WEBVTT - Eva Galperin 0:00:03.360 --> 0:00:06.960 I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to What's 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:09.559 Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a show 0:00:09.640 --> 0:00:15.400 about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and personal journeys. Together, 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:19.200 we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors, and leaders 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:22.840 of the world's most iconic brands. Listen every Thursday or 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:27.880 join the conversation anytime on Instagram at What's Her Story Podcast. 0:00:30.440 --> 0:00:33.320 Eva Gabrand has been referred to as a hacker hero. 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:36.720 She is the Director of cyber Security at the Electronic 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:40.400 Frontier Foundation and Technical Advisor for the Freedom of the 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:43.760 Press Foundation. She is a co founder of Stop Stalker. 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:49.960 Were so, Eva, how did you become interested in privacy, 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:54.120 in free speech in this entire world. I am an 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:57.200 immigrant who came to the United States as a child 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:01.720 with my family from the Soviet Union, and so all 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:08.520 of of my most sort of foundational memories are built 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:12.200 around this notion that we left a place with no 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:14.840 civil liberties to come to a place that had more 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:17.840 of them, and that the protection of those liberties was 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:22.319 very important. Life in the Soviet Union was always framed 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:24.800 as you know, this place where you had no privacy 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:28.400 and where you had no free speech, and that these 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:32.640 were extremely important values that that we needed to protect. 0:01:33.240 --> 0:01:37.280 And so I guess I I I really internalized that 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:41.360 growing up, and then your interest in technology really started 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:45.319 very early on. Tell us about that. We left the 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:48.600 Soviet Union and then we landed in uh in Silicon 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:52.720 Valley in the eighties. My mom was a geneticist, and 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:55.840 so she came to, you know, San Francisco, had worked 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:59.480 in biotech, and my dad was an engineer, and so 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:02.640 he came to Silicon Valley and worked at a series 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:06.640 of tech companies, and as a result, there was always 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:10.280 tech around the house and I was I was online 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:14.560 at a time when most children were not. When there 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:17.720 was an Internet, but there was no web, and it 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:20.000 was assumed that if you were able to speak to 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:23.679 other people over this Internet, that you were at least 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:27.200 in college and probably using like your first college account. 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:30.400 And in my case, that is not what I was doing. 0:02:31.200 --> 0:02:35.919 I was actually using modem and one of those little 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:38.919 VT one hundred green screens that you used to see 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:44.640 in libraries to place a phone call to my dad's 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:49.880 desktop machine at Sun Microsystems in order to contact the 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:55.000 rest of the Internet. And so my first experiences online 0:02:55.440 --> 0:02:59.240 all required me to sort of have a strong understanding 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.000 of how the inner net worked. That brought me, you know, 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:05.080 a lot of the fundamentals that helped me land my 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:07.440 first jobs. But how did you sit down in front 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:10.519 of that first computer. So one of my friends had 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:14.480 found some sort of like chat group on Prodigy relating 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:17.560 to you know, our favorite fantasy and science fiction series. 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:20.400 And I came to my father and I said, Daddy, Daddy, 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:22.800 can I get Prodigy so that I can you know, 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:27.680 sit around talking about dragons. And my father said, no, 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:33.600 Prodigy sucks, and he got me a Shell account on 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:37.120 his computer and showed me how to use news groups 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:40.520 and use net. So take us to your first job, 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:46.360 I guess. My first computer job was during my freshman 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:50.640 year in college at UCSC. I worked for a company 0:03:50.840 --> 0:03:55.680 in Sunny Vale doing a sort of a desktop administration 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:59.320 of Windows machines and also a bunch of you know, 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:03.280 Unix ad illustration on a lot of Solaris machines as 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:06.240 some network administration. And the reason that I was able 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:08.400 to do this was because I had seen all of 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:10.680 these things before, and I had spent a bunch of time, 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:14.360 you know, building my own computers and I already understood 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:16.560 how networks worked, and so all I had to do 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:19.680 was just sort of expand that knowledge out into you know, 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:23.800 how how do you look after many machines at once 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:25.919 instead of just the one machine that you have in 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:28.719 your house. And that turned out to be such a 0:04:28.880 --> 0:04:31.839 useful skill that eventually I was like, wait a minute, 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:34.760 what am I going to college for again? And I 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:39.000 dropped up. Some people have called you their hacker hero. 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:43.400 How did you go from where you were then to 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:49.440 becoming the cyber hacking superstar that you are today? Well, 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:51.520 I don't want to leave people with the impression that 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:56.880 it is just a NonStop rise to power, where you know, I, 0:04:57.000 --> 0:05:00.760 as a as a vonder Kint mastered the inner No, 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:03.000 none of that is true. I I dropped out of 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:05.760 school in order to go work a steady tech job, 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:10.719 and my parents were appalled and they were like, but 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:13.680 you need to go to college, and so I told them, Oh, 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:16.040 don't worry. When this bubble bursts, I will go back 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:19.200 to school. And I was lying. But the bubble did 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:24.040 burst because I I have lived in Silicon Valley for 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:26.360 a very long time, and I have seen many bubbles 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:29.840 come and go. So the bubble did burst, and no 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:33.159 one I knew had a job in in the early 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:35.520 two thousands, and certainly I did not have a job. 0:05:35.760 --> 0:05:38.440 And I turned around and I went back to school. 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:43.120 I got a degree in international relations and political science. 0:05:43.640 --> 0:05:48.120 I spent two years studying Chinese and my intention was 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:52.359 to go to law school next and become a lawyer. 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:54.520 I'm like, well, you know, this computer stuff really isn't 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:57.440 working out. And I was. I was just about to 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:00.400 go to to law school and gotten into law school. 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:04.200 And the guy that I was I was dating at 0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:07.720 the time said, you know, I I don't want to 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:09.920 leave the Bay area. The law schools that you got 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:13.680 into are far away. So I've just started a job 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:15.800 at this place called Twitter, and I think it might 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:18.560 go somewhere. So can you just like give me a year, 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:22.680 Just go get a job somewhere, give me a year 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:26.440 while we work all of this stuff out. And he 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:27.880 went to go work for Twitter, and I went to 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:32.240 go work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And my job was, 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:36.880 you know, extremely high powered and technical. It was my 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:41.320 job to answer the phone. I answered the phone at 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:44.080 e f F in two thousand seven, which was shortly 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:48.600 after the Civil Liberties Organization had filed a lawsuit against 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:50.599 A T and T for its part in the n 0:06:50.680 --> 0:06:53.080 s AS warrantless wire tapping program that had been going 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:55.839 on since two thousand three. This was a Bush era program, 0:06:56.720 --> 0:06:58.279 and that meant that we had a lot of people 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:03.080 contacting us who were are concerned about government surveillance. And 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:07.240 some of those people had really interesting cases, and some 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:13.000 of those people were in need of a therapist. And 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:15.400 it was my job to tell the difference between these 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:21.520 two kinds of people and to very patiently sort of 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:24.800 corral both of them. And that was something that I 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:27.240 that I did for several years, and it really gave 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:31.120 me a strong background in all of e f f 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:35.160 S different issues. I I learned about copyright, I got 0:07:35.200 --> 0:07:39.360 to apply my international relations skills, I got to apply 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:42.920 my uh my language skills, and also my technical skills 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:45.400 when it came to know understanding how this kind of 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:51.000 surveillance worked. This was also the UM the height of 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:54.000 the m p A and the r a S efforts 0:07:54.360 --> 0:08:01.440 to sue mostly college students for pirating UM movies and music, 0:08:01.520 --> 0:08:03.080 and so I was also caring from a lot of 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:05.600 people who were only a couple of years younger than 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:08.480 I was, who had these, you know, terrifying letters that 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:10.360 were coming from the r A and the n p 0:08:10.440 --> 0:08:12.480 a A saying, you know, give us thousands of dollars 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:15.880 or we will sue you into oblivion because you downloaded 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:19.520 a movie once or you downloaded an album. And so 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:22.840 I spent some time working on that as well. There 0:08:22.920 --> 0:08:25.480 was actually a really interesting thing that happened while I 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:30.240 was doing this job, which was there was a a 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:34.600 law firm that came up with this interesting scam where 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:39.120 they would upload files to the Internet purporting to be 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:44.560 various types of porn, and then they would see who 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:47.320 downloaded it, and then they would send threatening letters to 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:50.160 that person saying, we know you downloaded this porn and 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:53.320 unless you want us to sue you a lawsuit in 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:57.560 which the title of this porn allowing people to know 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:01.160 embarrassing things about your taste in pornography. Unless you want 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:03.760 us to to file this lawsuit, please give us two 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:07.960 thousand dollars. And they sent out thousands and thousands of 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:12.640 these letters. It was a tremendous scam. So those were 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:17.400 my first experiences dealing with people who were being unfairly 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:22.880 surveiled unfairly targeted with vulnerable populations, with people who were 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:26.640 really scared and feeling powerless, and we're having their worst today, 0:09:27.200 --> 0:09:30.559 and would then reach out to me. Were you comfortable 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:32.640 or how did you go about taking that role of 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:36.559 answering phones into really analyzing what was coming through and 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:39.600 these massive early issues with the Internet. Well, part of 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:44.199 it was was just the act of repetition. Once you've seen, 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:47.600 you know, several hundred different examples of the same issue, 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.480 you get really good at triaging it very fast. And 0:09:52.000 --> 0:09:56.520 when you have accurately triaged things for for your legal 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:00.040 team or for your activism team, you know, consistently for 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:02.360 the better part of you know, a year or two 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:06.120 or three, than your peers start to trust your judgment 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:09.960 and you you know, kind of build up that kind 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:13.280 of rapport. But really it just came from doing it 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:17.000 over and over and over again until I got very 0:10:17.000 --> 0:10:19.719 good at it. The work of answering the phones that 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:23.440 the Electronic Frontier Foundation had prior to me been a 0:10:23.520 --> 0:10:27.000 job that famously burned people out. It was very rare 0:10:27.040 --> 0:10:29.800 for somebody last more than a year doing that. Why 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:32.600 weren't you burned out by that job? I think I 0:10:32.720 --> 0:10:38.480 just had a you know, text startup kids capacity for burnout. 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:45.080 I had a very different idea about what qualified has burnout. 0:10:46.280 --> 0:10:49.120 And I'm not going to tell you that that was healthy. 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:52.120 It absolutely was not. I think the one of the 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:55.120 things that's really changed at e FF, and in fact 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:59.720 in just in workplaces in general, in the many years 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:02.559 have gone by since I since I did that job, 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:07.800 is that we have a lot more understanding of the 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:12.240 psychological impacts of doing this kind of work, and an 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:17.080 understanding that you can't expect people to deal with with 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:21.600 other people's trauma four seven every single day and now 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:28.680 a quick break even there was an incident at your 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:33.520 work that led you to really focus on cyber stocking. 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:38.760 I spent many years focused on the privacy and security 0:11:38.800 --> 0:11:43.120 needs of activists and journalists, largely in North Africa and 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:45.400 the Middle East. A lot of this was happening during 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:47.520 the Arab Spring and sort of the years after the 0:11:47.559 --> 0:11:56.040 Arab Spring. But in lateen early it became known that 0:11:56.280 --> 0:11:59.400 my primary collaborator on all of the security research that 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:02.719 I was doing was a serial rapist. He had been 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:08.040 running around raping women for decades, and in January, I 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:12.840 think of an interview came out with one of his survivors, 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:17.480 and she was just terrified. She was really, really scared, 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:21.040 And everybody else in that article was really scared. And 0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:23.079 they were scared of him, not just because he had 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:27.320 been raping women for several decades, but also because he 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:28.920 was a hacker, and they were afraid that he was 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:32.720 going to compromise their devices. So they all had their 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:34.800 you know, their microphones covered, and they all had their 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:39.199 cameras covered, and they were they were terrified, and I 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:43.680 was so mad. I got so mad, and I didn't 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:46.240 want anybody to ever feel that way again. And as 0:12:46.280 --> 0:12:50.240 a result, I I started a project that was aimed 0:12:50.360 --> 0:12:53.880 at the sort of commercial spy where that these kinds 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:58.240 of abusers use in order to stock their victims, and 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:02.479 I co founded an organization called the Coalition against Stalkerware, 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:05.040 and we've and working on this issue ever since. You 0:13:05.160 --> 0:13:07.760 need an example to our listeners as to how it 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:12.000 all works and what it means to be cyber stocked. Well, Uh, 0:13:12.040 --> 0:13:16.280 there are many different forms of electronic surveillance are stalking. 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:19.280 But the particular thing that I chose to focus on, 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:23.320 because it's so invasive and also very easy to do, UH, 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:28.680 is stockerware, so there is commercially available UH software that 0:13:29.240 --> 0:13:32.920 anyone can find or purchase that if they have a 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:36.439 physical access to your device and they have like your 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:41.120 user name and password, which is an extremely common combination 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:45.360 of things. When you're dealing with somebody who is who 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:48.280 is abusing you, what the abuser does is they simply 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:52.080 grab the other person's phone when they're not looking, download 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:54.280 the stalker wear onto their phone, and then the phone 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:59.760 covertly ex fultraits data from the phone, usually to a 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:04.040 website which is run by the company that makes the 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:08.360 stoker wear, and then the abuser pays a monthly fee 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:12.200 to the stalker wear company in order to get that 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:15.280 get access to that data through a portal. You have 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:19.840 been vocal about trying to come after the executives from 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:23.280 the soccer wear companies, because presumably this is one of 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:28.160 the worst possible ways to to be making money in 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:32.600 this world. How have you been successful at that? I 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:36.480 have had some success when it comes to going after 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:39.880 the stoker wear companies themselves. I am very careful about 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:43.560 how how I do this because I am myself a 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:48.280 security researcher, and so I want to be really careful 0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:51.960 not to use any of the tools that are used 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:55.640 to sort of persecute security researchers for doing our thing, 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:58.840 even against bad people. Uh. And I want to make 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:01.600 sure that I don't create any bad precedent that can 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:04.240 then be used to stop the kind of work that 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:07.760 I do. But in addition to the fact that stoccer 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:10.840 ware is very bad, it is often very poorly made, 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:15.640 it's often really insecure. So not only is your data 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:20.720 available to your stalker, but sometimes these portals leave data 0:15:20.800 --> 0:15:25.240 open for anybody to see. And I have managed to 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:29.800 convince the FTC to take action against to such companies 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:33.000 that ended up behaving in this way. You've gone up 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:36.160 against some really powerful companies and powerful people. Have you 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:40.080 ever felt afraid? Have you faced me backlash? Before I 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:46.520 worked on domestic abuse, I was working on I was 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:53.800 working to support people who were being stalked by authoritarian governments. 0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:57.760 And if you think an abusive partner is is a jerk, 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:03.760 wait until you are, say, going up against the Syrian government. 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:07.920 It's a very different kind of situation. And I have 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:10.840 been targeted before by a government that was angry about 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:14.280 my activism. The Vietnamese government actually sent me malware, but 0:16:14.960 --> 0:16:17.880 I'm not scared because this sort of stuff is old 0:16:17.960 --> 0:16:19.560 hat to me. I have been doing it for a 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:23.960 very long time, and it's just very difficult to frighten 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:26.440 me at this point, which means that I don't get 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:29.640 bullied a lot. What is your relationship to personal safety, 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:33.440 like in your own everyday life, not online? Well, a 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:37.120 lot of people are are surprised. They say, well, you 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:39.880 know I can find you online. I you know you're 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:42.960 using your real name. There are pictures of you. I 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:45.560 can see them, you know, I I know what city 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:47.880 you live in, and all that sort of thing you 0:16:48.000 --> 0:16:50.920 use social media. I see that you have like an 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:54.880 Instagram account and a Facebook account whatever. And they say, well, 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:57.800 how dare you? You know, your privacy and security activist? 0:16:57.880 --> 0:16:59.520 How can you can be how can you be doing this? 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:04.200 And the answer is that privacy and security are not 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:08.920 about living on a mountaintop throwing all of your devices 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:12.080 into the ocean, which is presumably located near this mountaintop. 0:17:12.680 --> 0:17:15.800 It is about having control over your data and making 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:19.000 decisions about who you do and do not share it with. 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:23.959 And so my life is locked down, but it's not 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:27.480 so locked down that I can't move. I think one 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:30.800 of the most important things that we really lose sight 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:34.480 of when we talk about privacy and security online is 0:17:34.800 --> 0:17:38.680 that you need some wiggle room. You can't just turn 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:42.240 around and leave the Internet. And that's advice that that 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:45.840 people give to survivors of domestic abuse all the time. 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:48.800 They're like, you're being harassed, you're being you know, you're 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:51.760 being followed, you're being stocked. Just just don't use the internet. 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:54.840 Just you know, shut down to all of your social 0:17:54.840 --> 0:17:57.560 media accounts and never talked to your friends again. And 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:01.000 that's just more alienating. What about when you're just in 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:04.240 your everyday life, do you find that you're less trusting 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:07.639 of people? Given your work? I'm not sure what I 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:12.119 would use as a benchmark. I was never a particularly 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:15.800 trusting person. What is your personal life like when letting 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:19.800 a new relationship into your life? Are you more cautious 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:21.879 than the average person? I don't know. I don't have 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:25.320 an average person around to compare myself with. I limit 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:29.240 the kind of risks that I take, but I also, 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:32.879 you know, I live in reality where you have to 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:36.720 be able to communicate with other people and have them 0:18:36.760 --> 0:18:40.080 be able to find you on occasion. I don't live 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:45.120 like a secret agent. Okay, so when you met your partner, 0:18:45.720 --> 0:18:50.639 did you meet online? Or no? So you've never dated online? No? No, 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:52.679 I still meet people the old fashioned way where you 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:57.360 in meat space. I do not have any good advice 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:02.360 for trying to date online in the or of our Lord. 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:10.200 That seems terrifying. What is your relationship like with your 0:19:10.240 --> 0:19:14.320 parents today? Really? Nice? Actually? I mean I did in 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:17.919 my mid twenties apologize to my parents for that the 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:20.760 entire time I was a teenager and now we get 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:26.119 along just fine, but I was, I was an exceptionally 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:29.800 difficult teenager. How would you define sort of the biggest 0:19:29.880 --> 0:19:34.359 mistakes that most people are making when it comes to 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:41.960 exposing their own online world to potential stalkers or bad people. Well, 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:44.199 I think that the first thing people really need to 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.680 think about is so what we call threat modeling. So 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:49.280 you need to sit down and you need to think 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:51.000 about what you want to protect and who you want 0:19:51.000 --> 0:19:54.760 to protect it from, because trying to protect everything from 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:57.240 everybody all at once is a good way to go insane. 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:01.240 It's just not practical. The other thing to keep in 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:05.240 mind is that the people that you trust today are 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:07.240 not necessarily going to be the same people that you 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:11.199 trust tomorrow. Abusers, for example, do not show up with 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:13.960 a great, big sign across their forehead saying hello, I'm 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:16.520 an abuser. They show up looking like the best thing 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:20.320 that's ever happened to you. And I think that it's 0:20:20.320 --> 0:20:23.200 really important for people to understand the dynamics of abuse, 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:27.439 but also to understand how to lock someone out of 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:30.280 their lives, how to sort of take back all of 0:20:30.320 --> 0:20:33.000 the permissions that they have given, and how to do 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:38.200 it decisively and quickly, and to to sort of practice 0:20:38.240 --> 0:20:42.600 these skills in advance, because generally, when you need to 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:45.480 lock somebody out of your life, you are already in 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:49.760 a in a heightened state of panic, and that's not 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:52.920 when you want to be practicing tricky new skills. Now, 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:56.399 a lot of people feel like if a partner is 0:20:56.440 --> 0:20:59.360 not allowing you to hold their phone and use their 0:20:59.400 --> 0:21:04.120 phone and know their password, that they're hiding something that's 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:09.679 sort of the converse to you know, being protective. What 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:11.639 do you think about, I mean, does your partner have 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:16.840 access to your phone? Oh? Hell no? Okay, will they 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:21.080 ever know? Not their phone? So in twenty years he 0:21:21.119 --> 0:21:23.000 would never be able to just use your phone to 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:25.520 look up something on the Internet. Is his phone broken? 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:29.200 Did something up to his fingers? Me? What if you're 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:31.480 going on a road trip and he forgot his phone, 0:21:31.720 --> 0:21:33.879 we would chart around and go get it. Okay, So 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:37.960 there is no circumstance under which he can use your phone. 0:21:38.160 --> 0:21:40.480 I mean in some sort of situation where like terrorists 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:42.920 are going to destroy the world unless I hand him 0:21:42.920 --> 0:21:46.840 my phone. Sure, but for the most part, you know, no, 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:50.240 I have my own devices, I have my own privacy, 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:55.160 and there's no reason I would ever have to give 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:58.840 access to that stuff to another person. If I want 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:01.840 someone to have acts us to one of my devices, 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:03.920 I will set up a separate account for them that 0:22:03.960 --> 0:22:06.040 they can log into in order to get to that 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:08.840 a device. And the same thing happens with you know, 0:22:08.880 --> 0:22:11.960 all of the electronics around the house. You want access, 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.600 you can have an account, and when it's time for 0:22:14.680 --> 0:22:17.280 you to go, I can change the password on that account. 0:22:17.320 --> 0:22:19.840 I could lock that account out. I can delete that account. 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:23.560 But you don't get mine. And now a quick break 0:22:25.960 --> 0:22:29.920 in gave a ted talk that you know has over 0:22:30.160 --> 0:22:34.560 three million views. How did that change the tra doctory 0:22:34.560 --> 0:22:39.639 of your career? I was actually kind of surprised. I was. 0:22:39.800 --> 0:22:42.560 I was approached by Ted to give a talk, and 0:22:42.920 --> 0:22:44.840 they sort of shrugged when I asked them what I 0:22:44.840 --> 0:22:48.159 should talk about, like they didn't care. I just wanted 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:51.399 me to get up on stage and say stuff. And 0:22:51.440 --> 0:22:54.639 I was like, Okay, alright, fine, I'll just talk about 0:22:54.680 --> 0:22:58.280 this this thing that I'm currently working on. And I 0:22:58.359 --> 0:23:03.000 didn't expect for it to st such a nerve, But 0:23:03.119 --> 0:23:07.679 I think it was really just the combination of the 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:11.400 technical problem that I was working on, combined with the 0:23:11.520 --> 0:23:14.720 kind of human interest story of all of these people 0:23:14.720 --> 0:23:17.840 who are being targeted, combined with the human interest story 0:23:17.880 --> 0:23:20.800 of I got so mad I decided to destroy an industry. 0:23:20.880 --> 0:23:23.879 What are you working on today? Well, right now, I 0:23:24.400 --> 0:23:27.080 have just spent a bunch of time working on physical trackers, 0:23:27.840 --> 0:23:31.440 so like tiles and air tags, I am not destroying 0:23:31.440 --> 0:23:33.840 the industry. I'm trying to get the industry to agree 0:23:33.880 --> 0:23:36.480 on a standard that they will then publish so that 0:23:37.200 --> 0:23:41.040 the people who make phones and other devices can build 0:23:41.359 --> 0:23:45.360 sort of tracker detection directly into those devices that will 0:23:45.400 --> 0:23:47.680 work all the time in the background, so you don't 0:23:47.720 --> 0:23:51.280 have to like specifically download an app for every single 0:23:51.320 --> 0:23:53.720 different type of tracker and then run a scan for 0:23:53.800 --> 0:23:57.280 every single kind of tracker, because that is a health scape. Uh, 0:23:57.280 --> 0:23:59.439 and that's sort of where we are now. The other 0:23:59.480 --> 0:24:02.440 thing that I'm king on right now is uh, privacy 0:24:02.440 --> 0:24:06.159 and safety for people who are seeking abortions and who 0:24:06.200 --> 0:24:09.960 are doing abortion support. That's definitely my my last couple 0:24:09.960 --> 0:24:13.440 of months of work and trying to come up with 0:24:13.440 --> 0:24:18.200 with best practices for people, and also really bringing these 0:24:18.200 --> 0:24:20.560 issues up to people who are working in tech or 0:24:20.680 --> 0:24:23.719 making products and who are making platforms and get them 0:24:23.760 --> 0:24:26.400 to think about how they are going to protect users 0:24:26.880 --> 0:24:32.280 who are traveling to abortion clinics or searching for information 0:24:32.320 --> 0:24:37.400 about abortions, or who are simply being prosecuted for their 0:24:37.400 --> 0:24:40.280 pregnancy outcome, whether it was an abortion or a miscarriage. 0:24:40.840 --> 0:24:44.880