Edward Snowden: Can the Government Listen In if Your Phone is Off? — Transcript

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1. 0:00can I ask you this is there a way to
2. 0:02mitigate any of this personally I mean
3. 0:04is I mean shutting your phone off
4. 0:06doesn't even work right
5. 0:08well so it it does in a way it's yes and
6. 0:11no um the thing with shutting your phone
7. 0:12off that is risk is how do you know your
8. 0:14phone's actually turned off
9. 0:16um it used to be uh when I was in Geneva
10. 0:19for example working for the CIA
11. 0:23um we would all carry like drug dealer
12. 0:26phones uh you know the old smartphones
13. 0:29that are sorry old dumb phones they're
14. 0:31not smartphones and the reason why was
15. 0:34just because they had removable
16. 0:36batteries where you could take the
17. 0:38battery out right and the the one
18. 0:41beautiful thing about technology is if
19. 0:43there's no electricity in it right if
20. 0:45there's no go juice available to it if
21. 0:47there's no battery connected to it it's
22. 0:49not sending anything because you have to
23. 0:51get power from somewhere you have to
24. 0:53have power in order to do work
25. 0:56but now your phones are all sealed right
26. 0:59you can't take the batteries out so
27. 1:01there are potential ways that you can
28. 1:03hack a phone where it appears to be off
29. 1:05but it's not actually off it's just
30. 1:07pretending to be off whereas in fact
31. 1:09it's still listening and doing all this
32. 1:10stuff but for the average person
33. 1:13that doesn't apply right and I got to
34. 1:15tell you guys they've been chasing me
35. 1:17all over the place I don't worry about
36. 1:20that stuff right
37. 1:22um and it's because if they're applying
38. 1:23that level of effort to me they'll
39. 1:26probably get the same information
40. 1:27through other routes
41. 1:29I am as careful as I can and I I you use
42. 1:32things like fair to cages I turn devices
43. 1:34off but if they're actually uh
44. 1:37manipulating the way devices display
45. 1:39it's just too great a level of effort
46. 1:42even for someone like me to keep that up
47. 1:43on a constant basis also if they get me
48. 1:47I only trust phones so much so there's
49. 1:50only so much they can derive from the
50. 1:51compromise and this is how operational
51. 1:53security works you think about what are
52. 1:57the realistic threats that you're facing
53. 1:58that you're trying to mitigate
54. 2:01and with the mitigation that you're
55. 2:03trying to do is what would be the loss
56. 2:06what would be the Damage Done to you if
57. 2:08this stuff was exploited much more
58. 2:11realistic than worrying about these
59. 2:13things that I call Voodoo hacks right
60. 2:14which are like next level stuff and
61. 2:16actually just a shout out for those of
62. 2:18your readers who are interested in this
63. 2:21stuff um I wrote a paper on this
64. 2:24specific problem how do you know when a
65. 2:25phone is actually off how do you know
66. 2:27when it's actually not spying on you
67. 2:28with a brilliant brilliant guy named
68. 2:31Andrew bunny Huang he's an MIT PhD and I
69. 2:35I think electrical engineering
70. 2:38called the introspection engine that was
71. 2:42published in the Journal of open
72. 2:43engineering you can find it online
73. 2:46um and it'll go as deep down in the
74. 2:48weeds I promise you as you want we take
75. 2:49an iPhone 6 uh this was back when it was
76. 2:53fairly new and we modified it so we
77. 2:55could actually uh not trust the device
78. 2:57to report its own state but physically
79. 3:00monitor its state to see if it was
80. 3:01spying on you but for average people
81. 3:02right uh this academic uh that's not
82. 3:07your primary threat your primary threats
83. 3:09are these bulk collection programs your
84. 3:12primary threat is the fact that your
85. 3:14phone is constantly squawking to these
86. 3:16cell phone towers it's doing all these
87. 3:18things because we leave our phones in a
88. 3:20state that is constantly on