Morality in the age of tech surveillance - Edward Snowden

[Music] [Applause] at this stage I can offer nothing more than my word I am a senior government employee in the intelligence community I hope you understand that contacting you is extremely high-risk for now know that every border you cross every purchase you make every call you dial every cell phone tower you pass friend you keep site you visit and the subject line you type is in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited but whose safeguards are not in the end if you publish the source material I will likely be immediately implicated I ask only that you ensure this information makes it home to the American public thank you and be careful citizen for anything about you okay I work for no sorry I my name is Edward Snowden I go by Ed or Joseph Snowden's the full name [Music] Edward Snowden are you listening I can hear you can you hear me so welcome to Web Summit Edwards son let's jump right in let's have you takers all here to the moment where you decided as a serving intelligence contractor that you needed to speak to the public you needed to speak to the world what what was it like in that moment what drove you to it it's a good question excuse me I hear feedback on my audio line I'll just try to talk through it imagine that you worked at the CIA you follow the rules here your whole life I had never been drunk I had never smoked a joint right I was I was a square my family worked for the government I was gonna work for the government so you come from a certain kind of background you're a certain kind of guy you're not that exciting but you believe in the importance of rules and on the first day you work at the CIA you have to take what they call an oath of service it's a very solemn vow in a dark room flags all over the place with everybody else that's entering government service is the same day and here you have to swear an oath to support defend not the agency not a secret not even a president but the Constitution of your country against all enemies foreign and domestic now fast forward many many years after you've signed something else what's called standard form 312 a classified nondisclosure agreement means you won't talk to reporters and many years later you find that what you are doing what everyone at your agency is doing is a gigantic conspiracy to violate precisely that oath you took on the very first day and this is what I struggled with for many years and eventually drove me forward is what do you do when you have contradicting obligations to what do we owe our greater t2d founding documents of our society to the Constitution or to standard form 312 for myself the answer was clear and when the government can act behind closed doors when they can change the game without our knowledge and consent I believe the public has a right to know about that now when you made that decision to pick you the first loyalty to the US Constitution to the world's public what was you know you handed over lots of documents to reporters and they span months and years reporting now you know no one's going to remember every story every life what was the message that you wanted the US public the public's of the world to take from what you saw and you disclosed there's there's two large ones one is technological and one is democratic and when we talk about technology the primary distinction the thing that drove me forward the thing that chilled me is that intelligence collection and surveillance more broadly was happening in an entirely different way it was no longer the targeted surveillance of the past where the police or spies went we have this person that we suspect is up to no good and so we're gonna sneak into their their home or their office we're gonna plant a bug we're gonna go to the phone company and we're gonna tap their specific line we're gonna listen to a link that they talk to bad guys with instead they begin watching everyone everywhere all the time saving as much information as they could even for people who had done nothing wrong even for people who are not suspected of doing something wrong simply because it could eventually be useful or maybe they wouldn't get a chance to catch it later so they would prospectively begin surveilling people before they had broken the law this is what I call the creation of the new permanent record systems were being created that did this all the time in the background and nobody in a position of power tried to stop it because it benefited them and this is what brings us to the Democratic problem the law didn't matter the courts didn't matter your rights didn't matter because the system had redefined and compromised them and what they meant in absolute secrecy and this leaves us with the question that I think we are still dealing with today what do you do when the most powerful institutions in society have become the least accountable to society and I think that's the question that our generation exists to answer 2013 was a long time ago six years and the world has moved quite a long way it's not just the u.s. president has changed though maybe people will feel different about the surveillance powers that has we have seen our attitudes to tech change we've seen the Giants change you know we've seen far more activity from Russia from China from other countries do you think the huge debate the huge conversation that you started how do you feel about the state of that six years on have we moved forwards or are we moving back yeah no I think it's it's a good question and this is the really the subject of the memoir that I just wrote that the day I published it the CIA and NSA sued to try to keep people from reading because they don't like books like this being written I feel looking six years on that the world is changing and we are at a point of primary honor ability but I think as much as we see the anger rising as much as I think we see awareness of problems beginning to develop people are quite frequently mad at the right people for the wrong reasons as they see this increasing predation on all of us publicly through these systems whether we're talking governmental or corporate yes these people are engaged in abuse particularly when you look at a Google an Amazon a Facebook but their business model is a Pierce and yet every bit of it they argue is legal and whether we're talking about Facebook or the NSA that is the problem that's the real problem but we have legalized the abuse of the person through the personal we have entrenched a system that makes the population vulnerable for the benefit of the privileged now you talk about how this collection is intrinsic to the business model of a lot of the companies we think about when we think about the Internet one of the main programs that you know maybe the most famous that was something to cover I've uncovered thanks to what you revealed was prison famously involving a lot of the biggest tech companies now about three hours before that program was revealed I was on the phone to one of the execs at one of these companies saying what's prison why are you involved today and they were very confident in denying it they didn't think they were part of it this was not something no one is that good at lying not in tech anyway they thought they weren't how naive do you think Tech has been about how its business model helped surveillance and about how it relates itself to governments around the world I think what we saw for each of those companies in their own ways I don't think it was a collaborated decision across the industry was an entrance into a Faustian bargain they they had made the deal with the devil as it were where they went in this way in this particular circumstance and we are going to construct a data sharing method for us to go beyond what the law requires not to do this government a favor because we believe this government is positive force for the world and I think we can all understand and appreciate where that initial drive comes from you want to believe the government is going to have the tools they need to investigate serious crimes to prevent acts of terrorism but when we look at what these programs actually were used for and what the results of them were over many many years we saw the tools that have been intended to protect the public had been in many ways used to attack the public but the government's not going to tell these companies why in many cases they need this information they're simply going to try to create those methods of exchange those systems of information sharing as they call it and ultimately what they're doing is they're deputizing these companies to act in what are increasingly quasi governmental rules deciding what can and cannot be said on the Internet deciding what can and cannot be shared and ultimately turning over perfect records of private lives on demand to institutions that are no longer meaningfully accountable to the public at large so we're in the middle of something of a backlash towards a lot of big tech and it's a strange backlash sometimes it's because tech is seen as violating privacy or acting badly and sometimes it comes from governments for tech protecting privacy encrypting things and you know quotes helping terrorists do you think this backlash towards tech which was for a while at least was seen as this force for goods this difference thing from big corporations is that helping the surveillance era or is it harming it it's a good question as a complicated one I think the answer is both technology is largely value neutral it is an amplification of individual power but what is an institution than the accumulation of individual power put toward a single purpose when we have new technologies that are being used by small companies by nongovernmental organizations by human rights defenders and activists to try to empower the public broadly and protect them from threats and vulnerabilities we start moving in the direction of a safer and freer world when we see governments and corporations working in concert we begin to see the birth of a complex between the two we where neither truly acts independently or adversarially but rather they become the left in the right hand of the same body what we see is the concentration of power now when we have an institution in more institutions which were already powerful before and now they are combining their powers to control or at least influence what everybody who is outside of those institutions are able to do that I think raises real questions of is the ultimate benefit or the cost because if you create an irresistible power whether it's held by Facebook or whether it's held by any government the question is how will you police the expression of that power when it is used against the public rather than for it if this is essentially the bad version of the internet the dangerous version of the Internet what does a good version of the Internet look like what helps you build that you know we are speaking to you from within the EU so is it something like gdpr do you have a panacea there this is a a good bit of legislation in terms of the effort that they're trying to do is GDP are the correct Ellucian I think no and I think the mistake that it makes is actually in the name the Jenna general data protection regulation misplace is the problem the problem isn't data protection the problem is data collection regulating the protection of data presumes that the collection of data in the first place was proper that it was appropriate that it doesn't represent a threat or a danger that it's okay to spy on everybody all the time whether they're your customers or whether they're your citizens so long as it never leaks so long as only you are in control of what it is that you fussed sort of stolen from everybody and I would say not only is that incorrect but if we learned anything from 2013 it's that eventually everything leaks it's a bad strategy son but just test you on that a little but one of the rare things with gdpr is it's got big fines you know you can have 4% of your money are there not some tech junks you'd like to see facing that kind of thing absolutely like this is the thing where I say it is a good first effort right it's low bar I mean they have raised that far and that is meaningful what I'm saying is that it's not a solution what I'm saying is that it's not the good internet that we want because even though the gdpr does propose I believe four percent of global revenue fines for Internet giant's today those fines don't exist and until we see those fines being applied every single year to the Internet giant's until they've reformed their behavior and begin complying not just with the letter but the spirit of the law it is a paper tiger and I think that actually gives us a false sense of reassurance because these companies that are the ones who that find is most threatening to are also the ones with the most lawyers who are able to undermine the meaning that law the most effectively now of course the room that you're speaking to here this is roomful of tech entrepreneurs of tech executives of tech investors maybe one or two regulators but that's not the main crowd what teacher want them to build next what do you want them to do next what what is the sort of positive thing that you could see from them for the next year of the internet I think we need to consider what the real problem is what is responsible for this movement that we all feel whether we're talking politics whether we're talking technology whether we're talking economy the public my generation particularly the generation after me they no longer own anything they are increasingly not allowed to own anything you use these services and they create a permanent record of everything you've done simply by having your phone in this room on you and your pocket not even using it but simply having it turned on registers your presence at this event because your phone's association with the Wi-Fi points that around it your phone's association with the cellular towers that are around it and this is the thing that that people miss all of these companies all of these governments go oh data collection data protection it's all very abstract but data isn't harmless data isn't abstract when it's about people and almost all of the data that's being collected today is about people it is not data that is being exploited it is people that are being exploited it is not data and networks that are being influenced and manipulated it is you that is being manipulated and right now the reason that is so and the reason surveillance and collection is so much of a problem is because we have to trust everybody on the network we have to trust everyone that we pass on this hostile path of the internet all of the routers all the internet service providers that you cross if you have to trust Cisco or juniper or Huawei or Nokia we have a problem because you can't trust any of them they will all act in their own interest rather than the public's interest broadly whether it's a private company or a national telecommunications company it is an institution of power and our communications are vulnerable today to every single one of them until we change the model until we redesign the basic system of connectivity in the internet we have more and more communications becoming encrypted today or electronically protected right they're no longer electronically naked as they cross this hostile path but it is not all of them even when they are being encrypted they are still observed you can anyone origin and you have to tow it cut you there with that challenge for building you into that sir Edward Snowden thank you very much thank you I'm gonna say one last thing if I can I know we're out of time but one last thing and this is before the call for restructuring the internet it's much more simple than that rather than asking people to trust you rather than asking them to trust your service as all of your ailing competitors to show them why they don't have to trust you have all of the intermediaries between you and the people that you're talking to are not in control of you they do not understand your content it is private to them the only people you have to trust are the people that you're talking to the people on the ends of the communication and the reason that is important even if you are for the NSA even if you are for Facebook is that there are companies there are laws that do not apply to these countries there are different jurisdictions and the Internet is global the law is not the only thing that can protect you technology is not the only thing that can protect you we are the only thing that can protect us and the only way to protect anyone is to protect everyone thank you and stay free thank you very much [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Web Summit

Views: 135,051

Rating: 4.8628497 out of 5

Keywords: web summit, web summit conference lisbon, web summit paddy, web summit youtube, web summit lisboa, Lisbon, Lisboa

Id: X4_7A-SGLo8

Length: 21min 39sec (1299 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 04 2019