WEBVTT

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For more than 100 years,

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the telephone companies have provided
wiretapping assistance to governments.

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For much of this time,
this assistance was manual.

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Surveillance took place manually
and wires were connected by hand.

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Calls were recorded to tape.

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But as in so many other industries,

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computing has changed everything.

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The telephone companies
built surveillance features

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into the very core of their networks.

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I want that to sink in for a second:

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Our telephones and the networks
that carry our calls

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were wired for surveillance first.

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First and foremost.

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So what that means is that
when you're talking to your spouse,

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your children, a colleague
or your doctor on the telephone,

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someone could be listening.

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Now, that someone might
be your own government;

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it could also be another government,
a foreign intelligence service,

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or a hacker, or a criminal, or a stalker

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or any other party that breaks into
the surveillance system,

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that hacks into the surveillance system
of the telephone companies.

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But while the telephone companies
have built surveillance as a priority,

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Silicon Valley companies have not.

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And increasingly,
over the last couple years,

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Silicon Valley companies have built
strong encryption technology

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into their communications products

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that makes surveillance
extremely difficult.

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For example, many of you
might have an iPhone,

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and if you use an iPhone
to send a text message

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to other people who have an iPhone,

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those text messages
cannot easily be wiretapped.

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And in fact, according to Apple,

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they're not able to even see
the text messages themselves.

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Likewise, if you use FaceTime
to make an audio call

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or a video call with one of your
friends or loved ones,

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that, too, cannot be easily wiretapped.

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And it's not just Apple.

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WhatsApp, which is now owned by Facebook

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and used by hundreds of millions
of people around the world,

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also has built strong
encryption technology into its product,

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which means that people
in the Global South can easily communicate

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without their governments,
often authoritarian,

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wiretapping their text messages.

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So, after 100 years of being able
to listen to any telephone call --

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anytime, anywhere --

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you might imagine that government
officials are not very happy.

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And in fact, that's what's happening.

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Government officials are extremely mad.

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And they're not mad because
these encryption tools are now available.

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What upsets them the most

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is that the tech companies have built
encryption features into their products

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and turned them on by default.

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It's the default piece that matters.

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In short, the tech companies
have democratized encryption.

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And so, government officials
like British Prime Minister David Cameron,

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they believe that all communications --
emails, texts, voice calls --

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all of these should be
available to governments,

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and encryption is making that difficult.

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Now, look -- I'm extremely sympathetic
to their point of view.

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We live in a dangerous time
in a dangerous world,

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and there really are bad people out there.

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There are terrorists and other
serious national security threats

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that I suspect we all want
the FBI and the NSA to monitor.

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But those surveillance
features come at a cost.

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The reason for that is

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that there is no such thing
as a terrorist laptop,

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or a drug dealer's cell phone.

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We all use the same
communications devices.

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What that means is that
if the drug dealers' telephone calls

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or the terrorists' telephone calls
can be intercepted,

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then so can the rest of ours, too.

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And I think we really need to ask:

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Should a billion people
around the world be using devices

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that are wiretap friendly?

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So the scenario of hacking of surveillance
systems that I've described --

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this is not imaginary.

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In 2009,

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the surveillance systems that Google
and Microsoft built into their networks --

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the systems that they use to respond
to lawful surveillance requests

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from the police --

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those systems were compromised
by the Chinese government,

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because the Chinese government
wanted to figure out

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which of their own agents
the US government was monitoring.

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By the same token,

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in 2004, the surveillance system
built into the network

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of Vodafone Greece --
Greece's largest telephone company --

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was compromised by an unknown entity,

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and that feature,
the surveillance feature,

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was used to wiretap
the Greek Prime Minister

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and members of the Greek cabinet.

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The foreign government or hackers
who did that were never caught.

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And really, this gets to the very problem
with these surveillance features,

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or backdoors.

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When you build a backdoor
into a communications network

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or piece of technology,

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you have no way of controlling
who's going to go through it.

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You have no way of controlling

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whether it'll be used by your side
or the other side,

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by good guys, or by bad guys.

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And so for that reason,
I think that it's better

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to build networks
to be as secure as possible.

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Yes, this means that in the future,

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encryption is going to make
wiretapping more difficult.

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It means that the police
are going to have a tougher time

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catching bad guys.

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But the alternative would mean
to live in a world

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where anyone's calls or anyone's
text messages could be surveilled

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by criminals, by stalkers
and by foreign intelligence agencies.

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And I don't want to live
in that kind of world.

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And so right now,
you probably have the tools

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to thwart many kinds
of government surveillance

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already on your phones
and already in your pockets,

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you just might not realize how strong
and how secure those tools are,

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or how weak the other ways
you've used to communicate really are.

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And so, my message to you is this:

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We need to use these tools.

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We need to secure our telephone calls.

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We need to secure our text messages.

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I want you to use these tools.

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I want you to tell your loved ones,
I want you to tell your colleagues:

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Use these encrypted communications tools.

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Don't just use them
because they're cheap and easy,

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but use them because they're secure.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)