THIS is Coming to Your Phone NEXT... I Warned You — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Your phone already knows more about  you than most people ever will.
2. 0:03If you think it's just cookies, location tracking,  chat logs, shopping habits, and every website
3. 0:09you've ever visited feeding endless corporate and  government databases... that's just the beginning.
4. 0:14Because right now, governments and some of  the biggest companies on Earth are building
5. 0:17something far more dangerous: backdoors into the  devices you spend hours using every single day.
6. 0:23Including the one you're  probably watching this on.
7. 0:26Mark never thought it could happen to  him. He was already dealing with one
8. 0:30of a parent’s worst nightmares: His infant  son was getting sick. In February of 2021,
9. 0:35the San Francisco stay at home dad noticed his boy  was experiencing painful swelling in his groin.
10. 0:40So, he did what every responsible father would do,  getting in contact with a medical professional.
11. 0:45He’d never expect that doing the right  thing could put his whole life in jeopardy.
12. 0:50The COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing at  the time, when even leaving the house could be
13. 0:55dangerous, especially to the very old and the very  young. They’d need to send evidence of the illness
14. 1:00to the advice nurse to schedule an appointment for  a video consultation. Mark grabbed his Android and
15. 1:05took some pictures of the affected area so that  he and his wife could send them to the nurse.
16. 1:10It was the right decision,  because using the images,
17. 1:13the nurse was able to easily diagnose the  infection and prescribed an antibiotic.
18. 1:17But Mark was about to deal  with a far worse infection.
19. 1:21In taking and sharing those photos, he’d  attracted the attention of a supposedly
20. 1:25world-class AI system that big tech uses to catch  some of the most monstrous people in the world:
21. 1:30Creators and distributors of online child abuse  material. And in the eyes of this system, a man
22. 1:36who was just trying to help his son was actually  another one of these truly despicable criminals.
23. 1:42That decision was about to  throw his life into chaos.
24. 1:44Programs that large companies like Google and  Apple use to stop monsters are peering into your
25. 1:50private digital photo library. Mark found this  out the hard way. Loyalty didn’t matter: Mark was,
26. 1:55in many ways, one of Google’s best customers. Not  only was he a lifelong Android devotee since the
27. 2:01phones became available, he backed up all of  his data and photos on Google Cloud. He synced
28. 2:06his Google Calendar with his wife, and had a phone  plan with Google Fi. So when Google turned on him,
29. 2:12it really was like the ground opening up  beneath his feet and swallowing him whole.
30. 2:16Two days after taking the photos, he  received a notification from Google
31. 2:19saying that his account was closed  due to harmful content. It was, quote,
32. 2:24“a severe violation of Google’s  policies and might be illegal.”
33. 2:28And here’s the first cruel twist.
34. 2:30Mark immediately realized what was happening,  because he’d once worked as a software engineer
35. 2:34for a company producing automated content  moderation tools. In his case, he believed,
36. 2:39it would be as simple as identifying and  appealing to the human being inside the system
37. 2:44who could exercise real judgment. The  problem here was that there was no human.
38. 2:49The system itself was his only judge.
39. 2:51Google had also flagged a different video, and the  case triggered a humiliating police investigation.
40. 2:57Thankfully, after the stress of the  probe, it was easy to prove to the cops
41. 3:00that this had been a misunderstanding.  He had the words of his wife, the nurse,
42. 3:05and the paper trails of the treatment on his side.
43. 3:08It would not reinstate the account or any of  his tools, and what did this mean in real terms?
44. 3:13He lost years of photos, emails, contacts, records  of his son’s early life, his email address, and
45. 3:19important business documentation. And thanks to  Google Fi, he even lost his phone number and plan,
46. 3:25despite having done anything wrong. Mark  would say of this whole nightmare scenario,
47. 3:29“I knew that these companies were watching and  that privacy is not what we would hope it to be,
48. 3:33but I haven’t done anything wrong.”
49. 3:35It’s a freak case, a nightmare scenario,  the kind of thing you’ll think about every
50. 3:39time you take or save a perfectly innocent  photo. But this wasn’t just an isolated case.
51. 3:44Literally the exact same thing happened  to a man identified as Cassio in Texas,
52. 3:48right down to the private parts infection and  the photos texted to a concerned pediatrician.
53. 3:53Cassio was in the process of buying  a house, and having all of his Google
54. 3:56accounts nuked almost ruined him and his  family’s chances of sealing the deal.
55. 4:01These are real families, real  lives, real consequences,
56. 4:05all in the hands of something that doesn’t even  have hands: Unthinking, unfeeling AI content
57. 4:10algorithms hard-coded into the systems that  we’ve all come to be so dependent on. In 2021,
58. 4:14Google flagged over 600,000 cases, and used  this as evidence to annihilate 270,000 users.
59. 4:21Are we to believe that all of these people  are criminals? Or are we seeing a mass cull
60. 4:26from overzealous systems, designed to look like  hammers and treat everything they see as a nail?
61. 4:31And the cull is just getting started. In  the UK, the tools to carry it out aren’t
62. 4:35just being hard-coded into phones, they’re  being hard-coded into laws themselves…
63. 4:40The UK has always been the spearhead of digital  surveillance efforts in the English-speaking
64. 4:44world. For proof of this, look no further  than the Investigatory Powers Act 2016,
65. 4:50or as it was commonly nicknamed, “The Snooper’s  Charter.” It gave the British police and
66. 4:54intelligence services sweeping powers to violate  the communication privacy of their citizens.
67. 4:59In the classic style, trading privacy and  liberty for the promises of safety and security.
68. 5:04In terms of more specific provisions, they  empower these authorities to intercept certain
69. 5:09communications, collect mass communication  data, and to bulk-intercept communications.
70. 5:14Americans will probably be getting deja vu for  the actions of the NSA after the passing of the
71. 5:20Patriot Act right about now. It also led to the  creation of the Investigatory Powers Commission,
72. 5:25requiring service providers to retain details  of every site that a user had been on for at
73. 5:30least a year. It gave law enforcement warrantless  access to this data, and reaffirmed the ability
74. 5:35of these authorities to remove any encryption  that private companies have placed on user data.
75. 5:40Under these new laws, at least 48 different  agencies can have warrantless access to the data.
76. 5:46These range from different police  forces and national security interests
77. 5:49to even the Food Standards Agency and the  Northern Ireland Ambulance Service Health
78. 5:54and Social Care Trust. To say all of this  was just “controversial” among free internet
79. 5:59activists and government watchdog groups  in the UK would be vastly understating it.
80. 6:04Anne Jellema, head of the World Wide Web  Foundation, said, “Does the UK really want
81. 6:09the dubious honor of introducing powers deemed  too intrusive by all other major democracies,
82. 6:14joining the likes of China and Russia in  collecting everyone's browsing habits?”
83. 6:18Article 19, an individual rights  and freedoms group from the UK,
84. 6:22went even further. They said that the law  “offers a template for authoritarian regimes
85. 6:27and seriously undermining the rights of its  citizens to privacy and freedom of expression.”
86. 6:31And they were right, because the Chinese  Government would later use this British
87. 6:35legislation to defend their own  draconian internet control laws.
88. 6:39It’s not exactly great international company.
89. 6:42It got so much worse on April 23rd, 2024.
90. 6:45The British Government argued that the  bounty of data and metadata out there
91. 6:49had grown by an order of magnitude since  2016. That meant the general public as
92. 6:54well as the corporate sector were already  able to access and take advantage of this
93. 6:58data. Giving the government even more  power to snoop into all of this data
94. 7:02was simply a way of leveling the playing field  against the so-called “Bad Actors” out there.
95. 7:07If you’re someone who believes that  encryption that private companies will
96. 7:09protect your information, then this legislative  framework should and frankly, will, scare you.
97. 7:15The biggest additions for the new 2024  amendment are two frightening details:
98. 7:19One: The law would force technology  companies, even ones based overseas,
99. 7:23to keep the British Government updated  on any improvements to encryption,
100. 7:27privacy, and security hardware and software.
101. 7:29And Two: When receiving this information, they’d  have limitless power to order these companies to
102. 7:35halt or alter these new developments so they  could always have a backdoor into everyone’s
103. 7:40online data and communications. It’s a  kind of terrifying digital skeleton key,
104. 7:45a one-way mirror that lets the UK Government stare  into anyone’s devices without them ever knowing.
105. 7:51It might be happening right now.
106. 7:53An open letter from 30 cybersecurity  experts, cryptographers, and academics said
107. 7:57that this whole thing could be an absolute  disaster for overall security. They wrote,
108. 8:01“these proposals would have disastrous  consequences for the security of users…
109. 8:05by introducing bureaucratic hurdles that slow the  development and deployment of security updates.”
110. 8:10Nobody with any knowledge in the field  could tell them that they’re wrong here,
111. 8:14but that doesn’t matter. Legislators  are more oriented towards scrambling for
112. 8:18power and control than taking things  slow and listening to the experts.
113. 8:21If you think this starts and ends in the UK,  then I’m afraid you’re living in a fairytale.
114. 8:26You might think these are just tools  to track down criminals and terrorists,
115. 8:30you’re safe and secure. After all,  you haven’t done anything wrong.
116. 8:33But that’s just what they want you to think.
117. 8:36Now that the tracks have been put down to slow  and sometimes even destroy the encryption,
118. 8:40the next question is how they can  look at everyone’s actual messages.
119. 8:44And if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll  know that they already have the answer…
120. 8:48The UK Government isn’t the all-powerful,  world-dominating force that it was in the
121. 8:52Imperial Era. There’s no putting the power of  End to End Encryption, and the security and
122. 8:57privacy it provides, back in the box. And you’re  right. So instead, they took a different route.
123. 9:01Hiding the poison pill  inside end to end encryption.
124. 9:04If you’ve never had it explained  to you in human terms before,
125. 9:08end to end encryption means that when you  send a message, the message is scrambled,
126. 9:12or “encrypted”. No one but its intended  recipient would be able to see it. The
127. 9:16decryption key would only be in the recipient’s  hand, and the message would only be decoded when
128. 9:21in this person’s possession. It’s a great  system that will keep your secrets safe.
129. 9:26Unless there’s a backdoor…
130. 9:28Like Client-Side Scanning.
131. 9:30It goes by many names, including “local  processing” and “endpoint filtering.”
132. 9:34But they all fundamentally mean the same thing.  It creates a filter between the two ends of the
133. 9:39encryption process. That filter is connected  to a database that has a series of hashes.
134. 9:44When a message or a file passes through, while  the encrypted message isn’t said to be “read”,
135. 9:49it is checked against the hash databases  of the Client-Side Scanning software.
136. 9:53If this filter deems the encrypted communication  to contain objectionable or forbidden material,
137. 9:58one of several things might happen.
138. 10:00If you’re lucky, on the most benign end, the  filter will just stop the message from sending. If
139. 10:05you’re unlucky, your message might be sent, but a  copy of it will also be sent to the relevant third
140. 10:10party, whether that’s a corporate moderation team  or the government imposing restrictions on it.
141. 10:15No matter how narrow the focus of this  filter, this is still a breach of security
142. 10:19that could be crowbarred open as wide  as a powerful enough entity likes.
143. 10:24If the end to end encryption you’ve been  promised contains Client-Side Scanning,
144. 10:28then the encryption is little  more than a comforting lie.
145. 10:31This little government black box  is hiding inside far more of your
146. 10:34favorite communication programs than  you’d ever feel comfortable knowing.
147. 10:38There’s no meaningful limit to what can  be put in this collection of hashes.
148. 10:42Some have suggested that you could easily put  the whole dictionary into one of these databases,
149. 10:47which would effectively make any  message susceptible to easy decryption.
150. 10:51Think of it like Dracula: He can’t enter  your house until he’s been invited,
151. 10:55but once he’s been invited in once,  he can come and go as he pleases.
152. 10:59Then you’re in real trouble.
153. 11:01In the days before the internet, would  you still send mail if you knew that USPS
154. 11:05was opening every single letter, every package,  to find out and record what’s waiting inside?
155. 11:11Which brings us back to the privacy-destroying  legislative experiments of the UK, such as the
156. 11:15Online Safety Act of 2023. This is the law that  keeps minors in the UK off of social media,
157. 11:21and has likely led to an incredible boost in  the sales of VPNs across the nation. But it
158. 11:27actually contains an even more sinister caveat  that the intrusive age checks: A mandate for
159. 11:31technology providers to include the exact kind of  Client-Side Scanning mechanisms we just described.
160. 11:38At this point, it probably goes without  saying that this is a terrible idea.
161. 11:42Ciaran Martin, former chief executive of the UK  National Cyber Security Centre, said of this:
162. 11:46“Client-side-scanning, despite  the claims of its proponents,
163. 11:49does seem to involve some kind of level of access,  some kind of ability to sort and scan… there’s
164. 11:55no way of confining that to good use by lawful  credible authorities and liberal democracies.”
165. 12:00It’s not surprising that ComputerWeekly.Com has  declared, “Privacy will be under unprecedented
166. 12:05attack in 2026.” The UK seems to just be  the warning shot before the full onslaught.
167. 12:11The worst part is that all  these nightmarish new policies
168. 12:14are almost impossible to argue  against for one big reason:
169. 12:18You’re not against child safety online, are you?
170. 12:22It’s the vague notion of child safety that’s  been employed to prop up campaigns as baloney
171. 12:27at the original 1980s Satanic Panic against rock  music, to more modern attempts to paint games
172. 12:33from Pokemon to GTA as horrors that’ll  turn kids into cold-blooded murderers.
173. 12:38And the reason it keeps being used  is that it almost always works.
174. 12:41Purely because of the fact it looks really,
175. 12:44really bad if you argue against proposals that  aim to prevent child abuse and even terrorism.
176. 12:49But is this technology actually really stopping  criminals and terrorists? Or is it just making
177. 12:54things easier for governments across the world  to oppress people whose speech they don’t like?
178. 12:59Starting in 2023, the National Center for Missing  and Exploited Children saw a sharp rise in reports
179. 13:05thanks to the increasing role of  automated technological systems
180. 13:08in reporting sinister behavior  online. 36.2 million reports.
181. 13:14Sadly, while some of that actually is material  being made by truly awful people, it’s worth
182. 13:19remembering that people like Mark and Cassio from  earlier would be included in a tally like this.
183. 13:24This is a problem that cuts both ways.
184. 13:27Not only is it horrible for the  people who get falsely accused,
185. 13:30but all these false positives make it harder  for authorities to investigate actual culprits,
186. 13:35and save any victims involved. Anyone whose  primary motivation was actually protecting
187. 13:39children would be able to notice this glaring  flaw in the system and work to create more
188. 13:44specific tools. Well, unless “protect the  children” is really just a smokescreen.
189. 13:49And you inevitably have to ask: If they’re not  actually building this system to protect children,
190. 13:55then what’s the true purpose of these  massive, hidden surveillance machines?
191. 13:58What the UK is doing is just the start.
192. 14:01Obviously, restrictive systems like this have  existed in Russia and China for about as long
193. 14:05as the internet existed. But the UK were  the real trailblazers for destroying digital
194. 14:10privacy in the alleged liberal democracies of  the Western world. Now the EU and the United
195. 14:16States seem eager to follow that trail to a  potentially even more extreme destination.
196. 14:21The EU has been slowly but surely moving to take  up a policy called CSAR, but it’s more infamously
197. 14:28known by its nickname: Chat Control. Now why  might they call it something like that, huh?
198. 14:33Of course, this policy would feature the same age  verification traps that have been inconveniencing
199. 14:38people across the UK and Australia. But they’d  also take it just that little bit further:
200. 14:43Proposing that technological communication  programs “voluntarily” scan all the messages
201. 14:48of their users for forbidden content. When  the government of a major economic zone
202. 14:53strongly suggests that you “voluntarily”  do something, it’s a little like the Mafia
203. 14:58strongly encouraging you to “voluntarily”  give them protection money every week.
204. 15:03It’s kind of an offer you can’t refuse.
205. 15:05Critics have said that the systems the EU wants  to put in place are notoriously error prone.
206. 15:11While the legislation says that it will only  give the police access to data that the system
207. 15:15flags as potentially dangerous, you’ll realize by  now that tuna nets catch plenty more than tuna.
208. 15:21If you use an innocent word that’s been plugged  into the system as a terrorist code hash,
209. 15:26police and intelligence agencies will have  full legal access to all of your chats.
210. 15:30Even if you’re not doing anything illegal,  do you really want them seeing all that?
211. 15:35Let’s say you go to the beach and you and your  friends take a few photos in your swimwear.
212. 15:40You’re not the kind of person who posts stuff  like that to social media, it’d make you feel a
213. 15:43little self-conscious, but you still don’t want  to lose the memory. These photos sit there in
214. 15:48your photo album, but if you’re in the UK, the  EU, or - as you’re about to find out - the US,
215. 15:53something scary happens the next time  your device backs up to the cloud.
216. 15:57AI systems designed to scan photos  for bodies and bare skin suddenly
217. 16:00pick your photos out of the cloud. There  might never be any real consequences,
218. 16:05you might not even know it happened,  but they still got flagged. Somewhere,
219. 16:09a content moderation team or a cybercrime  division are looking at your swimsuit photos.
220. 16:14Pretty creepy, right?
221. 16:15But it could get worse. Imagine you  take an intimate selfie for a partner,
222. 16:19and it trips this same system.  There’s no cleaner way to put this:
223. 16:23A content moderation team or a group of anonymous  government agents could be looking at your nudes.
224. 16:29It’s totally legal… and there’s  nothing you can do about it.
225. 16:33The American flavor of this is the EARN IT  Act, which stands for Eliminating Abusive and
226. 16:38Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act  of 2023. In essence, it’s a reskin of all these
227. 16:44other laws and regulations we’ve seen popping up  over the Western world. They want to establish a
228. 16:49formal regulatory board that threatens to strip  tech companies of their immunity if they don’t
229. 16:54follow the board’s practices. This means they  can use the threat of legal coercion to force
230. 16:59companies to break the encryption in your devices  and look at your private photos and messages.
231. 17:04It’s preposterous, but when has anything  being absurd ever stopped it from happening?
232. 17:09And we all know where this leads…
233. 17:11We all look back fondly on the days of  the first Smartphones. Fruit Ninja, iBeer,
234. 17:16and the convenience of having a working  computer in your pocket. But that thing
235. 17:20you can’t do without is soon going to be a  double agent for the corporations and the Feds.
236. 17:24It’ll become a gateway onto an internet  panopticon that’ll never stop looking.
237. 17:28Want even more reasons to  feel justifiably paranoid?
238. 17:31Check out “Somebody Is Watching You  Right Now”, or watch this instead!