WEBVTT

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For more than a 100 years,
the telephone companies have provided

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wire-tapping 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,
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,
first and foremost.

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

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or your doctor on the telephone,
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,
or any other party that breaks

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into the surveillance system that hacks
into the surveillance system

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of the telephone companies.

NOTE Paragraph

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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, Silicon Valley companies have built

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strong encryption technology into their
communications products that makes

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surveillance extremely difficult.

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For example, many of you might have
an iPhone and if you use an iPhone

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to send a text message to other people
that have an iPhone, those text messages

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cannot easily be wire-tapped.

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And in fact, according to Apple
they're not able to even see

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the text messages themselves.

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Likewise, if you use 
FaceTime to make


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an audio call or a video call 
with one of your friends

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or loved ones, that too
cannot be easily wire-tapped.

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And it's not just Apple.

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WhatsApp, which is now owned by Facebook
and used by hundreds of millions of people

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around the world, also has built strong
encryption technology into its product.

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Which means that people in the global
south can easily communicate without

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their governments, often authoritarian,
wire-tapping their text messages.

NOTE Paragraph

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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

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tools are now available.

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What upsets them the most, is that
the tech companies have built encryption

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features into their products 
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 and encryption

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is making that difficult.

NOTE Paragraph

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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 that I suspect

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we all want to 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 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
dealer's telephone calls

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or the terrorist 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, should 
a billion people around the world be

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using devices that 
are wire-tap friendly?

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The scenario of hacking of surveillance 
systems that I described is not imaginary.

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In 2009, the surveillance systems
that Google and Microsoft built

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into the networks.

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The systems that they used 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 which of their own

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agents the US government
was monitoring.

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By the same token, in 2004
the surveillance system built

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into the network of Vodafone Greece
-- Greece's largest telephone company

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was compromised by unknown entity
and that feature, the surveillance feature

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was used to wire-tap the Greek
Prime Minister and members

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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 back doors.

NOTE Paragraph

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When you build a back door into
a communications network

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or piece of technology,you 
have no way of controlling

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who's going to go through it.

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You have no way controlling whether
it'll be used by your side

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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 to build networks

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to be as secure as possible.

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Yes, this means that in the future,
encryption is going to make

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wire-tapping more difficult.

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It means that the police are going to have
a tougher time catching bad guys.

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But the alternative would mean to live
in a world where anyone's calls

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or anyone's text messages could
be surveilled by criminals,

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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 to thwart many kinds

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of government surveillance
already on your phones

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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.

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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, but use them because

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they are secure.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)