Your phone company is watching
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0:02 - 0:07Hi. This is my mobile phone.
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0:08 - 0:12A mobile phone can change your life,
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0:12 - 0:16and gives you individual freedom.
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0:16 - 0:18With a mobile phone,
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0:18 - 0:23you can shoot a crime against humanity in Syria.
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0:23 - 0:24With a mobile phone,
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0:24 - 0:26you can tweet a message
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0:26 - 0:29and start a protest in Egypt.
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0:29 - 0:32And with a mobile phone,
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0:32 - 0:35you can record a song, load it up to
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0:35 - 0:37SoundCloud and become famous.
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0:37 - 0:42All this is possible with your mobile phone.
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0:42 - 0:44I'm a child of 1984,
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0:44 - 0:47and I live in the city of Berlin.
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0:47 - 0:52Let's go back to that time, to this city.
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0:52 - 0:54Here you can see
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0:54 - 0:56how hundreds of thousands of people
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0:56 - 1:00stood up and protested for change.
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1:00 - 1:03This is autumn 1989,
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1:03 - 1:08and imagine that all those people standing up
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1:08 - 1:11and protesting for change had a
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1:11 - 1:14mobile phone in their pocket.
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1:14 - 1:16Who in the room has a mobile phone with you?
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1:16 - 1:17Hold it up.
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1:17 - 1:20Hold your phones up, hold your phones up!
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1:20 - 1:23Hold it up. An Android, a Blackberry, wow.
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1:23 - 1:29That's a lot. Almost everybody today has a mobile phone.
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1:29 - 1:34But today I will talk about me and my mobile phone,
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1:34 - 1:38and how it changed my life.
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1:38 - 1:41And I will talk about this.
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1:41 - 1:46These are 35,830 lines of information.
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1:46 - 1:49Raw data.
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1:49 - 1:54And why are these informations there?
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1:54 - 1:57Because in the summer of 2006,
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1:57 - 2:00the E.U. Commission tabled a directive.
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2:00 - 2:05This directive [is] called Data Retention Directive.
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2:05 - 2:09This directive says that each phone company in Europe,
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2:09 - 2:14each Internet service company all over Europe,
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2:14 - 2:19has to store a wide range of information about the users.
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2:19 - 2:22Who calls whom? Who sends whom an email?
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2:22 - 2:24Who sends whom a text message?
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2:24 - 2:29And if you use your mobile phone, where you are.
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2:29 - 2:33All this information is stored for at least six months,
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2:33 - 2:36up to two years by your phone company
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2:36 - 2:43or your Internet service provider.
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2:43 - 2:46And all over Europe, people stood up and said,
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2:46 - 2:48"We don't want this."
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2:48 - 2:52They said, we don't want this data retention.
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2:52 - 2:55We want self-determination in the digital age,
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2:55 - 2:58and we don't want that phone companies and Internet companies
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2:58 - 3:02have to store all this information about us.
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3:02 - 3:05They were lawyers, journalists, priests,
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3:05 - 3:08they all said: "We don't want this."
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3:08 - 3:11And here you can see, like 10 thousands of people
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3:11 - 3:13went out on the streets of Berlin and said,
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3:13 - 3:17"Freedom, not fear."
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3:17 - 3:22And some even said, this would be Stasi 2.0.
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3:22 - 3:27Stasi was the secret police in East Germany.
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3:27 - 3:31And I also ask myself, does it really work?
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3:31 - 3:35Can they really store all this information about us?
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3:35 - 3:38Every time I use my mobile phone?
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3:38 - 3:42So I asked my phone company, Deutsche Telekom,
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3:42 - 3:46which was at that time the largest phone company in Germany,
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3:46 - 3:47and I asked them, please,
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3:47 - 3:51send me all the information you have stored about me.
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3:51 - 3:54And I asked them once, and I asked them again,
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3:54 - 3:57and I got no real answer. It was only blah blah answers.
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3:57 - 4:00But then I said, I want to have this information,
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4:00 - 4:05because this is my life you are protocoling.
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4:05 - 4:09So I decided to start a lawsuit agains them,
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4:09 - 4:12because I wanted to have this information.
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4:12 - 4:14But Deutsche Telekom said, no,
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4:14 - 4:17we will not give you this information.
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4:17 - 4:20So at the end, I had a settlement with them.
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4:20 - 4:22I'll put down the lawsuit
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4:22 - 4:25and they will send me all the information I ask for.
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4:25 - 4:27Because in the mean time,
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4:27 - 4:29the German Constitutional Court ruled
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4:29 - 4:33that the implementation of this E.U. directive
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4:33 - 4:37into German law was unconstitutional.
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4:37 - 4:40So I got this ugly brown envelope
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4:40 - 4:42with a C.D. inside.
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4:42 - 4:45And on the C.D., this was on.
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4:45 - 4:50Thirty-five thousand eight hundred thirty lines of information.
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4:50 - 4:53At first I saw it, and I said, okay,
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4:53 - 4:56it's a huge file. Okay.
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4:56 - 4:59But then after a while I realized,
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4:59 - 5:01this is my life.
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5:01 - 5:03This is six months of my life,
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5:03 - 5:07into this file.
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5:07 - 5:11So I was a little bit skeptical, what should I do with it?
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5:11 - 5:14Because you can see where I am,
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5:14 - 5:17where I sleep at night,
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5:17 - 5:21what I am doing.
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5:21 - 5:26But then I said, I want to go out with this information.
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5:26 - 5:28I want to make them public.
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5:28 - 5:31Because I want to show the people what does data retention mean.
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5:31 - 5:37So together with Zeit Online and Open Data City, I did this.
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5:37 - 5:41This is a visualization of six months of my life.
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5:41 - 5:44You can zoom in and zoom out,
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5:44 - 5:46you can wind back and fast forward.
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5:46 - 5:49You can see every step I take.
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5:49 - 5:52And you can even see
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5:52 - 5:55how I go from Frankfurt by train
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5:55 - 5:59to Cologne, and how often I call in between.
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5:59 - 6:04All this is possible with this information.
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6:04 - 6:07That's a little bit scary.
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6:09 - 6:15But it is not only about me.
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6:15 - 6:17It's about all of us.
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6:17 - 6:21First, it's only like, I call my wife and she calls me,
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6:21 - 6:25and we talk to each other a couple of times.
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6:25 - 6:27And then there are some friends calling me,
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6:27 - 6:29and they call each other.
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6:29 - 6:31And after a while you are calling you,
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6:31 - 6:33and you are calling you, and you have this great
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6:33 - 6:36communication network.
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6:36 - 6:40But you can see how your people are communicating with each other,
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6:40 - 6:44what times they call each other, when they go to bed.
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6:44 - 6:46You can see all of this.
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6:46 - 6:50You can see the hubs, like who are the leaders in the group.
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6:50 - 6:53If you have access to this information,
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6:53 - 6:57you can see what your society is doing.
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6:57 - 7:00If you have access to this information,
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7:00 - 7:04you can control your society.
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7:04 - 7:09This is a blueprint for countries like China and Iran.
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7:09 - 7:13This is a blueprint how to survey your society,
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7:13 - 7:16because you know who talks to whom,
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7:16 - 7:19who sends whom an email, all this is possible
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7:19 - 7:21if you have access to this information.
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7:21 - 7:25And this information is stored for at least six months
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7:25 - 7:29in Europe, up to two years.
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7:29 - 7:31Like I said at the beginning,
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7:31 - 7:34imagine that all those people on the streets of Berlin
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7:34 - 7:37in autumn of 1989
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7:37 - 7:40had a mobile phone in their pocket.
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7:40 - 7:44And the Stasi would have known who took part at this protest,
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7:44 - 7:46and if the Stasi would have known
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7:46 - 7:49who are the leaders behind it,
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7:49 - 7:52this may never have happened.
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7:52 - 7:55The fall of the Berlin Wall would maybe not [have been] there.
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7:55 - 7:59And in the aftermath, also not the fall of the Iron Curtain.
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7:59 - 8:04Because today, state agencies and companies
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8:04 - 8:08want to store as much information as they can get about us,
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8:08 - 8:10online and offline.
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8:10 - 8:14They want to have the possibility to track our lives,
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8:14 - 8:18and they want to store them for all time.
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8:18 - 8:22But self-determination and living in the digital age
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8:22 - 8:25is no contradiction.
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8:25 - 8:30But you have to fight for your self-determination today.
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8:30 - 8:34You have to fight for it every day.
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8:34 - 8:36So, when you go home,
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8:36 - 8:38tell your friends
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8:38 - 8:43that privacy is a value of the 21st century,
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8:43 - 8:46and it's not outdated.
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8:46 - 8:49When you go home, tell your representative
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8:49 - 8:54only because companies and state agencies have the possibility
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8:54 - 8:59to store certain information, they don't have to do it.
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8:59 - 9:01And if you don't believe me,
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9:01 - 9:09ask your phone company what information they store about you.
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9:09 - 9:16So, in the future, every time you use your mobile phone,
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9:16 - 9:19let it be a reminder to you
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9:19 - 9:23that you have to fight for self-determination in the digital age.
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9:23 - 9:24Thank you.
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9:24 - 9:33(Applause)
- Title:
- Your phone company is watching
- Speaker:
- Malte Spitz
- Description:
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What kind of data is your cell phone company collecting? Malte Spitz wasn’t too worried when he asked his operator in Germany to share information stored about him. Multiple unanswered requests and a lawsuit later, Spitz received 35,830 lines of code -- a detailed, nearly minute-by-minute account of half a year of his life.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 09:56
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Natta Yantasri edited English subtitles for Your phone company is watching | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Your phone company is watching | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Your phone company is watching | ||
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Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Your phone company is watching |