institutional and distributed power,

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more technology means more damage.

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And we've already seen it:

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cyber criminals can rob 
more people, more quickly

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than real world criminals;

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digital pirates can make
more copies of more movies,

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more quickly than 
their analog ancestors.

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And we'll see it in the future.

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3D printers means control debates

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are soon going to involve 
guns and not movies.

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And Google glass means 
surveillance debates

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will soon involve
everyone all the time.

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This is really the same thing as
the weapons of mass destruction fear:

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terrorists with nuclear biological bombs

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can do a lot more damage than 
terrorists with conventional explosives.

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And like that fear, increasing 
technology brings it to a head

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Very broadly, there is 
a natural crime rate in society,

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based on who we are
as a species and a culture.

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There's also a crime rate that
society is willing to tolerate.

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When criminals are inefficient,

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we're willing to live with some
percentage of them in our midst.

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As technology makes each 
individual criminal more effective,

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the percentage 
we can tolerate decreases.

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As a result, institutional power
naturally get stronger,

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to protect against the bad part
of distributed power.

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This means even more
oppressive security measures

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even if they're ineffective,

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and even if they stifle
the good part of distributed power.

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OK, so what happens?

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What happens 
as technology increases?

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Is a police state the only way
to control distributed power

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and keep our society safe?

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Or do fringe elements
inevitably destroy society

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as technology increases their power?

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Is there actually no room for
freedom, liberty and social change

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in the technological future?

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Empowering the distributed

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is one of the most important 
benefits of the Internet.

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It's an amazing force for 
positive social change in the world.

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And we need to preserve it.

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In this battle between 
the quick and the strong,

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what we need is a stalemate.

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And I have three recommendations
on how to get there.

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In the short term, what we need
is transparency and oversight.

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The more we know
what institutional power is doing,

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the more we can trust it.

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Well we actually know this is true,

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we know it's true about government.

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But we've kind of forgotten it

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in our fear of terrorism 
or other modern threats.

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It's also true for corporate power.

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Unfortunately, market dynamics

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will not force corporations
to be transparent.

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We actually need laws to do that.

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And transparency also helps us
trust distributed power.

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Most of the time distributed power
is good for the world.

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And transparency is how we
differentiate positive social groups

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from criminal organizations.

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Oversight is the second thing.
It's also critical.

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And again, it's a long understood
mechanism for checking power.

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And it's a combination of things.

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It's courts that act as
third party advocates,

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it's legislators that understand
technologies, it's a vibrant press,

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and it's watchdog groups
that analyze and report

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on what power is doing.

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Those two things,
transparency and accountability,

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give us the confidence 
to trust institutional power

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and ensure they'll act
in our interest.

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And without it, I think
democracy just fails.

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In the longer term,

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we need to work
to reduce power differences.

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The more we can balance power
among various groups,

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the more stable society will be.

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And the key to all
this is access to data.

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On the Internet, data is power.

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To the extent the powerless have
access to it they gain in power,

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to extent the already
power have access to it

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they further consolidate their power.

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As we look to reducing power imbalances,
we have to look at data.

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This is data privacy for individuals,

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mandatory disclosure rules 
for corporations,

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and open government laws.

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This is how we survive the future.

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Today's Internet is really
a fortuitous accident.

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It's a combination of an initial lack 
of commercial interests,

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of government benign neglect,

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of some military requirements
for survivability and resilience,

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and a bunch of computer engineers 
building open systems

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that work simply and easily.

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We're at the beginning 
of some critical debate

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about the future of the Internet,

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Law enforcement, surveillance,
corporate data collection, cyberwar,

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information consumerism
and on and on and on.

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This is not going to be an easy period
as we try to work this out.

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Historically, no shift in
power has ever been easy.

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Corporations are turning the Internet
into enormous revenue generator

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and they're not going to back down.

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Neither will governments

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who have harnessed
the Internet for a good control.

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And these are all very complicated
political and technological issues.

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But we all have a duty
to tackle this problem.

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I don't know what the result is gonna be

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but I hope that when,
generations from now,

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society looks back on us
in these early decades of the Internet,

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they're not going to be disappointed.

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And this is only gonna happen
if each one of us engages,

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makes this a priority
and participates in the debate.

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We need to decide 
on the proper balance

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between institutional 
and distributed power,

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and how to build tools that 
will amplify what is good in each,

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or suppressing what is bad.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)