Spies inside Facebook | Menny Barzilay |TEDxAcademy

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. In this TEDx talk, Menny Barzilay points out that companies like Facebook and Google are better at collecting our data than actual intelligence agencies.

I'd like to start by asking you
a few questions.

Please raise your hand
if you have a smartphone.

OK. Is there anyone here
without a smartphone?

Oh, I'm sorry.
(Laughter)

Raise your hand if you have
a Facebook account.

OK. Is there anyone here
without a Facebook account?

Wow, I'll speak more slowly.
(Laughter)

Is there anyone here that has more
than one Facebook account?

OK, interesting.

How about Twitter?
Instagram?

Have you ever bought
something from Ebay?

Amazon? Deal Extreme?
With that, you are very good.

Is there anyone here that has bitcoins?

OK, interesting.

OK, last one.
Listen carefully.

If you had to choose
between spending three days

without your smartphone
or without your toothbrush,

what would you choose?
(Laughter)

Don't answer.
There are cameras here.

Ever since I was a kid,
I was fascinated with computers.

I loved taking them apart
and putting them back together.

Putting them back together
didn't always work.

Nevertheless, I learned a lot.

But there was a downside to this,
as you would expect.

Friends, and friends of friends,
and even their parents,

used to call me and ask,

"Do you have a spare minute?
I need you to fix my computer."

It never took a minute.

And I hated the fact that computers
had so many problems.

One day, I decided, "Enough.

From now on, I'm going to charge
anyone who wants me to fix his computer."

Amazingly enough, that actually worked.

People started paying me
to fix their computers.

From that moment on, I loved the fact
that computers had so many problems.

(Laughter)

So at the age of 15,
I actually opened my first business

together with a friend of mine
from school.

And it was a huge success for us.

We didn't have to take anymore money
from our parents.

And we started with fixing computers

and at some point we started
selling computers.

But the most amazing thing
about this story

is that so few people know it.

This is actually the first time
I'm sharing this business card.

I only took this picture four days ago
for the sake of this presentation.

I'm from the last generation that knows

how the world looked like
before the Internet.

Now, keep that in mind, and think
about the children of our grandchildren.

They will know us so well.

I have no clue who was
my great grandfather.

It could have been anyone.

There is so little information
about past generations.

And only selected few had received
this highest honor

of having their life documented.

Right, kings and philosophers.

But for us, we document
our lives as we go.

Every 60 seconds, 100 hours of movies
are being uploaded to YouTube.

In those 60 seconds, approximately 40,000
pictures are being posted on Instagram.

And 350,000 tweets are being shared.

So, future generations will have
so much information about us,

they wouldn't know what to do with it.

They could know us so well,
but so could anyone else.

Including our future potential boss

that might approach
a new type of psychologist,

that will be asked to determine whether
we fit for the job that we applied to.

And he would do that
without even meeting us.

Just by browsing through
the information we shared,

and, yes, sometimes the information
we forgot we've shared.

(Laughter)

I have no excuse, I'm sorry.

No one needs to meet us
in order to know us.

So sometimes we will find out
if we got the job

even before we had the interview.

Strange as it may sound,
today, 75% of employers

are already browsing through
candidates' personal profiles

before hiring them.

One in every three admitted
having disqualified a candidate

because of information found online.

And we're becoming even better
at sharing information, right?

So, amazing companies
are creating great tools

that will help us share
more and more information.

They do that because
they understand the great value

in holding huge amounts of personal
information, of our infomation.

We should think of them as a great machine

that knows how to transform
personal data into profit.

And they make billions of money.

But I want to speak about
a different type of machines.

Those machines also take personal data,
the same data,

but they transform it
into National Security.

Those are governments
and intelligence agencies.

So, with Facebook, we know
how they get the information.

We give it to them, free of charge.

But how would intelligence agencies
get this information?

It's not very easy to collect, right?

But wait a minute.

If someone already collected it,
maybe we can use it.

So, many states understand now
that they have a great incentive

to put a spy inside Facebook.

But not just Facebook.

Many companies in the private sector
are unwillingly becoming pawned

in the national security games,
in the homeland security campaigns.

You probably recognize this guy, right?

This is Edward Snowden,
who worked for the NSA.

The NSA is the National Security Agency.

What do they do there, inside the NSA?

In the world of intelligence, they are
called SIGINT Intelligence gathering Unit.

SIGINT stands for Signals Intelligence.

That means that the NSA,

much like Facebook and Google and others,

is in the business of collecting
digital data and processing it.

So, every country in the world
has an agency

that is responsible for SIGINT gathering.

In the United States, it's the NSA.

Edward Snowden worked there,

and one day he decided to do something

that completely changed the way
we speak about privacy.

He took many documents and published them;

many classified documents
from within the NSA, and published them.

You should understand,
that until that point,

people in my field of work
addressed NSA as No Such Agency.

This is how we called them.

But right now, we have so much information
about what is going on in there.

So, one of the first things
that Edward Snowden

actually published,
revealed to the world

this secret secret secret project,
named PRISM.

This is what Edward Snowden published.

This is what used to be
a top secret presentation.

It was so secret that
only selected few inside the NSA

were cleared to see it.

While viewing this presentation,
we come to understand two amazing things.

The first one, they design terrible
presentations inside the NSA.

(Laughter)

This design is unforgivable.
Seriously, guys.

The second thing that we learned
is what PRISM is.

PRISM is an intelligence
gathering program,

through which the NSA actually
had access to private companies,

to information that was stored
inside private companies,

like Microsoft, Yahoo, Google
and Facebook, Skype, YouTube and Apple.

The NSA could access those companies

in order to gain access
to our information.

Obviously these things
that Edward Snowden published

created a lot of public criticism
surrounding the NSA, right?

The public wasn't happy with that.

So, someone had to tell
the other side of the story.

The job fell on the shoulders
of this guy, General Keith Alexander,

who until recently was
the head of the NSA.

So, his job was to demonstrate
the trade-off.

So if you have privacy in one hand,

and national security in the other,

and you want more national security,

you should compromise privacy.
That's that.

So, he tries to convince us that the NSA
is actually an efficient machine

for transforming personal data
into national security.

How did he do that?

One of the things that he did,

he went onstage at a big
cyber conference in Las Vegas.

This conference is for hackers
and security professionals.

I was sitting there in the audience
listening to him,

and he said about PRISM
and other intelligence gathering programs

that they were a vital tool
in stopping actual terrorist attacks.

Oh my God!
What should we take from it?

What should we take from the fact
that the NSA is using this information

to stop terrorist attacks?

It is now the undeniable truth
that the information that sits

within private companies
such as Facebook,

is valuable intelligence
related information.

It is the type of information
that the United States can use

in order to promote its old
national security agenda.

Now, the NSA had a pretty easy life

because all of those companies
are actually American companies,

which sit within the United States.

So they could approach a federal judge
that will issue a warrant.

This is a magic key.

It forces everyone to hand over
this information.

But what can Russia do?

What can China do?

What can any other country
in the world do?

Every intelligence agency in the world

wants the information that sits
inside Facebook and other companies.

If the United States
can stop terrorist attacks

using this information,

everyone can use this information.

Make no mistake.

It is not a question
of if they will get it.

It is a question of how and when.

They can try to actually
approach the federal judge,

right, the American federal judge.

It won't help, though
it might amuse him a lot.

So there are basically two ways
to go about it.

One, they can try hacking into Facebook,

which is not an easy thing to accomplish.

Trust me.
(Laughter)

The second thing that they can do,

they can try to put a spy inside Facebook,

so that he will provide
the information they need.

Well, when we think
about a spy inside Facebook,

this is probably not a spy
we have in mind.

This is more like it.
(Laughter)

It's strange to think about
state sponsored spies

inside private companies,
inside commercial companies.

But there are several reasons
that make this thing easier.

One, it's much easier to get a job
inside Facebook than inside the NSA,

security clearance-wise.

The second thing is
that the risk is lower.

Being a spy inside Facebook
is not as risky

as being a spy inside the NSA.

And the third, in the past,
if you wanted to be a good spy,

if you wanted to hire a good spy,
you wanted this guy.

This is the guy that
knew everything, right?

You wanted someone that would be as senior
as possible inside the organization.

But today, in the age of information,

the people that actually have the power
are those people,

the hands-on guys, the engineers,
the support team.

Those people have unrestricted access
to information.

This is what you want.

This makes your life much easier,

if you want to put a spy
inside a commercial company.

And then the plot thickens,

because there are many other companies
that hold information that is valuable.

For example, you might put a spy
inside a mobile operator.

And he could listen to your phone calls,

and might be able to tell
where you're at at every given moment.

You might want to put a spy
inside a credit card company.

He will know everything about everyone

while being inside a credit card company,

and sometimes, your deepest secrets.

And there are many other companies

that hold valuable information
for intelligence.

So, where do we go from here?

Someone hacked my presentation.

(Laughter)

Good job guys.

Where do we go from here?

We have to understand that today,

commercial companies are actually
better at collecting data

than actual intelligence agencies.

Companies like Facebook and Google
are better at collecting our data

than actual intelligence agencies.

That's amazing.

Think about Facebook
facial recognition mechanism.

This is an amazing tool for spies.

Are you familiar with this mechanism?

It means that you can take
pictures of your friend

and Facebook will automatically tag them.

He will recognize your friends
and will automatically tag them.

So if you are a spy,
you could create this amazing camera,

and stand outside a secret agency,

and take pictures of people coming out

and immediately receive their names,
the names of their friends,

what are their deepest secrets,
where are they going to be.

Facebook is a dream place for spies.

You can see how much the spy is happy.

So where do we go from here?

Should we educate our children
only to use applications

that were made by countries
that we consider friendly?

Or should we just accept
that we are living in a world

that has no secrets?

What we can be sure of
is that nothing is free.

On the Internet nothing is free.

We either pay with money
or with our privacy.

Thank you.

(Applause)