I study the future of crime and
terrorism and frankly I'm afraid I'm
afraid by what I see I sincerely want to
believe that technology can bring us the
techno utopia that we've been promised
but you see I've spent a career in law
enforcement and that's informed my
perspective on things I've been a street
police officer an undercover
investigator a counterterrorism
strategist and I've worked in more than
70 countries around the world I've had
to see more than my fair share of
violence and the darker underbelly of
society and that's informed my opinions
my work with criminals and terrorists
has actually been highly educational
they have taught me a lot and I'd like
to be able to share some of these
observations with you today I'm going to
show you the flip side of all those
technologies that we marvel at the ones
that we love in the hands of the Ted
community these are awesome
tools which will bring about great
change for our world but in the hands of
suicide bombers the future can look
quite different I started observing
technology and how criminals were using
it as a young patrol officer in those
days this was the height of Technology
laughs though you will all the drug
dealers and gang members with whom I
dealt had one of these long before any
police officer I knew did 20 years later
criminals are still using mobile phones
but they're also building their own
mobile phone networks like this one
which has been deployed in all 31 states
of Mexico by the narcos they have a
national encrypted radio communication
system think about that think about the
innovation that went into that think
about the infrastructure to build it
and then think about this why can't I
get a cell phone signal in San Francisco
how is this possible it makes no sense
we consistently underestimate what
criminals and terrorists can do
technology has made our world
increasingly open and for the most part
that's great but all of this openness
may have unintended consequences
consider the 2008 terrorist attack on
Mumbai the men that carried that attack
out were armed with ak-47s explosives
and hand grenades they threw these hand
grenades and innocent people as they sat
eating in cafes and waited to catch
trains on their way home from work but
heavy artillery is nothing new and
terrorist operations guns and bombs are
nothing new what was different this time
is the way that the terrorists used
modern information communications
technologies to locate additional
victims and slaughter them they were
armed with mobile phones they had
BlackBerry's they had access to
satellite imagery they had satellite
phones and they even had night-vision
goggles but perhaps their greatest
innovation was this we've all seen
pictures like this on television and in
the news this is an operation center and
the terrorists built their very own ops
center across the border in Pakistan
where they monitored the BBC al Jazeera
CNN and Indian local stations they also
monitored the internet and social media
to monitor the progress of their attacks
and how many people they had killed they
did all of this in real time the
innovation of the terrorist operation
center gave terrorists unparalleled
situational awareness and tactical
advantage over the police and over the
government what did they do with this
they used it to great effect at one
point during the 60 hour siege the
terrorists were going room to room
trying to find additional victims they
came upon a suite on the top floor of
the hotel and they kicked down the door
and they found
man hiding by his bed and they said to
him who are you and what are you doing
here and the man replied I'm just an
innocent schoolteacher of course the
terrorists know that no Indian
schoolteacher stays at a suite in the
Taj they picked up his identification
and they phoned his name in to the
terrorist war room where the terrorist
war room googled him and found a picture
and called their operatives on the
ground and said your hostage is a heavy
set is he bald in front does he wear
glasses yes yes yes cane the answers the
OP Center had found him and they had a
match he was not a schoolteacher he was
the second wealthiest businessman in
India and after discovering this
information the terrorist war room gave
the order to the terrorists on the
ground in Mumbai we all worry about our
privacy settings on Facebook but the
fact of the matter is our openness can
be used against us terrorists are doing
this a search engine can determine who
shall live and who shall die this is the
world that we live in
during the Mumbai siege tariffs were so
dependent on technology that several
witnesses reported that as the
terrorists were shooting hostages with
one hand they were checking their mobile
phone messages in the very other hand in
the end 300 people were gravely wounded
and over 172 men women and children lost
their lives that day think about what
happened during this 60 hour siege on
Mumbai ten men armed not just with
weapons but with technology were able to
bring a city of 20 million people to a
standstill ten people brought 20 million
people to a standstill and this
travelled around the world
this is what radicals can do with
openness this was done nearly four years
ago
what could terrorists do today with the
technologies available that we have what
will they do tomorrow the ability of one
to affect many is scaling exponentially
and it's scaling for good and it's
scaling for evil it's not just about
terrorism though there's also been a big
paradigm shift in crime you see you can
now commit more crime as well in the old
days it was a knife and a gun then
criminals moved to robbing trains you
could rob 200 people on a train a great
innovation moving forward the internet
allowed things to scale even more in
fact many of you remember the recent
Sony Playstation hack in that incident
over 100 million people were robbed
think about that when in the history of
humanity has it ever been possible for
one person to rob 100 million of course
it's not just about stealing things
there are other avenues of technology
that criminals can exploit many of you
will remember this super cute video from
the last it but not all quadcopter
swarms are so nice and cute they'd all
all have drumsticks some can be armed
with HD cameras and do counter
surveillance on protesters or as in this
little bit of movie magic quad copters
can be loaded with firearms and
automatic weapons little robots are cute
when they play music to you when they
swarm and chase you down the block to
shoot you a little bit less so of course
criminals and terrorists weren't the
first to give guns to robots we know
where that started but they're adapting
quickly recently the FBI