1 00:00:00,422 --> 00:00:01,915 Thank you 2 00:00:02,392 --> 00:00:04,017 It’s a pleasure to be here. 3 00:00:04,944 --> 00:00:07,221 I would love to think that 4 00:00:07,271 --> 00:00:09,543 the reason that we’re all here on a Friday night 5 00:00:09,593 --> 00:00:11,819 is because my speeches are so good. 6 00:00:11,869 --> 00:00:13,441 I actually have no idea 7 00:00:13,441 --> 00:00:15,256 why we’re all here on a Friday night 8 00:00:15,306 --> 00:00:17,717 but I’m very grateful for the invitation. 9 00:00:17,717 --> 00:00:20,689 I am the person who had no date tonight 10 00:00:20,689 --> 00:00:24,311 so it was particularly convenient 11 00:00:24,311 --> 00:00:26,837 that I was invited for now. 12 00:00:30,175 --> 00:00:31,052 So, 13 00:00:31,898 --> 00:00:34,621 of course, I didn’t have any date tonight. 14 00:00:34,621 --> 00:00:35,968 Everybody knows that. 15 00:00:35,968 --> 00:00:38,959 My calendar’s on the web, right?. 16 00:00:40,270 --> 00:00:43,398 The problem is that problem. 17 00:00:44,983 --> 00:00:47,671 Our calendar is on the web. 18 00:00:47,671 --> 00:00:50,550 Our location is on the web. 19 00:00:50,550 --> 00:00:53,336 You have a cell phone 20 00:00:53,336 --> 00:00:55,519 and you have a cell phone network provider 21 00:00:55,519 --> 00:00:59,652 and if your cell phone network provider is Sprint 22 00:00:59,652 --> 00:01:03,414 then we can tell you that several million times last year, 23 00:01:03,414 --> 00:01:07,965 somebody who has a law enforcement ID card in his pocket somewhere 24 00:01:07,965 --> 00:01:10,722 went to the Sprint website 25 00:01:10,799 --> 00:01:16,343 and asked for the realtime location of somebody with a telephone number and was given it. 26 00:01:16,466 --> 00:01:18,726 Several million times. 27 00:01:18,803 --> 00:01:20,337 Just like that. 28 00:01:20,429 --> 00:01:22,408 We know that because Sprint admits 29 00:01:22,408 --> 00:01:23,569 that they have a website 30 00:01:23,569 --> 00:01:25,194 where anybody with a law enforcement ID 31 00:01:25,194 --> 00:01:28,352 can go and find the realtime location of anybody 32 00:01:28,352 --> 00:01:29,884 with a Sprint cellphone. 33 00:01:29,884 --> 00:01:31,974 We don’t know that about ATT and Verizon 34 00:01:31,974 --> 00:01:34,609 because they haven’t told us. 35 00:01:35,132 --> 00:01:36,758 But that’s the only reason we don’t know 36 00:01:36,758 --> 00:01:38,894 because they haven’t told us. 37 00:01:38,894 --> 00:01:43,724 That’s a service that you think of as a traditional service - 38 00:01:43,724 --> 00:01:45,395 telephony. 39 00:01:45,395 --> 00:01:47,253 But the deal that you get 40 00:01:47,253 --> 00:01:49,203 with the traditional service called telephony 41 00:01:49,203 --> 00:01:51,804 now includes a thing you didn’t know, like spying. 42 00:01:51,804 --> 00:01:54,451 That’s not a service to you 43 00:01:54,451 --> 00:01:56,402 but it’s a service 44 00:01:56,402 --> 00:01:57,702 and you get it for free 45 00:01:57,702 --> 00:02:01,422 with your service contract for telephony. 46 00:02:02,160 --> 00:02:07,687 You get for free the service of advertising with your gmail 47 00:02:07,687 --> 00:02:10,380 which means of cause there is another service behind 48 00:02:10,380 --> 00:02:16,649 which is - untouched by human hands - semantic analysis of your email. 49 00:02:16,649 --> 00:02:19,854 I still don't understand why anybody wants that. 50 00:02:19,854 --> 00:02:23,058 I still don't understand why anybody uses it, 51 00:02:23,058 --> 00:02:25,446 but people do, 52 00:02:26,077 --> 00:02:30,117 including the very sophisticated and thoughtful people in this room 53 00:02:30,117 --> 00:02:33,414 and you get free email service 54 00:02:33,414 --> 00:02:37,315 and some storage, which is worth exactly a penny and a half 55 00:02:37,315 --> 00:02:39,312 at the current price of storage 56 00:02:39,312 --> 00:02:41,588 and you get spying all the time 57 00:02:41,588 --> 00:02:44,609 and for free, too 58 00:02:45,024 --> 00:02:47,671 and your calendar is on the web 59 00:02:47,671 --> 00:02:49,575 and everybody can see whether you have a date Friday night, 60 00:02:49,575 --> 00:02:51,712 and you have a status: Single... Looking 61 00:02:51,712 --> 00:02:57,470 and you get a service for free: advertising, single looking and spying with it, for free. 62 00:02:58,870 --> 00:03:04,250 And it all sort of just grew up that way, right, in a blink of an eye, and here we are. 63 00:03:04,250 --> 00:03:11,309 And what's that got to do with open source? Well in fact it doesn't have anything to do with open source, 64 00:03:11,309 --> 00:03:19,066 but it has a whole lot to do with free software, yet another reason why Stallman was right, it's the freedom, 65 00:03:19,066 --> 00:03:20,644 right? 66 00:03:20,644 --> 00:03:27,563 So we need to backup a little bit to figure out where we actually are and how we actually got here, 67 00:03:27,563 --> 00:03:36,619 and probably even more important whether we can get out and if so, how? And it isn't a pretty story. At all. 68 00:03:36,619 --> 00:03:44,328 David's right, I can hardly begin by saying that we won given that spying comes free with everything now. 69 00:03:44,328 --> 00:03:49,854 but we haven't lost, we've just, really, bamboozled ourselves. 70 00:03:49,854 --> 00:03:55,752 And we're going to have to unbamboozle ourselves real quickly or we're going to bamboozle a lot of other innocent people 71 00:03:55,752 --> 00:03:59,700 who didn't know that we were throwing away their privacy for them forever. 72 00:03:59,700 --> 00:04:08,337 It begins, of course, with the Internet which is why it's really nice to be here talking to the Internet society, 73 00:04:08,337 --> 00:04:17,765 a society dedicated to the health expansion and theoretical elaboration of a peer to peer network called the Internet. 74 00:04:17,765 --> 00:04:25,752 Designed as a network of peers without any intrinsic need for hierarchical or structural control, 75 00:04:25,752 --> 00:04:33,647 and assuming that every switch in the net is an independent freestanding entity whose volition is equivalent 76 00:04:33,647 --> 00:04:37,177 to the volition to the human beings who own and control it. 77 00:04:37,177 --> 00:04:45,257 That's the design of the net which, whether you're thinking of it as glued together with IPv4 or that wonderful 78 00:04:45,257 --> 00:04:54,452 improvement IPv6 we will never use, apparently, it still assumes peer communications. 79 00:04:54,452 --> 00:05:04,344 Of course it never really, really, really worked out that way. There was nothing in the technical design to prevent it. 80 00:05:04,344 --> 00:05:10,381 Not at any rate in the technical design of the interconnection of nodes and their communication. 81 00:05:10,381 --> 00:05:21,434 There was a software problem. It's a simple software problem and it has a simple two syllable name, it's name is Microsoft. 82 00:05:23,249 --> 00:05:32,487 Conceptually there was a network which was designed as a system of peer nodes, but the 83 00:05:32,487 --> 00:05:42,239 operating software which occupied the network in an increasingly --I'll use the word, they use it about us, why can't I use it back-- 84 00:05:42,239 --> 00:05:47,115 viral way, over the course of a decade and a half, the software which 85 00:05:47,115 --> 00:05:52,734 came to occupt the network was built around a very clear idea that had nothing to do with peers, 86 00:05:52,734 --> 00:05:57,104 it was called a server-client architecture. 87 00:05:57,750 --> 00:06:01,140 And the idea that the network was a network of peers 88 00:06:01,140 --> 00:06:04,298 was hard to perceive after a while, 89 00:06:04,298 --> 00:06:11,728 particularly if you were, let us say, an ordinary human being that is not a computer engineer, scientist or researcher, 90 00:06:11,728 --> 00:06:14,422 not a hacker, not a geek. 91 00:06:14,422 --> 00:06:17,208 If you were an ordinary human being it was hard to perceive 92 00:06:17,208 --> 00:06:20,970 that the underlying architecture of the net was meant to be peerage 93 00:06:20,970 --> 00:06:25,892 because the operating system software with which you interacted 94 00:06:25,892 --> 00:06:33,694 very strongly instantantiated the idea of the server and client architecture. 95 00:06:33,694 --> 00:06:38,431 In fact, of course, if you think about it, it was even worse than that. 96 00:06:38,431 --> 00:06:45,072 The thing called Windows, was a degenerate version of a thing called X Windows. 97 00:06:45,072 --> 00:06:50,041 It too thought about the world in a server client architecture 98 00:06:50,041 --> 00:06:53,060 but what we would now think about as backwards. 99 00:06:53,060 --> 00:06:56,776 The server was the thing at the human beings end. Remember? 100 00:06:56,776 --> 00:07:00,258 That was the basic X Windows conception of the world. 101 00:07:00,258 --> 00:07:06,109 It served communications with human beings at the endpoints of the net 102 00:07:06,109 --> 00:07:13,679 to processes located at arbitrary places near the center, in the middle, or at the edge of the net. 103 00:07:13,679 --> 00:07:20,784 It was the great idea of Windows, in an odd way, to create a political archetype in the net 104 00:07:20,784 --> 00:07:23,942 which reduced the human being to the client 105 00:07:23,942 --> 00:07:28,122 and produced a big centralized computer 106 00:07:28,122 --> 00:07:35,552 which we might have called a server, which now provided things to the human being 107 00:07:35,552 --> 00:07:38,153 on take it or leave it terms. 108 00:07:38,153 --> 00:07:41,961 They were of course quite take or leave it terms. 109 00:07:41,961 --> 00:07:49,252 And unfortunately everybody took it, since they didn't know how to leave once they got in. 110 00:07:49,252 --> 00:07:54,500 Now the net was made of servers in the center and clients at the edge. 111 00:07:54,500 --> 00:07:59,144 Clients had rather little power, and servers had quite a lot. 112 00:07:59,144 --> 00:08:04,159 As storage gets cheaper, as processing get cheaper, 113 00:08:04,159 --> 00:08:07,642 and as complex services that scale 114 00:08:07,642 --> 00:08:12,100 in ways that are hard to use small computers for, 115 00:08:12,100 --> 00:08:15,862 or at any rate these aggregated collections of small computers for 116 00:08:15,862 --> 00:08:18,649 the most important of which is search 117 00:08:18,649 --> 00:08:20,924 As services began to populate that net 118 00:08:20,924 --> 00:08:23,803 the hierarchical nature of the net came to see like 119 00:08:23,803 --> 00:08:26,729 it was meant to be there. 120 00:08:26,729 --> 00:08:28,726 The net was made of servers and clients, 121 00:08:28,726 --> 00:08:30,816 and the clients were the guys at the edge 122 00:08:30,816 --> 00:08:33,184 representing human beings, 123 00:08:33,184 --> 00:08:35,181 and servers were things in the middle with lots of power 124 00:08:35,181 --> 00:08:37,226 and lots of data. 125 00:08:40,210 --> 00:08:44,934 Now, one more thing happened about that time, 126 00:08:44,934 --> 00:08:48,463 It didn't happen in Microsoft Windows computers 127 00:08:48,463 --> 00:08:52,921 although it happened in Microsoft Windows servers 128 00:08:52,921 --> 00:08:56,079 and it happened more in sensible operating systems 129 00:08:56,079 --> 00:08:59,098 like Unix and GNU/Linux and other ones -- 130 00:08:59,098 --> 00:09:01,559 namely, servers kept logs. 131 00:09:01,559 --> 00:09:02,859 That's a got thing to do, 132 00:09:02,859 --> 00:09:04,206 computers ought to keep logs, 133 00:09:04,206 --> 00:09:06,157 it's a very wise decision, 134 00:09:06,157 --> 00:09:08,432 when making computer operating software 135 00:09:08,432 --> 00:09:09,640 to keep logs. 136 00:09:09,640 --> 00:09:10,940 It helps with debugging, 137 00:09:10,940 --> 00:09:13,540 makes efficencies attainable, 138 00:09:13,540 --> 00:09:16,280 makes it possible to study the actual operations 139 00:09:16,280 --> 00:09:18,231 of computers in the real world, 140 00:09:18,231 --> 00:09:19,299 it's a very good idea. 141 00:09:19,299 --> 00:09:22,318 But if you have a system which centralizes servers 142 00:09:22,318 --> 00:09:26,079 and the servers centralize their logs 143 00:09:26,079 --> 00:09:29,191 then you are creating vast repositories 144 00:09:29,191 --> 00:09:31,048 of hierarchically organized data 145 00:09:31,048 --> 00:09:33,695 about people at the edges of the network 146 00:09:33,695 --> 00:09:36,203 that they do not control 147 00:09:36,203 --> 00:09:38,804 and unless they are experienced in the operation 148 00:09:38,804 --> 00:09:44,098 of servers, will not understand the comprehensiveness of, 149 00:09:44,098 --> 00:09:47,302 will not understand the meaningfullness of, 150 00:09:47,302 --> 00:09:51,343 will not understand the aggregatability of 151 00:09:51,343 --> 00:09:54,872 So we built a network out of the communications 152 00:09:54,872 --> 00:09:57,612 architecture designed for peering, 153 00:09:57,612 --> 00:10:01,281 which we defined in client-server style, 154 00:10:01,281 --> 00:10:05,600 which we then defined to be the disempowered client 155 00:10:05,600 --> 00:10:08,665 at the edge and the server in the middle. 156 00:10:08,665 --> 00:10:11,033 We aggregated processing and storage 157 00:10:11,033 --> 00:10:13,448 increasingly in the middle, 158 00:10:13,448 --> 00:10:17,163 and we kept the logs that is information about the 159 00:10:17,163 --> 00:10:19,764 flows of information in the net 160 00:10:19,764 --> 00:10:23,200 in centralized places, far from the human beings 161 00:10:23,200 --> 00:10:26,498 who controlled, or at any rate thought they controlled 162 00:10:26,498 --> 00:10:29,284 the operation of the computers that increasingly 163 00:10:29,284 --> 00:10:31,699 dominated their lives. 164 00:10:31,699 --> 00:10:34,906 This was a recipe for disaster. 165 00:10:35,414 --> 00:10:39,259 This was a recipe for disaster. 166 00:10:40,013 --> 00:10:44,052 Now, I haven't mentioned yet the word "cloud", 167 00:10:44,052 --> 00:10:46,653 which I was dealt on the top of the deck 168 00:10:46,653 --> 00:10:50,136 when I recieved the news that I was talking here tonight 169 00:10:50,136 --> 00:10:52,643 about privacy in the cloud. 170 00:10:52,643 --> 00:10:55,383 I haven't mentioned the word cloud because 171 00:10:55,383 --> 00:10:58,588 the word cloud doesn't really mean anything very much. 172 00:10:58,588 --> 00:11:01,653 In other words, the disaster we are having 173 00:11:01,653 --> 00:11:04,253 is not the catastrofe of the cloud. 174 00:11:04,253 --> 00:11:06,993 The disaster we are having is the catastrofe of the way 175 00:11:06,993 --> 00:11:10,383 we misunderstood the net under the assistance of the 176 00:11:10,383 --> 00:11:14,099 un-free software that helped us to understand it. 177 00:11:14,099 --> 00:11:19,114 What "cloud" means is that servers have ceased to be 178 00:11:19,114 --> 00:11:21,250 made of iron. 179 00:11:21,250 --> 00:11:26,730 Cloud means virtualization of servers has ocurred. 180 00:11:26,730 --> 00:11:31,421 So, out here in the dusty edges of the galaxy where we live 181 00:11:31,421 --> 00:11:34,114 in disempowered clienthood 182 00:11:34,114 --> 00:11:36,965 nothing very much has changed. 183 00:11:37,365 --> 00:11:39,733 As you walk inward towards the center of the galaxy 184 00:11:39,733 --> 00:11:42,055 it gets more fuzzy than it used to. 185 00:11:42,055 --> 00:11:46,188 We resolve now halo where we used to see actual stars, 186 00:11:46,188 --> 00:11:49,486 you know, servers with switched and buttons you can 187 00:11:49,486 --> 00:11:51,622 push and such. 188 00:11:51,622 --> 00:11:53,572 Instead, what has happened of course is that 189 00:11:53,572 --> 00:11:56,173 iron no longer represents a single server, 190 00:11:56,173 --> 00:12:00,585 iron is mearly a place where servers could be. 191 00:12:00,585 --> 00:12:04,439 And so cloud means servers have gained freedom. 192 00:12:04,439 --> 00:12:07,783 Freedom to move, freedom to dance, 193 00:12:07,783 --> 00:12:10,616 freedom to combine and separate and reaggregate 194 00:12:10,616 --> 00:12:12,334 and do all kinds of tricks. 195 00:12:12,334 --> 00:12:15,074 Servers have gained freedom, clients have gained nothing. 196 00:12:15,074 --> 00:12:17,946 Welcome to the cloud. 197 00:12:21,499 --> 00:12:25,709 It's a minor modification of the recipe for disaster. 198 00:12:25,709 --> 00:12:30,214 It improves the operability of systems that control 199 00:12:30,214 --> 00:12:35,136 the clients out there who were meant to be peers in a net 200 00:12:35,136 --> 00:12:37,489 made of equal things. 201 00:12:40,012 --> 00:12:43,635 So that's the architecture of the catastrofe. 202 00:12:43,635 --> 00:12:46,189 If you think about it, each step in that architectural 203 00:12:46,189 --> 00:12:49,533 evolution away from a network made of peers 204 00:12:49,533 --> 00:12:55,059 to servers that serve the communication with human beings 205 00:12:55,059 --> 00:12:58,913 to clients which are programs running on heavy iron, 206 00:12:58,913 --> 00:13:03,093 to clients which are the computers that people actually use 207 00:13:03,093 --> 00:13:06,390 in a fairly disempowered state and servers are high 208 00:13:06,390 --> 00:13:08,248 concentration of powers in the net, 209 00:13:08,248 --> 00:13:13,867 to servers are virtual processes running in clouds of iron 210 00:13:13,867 --> 00:13:17,304 at the center of an increasingly hot galaxy 211 00:13:17,304 --> 00:13:20,694 and the clients are out there in the dusty spiral arms. 212 00:13:20,694 --> 00:13:24,177 All of those decisions architecturally were made without 213 00:13:24,177 --> 00:13:28,126 any discussion of the social consequences long term. 214 00:13:28,234 --> 00:13:31,375 Part of our general difficulty in talking about the social 215 00:13:31,375 --> 00:13:34,115 consequences of technology during the great 216 00:13:34,115 --> 00:13:38,016 period of invention of the Internet, 217 00:13:38,016 --> 00:13:40,616 done by computer scientists who weren't terribly 218 00:13:40,616 --> 00:13:44,471 interested in sociology, social psychology or, 219 00:13:44,471 --> 00:13:47,726 with a few shining exceptions, freedom. 220 00:13:48,372 --> 00:13:52,969 So we got an architecture which was very subject to misuse. 221 00:13:52,969 --> 00:13:57,103 Indeed, it was in a way begging to be misused. 222 00:13:57,103 --> 00:14:01,038 And now we are getting the misuse that we setup. 223 00:14:01,700 --> 00:14:06,158 Because we have thinned the clients out 224 00:14:06,158 --> 00:14:08,991 further and further and further. 225 00:14:08,991 --> 00:14:11,406 In fact we made then mobile. 226 00:14:11,406 --> 00:14:12,939 We put them in our pockets and we started 227 00:14:12,939 --> 00:14:15,382 strolling around with them. 228 00:14:18,505 --> 00:14:25,745 There are a lot of reasons for making clients disempowered, 229 00:14:26,207 --> 00:14:28,821 and there are even more reasons for disempowering the 230 00:14:28,821 --> 00:14:33,047 people who own the clients, and who might quaintly be 231 00:14:33,047 --> 00:14:36,298 thought of as the people who ought to control them. 232 00:14:36,298 --> 00:14:38,991 If you think for just a moment how many people have an 233 00:14:38,991 --> 00:14:42,660 interest in disempowering the clients that are the mobile telephones, 234 00:14:42,660 --> 00:14:44,750 you will see what I mean. 235 00:14:44,750 --> 00:14:47,676 There are many overlapping rights owners, 236 00:14:47,676 --> 00:14:50,648 as they think of themselves, each of whom has a stake in 237 00:14:50,648 --> 00:14:55,245 disempowering a client at the edge of the network, 238 00:14:55,245 --> 00:14:58,403 to prevent particular hardware from being moved 239 00:14:58,403 --> 00:15:02,165 from one network to another, to prevent particular hardware 240 00:15:02,165 --> 00:15:05,044 from playing music not bought at the great monopoly 241 00:15:05,044 --> 00:15:11,824 of music in the sky, to disable competing video delivery 242 00:15:11,824 --> 00:15:16,253 services in favor of new chips I founded myself that won't 243 00:15:16,253 --> 00:15:20,091 run popular video standards, good or bad. 244 00:15:20,091 --> 00:15:23,992 There are a lot of business models that are based around 245 00:15:23,992 --> 00:15:28,403 mucking with the control over client hardware and software 246 00:15:28,403 --> 00:15:32,490 at the edge to deprive the human being who has quaintly 247 00:15:32,490 --> 00:15:36,995 thought that she purchased it, from actually occupying 248 00:15:36,995 --> 00:15:40,849 the position that capitalism says owners are always in, 249 00:15:40,849 --> 00:15:43,729 that is, of total control. 250 00:15:45,467 --> 00:15:48,930 In fact, what we have, as I said a couple of years ago, 251 00:15:48,930 --> 00:15:51,640 in between appearances here and another NYU function, 252 00:15:51,640 --> 00:15:55,062 in fact what we have are things we call platforms. 253 00:15:55,062 --> 00:15:57,196 The word platform, like the word cloud, doesn't 254 00:15:57,196 --> 00:15:59,890 inherently mean anything, it's thrown around a lot 255 00:15:59,890 --> 00:16:03,049 in business talk, but basically what platform means is 256 00:16:03,049 --> 00:16:08,239 places you can't leave. Stuff you're stuck to. 257 00:16:08,808 --> 00:16:11,656 Things that don't let you off, right? 258 00:16:11,656 --> 00:16:15,958 That's platforms. And the net, once it became 259 00:16:15,958 --> 00:16:20,509 a hierarchically architected zone, with servers in the center 260 00:16:20,509 --> 00:16:24,781 and increasingly disempowered clients at the edge becomes 261 00:16:24,781 --> 00:16:32,199 the zone of platforms. And platform-making becomes the order of the day. 262 00:16:32,676 --> 00:16:37,493 Some years ago a very shrewd lawer who works in the industry 263 00:16:37,493 --> 00:16:42,957 said to me: "Microsoft was never really a software company. 264 00:16:42,957 --> 00:16:47,430 Microsoft was a platform management company." 265 00:16:47,430 --> 00:16:51,075 And I thought, "yes, shot through the heart." 266 00:16:52,244 --> 00:16:55,526 So we had a lot of platform managers in a hierarchically 267 00:16:55,526 --> 00:17:00,952 organized network, and we began to evolve services. 268 00:17:02,306 --> 00:17:06,037 Services is a complicated word, it's not meaningless by any means, 269 00:17:06,037 --> 00:17:10,634 but it's very tricky to describe that we use it for a lot of different things. 270 00:17:10,634 --> 00:17:14,890 We badly need an analytical taxonomy of services, 271 00:17:14,890 --> 00:17:18,605 as my friend and collegue Phillip Begrine, in Paris, 272 00:17:18,605 --> 00:17:21,587 pointed out some two years or three ago. 273 00:17:23,080 --> 00:17:27,414 Taxonomies of services involve questions of simplicity, 274 00:17:27,414 --> 00:17:30,872 complexity, scale and control. 275 00:17:31,764 --> 00:17:34,906 To take an example, we might define a dichotomy between 276 00:17:34,906 --> 00:17:39,596 complex and simple services, in which simple services 277 00:17:39,596 --> 00:17:43,004 are things that any computer can perform for any other computer 278 00:17:43,004 --> 00:17:46,794 if it wants to, and complex services are things you can't do 279 00:17:46,794 --> 00:17:50,324 with a computer, you must do with clusters or stuctures 280 00:17:50,324 --> 00:17:56,268 of some computational or administrative complexity. 281 00:17:56,268 --> 00:18:01,702 Search is a complex service, indeed search is the archetypal 282 00:18:01,702 --> 00:18:04,209 complex service. 283 00:18:04,209 --> 00:18:07,513 Given the one way nature of links in the web, 284 00:18:07,513 --> 00:18:09,598 and other elements of the data architecture 285 00:18:09,598 --> 00:18:14,194 that we are now also living with --that's another talk another time-- 286 00:18:14,194 --> 00:18:18,841 search is not a thing that we can easily distribute. 287 00:18:19,164 --> 00:18:21,889 The power in the maket of our friends at Google depends 288 00:18:21,889 --> 00:18:26,116 entirely on the fact that search is not easily distributed. 289 00:18:26,116 --> 00:18:29,055 It is a complex service that must be centrally organized 290 00:18:29,055 --> 00:18:31,905 and centrally delivered. It must crawl the web 291 00:18:31,905 --> 00:18:35,278 in a unilateral direction, link by link, figuring out where 292 00:18:35,278 --> 00:18:39,800 everything is, in order to help you find it when you need it, 293 00:18:39,800 --> 00:18:44,055 and in order to do that, at least so far, we have not evolved 294 00:18:44,055 --> 00:18:48,081 good algorithmic and delivery structures for doing it 295 00:18:48,081 --> 00:18:50,283 in a decentralized way. 296 00:18:50,283 --> 00:18:55,572 So, search becomes a archetypal complex service, 297 00:18:55,572 --> 00:19:01,120 and it draws unto itself a business model for its monetization. 298 00:19:01,905 --> 00:19:05,543 Advertizing in the twentieth century was a random activity. 299 00:19:05,543 --> 00:19:08,529 You threw things out and hoped they worked. 300 00:19:08,529 --> 00:19:11,497 Advertizing in the twenty first century is an exquisitely 301 00:19:11,497 --> 00:19:15,913 precise activity. You wait for a guy to want something 302 00:19:15,913 --> 00:19:19,024 and them you send him advertisements about what he wants, 303 00:19:19,024 --> 00:19:22,125 and bingo, it works like magic. 304 00:19:22,617 --> 00:19:26,362 So, of course, on the underside of a complex service 305 00:19:26,362 --> 00:19:29,194 called search, there is a theoretically simple service 306 00:19:29,194 --> 00:19:32,584 called advertising, which, when unified to a complex 307 00:19:32,584 --> 00:19:36,596 service increases its efficiency by orders of magnitude, 308 00:19:36,596 --> 00:19:39,816 and the increase of the efficiency of the simple service, 309 00:19:39,816 --> 00:19:42,106 when combined with the complex one, 310 00:19:42,106 --> 00:19:45,541 produces an enormous surplus revenue flow 311 00:19:45,541 --> 00:19:49,824 which can be used to strengthen search even more. 312 00:19:51,440 --> 00:19:55,108 But that's the innocent part of the story, 313 00:19:55,108 --> 00:19:58,777 and we don't remain in the innocent part of the story 314 00:19:58,777 --> 00:20:01,935 for a variety of reasons. I won't be tedious and marxise 315 00:20:01,935 --> 00:20:05,510 on a friday night and say because the bourgoisie is constantly 316 00:20:05,510 --> 00:20:10,294 engaged in distructively reinventing and improving its own activities, 317 00:20:10,294 --> 00:20:14,241 and I won't be moralistic on a friday night that you can't do that, 318 00:20:14,241 --> 00:20:19,024 say, because, you know, sin is inirrevocable, is iniradicable 319 00:20:19,024 --> 00:20:22,925 and human beings are fallen creatures, and greed is one of the sins 320 00:20:22,925 --> 00:20:25,433 we cannot avoid commiting. 321 00:20:25,433 --> 00:20:28,916 I will just say that, as a sort of ordinary social process 322 00:20:28,916 --> 00:20:33,514 we don't stop at innocent, we go on, which surely is the thing 323 00:20:33,514 --> 00:20:36,049 you should say on a friday night. 324 00:20:37,680 --> 00:20:40,005 And so we went on. 325 00:20:40,420 --> 00:20:43,127 Now, where we went on is really toward the discovery 326 00:20:43,127 --> 00:20:46,795 that all of this would be even better is you had all the logs of everything. 327 00:20:46,795 --> 00:20:49,489 Because once you have all the logs of everything 328 00:20:49,489 --> 00:20:56,269 then every simple service is suddenly a gold mine waiting to happen 329 00:20:56,269 --> 00:20:58,963 And we blew it because the architecture of the net put the logs 330 00:20:58,963 --> 00:21:02,724 in the wrong place. They put the logs where innocents 331 00:21:02,724 --> 00:21:04,953 would be tempted. 332 00:21:04,953 --> 00:21:08,065 They put the logs where the fallen state of human beings 333 00:21:08,065 --> 00:21:12,111 implies eventually bad trouble, and we got it. 334 00:21:18,019 --> 00:21:23,454 The cloud means that we can't even point in the direction 335 00:21:23,454 --> 00:21:25,777 of the server anymore. 336 00:21:25,777 --> 00:21:29,567 And because we can't even point in the direction of the server anymore 337 00:21:29,567 --> 00:21:34,721 we don't have extra-technical or non-technical means 338 00:21:34,721 --> 00:21:39,895 of reliable control over this disaster in slow motion. 339 00:21:39,895 --> 00:21:46,703 You can make a rule about logs or data flow, or preservation, 340 00:21:46,703 --> 00:21:52,972 or control, or access, or disclosure, but your laws are human laws 341 00:21:52,972 --> 00:21:57,105 and they occupy particular territory and the server's 342 00:21:57,105 --> 00:21:59,236 in the cloud. 343 00:21:59,852 --> 00:22:03,206 And that means the server is always one step ahead 344 00:22:03,206 --> 00:22:06,626 of any rule you make, or two, or three, or six, 345 00:22:06,626 --> 00:22:09,956 or poof, I just realized I'm subject to regulation, 346 00:22:09,956 --> 00:22:13,029 I think I'll move to Oceana now. 347 00:22:14,567 --> 00:22:17,759 Which means that, in effect, we lost the ability to 348 00:22:17,759 --> 00:22:21,753 use either legal regulation or anything about the physical 349 00:22:21,753 --> 00:22:26,223 architecture of the network to interfere with the process 350 00:22:26,223 --> 00:22:30,251 of falling away from innocence that was now inevitable 351 00:22:30,251 --> 00:22:32,911 in the stage I'm talking about, what we might call 352 00:22:32,911 --> 00:22:35,722 late Google stage 1. 353 00:22:41,122 --> 00:22:45,171 It is here, of course, that mister Zuckerberg enters. 354 00:22:46,955 --> 00:22:51,487 The human race has, you know, susceptibility to harm 355 00:22:53,133 --> 00:22:58,665 but, mister Zuckerberg has attained an unenviable record. 356 00:23:00,496 --> 00:23:06,565 He has done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age. 357 00:23:11,795 --> 00:23:16,025 Because he harnessed, you know, friday night, that is, 358 00:23:16,025 --> 00:23:19,631 everybody needs to get laid, and he turned it into 359 00:23:19,631 --> 00:23:25,056 a structure for degenerating the integrity of human personality. 360 00:23:26,118 --> 00:23:30,407 And he has to a remarkable extent succeeded, 361 00:23:30,407 --> 00:23:36,412 with a very poor deal, namely, I will give you free web hosting, 362 00:23:36,412 --> 00:23:43,177 and some PHP doodads, and you get spying for free, 363 00:23:43,177 --> 00:23:51,441 all the time. And it works. That's the sad part, it works. 364 00:23:52,903 --> 00:23:55,555 How could that have happened? 365 00:23:55,555 --> 00:24:00,311 There was no architectural reason, really, right? 366 00:24:00,311 --> 00:24:03,004 There was no architecural reason, really. 367 00:24:03,004 --> 00:24:07,416 Facebook is the web, with "I keep all the logs, 368 00:24:07,416 --> 00:24:10,164 how do you feel about that?" 369 00:24:11,506 --> 00:24:15,988 It's a terrarium for what it feels like to live in a panopticon 370 00:24:15,988 --> 00:24:16,488 built out of web parts. 371 00:24:16,488 --> 00:24:18,345 and it shouldn't be allowed. It comes to that, it shouldn't be allowed. That's a very poor way to deliver 372 00:24:18,545 --> 99:59:59,999 those services. They are grossly overpriced at "spying all the time." They are not technically innovative. 373 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They depend upon an architechture subject to misuse, and the business model that supports them is misused. 374 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 There isn't any other business model for them. It's bad. It's bad. I'm not suggesting that it should 375 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 be illegal. It should be obsolete. We're technologists. We should fix it. I'm glad you're with me so far, 376 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 when I come to how we should fix it, I hope you'll still be with me 377 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 because then we could get it done. But let's say for now, that that's a really good example of where 378 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 we went wrong and what happened to us because. It's trickier with Gmail, because of that magical "untouched 379 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 by human hands-iness". 380 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 when I say to my students: "Why do you let people read your email?" 381 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They say: "But nobody's reading my email. There's no human 382 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 being ever touching it. That would freak me out. I would be creeped out if guys at 383 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Google were reading my email. But that's not happening, so I don't have a problem." Now this they cannot 384 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 say about Facebook. 385 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Indeed they know way too much about Facebook, if they've let themselves really know it. You have read the stuff 386 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and you know. Facebook workers know who's about to have a love affair before the people do. Because they 387 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 can see X obsessively checking the facebook page of Y. 388 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 There's some very nice research done a couple of years ago at MIT 389 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 in a seminar I shouldn't name by students I'm not going to describe because they were a little 390 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 denting to the Facebook terms of service in the course of their research, they were just scraping. But 391 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the purpose of their scraping was to demonstrate that you could find 392 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 closeted homosexuals on Facebook. They don't say anything about their sexual orientation. Their friends. 393 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Their friends are out. Their interests are the interests of their friends who are out. Their photographs 394 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 are tagged with their friends who are out. 395 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And they're out. Except they're not out. They're just out in Facebook, if anybody looks. Which is not 396 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 what they had in mind, surely. 397 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And not what we have in mind for them, surely. In fact 398 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the degree of potential informational inequality and disruption and difficulty that arises from a misunderstanding, 399 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 a heuristic error, in the minds of human beings about what is and is not discoverable about them is now 400 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 our biggest privacy problem. 401 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 My students, and I suspect many of the students of the teachers in this room, too, show constantly in 402 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 our dialogue the difficulty. They still think of privacy as "the one secret I don't want revealed." 403 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And that's not their problem. Their problem is all the stuff that's the cruft 404 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the daily dandruff of life 405 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 that they don't think of as secret in any way, but which aggregates to stuff that they don't want 406 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to know. Which aggregates not to just stuff they don't want people to know, but to predictive models 407 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 about them, that they would be very creeped out to think could exist at all. 408 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The simplicity with which, you can unanonymize theoretically anonymized data, the ease with which from 409 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 multiple source available to you through third and fourth party commercial transactions for information 410 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 you can assemble data maps of people's live, the ease with which, once you begin constraining 411 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 by the few things you know about people, the data available to you, you can quickly infer immense amounts 412 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 more 413 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 My friend and collegue Bradley Kooning, who works at the Software Freedom Law Center 414 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 is one of those archaic human beings who believes that his social security number is a private thing. 415 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and he goes to great lengths to make sure that his social security number is not disclosed, 416 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 which is his right under our law, oddly enough 417 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 though, try to get health insurance, or get a safe deposit box, or in fact, operate the business at all. 418 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We bend over backwards, sometimes, in the operation of our business, because 419 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Bradley's social security number is a secret. 420 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I said to him one day, "You know, it's over now, because Google knows your social security number." 421 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He says: "No they don't, I've never told it to anybody." 422 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I said: "Yeah, but they know the social security number of everybody else born in Baltimore. Yours is 423 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the other other one." 424 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And, as you know, that's true. The data that we infer is the data in the holes between the data 425 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 we already know if know enough things. 426 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So where we live has become a place in which it would be very unwise to say a 427 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 about anything that it isn't known if you are pretty widely known. And all of us, for one reason or another 428 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 are pretty widely known in the net. We want to live there. 429 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It is our neighborhood. 430 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We just don't want to live with a video camera on every tree, and a microphone on every bush 431 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and data miner beneath our feet everywhere we walk. 432 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And the net's like that now. 433 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I'm not objecting to the presence of AOL newbies in usenet news. 434 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Right, it's not an asthetic judgment from 1995, you know 435 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 that they neighborhood is now full of people who don't share our ethnocentric technogeekery, right? 436 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I'm not lamenting progress of a democritizing kind. 437 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I'm lamenting progress of a totalizing kind. I'm lamenting progress hostile to human freedom. 438 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We all know that it's hostile to human freedom. We all understand it's dystopic possibilities, 439 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 because the dystopias of which it is fertile were the stuff of the science fiction we read when we were 440 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 children. 441 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The Cold War was fertile in the fantastic invention 442 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 of where we live now, and it's hard for us to accept that, but it's true. 443 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Fortunately, of course, it's not owned by the government. Well, it is, it's fortunate, it's true. 444 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's owned by people who you can bribe to get the thing no matter who you are. 445 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If you're the government, you have an easy way of doing it. You fill out a subpoena blank and you mail 446 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 it. 447 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I spent two hours yesterday with a law school class, explaining in detail why the Fourth Ammendment does 448 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 not exist anymore. And I'm not going to do it again, because that's Thursday night, and 449 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 who would do that on a Friday night? 450 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But the Fourth Amendment doesn't exist anymore. 451 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I'll put the audio on the net, and the FBI and you can listen to it. 452 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 anytime you want. 453 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We have to fess up. If we're the people who care about freedom, it's late in the game, and we're behind. 454 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We did a lot of good stuff, and we have a lot of tools lying around that we built over the last 25 years 455 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I helped people build those tools, I helped people keep those tools safe, 456 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I helped people prevent the monopoly from putting all those tools in its bag and walking off with them 457 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I'm glad the tools are around, but we do have to admit: we have not used them to protect freedom 458 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 because freedom is decaying. And that's what David 459 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 meant in his very kind introduction. 460 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In fact, people who are investing in the new enterprises of unfreedom, are also the people you will hear 461 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 if you hang out in Silicon Valley these days telling you that Open Source has become irrelevant. 462 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 What's their logic? Their logic is Software as a Service is becoming the way of the world. 463 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Since nobody every gets any software anymore, the licenses that say if you give people software, you 464 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 have to give them freedom, don't matter, because you're not giving anybody any software, you're only 465 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 giving them services. 466 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Well, that's right, Open Source doesn't matter anymore. Free Software matters a lot. 467 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Because, of course, Free Software is Open Source software with freedom. 468 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And Stallman was right, it's the Freedom that matters, ok, the rest of it is just source code. 469 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Freedom still matters, and what we need to do is to make Free Software matter to the problem that we 470 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 have, which is un-free services, delivered in un-free ways really begining to deteriorate the structure 471 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 of human freedom. 472 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Like a lot of un-freedom, the real underlying social process that force this un-freedom along, is nothing 473 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 more than perceived convenience. 474 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 All sorts of freedom goes over perceived convenience. 475 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You know this, you've stopped paying for things with cash, you use a card you can wave at an RFID reader 476 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Convenience is said to dictate that you need free web hosting and PHP doodads in return for spying all t 477 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the time, because webservers are so terrible to run. 478 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Who could run a webserver of his own, and keep the logs? 479 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It would be brutal. 480 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Well, it would if it were IIS, I mean, you know, it was a self fulfilling, well, it was intended to be 481 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 a self fulfilling, yeah, it was designed to say "you're a client, I'm a server. I invented Windows 7. " 482 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 "It was my idea, I'll keep the logs, thank you very much." 483 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That was the industry. 484 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We built another industry. It's in here. But it's in - well, yeah, it is kind of in here, huh? 485 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So where isn't it? 486 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Well, it's not in the personal web server I don't have that would prevent me from falling... 487 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Well why don't we do something about that? 488 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So what do we need? 489 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We need a really good web server that you can put in your pocket and plug in any place 490 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In other words, it shouldn't be any larger than the charger for your cellphone. 491 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And you shouldn't be able to plug it into any power jack in the world and into any wire near it 492 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 or sink it up to any wifi router that happens to be in its neighborhood 493 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It should add a couple of USB ports to attach it to things. It should know how to bring itself up 494 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 it should know how to start its web server. It should know how to go and collect your stuff out of all 495 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 of the social networking places where you've got it. 496 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It should know how to send an encrypted backup of everything to your friends servers. 497 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It should know how to microblog. It should know how to make some noise that's like tweet, but not gonna 498 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 infringe anybody's trademark. 499 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In other words, it should know how to be your - oh, excuse me, I have to use a dangerous word - avatar 500 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 , in a free net that works for you, and keeps the logs. 501 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You can always tell what's happening in your server, and if anybody else what's happening in your server 502 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 they can get a search warrant. 503 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And if you feel like moving your server to Oceana, or Sealand or New Zealand, or the North Pole, well 504 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 buy a plane ticket and put it in your pocket. Take it there and leave it behind. 505 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Now there's a little more we got to do, but you know it's all trivial. We need some dynamic DNS, and 506 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 all stuff we've already invented, it's all there, nobody needs anything special. 507 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Do we have the server you can put in your pocket? 508 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Indeed we do, off the shelf hardware now, right? 509 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Beautiful little wall warts, made with ARM chips 510 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 exactly what I spec'ed for you. Plugin 'em in, plug 'em in, wire'em up. 511 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 How's the software stack in there? I don't know, gee, it's any software stack you want to put in there. 512 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Ubuntu 9.04, 9.10, 8.04, 8.10, Debian, Fedora, it doesn't matter, it can do it in an instant. 513 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In fact we will send it to you with somebody's top of the charts current distro in it, you just have 514 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to name which one you want. Which one do you want? 515 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Well, you ought to want the Debian GNU/Linux social networking stack 516 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Delivered to you free, free as in freedom, I mean. 517 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Which does all of things I mean, brings itself up, runs its little Apache, or it's OIAUTH, or it's tinyHTTP or, HTTPlighty, 518 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 whatever you want. Does all of the things we need it to do, syncs up, gets your social network 519 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 data from the places, locks it down, does you backup, searches, find your friends, registers your dynamic 520 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 DNS. All of it is trivial, all of it is stuff we've got. 521 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We need to put that together. 522 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I'm not talking about a thing that's hard for us - we need to make a Free Software distribution 523 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 how many of those do we do? 524 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 right? 525 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We need to give a bunch to all of our friends and we need to say: "Here, fool around with this and make 526 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 it better." 527 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We need to do the one thing we are really, really, really, really good at. 528 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Because all the rest of it is done, in the bag, cheap, it's ready. 529 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Those wall wart servers, those are $99 now, going to $79, when there are 5 million of them, they will 530 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 be $29.99 531 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Then we go to people and we say: "$29.99 once, for a lifetime. Great social networking. Updates automatically. 532 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Software so strong, you coudn't knock it over if you kicked it. Used in hundreds of millions of servers 533 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 all over the world, doing a wonderful job, and you know what? You get no spying, for free. 534 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They want to know a what's going on in there? Let them get a search warrant. 535 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 For your appartment, your home, your castle, the place where the Fourth Amendment still sort of exists 536 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 every other Tuesday and Thursday, when the Supreme Court is not in session 537 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We can do that. We can do that. That requires us to do only the stuff we're really really good at. 538 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The rest of it, we get for free. 539 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Mr. Zuckerberg? Not so much. 540 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Because of course, when there is a competitor to "All spying all the time, whether you like it or not" 541 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the competition's going to do real well. 542 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Don't expect Google to be the competitor, that's a platform. 543 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 What we need is to make a thing that's so greasy, that thre will never be another platform again 544 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Can we do it? Yeah, absolutely, in fact, if you don't have 545 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 a date on Friday night, let's just have a hackfest and get it done. 546 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Right, it's well within our reach. 547 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Are we going to do it before the Facebook IPO, or are we going to wait until after? 548 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Really, honestly, seriously? 549 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 See, the problem that the law has very often in the world where we live in and practice where we work 550 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The problem that the law has is very often the problem that technology can solve, 551 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and the problem that technology can solve is the place where we go to the law. 552 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's the Free Software movement, right? There's software hacking over here, and there's legal hacking 553 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 over there, and you put'em both together. The whole is bigger than the sum of the parts. 554 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So, it's not like we have to live in the catastrophe. We don't have to live in the catastrophe. 555 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's not like what we have to do to begin to reverse the catastrophe is hard for us. 556 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We need to re-architecht services in the net. We need to redistribute services back towards the edge 557 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We need to de-virtualize the servers where your life is stored, and we need to restore some autonomy 558 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to you, as the owner of the server. 559 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The measures for taking those steps are technical. 560 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 As usual, the box builders are ahead of us. 561 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The hardware isn't the constraint. 562 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 As usual, nowadays, the software isn't really that deep of a constraint, either. 563 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Because we've made so much wonderful software, which is in fact being used by all of the guys 564 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 on the bad architecture. 565 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They don't want do without our stuff. The bad architecture is enabled, powered by us. 566 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The re-architecture is, too. And we have our usual magic benefit. 567 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If we had one copy of what I'm talking about, we'd have all of the copies we need. 568 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We have no manufacturing, or transport or logistics constraint. If we do the job, it's done. We scale. 569 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This is a technical challenge for a social reason. It's a frontier for technical people to explore. 570 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 There is enormous social payoff for exploring it. 571 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The payoff is plain, because the harm being ameliorated is current, and people you know are suffering 572 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 from it. 573 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Everything we know about why we make Free Software says that's when we come into our own. 574 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's a technical challenge, incrementally attainable by extension from where we already are 575 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 that makes the lives of the people around us and whom we care about immediately better. 576 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I have never, in 25 years of doing this work, I have never seen us fail to rise to a challenge that could 577 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 be defined in those terms. 578 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So I don't think we're going to fail this one either, 579 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Mr. Zuckerberg richly deserves bankruptcy. 580 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Let's give it to him. 581 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Let's give it to him. For free. 582 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I promise, and you should promise, too, not to spy on the bankruptcy proceedings. 583 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's none of our business, it's private. 584 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 This is actually, you know, a story potentially happy. It is a story potentially happy. 585 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Anf if we do it, we will have quelled one more rumor about the irrelevance of us. 586 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And everybody in the Valley will have to go find another buzzword. 587 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And all the guys who think that Sand Hill Road is going to rise into new power and glory by spying on 588 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 everybody and monetizing it, will have to find another line of work, too. 589 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 All of which is purely on the side of the angels. Purely on the side of the angels. 590 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We will not be rid of all of our problems, by any means, but just moving the logs from them to you 591 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 is the single biggest step that we can take in resolving a whole range of social problems that I feel 592 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 badly in what remains in what remains of my American constitution, and that I would feel badly aboute 593 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 if I were watching the failure of the European data protection law from the inside instead of outside 594 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and that I would feel kind of hopeful about, if I were, oh, say a friend of mine in China. 595 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Because you know, of course, we really ought to put a VPN in that wall wart, and probably we gotta put 596 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 a Tor router in there, and of course we've got BitTorrent. And by the time you get done with all of that 597 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 we have a Freedom Box. We have a box that not merely climbs us out of the hole we're in, 598 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We have a box that puts the ladder up for people who are deeper in the hole than we are. 599 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Which is another thing we love to do. 600 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I do believe the United States State Department is going to go slanging away at the Chinese Communist 601 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Party about internet freedom, and I believe the Chinese Party is going to go slanging back. 602 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And what they are going to say is: "you think you've got real good privacy and autonomy in the internet in 603 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 your neighborhood?" 604 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I got to admit, everytime they do that now, as they have been doing it in the last two weeks 605 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I would say "Ouch" if I was Hillary Clinton and I knew anything about it. 606 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Because we don't. Because we don't. 607 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's true, we have a capitalist kind, and they've got a centralist vanguard of the party sort of marxists 608 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 kind, or maybe marxists, or maybe just totalitarian kind. 609 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But we're not going to win the freedom of the net discussion carrying Facebook on our backs. 610 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We're not. 611 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But just through those wall wart servers around pretty thickly in American society and start taking back 612 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the logs and if you want to know who I talk to on a Friday night, get a search warrant, and stop reading 613 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 my email, and by the way, 614 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 there's my GPG key, and now we really are encrypting, for a change, and so on 615 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and so on, and so on 616 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and it begins to look like something we might want to go on an international crusade about 617 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 we really are making freedom, here, for other people, too. 618 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 For people who live in places where the web don't work. 619 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So this is not a challenge we don't want to rise to, it's a challenge that we want to rise to plenty. 620 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In fact, we're in a happy state that all the benefits that we could get are way bigger than the technical 621 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 intricacy of doing what needs to be done, which isn't much. isn't much. 622 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's where we came from. We came from our technology was more free than we understood 623 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and we gave away a bunch of the freedom before we knew it was gone 624 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We came from un-free software had bad social consequences further down the road than even the freedom 625 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 agitators knew. 626 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We came from un-freedom's metaphors tend to produce bad technology. 627 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In other words, we came from stuff that our movement, if I can call it 'ours,' was designed to confront 628 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 from the beginning, but we came from there. 629 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And we're still living with the consequences of: we didn't do it quite right the first time. 630 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Though we cought up, thanks to Richard Stallman, and we're moving on. 631 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Where we live now, is no place where we're going to have to see our grandchildren live. 632 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Where we live now is no place we would like to conduct guided tours of. 633 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I used to say to my students: "How many video cameras are there between where you live and the law school? 634 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 count them." 635 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I now say to my students: "How many video cameras are there between the front door of the law school 636 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and this classroom? Count them." 637 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I now say to my students: "Can you find a place where there are no video cameras?" 638 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Now what happened in that process, was that we created immense cognitive auxiliaries for the State. 639 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Enourmous engines of listening. 640 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You know how it is if you live in an American university, thanks to the movie and music companies, 641 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 which keep reminding you of the consequeces of living in the midst of an enormous surveillence network. 642 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We're surrounded by stuff listening to and watching us. 643 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We're surrounded by mineable data. 644 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Not all of that is going to go away, because we took Facebook and split it up and carried away our little 645 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 shards of it. 646 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's not going go away because we won't take free webhosting with spying inside, anymore 647 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We'll have other work to do. 648 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And some of that work is lawyers' work, I will admit that. 649 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Some of that work is law drafting and litigating and making trouble and doing lawyer stuff. 650 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I'm, that's fine, ready. 651 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 My friends and I, we'll do the lawyers' work. 652 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It would be way simpler to do lawyers' work if we were living in a society which had come to understand 653 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 its privacy. 654 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It would be way simpler to do lawyers' work if young people realized that when they grow up and start 655 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 voting or start voting now that they're grown up, this is an issue. 656 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That they need to get the rest of it done, the way we fixed the big stuff when we were kids. 657 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And we'll have a much easier time 658 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 with the enormous confusions of international interlocking of regimes 659 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 when we have deteriorated the immense force of American capitalism enforcing us to be less free and more 660 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 surveiled for other people's profit all of the time. 661 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It isn't that this gets all problems solved, but the easy work is very rich and rewarding right now. 662 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The problems are really bad. Getting the easy ones out will improve the politics of solving the hard 663 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 ones. 664 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And it's right up our alley. The solution is made of our parts. We gotta do it. That's my message. 665 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's Friday night, some people don't want to go right back to coding, I'm sure 666 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We could put it off until Tuesday, but how long do you really want to wait? 667 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 How long do you really want to wait? 668 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You know, every day that goes by, there's more data we'll never get back 669 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Every day that goes by, there's more inferences we can't undo. 670 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Every day that goes by, we pile up more stuff in the hands of the people who got too much. 671 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So it's not like we should just say: "one of these days, I'll get around to that." 672 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's not like we should say: "you know, umn, I think I'd rather, sort of, spend my time browsing news a 673 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 about iPad." 674 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's way more urgent than that. It's way more urgent. 675 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It's that we haven't given ourselves the direction in which to go. 676 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So let's give ourselves the direction to go. 677 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The direction in which to go is towards freedom, using Free Software, to make social justice. 678 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 alright? 679 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But, but, but, you know this. That's the problem with talking on a Friday night. 680 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You talk for an hour, and all you tell people is what they know already. 681 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So thanks a lot. I'm happy to take your questions.