Hello everybody!
I'm gonna talk to you about a crazy concept today that you’ve probably never heard.
Escape the internet.
And I don't mean this about not using technology, I'm a huge lover of technology so that's not what this is about.
Who you’re seeing a picture of here is one of the best big wave surfers in the world
Alison, she also works for iSec Partners.
iSec Partners is a group of hackers that we actually pay to hack us.
They’re white hat hackers, as most of the hackers that I work with are.
My parents get kind of upset with me when I say this, but I can't help myself.
For the last fifteen years I've been lucky enough to help The Dark Tangent in running Defcon
and Defcon has been around for now 22 years.
And I have learned more from my education from the best hackers in the world
than I ever did at an Ivy League.
And we give these tools away for free to all of you, you can find them on our website.
So it is something that you can all learn.
And to make it even a little bit more accessible for those of you that aren't technologists
about five years ago I started a non-profit called Rootz Asylum, which is the kids version of Defcon.
We teach kids how to love being white hat hackers, and you can also find these talks online.
And they can teach you a lot of things that I've learned.
Such as, I can hear your calls now.
My daughter is outside listening to all of you that are not behaving Thor and are texting right now on your phones.
This is not NSA level stuff.
We show the kids how to do this for a 400 dollar device that can be carried around in a back-pack.
So it's not just the NSA.
Furthermore one of the things that we’ve shown the kids is
how to turn on your interfacing camera on your smartphone
your laptop and your TV from anywhere in the world.
Again, not spy level stuff.
So, when the summer of Snowden hit, my first reaction was: "duh, doesn't everybody know this?"
I was assuming that all of the new attacks, dozens and dozens of new attacks
that we show every year at Defcon, are used by the NSA.
And it's worse than that. They're used by 70 nation states at the very least around the world.
And even worse than that, there’s thousands and thousands
of data brokers out there that spend every minute
of every day trying to find every piece of information they can on you.
And this is the real threat to my friends and family.
Why do you think that the government went to technology companies
and to data brokers to help them with surveillance?
Because they are the masters of surveillance. This is what they do. This is how they make their money.
I've boycotted Facebook my whole life and I tell my friends and family to do the same.
And when I say boycott Facebook, I’m talking about boycott it for your personal conversations.
I think it's irresponsible for you to put photos up there of your children.
Facebook is a great tool for publishing something to the rest of the world
but that's the only way that you should be using it.
Furthermore, I think you're stupid to Skype. Really, I'm serious, have you read their privacy policy?
They have full permission to do whatever they want with the conversations you’re having with your mother
and your fellow human rights fighters.
And in fact, Thor has told us some horrifying stories about what governments
around the world do with these conversations.
And what’s happened is that privacy policies have switched to ownership policies.
They're not there to protect you anymore, they’re to take your information and own it
and be able to do whatever they want with it.
And that's where we are today.
And so if you meet me here today and we become good friends, please don't e-vite me to a party
because I don't want a shadow dossier of me, you're selling me out
it's rude to upload my contact information to these data bases.
Follow the money, these guys are making money off of you every single day
so when you use a service please ask yourself
how is this company making money?
And at the worst of this problem are the data brokers.
There's thousands of them, the worst of them being Experian. Experian does a lot of bad things.
Luckily Congress is looking at it pretty closely in the United States.
They sell lists of: dementia sufferers, rape victims, erectile sufferers, milk lovers, for seven cents a piece.
And pretty much what’s happened is the system is out of control.
I don't believe that the CEO's of these data brokers are evil people, but the system, like I said has run away from us.
I'm not sure how many of you have read 1984, but it reminds me a lot of where we are today.
The brainwashing that occurred in this book that Orwell wrote was that everyone in society
believed that war is peace, slavery is freedom and ignorance is strength.
It all seems really ridiculous to us now but I see a similar brainwashing that’s going on in our society today.
Especially in the United States. And that’s that they say that surveillance is your friend.
You have nothing to hide, and resistance is impossible.
"I've already put everything out there, what I am I to do?"
And what I've got to say to you is that surveillance is not your friend
and its not actually your friend even for big data analytics.
We can be a lot more efficient about understanding data if we don't save everything.
And you do have things to hide, most of you here know that.
But everyone out there has things to hide, like your birthdate, and your birthplace
and your children's every location and move.
These are things that we need to protect. If not for you, for those around you that are not as fortunate.
And also, "resistance is impossible", this is not true. Resistance is here. There's a lot of things you can do.
For instance if you have put your birthdate, birthplace and child's information
out there on the Internet, go and put misinformation out there.
Put a wrong birthdate, wrong pictures.
And you can mess with the system, and that is one way that you can really resist here.
Big Brother that is watching you, at every moment of every day.
This was an ad that Steve Jobs made in 1984, about 1984.
What we're seeing now is actually the same thing.
It's 2014 and we're in an Orwellian state, even in the United States.
We've lost these rights. This is one of my favorite books of all time. Cory Doctorow is one of my advisors.
He teaches us on really simple terms, this is a young adult novel, things like cryptography
and how you all should know about cryptography and be using it every single day of your lives.
And steganography as well. These are good tools for all of us to use around the world.
So I'm telling you, it's your duty to encrypt.
This is how we get power to the people and this is how we fight the surveillance state.
And so I have one last story for you here, which I think that some of you heard in the press conference.
But my ancestors helped start the United States
and one of them was a drummer boy for George Washington.
And the thing that they did together was establish the U.S. post office.
And the U.S. post office was different than the British post office at this time
because George Washington had a theory.
And he said “In order to build a strong social system, we must have two things.
We need to have communication without the government’s prying eyes
and freedom of information without government censorship.”
It's my belief that these are the most powerful tools that we can give to the world
and if we do, we can have evolution instead of revolution.
That's what I'm here to help you do.
I have some tips that didn't make it to the post office today but I hopefully will have them later for you
on ways that all of you can communicate in hostile environments
things that I've learned from the best hackers in the world.
I look forward to the next fifteen years of my life
learning from all of you who I consider the true superheroes of our day.
I am really honored to be here and I look forward to meeting each one of you. Thanks.