The shift we need to stop mass surveillance | Albert Fox Cahn

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2022

⏱️ 7 minutes

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Summary

Mass surveillance is worse than you think, but the solutions are simpler than you realize, says lawyer, technologist and TED Fellow Albert Cahn. Breaking down the crude tactics law enforcement uses to sweep up massive amounts of data collected about us by our everyday tech, he lays out how new legal firewalls can protect the public from geofence warrants and other surveillance abuses -- and how we might end the looming dystopia of mass surveillance.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily.
0:07.4	So how are the troves of data collected about us getting used by government and law enforcement?
0:12.6	What rights do we have? And how do we protect ourselves from data being used for undemocratic purposes?
0:19.0	In his talk from TED 2020,
0:24.4	anti-surveillance advocate and TED fellow Albert Foxcon lays out how we can better protect our information.
0:28.4	And that'll keep us from having our data used against us.
0:31.8	That's after this short break.
0:35.5	We all know we're tracked everywhere we go, but as a lawyer, a technologist, and
0:41.1	anti-surveillance activist, I'm here to tell you two things. The threat is way worse than you
0:47.0	realize, and the solution's simpler than you think. And no, it's not wearing a tinfoil hat.
0:57.7	You may know that advertisers can record every link you click and every place you've been, but you may not realize the government can buy that
1:03.7	data too. If the NYPD wants to track a BLM protest, they can buy the data. If Texas wants to watch an abortion clinic,
1:14.0	they can buy the data. And when the IRS wants to know if your Florida company is really doing
1:21.6	work in California, they don't need to buy the data. They already did. Millions of our location records.
1:30.3	And what the government can't buy, it can take by force,
1:33.7	crudely wielding our 18th century constitution against 21st century technology.
1:40.4	With a geo-fence warrant, companies are forced to hand over our location data, not for one person, but everyone, every single user in a geographic area, whether a single room or an entire city.
1:56.7	In one Virginia case, police cast a digital dragnet far beyond the crime scene,
2:02.9	forcing Google to identify everyone nearby, even those at a church, even though they weren't
2:10.5	even suspects. It's not only Orwellian, it's bad policing. Search widely enough and someone's movements will always look
2:19.9	suspicious. Like an Arizona man, wrongly arrested for a murder miles away, simply because someone
2:28.7	was logged into his Google account. Or a Florida man connected to a crime scene for biking around the neighborhood.
	...

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