Journalist Annie Jacobsen: Biometrics and the Surveillance State

become a sustaining member of the commonwealth  club for just 10 a month join today hello and welcome to today's online program  from the commonwealth club of california   i'm john zieber the club's vice  president of media and editorial   the commonwealth club has of course shifted  from in-person programs to online events during   the pandemic this is the latest more than  360 online programs we have presented since   march and we are grateful to our viewers for  making these programs possible we appreciate   your considering supporting the club and if you  wish to do so please text the word donate to 415-329-4231 or visit the club's  website at commonwealthglove.org   if you are watching our program live on youtube  today we invite you to submit questions for our   guests via the chat box on your youtube  screen and after the conversation between   our two guests i'll return and get to  as many of those questions as possible   now today's program features annie jacobson a  journalist former contributing editor to the   editor to the los angeles times magazine  and author of the new book first platoon   she will be in conversation with max brooks a  fellow at the modern war institute at west point   and author of the books world war z and evolution  annie jacobson is well known for her bestsellers   the pentagon's brain area 51 and operation  paperclip in her latest book first platoon she   investigates the age of biometrics and technology  that will allow the government to identify anyone   anywhere at any time she delves into the  pentagon's abilities to utilize iris scans   fingerprint scans voice patterning detection by  order gait and more to track human patterns as   well as the ethical questions raised by what ms ms  jacobson calls a burgeoning surveillance state now   as i mentioned she'll be talking with max brooks  who's also a fellow at the atlantic council's   brent scowcroft center for strategy and security  now let's welcome andy jacobson and max brooks   hello everybody thanks for uh zooming in uh i  confess that i just read annie's book or i listen   to it and it's it's an amazing read but i'm not  gonna i'm gonna tell you what it's about uh annie   i want you to i want you to jump in and just give  us just a quick overview of what awesomeness lies   within these pages well first of all thanks to the  commonwealth commonwealth club for having us and   max for having this conversation i am a reader and  fan of your work and look forward to talking about   some really interesting things that are affecting  all of us today and the story of first platoon   while it is set in afghanistan and tells the  story of a group of very young soldiers who are   whose deployment to afghanistan ends abruptly in  catastrophe and tragedy it also tells the story   about the defense department's quest to build  the most powerful biometric database in the world   in order to tag track and locate people and here's  the rub before they commit a crime and that's why   i think this story is just as important today  as it was in 2012 when the boys went through   what they went through now uh for those of us who  are not award-winning los angeles times authors   uh what the hell is biometrics just give us a  quick rundown what are we talking about here   um and you know that was the very first  question i asked when i first learned about this   biometrics human measurements so the most obvious  ones are fingerprints iris scans facial images   and dna and when i say obvious those are  the favored biometrics of both the fbi   and the defense department right now  but as we heard in the introduction   uh biometrics are expanding you know to include  the shape of the ear the patterns on your veins   the heartbeat your individual unique heartbeat  these are all biometrics that can be taken   without your knowledge or consent unwittingly the  defense department calls it offset technology but   the point of all of it is to create these  massive catalogues of individual people   once upon a time these catalogs that  belonged to the fbi these big databases   had only criminals in them and that was explained  to me by the many special agents with the fbi that   i interviewed for the book but now these big data  databases have information biometric information   on all of us long before we ever commit a  crime and that really brings to bear this   idea that we're going to talk about which is what  is security and what is straight-up surveillance   right and so from the book uh you described  the id that the whole point of this was that   if you if you swept up into an afghan  the us military went to an afghan village   and then they could discern through biometrics  through fingerprint and dna and as you say   in the book dna is oh is it 99.10 nines  accurate to tell say uh an afghan farmer   from an insurgent because if they if they  captured insurgents fingerprinted them uh   if they were released or if they escaped we knew  the difference now as scary as all this sounds   it also sounds like something as scientific as  dna would be able to counteract things like racial   profiling uh racism uh politics because we know  that that certainly united states in the past many   people have been sent to prison um because of uh  corruption bias what not justice was not served   and we also we know that with the advent of dna uh  many people sitting on death row were exonerated   so is it is it inherently bad  or is there a good and bad   you know you raise this incredibly important issue  to all of this which is what is the intention   and because i tell the origin story here of about  defense department biometrics i think it allows   readers to kind of ask those very questions and  then explore them as we you know move forward   and in your own life and in society the original  idea the fbi wanted to help the defense department   to be able to do exactly what you're talking  about to be able to identify bomb makers saying   you know this is criminalistics this is a this  is law and order base this is a great idea   but that very quickly went astray when the defense  department said to most of the fbi special agents   who were working with them originally thanks so  much for the help but we're going to actually   go forward on our own and the reason that  created so many problems was because the   fbi's database is are governed by laws enacted by  congress so there's oversight there's legislation   um you can't just stop somebody at a routine  traffic stop and say open your mouth i'd like to   take your dna to see if you're wanted for rape in  another state okay but the defense department has   no such oversight and no such guidelines and so  it gets very complex chaotic and ultimately out of   control very fast because there's no one watching  the watchers right and we should we should state   um we should remind everyone that the whole reason  after 9 11 the global war on terror was given   to the defense department that was taken  away from the fbi was because uh the defense   department overseas could move much quicker  with much less regulations because up until 9 11   uh the terrorists were watched encountered by  the fbi uh but they lost that right because   there was too much oversight and there were too  many legal loopholes it was believed that we   could prosecute the war on terror quicker but as  you say now it's coming it's coming back here uh   so now what and you you just earlier said the most  two most important words consent and knowledge   so the danger is not that our government  is building a biometric database it's that   they could potentially build one without  us knowing and without our permission so   what safeguards are in place and what  safeguards do you think need to be in place well it's tricky i mean yeah back up for a moment  about the idea that wow isn't it great if we just   have a big biometric database of all of us because  you have to stop and say is that is that even a   good idea i mean you know people used to be able  to live off the grid they used to be able to say   thank you i don't want anything to do with law  enforcement with the fbi with i just want to live   my life and be a good citizen i'll pay my taxes  but leave me alone and that's kind of a foundation   of you know western democracy that you have that  option and what we're seeing happen now with these   biometric databases i mean you  can see it just right now with   all these in insurrectionists being identified  from social media through facial images which is   a biometric once upon a time it was a mug  shot then it moved to be you know facial   images and now we have facial recognition  software and so at the heart of the matter   before you even get to is this a good idea or  is this a bad idea because yes we should as you   know the people be able to make these decisions  but ultimately they get argued in the courts and   what we're seeing happening is that the arguments  in the courts about right to privacy about whether   or not um people are being you know whether if if  your photo is taken while you're walking down the   street and that later comes into play in a very  public way has your right to privacy been violated   those fourth amendment questions are being debated  in the courts at a snail's pace in the meantime   you have these issues of you know  civilian justice civilian law and order   happening at science fiction like speed just like  we have seen in the past week the big fear among   among the lawyers that i speak to on this  is that will some of these cases against   the insurrectionists could they potentially be  thrown out because of these right to privacy   issues because i mean that's the fruit of the  poisonous tree argument that if what you if what   you garnered to build your case on was an illegal  search and seizure then perhaps it can't be used   right right and it seems like there are there  are clearly val valuable arguments to be made on   both sides uh because like you said you can't you  can't live off the grid anymore uh even if you're   a law buying citizen but by the same token uh  ted kaczynski lived off the grid that's right   so it seems it seems that you could make an  argument for both sides but it seems like   uh the arguments themselves are not keeping pace  with the science and it reminds me of the speech   that eisenhower made about nuclear weapons that  when he was born the weapons of his childhood   were the musket in the cannon and now it is  the hydrogen bomb and he warned us he warned us   that and i can say this as a writer i can tell  you all the great science fiction of the 1950s and   60s was all about our power racing ahead of our  wisdom but what do you as someone who studied this   think could be done for our our society our rights  our laws our national discussion to catch up how   do we do that okay so let me tell you the origin  story of the fingerprints for the for the defense   department and i find this astonishing because  it's almost like a puzzle within a puzzle you   don't really know the answer so it goes like this  um this is the moment where the defense department   started its biometrics program shortly and i and i  tell the story from my interviews with the special   agent who is in charge of this program named paul  shannon and he was working in the rubble of the   trade center after the planes had taken them down  after 9 11 and it was his job as an fbi agent to   locate finger printable body parts that's what a  grim job it was and at the time he learned that   the cia the para military organization and the  special operators were going into afghanistan and   we're going to be you know going after terrorists  within weeks and paul shannon said to himself   we've got to get the fingerprints the biometrics  of the fighters leaving the battlefield because   these guys are going to be really important  and they're going to scatter that's the basic   premise of asymmetric warfare you can just  disappear into the crowd and it's such a good idea   that the director of the fbi gives paul shannon  and a couple other special agents his gulf stream   to go to pakistan and fingerprint the fighters  that have been captured leaving the battlefield   all of whom claimed oh i'm just one of  you know i'm just a cook because they were   captured near and around bin laden shannon  fingerprints all these guys takes their dna   takes their photographs hand  carries it back to the fbi   and the system the information goes into  the database well not a few months later he   gets a phone call that says you're not going to  believe this one of those 30 terrorists in that   you know little tiny prison secret prison  in pakistan he's been arrested in the united   states he's in the fbi's database which has to  mean he was here in the united states and this   is astonishing and as it turns out and i tell  the longer version of the book but this was   a man by the name of mohammed al-qatani who  was in fact supposed to be the 20th hijacker on   911 there were 19 hijackers mohammed el catani  was stopped at the border was you know the the   customs and border patrol agent was suspicious of  him rejected him and his fingerprints were taken   imagine what the dod must have thought in that  moment this was a one in six billion person match   hit and so the long-winded that's a long-winded  answer to my god imagine the good it could do   if we have these databases and know who these  individuals are and you can stop them it could be   the difference between a terrorist attack but that  was a very long time ago and technology like you   said has moved forward at this incredible speed  and we're now in a position where these databases   are too big they're controlled by a very small  number of people and understood by even fewer   right well it sounds like this is the age-old  argument of in in any democratic society of uh   where is the power it's the same thing with with  nuclear weapons it's the reason that um that every   every time a nuclear missile drill is conducted it  has to have two keys by two separate people that   have to agree little things like that it's the  same reason that a policeman must read you your   miranda rights and have you not been miranda in  you can walk uh so we have these safeguards but   uh it sounds like this is moving very  fast and i think i'd like to not segue but   point out that at least if this is our government  keeping a database on us there are safeguards   maybe they don't move so fast but i elect  these representatives who elect the judges   and if i don't like the way things are going well  maybe i should get more of my friends to vote and   maybe i should pay more attention in civics class  however these massive databases are also in the   private sector and we learned this right after 9  11 we learned that while we were getting so angry   at the bush administration for collecting our data  from our online searches google one of our biggest   companies has based its entire business model  on spying on us and collecting big data so what   safeguards are there and and just another fine  point these many of these corporations are global   china owns tick tock so every kid that goes on  tick tock china is building a database on them   so in the private sector what are the safeguards  to protect our privacy well there are almost none   and that is that's the bad news and the bad news  because and i think even worse than the lack of   safeguards is the utter lack of transparency  right because the and or you could you could   say transparency or you could say desire to know i  mean you know we could sit here and geek out about   biometrics and we are but at the end of the day  a lot of people say oh my god i've got you know   dinner to make and the laundry to deal with  and wait a minute you want me to know about   you know these high falutin high technology big  data systems i'm just going to trust that this   is being taken care of by someone and i think the  story of first platoon makes explicitly clear in   just a simple tale of a group of young soldiers in  afghanistan and the aftermath of what happened how   all of those ideas that i'm being taken care of  that you just said as well are actually not true   they're not in place they're not true and the  system is spiraling out of control far faster   than anyone is really catching up with  with the a way in which to understand these   systems in a simple manner not just a esoteric um  asymmetric warfare geek manner well you you have   the story one of one of the the through lines of  the book is a war crime that and we won't spoil it   uh but a war crime has been committed and uh  the perpetrator was sent to federal prison   however there was a pardon on the table and  the pardon is based not on the biometric data   but as i understand it a lie about the biometric  data it's actually the biometrics that would have   done the right thing the science itself  would have kept this murderer in prison   but it's the people who are able to lie about  it the same way they cover up any evidence   uh or what not so it's it's absolutely  right it's a twist on this idea that   science doesn't lie which it doesn't but humans  lie and so as you create a more and more rarefied   world where no one understands biometrics they  don't understand how that how they can be captured   they don't understand where the  information goes once it is captured   then ultimately that information can be  used against you and you the the whole world   with the example of the rogue army officer i  tell in first platoon he goes to leavenworth   convicted of a double murder war crimes as is  appropriate and if you read the book you can   it's all pulled from the trial transcripts and  you can make that decision for yourself you can   also decide whether whether whether his sentence  was fair but he is convicted he goes to prison   and then he is released after president trump is  presented with quote unquote dna that proved that   the people that he killed were not civilians but  in fact terrorist bomb makers i mean it's it's   sort of hijacking the public's sentiments about  war and obligation and and the role of young   soldiers in a foreign country to fight america's  war it's just taking all of it turning it upside   down and manipulating the reality of the situation  simply because people are too busy to understand   what's going on but i urge everyone to just pay  the tiniest bit of attention because at the end of   the day it's not as calm it's a little bit like  the emperor's new clothes it's not as complex   as it's made out to be yeah and you know you  keep coming back to the idea that we're busy   and it seems like this is this is the  issue and this is this is just basic   human psychology that we tend to not want to  deal with the problem until we have no choice   and you could argue whether that is true or  not but you could argue that the reason that   kennedy and khrushchev did not destroy the  world was because of hiroshima and nagasaki   hiroshima nagasaki not happened had it just been  a a bomb in an empty desert without the horrific   casualties that we could have seen kennedy and  khrushchev would not have been able to imagine   that sort of devastation all around the world so  with nuclear weapons you got a bank and we put in   the safeguards and as a result we have had not had  a nuclear explosion in anger since 1945 but this   seems like if i understand this this seems  like a slow creep this seems like something   that it just happens and happens it happens  and one day you wake up and you realize   oh wow my dna is everywhere and and there's  a story i tell in the book that is very   simple and frightening where involving dna  because dna as a biometric is both powerful   um in the criminal justice system to be able  to gather you know evidence from a crime scene   that a perpetrator left behind no doubt this  is a fundamental of rule of law the systems   have moved from taking two years to identify  to 94 minutes you can now do a rapid dna test   thanks to dod money um but i tell the story in  the book which was originally reported by two new   york times reporters where a 12 year old boy was  called into detectives in new york city based on   his suspected involvement in a felony crime he's  offered a mcdonald's soda which he accepts and   when he's done with it the detective wearing  rubber gloves takes it away takes the straw out   pulls cell samples from his lips and  that 12 year old boy his genetic foot   fingerprint goes in to a database he was later  proven to have nothing to do with the crime but   it took his mother an extraordinary amount of  time in the help of a big legal firm to get her   son's genetic information out of a database that  happens can happen to any of us and as you say   it sounds a lot like once that happens it's far  too late right and it seems it seems like we would   need uh once again it's not the science  it's the transparency behind it because   when you are brought in when you are arrested uh  and you and you're brought to the police station   they fingerprint you you don't get a say on  that but you know you're being fingerprinted so it sounds like there needs to at  least be if not consent awareness   that you are being genetically fingerprinted  so at least you know that that is happening so   at least then your lawyers have the ability to  trace that because like you said it was the dna   that got him off and you also mentioned in the  book dna got the golden state killer and if you   can just talk for a minute about that that's the  other side of where dna can be a force for good   yes and i think i mean the concept here that  you're hitting upon is identity dominance   and that's why it's in the title of the book  first platoon a story of modern war in the age   of identity dominance this idea that the defense  department or any law enforcement organization for   that matter wants to dominate my identity that's  a bit frightening and what it means is that they   can and perhaps will have all this disparate  pieces of information about me about you about   anyone at their fingertips pun intended to be  able to then dominate the situation when when the   when the when the question arises is this person  guilty or not and that is something that merits a   much larger that discussion than is going on right  now but you had a question in there that i forgot   i i was talking about uh because we talked about  a dna and i was saying that you also mentioned in   the book about when it is a force for good and  that you have several examples so first talk   just for a second about the golden state killer uh  because when we say they have our dna oh god what   do they know what do they know well by the same  token there are people who have something to hide   and have got away with it for what 50 40 years  tell us about about that that story is really   interesting to me for two reasons one i tell  the origin story of rapid dna in first platoon   through the eyes of its inventor a man named dr  richard selden a harvard educated microbiologist   and again it brings up that theme of like you  know frankenstein versus dr frankenstein like   when scientists create something that they believe  is for good and it gets out of their control   and you know dr selden certainly presents a great  case that what he believes he has done with rapid   dna the ability to determine someone's dna in 94  minutes what that means is the perp that's in the   police station is still in the police station  after 94 minutes and you're you're waiting for   the test results whereas before it used to take up  to 24 months the guy would be in the wind by then   so you have this idea that dna is moving  faster than we can keep up with and   the golden state killer was found through this  you know civilian company called jed match just   two retired businessmen in florida  who were you know sort of history um   ancestry fans and they wanted to help  build a database whereby other people   could figure out who their ancestors were  again for the greater good this idea that   you know maybe people who had been adopted that  were searching for their birth parents and it   became extraordinarily popular overnight but what  was unknown to all the users was at the same time   state and federal law enforcement agencies  were using this database taking samples of   old you know dna maybe the cigarette butt  of a perp of something left behind at a   at a murder scene and they were using this  database to try to do what is called familial   genotyping which is to figure out who people  are based on who their family members are   and this is how the golden state killer was found  after decades on the loose but what i also thought   was particularly interesting about that was even  dr richard selton who invented the rapid dna test   he told me that he could not have foreseen what  jed match was capable with familial genotyping   and that's where we're talking about you know  annie and max can't think through these ideas   and what they might mean and what might be next  and what they might foretell and your analogy   with eisenhower and the bomb is so important  here if the actual scientists can't imagine   my god what will become of this what monsters can  be unleashed and that's not again meant to just   terrify people it's that old thing of to quote  eisenhower you know that it's the knowledgeable   it's the informed public i'm paraphrasing him that  is the key component to making a democracy work   yeah and we should just take a step back and and  remember that that's why we have these systems   because there's different types of intelligence  and and you and i are both we know the scientists   we know scientists we've worked with them uh  we also know that they get lost in their own   work and they get very excited about they you  know they are not horizontal thinkers who see   the big picture they are vertical thinkers they  drill down oppenheimer who invented the atom bomb   had to actually watch it go off before he said  my god what have we done really you didn't know   this when you were you're working with your little  rubik's cube you had to blow it up thanks hoppy so   that's why we have judges and courts and  lawyers and journalists one of the most   important factors of a democracy journalists  who can inform schmucks like me that go oh wow   and i just i want you to talk for just another  minute because while we're talking about our   society let's jump back to afghanistan another  example is as i think i remember from 24 hours ago   when biometrics was a force for good that helped  encounter insurgency so talk a little bit about   the man in the purple hat well you know i on  the one hand you have these young soldiers   capturing biometrics on the ground of civilian  insurgents alike the program in afghanistan it was   secretive not secret was for the defense  department to capture eighty percent of the   biometrics on eighty percent of all of afghanistan  so that that's that catalog that has to exist   then on the other hand you have what is called  persistent ground surveillance which is actually   an overhead system in an aerostat which is a big  giant balloon or other ways drones and things   whereby full motion video so that's video  with geo-location data embedded inside of it   tracking individual people who are anonymous  on the ground but all of this data needs to be   processed by ai by you know intelligent machines  that are run by a software system called palantir   because no human can keep track of even one  one zillionth of this let alone all of it and   so these two systems are kind of working hand in  glove and what was shocking to me interviewing the   the persistent ground surveillance  operators they're called pages operators   they were actually watching the movement  step by step of the soldiers in first platoon   this was completely unknown to any of the soldiers  and yet the peaches operators are watching the   soldiers every time they step off the outpost  technically so that they can warn them of ieds   that are buried in the ground because they  have all of that mapped or at least a lot of it   it didn't work out well that way at all as you  can read in the book and at the same time the   peaches operators are tracking individuals  who they think might be insurgents and that   comes to the story of the man in the purple hat  and the peaches operator named kevin gave me a   series of these remarkable interviews whereby  he's watching this man in the purple hat and he   literally has to watch everything he watches him  go to the bathroom there's no indoor bathrooms   in this area of afghanistan so everyone goes to  the bathroom outside he's watching him do that   he's watching him pray he's watching him watch it  wash his clothes in the river he's watching him go   home and he's always wearing a purple hat what the  pegis operator is looking for is what are called   three interactions with the earth then that  meets the qualifications to kill the man   the government's methodology in afghanistan is  called find fix finish the biometric systems find   and the pegis operators fix them they figure  out where they are and then a drone is called   in or another form of aircraft to finish them  meaning kill them and i tell the story of the   man in the purple hat because it indicates  how much can go wrong the peaches operator   has been watching this man they know he's a  terrorist they're going to kill him and he   comes into the outpost one day and his colleague  says we're about to kill the man in the purple hat   and kevin the peaches operator says wait um he  notices that the man in the purple hat is on a   very expensive tractor the kind that really can  only be used by an actual farmer and i won't give   away the whole story but suffice to say the man in  the purple hat became came extraordinary clothes   the the farmer on the tractor was mistaken for the  man in the purple hat and became extraordinarily   came extraordinary close to being executed this  is the kind of thing that can go wrong right   right because once you're dead you can't come back  you can't say oh we made a mistake and you can't   say check my fingerprints it wasn't me it wasn't  me no it's too late when you use lethal force   uh there's no coming back from from deadly force  but now certainly after the capital insurgency it   looks like we are entering a new phase of domestic  terrorism which we haven't seen since the 1970s   you know even my generation gen  x is too young to remember a time   when there were bombs going off all the time when  there were homegrown left lefty insurgents groups   everywhere and now the right is seems to be  doing it but now that we enter this new phase   how do you see biometrics being used in a way that  protects people's rights but also keeps people   safe because you know let's remember when we talk  about uh surveillance law enforcement we're not   just talking about uh beating up poor people or  brown people who are innocent we're also talking   about as you mentioned in the book the guy who  used to blow up abortion clinics we are talking   about stopping someone from going into the next  black church with an ak-47 uh going into the next   synagogue we are stopping the next person the next  timothy mcveigh so how do we do that do you see   this but at the same time uh not looking at  all of us going to the bathroom every day   i mean these biometric systems absolutely  can be used part and parcel to rule of law   as it is intended to work in a western  democracy i mean you have to have a   situation it's part of the social contract  to have one group of people in charge   and allowed to enforce rules and laws that's the  basic proponent and so in an interesting way if   we want to be hopeful which i think we should be  we can look at the situation that is upon us now   whereby we have we we saw both ends of the  spectrum in terms of protests unrest and you   know civil unrest we've seen it since june and  it culminated um january this past you know just   a few a few weeks ago at the capitol and let's  see what law enforcement does with the biometric   tracking systems but i think it's going to be  a great opportunity for everyone to be involved   and to put their sort of best western style  rule of law hat on and say to themselves   you know where does privacy factor into this  and what rights am i willing to give up for the   greater good of society because that's the fundam  that's like a foundation since the age of reason   we are all we agree as a society to give up a  little bit of our freedom for a little bit of   security and the line always moves you know we  have this absolutely in the 60s we thought that   cops were going too far we even called it gestapo  tactics so we we put in all these great rights and   then in the 70s maybe we went a little bit too  far in the other way and a lot of bad guys got   out but now the needle shifts and the needle is  always shifting in our country and that's a good   healthy thing but if you can you don't really  talk about it as much in the book but clearly   you know what you're talking about just talk for a  few minutes about a country that doesn't have that   back and forth that we have talk about the chinese  their big data and the trust index that they are   now building among their citizens well china is  the best example of all that can go wrong and   china specifically has a program called physicals  for all and this was a biometric tracking program   to catalog every single chinese person of uyghur  descent and it is estimated that there that they   now china has a database of two million weekers  and this includes their fingerprints facial images   iris scans and dna and the frightening  part about the dna it's believed that   in that way we talked about what jed match can do  that the chinese government is doing to actually   use the dna to determine who else might be  of weaker blood which sounds very much to me   like what went on in nazi germany and this is a  frightening program it's very dangerous and when   it came to bear by some great journalists just a  few years ago that have been covering this story   human rights organizations around the world went  wild with you know this is so terrible not one   single place out of all the research i did did i  ever see a human rights person make the connection   that this program is almost precisely out of  the defense department playbook in afghanistan   right so we should say that they they are  using without any safeguards they are using   biometric information to racially  profile yes an entire community and   i don't know whether you know this but it  would seem that the chinese communist party   would then have a surveillance  state within a surveillance state   which would then curtail movements which would  then curtail jobs which keeps an entire community   essentially in a giant re-education camp so to  my fellow liberals who i love let us all remember   that when we all tweet about israel we are doing  this on a phone made in a country that's putting   two million muslims in a re-education camp i saw  photographs of uyghur cemeteries being dug up and   the idea very frightening idea is that the chinese  government is going as far as pulling up you know   skeletal remains so as to get dna and build out  this database to racially profile anyone who is   even the slightest hint of weaker descent and this  is just you know frightening on top of frightening   right and this is the country that makes our  shoes and our iphones and everything else and   we su and we don't talk about boycotting or  divesting or anything like that because god   forbid we lose these cheaply they could be made in  flint michigan but clutch the pearls we might have   to pay a little bit more oh no this time for some  questions from our online audience um and here's   a question really for i'll be interested in either  of you or both of you excuse me responding to and   that is what impacts have biometrics had on your  work you know any as a journalist and a researcher   uh you know max and military strategy and of  course defeating the zombie menace um has it had   any impact noticeably on your work or your access  to sources and things like that annie you first well you know i wrote a whole  book about it but um but you know um i think that max should tell us  about how it affects science fiction because   sometimes you can learn as much about a subject  reading science fiction as you can read it as you   can reading science fact well you know the role  of the storyteller uh is hopefully to teach us   something if we do our job right but we all have  an ego defense mechanism sometimes if you if you   give people a little bit too much truth um people  tend to tune out uh but if you wrap it in a veneer   then you are able to get people just familiar you  introduce them to something novel which annie does   in her book she talks about minority report  which science fiction movie but minority report   introduces us to the notion of pre-crime you're  going to commit a crime and it really is a and now   it's something we really have to deal with because  as i was reading this part of the book i thought   oh my god i was literally hearing on cnn the story  that the fbi had been tracking much more dangerous   not protesters but insurgents who are uh who are  who are arming and preparing to go to washington   dc and the fbi got in their way and said listen  you haven't committed a crime yet but we know   what you're planning and if you go to dc you will  be arrested and they didn't go and as a result a   lot of shots were not fired and a lot of blood was  not spilled so that was minority report in action   i mean i can tell you biometrics um it happens to  me in real life uh as someone who after 9 11 has   been pulled out of god knows how many airlines  oh wow i can't tell how many flights i've been   pulled off of in line uh just because i mean  look at me in the days after 9 11 wow was i   yanked off and that went away for a while and then  when i was coming back from london with my family   when i went when i flew into the uk  you know you have to look through   and then they take the picture and then first  and then when i was waiting to get on my flight   someone from british airways came in with a list  and basically said you you you you and pulled us   all out and we all just sit in a little room and  my poor little boy was scared to death did why are   they taking daddy away my wife's freaking out and  i'm sitting in the room with everyone we're all   uh different countries and we're all asking each  other where did you go what what we all know about   algorithms what did you trip what did you do this  did i go here and i looked around and i realized   we're all [ __ ] when no blondie's there no  blonde hair and blue eyes everybody was either   my shade or darker and because i had no passenger  bill of biometric rights that was read to me   i don't know and i think that's something that  we have to remember the algorithms the big data   that that flags someone it's not there yet   it's not perfect this is what annie's trying  to warn us about is it's still a machine and   you still need human beings to look it over  and say wait a minute your algorithm is wrong   and if we don't fix this you could destroy lives  i mean the worst thing that happened to me was   some time out of my day but what if it's something  bigger what if it's a drone strike what if the fbi   shows up at someone's door uh and that person god  forbid gets angry this is america we're all armed   flashes a gun and is then shot so i think i  think what annie is trying to tell us is that   biometrics as a tool of law enforcement is not  inherently bad or good but when any new tool   comes into the toolbox of society it must be  examined and debated by all okay someone asks   are there any ways to fake out or get around  biometrics they say they're asking for a friend   um or just headed in the direction of no  way to stay off a government's radar annie   there's almost no way to stay off the government's  radar however um when i was writing the book i   went to several different uh biometric conferences  one of which was uh with an emphasis on dna   and here a little detail that could be straight  out of science fiction but is science fact   um you know you could you could never fake your  dna right well i listened to the story of a man   who had undergone a bone marrow transplant for a  very severe form of cancer and over time his dna   shifted to that of the person who provided him  with the bone marrow transplant and my first   thought was my god this is what the arch criminals  you know the top level you know russian spies are   going to begin doing to be able to escape that  biometric capture net what i will say is the   book i wrote before this was called surprise  kill vanish and it was about cia paramilitary   operators and i traveled to a number of foreign  countries with a number of them while i was   working on the book including cuba and vietnam and  let's just say there was a lot of tension going   through those iris scans that max is talking  about because all of them had big profiles   yeah i mean um i can tell you  that in the work that i've done   uh there's always a low-tech solution solving  a big solution this is the history of warfare   especially in the history of the united  states at war we always we love big tech   that's our bread and butter and constantly in  warfare we come up against an enemy that has   a stone age solution now we thought when we went  and annie knows this when we went to afghanistan   we thought with drones especially drones armed  with thermal cameras with heat signatures the   day of the ambush was gone there was just no way  we could just track them we didn't realize someone   had invented the wool blanket that the taliban  uses a nice big thick wool blanket that it drapes   they drape over themselves at night when they  sleep under it can't see them so there are ways so someone asked you and that you annie may  have just really kind of said this um but do   you think we will eventually have this full  identification and tracking of all citizens   that we're seeing china kind of rule  out i mean is this an inevitable thing   and i want to take to that if it could  another question from the audience which is   is this likely to continue a pace under biden  as it was under trump as it was under obama   i think that the i think the biometric systems  are non-partisan i think the rule of law   issues um you know have a little more to do on  par they they access on party lines but i think   that we're only going to see more biometric  systems because the big data systems that are   processing the data that's the that's where  so much of the money is and so it's like the   defense department military industrial complex  you know or as one defense department insider   told me they call it the self-licking  ice cream cone um there are 85 million   ground-based surveillance cameras in the united  states we have the largest per capita surveillance   state and that's larger than china per capita i i  can say that this this goes back to a conversation   i had with a friend of mine in the intelligence  community once uh the torture scandals came out   in guantanamo bay and abu ghraib because remember  the bush administration's argument was uh   we need to torture these people we need to  waterboard them because god forbid there's a   ticking bomb and if we don't the bomb's going to  go off and kill people so we are torturing people   to save lives and i asked my friend i said has  that ever happened have lives ever been saved   by torture he said well i can't obviously tell  you that i said well then we don't have a debate   that is only a debate if there are two sides to  an argument and when it comes to power any form   of power you in our society it needs to be open  and clear and then we the voter can decide what   is best for us but the bush administration uh  set the precedent of the sheepdog saying well   we know better you don't need to know we got  this and we got this doesn't work in a free   and open society then there's no debate so i'm  i think that there needs to be full transparency   and there needs to be a reckoning every  time something new comes in the toolbox   full transparency how does that work in a time of  when you've got very active forces misinforming   the public active force we've all seen these  people saying ah the coveted vaccine it's got   biomarkers on it yeah well that that's what  annie was saying that's this is in this is   the crux of the climax of annie's book is  this war crime is doubled down not by bad   science or by some evil who do voodoo technology  just people lying just people lying for politics   and i've done a lot of work on bio warfare uh  because we talk about vaccines and really it   it takes people of courage like we've seen  like in liz cheney to stand up to this fanatics   and the self servers on their side and we got  plenty of fanatics and self servers on our side   so it's going to take people in the  middle to be able to take on the wings   and say no no no maybe that hurts me but that's  not true that's john mccain saying to that woman   no ma'am he's not an arab he's an american who  loves his country as much as i love my country   and he lost the election in that moment but he  gained back his soul and if we don't all do that   then we will leave ourselves  open to the monsters in the box it's absolutely a middle of the  road issue as max is talking about   i mean i think that's the you know anyone who  has kids can begin to kind of see that because   the extremes don't get you anywhere but where  where the i think where the most productive   discussions about how to move forward as a  great society that we are and all of these   liberties that we have and balancing rule  of law within that it's being able to be a   centrist about it and not having such an extreme  idea about you know i'm right there wrong because   that is actually what biometrics are trying to  fundamentally do is to divide people into groups   us versus them instead you know good guy versus  bad guy that's the danger in in all that's where   you start to have totalitarianism come in  dividing people into groups and i would say   also that biometrics is just another form of  science and the problem with science with data   is that sometimes it makes you not feel good about  the beliefs that you had going into an argument   you know you believe something you feel good  you go in you look at the facts you go oh i was   a little wrong about something and every every  side is guilty in this you know you talk about   anti-vaxxers the anti-vaxxer movement did not  start in some rural town in arkansas it's right   down the street in my hometown in santa monica a  few blocks away we got one guy dr death who said   on bill maher i believe vaccines cause autism but  i have no proof to back it up that's a medical doc   so if we value our feel goodness more then  we value the objective facts we are finished we've talked for obvious reasons a lot about uh   china and the united states and their role in  biometrics and such um what do we know about   other countries and is this very widespread  are the united states and china the two   most um aggressive in pursuing this or are there  some others maybe uh that are dark horses in this dark horse is a good question because those are  the ones you always want to look out for you know   what is saudi arabia doing who are they tracking  with their biometrics but um the indian government   recently showed just how big and how fast and  how effective a biometric program can be by   capturing in less than a decade biometrics on one  billion indian citizens and that was for a program   for food that again the setup was essentially  well intended you know the idea was people were   handing in their chits and sort of faking a chit  and getting someone else's food and the the idea   behind this was well if we have everyone's  iris scans we will be able to authenticate   who has been given what so good intentions  but that's a billion biometrics right there   um i did not i did not know that  that's why you wrote the book well leading up to 9011 there were a lot of  intelligence critics who said that the united   states had been over relying on technological  spying and under investing in the on-the-ground   human intelligence double agents spies and the  rest that helped give information that couldn't   necessarily come from intercepted phone calls  or chat rooms um is biometrics another lure into   misappropriating you know focus and money and and  attention and maybe under investing and another   big question wow we could spend a whole hour  on that but you know the question that i think   maybe the metaphor for that is science doesn't  lie humans do and so on that access of human   which the questioner is at is is talking about  human intelligence there is always going to be   the balance that of the human foiling the science  and that's you know that's espionage right and   you know and i would always say you have to have a  mix of both you know we after all the black lives   matter uh marches uh there was this narrative  that the the rioters the the looters the bad guys   had infiltrated the pro the peaceful protesters  and had used that as cover in order to do some   really bad stuff now with biometrics we would  be able to prove that people say no no we know   these people they have rap sheets a mile long  they've never been involved in any black lives   matter before they were there to cause trouble  but while you do that you also need to have the   kind of police chief that we had in l.a who took  a knee with the protesters and by the way caught   a lot of flack for that and said what i thought  i grew up in la i'm i'm generation daryl bates   and i in my life i've never had a police chief of  the lapd say listen my job is to keep the peace   and if that means taking a knee with protesters  i will do it i will do whatever i have to do   to keep the peace so you need both you need  science you need head and you need heart um is there such a thing as there being  too much information being accumulated for   it to be useful or in the days of big tech  now is that not a challenge in other words   the these agencies and the forces we have the  issues that you've already talked about about   the human use of it but is there even going to be  a problem of the systemic understanding of this   just from so much that as tens of millions  of people's data biometric control gets   gets accumulated or as i said is big data  solve that well that's the that's the   end game that i think is frightening which  is where a.i becomes too important because   only ai systems only system machine systems that  can learn can handle this data and process it and   there is simply too much data coming in with  all these surveillance systems we now have   to be processed by anything other than a.i  and that is your military-industrial complex   potentially gone awry in the field of surveillance  yeah and i think we we have to remember that   in an age of globalization uh chinese companies  are still very much chinese russian companies very   much russian american companies are global and  that's how they think that's their business model   we had tim cook remember he said i'm not going to  put a back door on the iphone to track terrorists   because our first obligations to our customers  he met his global customers he's not an american   but we have to remember that if if we are  not watching who our corporations do business   with because a lot remember a lot of  these big data corps they farm out to   cheaper corporations which may be contractors  who may be working overseas with other laws   you know we know this now so it may be an american  corporation but if the server itself if that data   is being handled in another country where the  laws are very different and even though we have   the rights and protections here at home our data  is sitting in kyrgyzstan so i think we have to   keep an eye on it there's something that we have  it's called the committee uh it's a it's called   cyphus it's like an aerial disease committee  on foreign investment in the united states   and it was specifically set up to make sure that  we did not farm out anything from the private   sector that could be used against us and we need  to look at cyphus again with the eye of big data   okay well we've now reached the point in our  program where we have time for just one more   question so we'll try to end this on a hopeful  or at least a helpful uh tone and that is we've   talked about you know certain types of regulation  or oversight or something that could be done   can maybe each of you give one or two specifics  on what you would like to see as the government   either comes to grip or attempts to come to grip  with some sort of regulatory structure that could   tackle what is clearly something  that's going to continue to happen   i think just the the slightest bit of  information and understanding and and   learning about the topic of biometrics is  brilliant and then from there you ask yourself   the question that max was talking about earlier  which has to do with the fact that you know so   society does evolve and technology is moving us  forward and so we have to think with a new set   of eyes about how to deal with this that  means putting away some of our old ideas   but really moving forward for me as certainly  as a parent that the idea that rule of law   is a good thing it's just that  we have to help the law enforcers   work within the society that they now have and i  think that that comes from you know opening up the   lens of your own perspective on what you think  might be right might be wrong who's the good   guy who's the bad guy and looking at things sort  of with a hopefulness toward the new era that we   are now in i agree i think one safeguard this is  a long-term safeguard that we could put in place   is get civics taught back in the classroom because  all the kids i know they don't know how their   government works they literally don't know about  the three branches of government they don't know   about checks and balances i think that that must  be taught but i would go farther i think it should   be taught by veterans i think the money should  come from the departments of veterans affairs   not from the overstrap department of education  i think that our veterans many of whom need a   purpose when they come out of uniform should be  retrained to become school teachers here is our   constitution here are our three branches here are  checks and balances here's our rights here's why   we have rights because a lot of them can speak not  just from the head but from the heart about places   in the world that they have been where these  rights do not exist i think that we talk a lot   about people not trusting in their institutions  anymore they don't understand it anymore you know   we need what is called a culture of ownership  again but not ownership in terms of owning stuff   owning our institutions owning our government  that will start in the classroom and it will   it will be long term but it took us 50 years  to get from the greatest generation to where   we are now and maybe if we turn it around in  50 years we'll have another greatest generation   okay i'm going to add one last thought on that  off dovetail off of max's ideas that i think   the beginning the place to begin with getting rid  of your old ideas and moving forward is precisely   on that for whatever reason the sacrifice  of veterans has been sort of sidelined in   the past 20 years in the war on terror and it's  almost as if veterans issues has become an issue   of the republican party this is an absurdity  and i think both parties need to realize   the incredible sacrifices of people like the  young soldiers in first platoon and the millions   who have served recently without nearly the kind  of acknowledgement that needs to be given to them   yeah which and which also does not mean  worshiping them because i think there's   there's a a lack there's an irresponsibility in  thank you for your service because we've seen   that since 9 11 where people go oh thank you for  your service you're so amazing wow now go away   in my dad's generation nobody said thank you for  your service because everybody in some capacity   was serving even if it meant rationing even if  it meant blackout curtains but everybody did   something to contribute to the current events  that they were living so i do i i think that   the military has to get off its eye high  horse and we need to get off the couch   and we need to understand that what affects  one of us affects all of us i think that's   a great final note to end on our thanks  to journalist andy jacobson author of   first platoon which you can purchase at your  online or local bookstore and thanks also to   max brooks a fellow at the modern war institute  at west point we thank you our audience watching   and listening today this concludes this program  the commonwealth club of california thank you you

Channel: Commonwealth Club of California

Views: 75,778

Keywords: CommonwealthClub

Id: kOrEMTlItDY

Length: 68min 46sec (4126 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021