WEBVTT - How the EFF Works 0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:12.039 Again text technology with tech Stuff from stuff works dot com. 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:14.720 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host, 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:18.760 Jonathan Strickland, and I'm just super I'm also the executive 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:22.040 producer or an executive producer here ed how stuff works 0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:25.160 and I love talking about technology. And if you listen 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:28.360 to the previous episodes of tech Stuff, the two that 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:32.480 came before this, you heard about the the evolution did 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:36.159 the birth really of the Electronic Frontier Foundation as a 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:42.960 result of a really bizarre and ultimately over zealous sting 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:47.080 operation that the Secret Service did back in the early nineties. 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:51.760 So I want to talk more about the Electronic Frontier 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:55.200 Foundation and exactly what they do since really I just 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:57.760 talked about them kind of coming into being in the 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:01.920 last episode, and you know all about how uh the 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:06.200 Steve Jackson, who was the target of the Secret Service 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:09.920 in part of their sting operation, felt that his and 0:01:10.000 --> 0:01:15.240 his employees civil liberties had been violated and was looking 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:18.880 for someone to help him pursue a claim against the 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:21.639 United States government, but found that none of the civil 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:24.600 liberties organizations that were in existence were really prepared to 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:28.960 help him out because they just weren't savvy as far 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:32.759 as the Internet goes, and so the Electronic Frontier Foundation 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:36.920 was borne out necessity by a group of people who 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:41.160 felt that they're definitely needed to be an organization dedicated 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:46.560 to defending civil liberties in the Internet space space, especially 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:50.600 since they foresaw the Internet becoming an increasingly important role 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.440 in our lives. And that has absolutely been the case. 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:56.440 The Internet has become instrumental to the point where some 0:01:56.480 --> 0:02:00.120 people argue that it is a a fundamental necessity, the 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:02.800 kind of like food and water. You pretty much need 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:05.960 the Internet to make a go of it today, which 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:09.120 is now for at least for on the national level, 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:12.960 certainly you can make a case for that. Well, we're 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:16.480 gonna talk more about what the Electronic Frontier Foundation is 0:02:16.600 --> 0:02:19.840 and what they do in this episode. The e f 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:24.640 F focuses on several broad areas of civil liberties, and 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:29.920 here's how the organization itself defines that. They actually have 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:34.280 a selection where they have a page where they talk 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:36.640 about all of these different ones. And we'll start with 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:40.120 free speech. So, freedom of speech typically means that the 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:42.760 people of any given population have the right to express 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:47.680 their opinions publicly without governmental interference, and a lot of 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:50.920 countries around the world have this as a fundamental freedom 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:54.560 codified in some way. Here in the United States, we 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:58.040 have the Constitution, and freedom of speech is in the 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:00.839 first Amendment in the Bill of Right, those first ten 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:05.680 Amendments to the Constitution. Is therefore a foundational right of 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:09.840 a citizen in the United States. There are some considerations 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:12.080 we have to make, however, freedom of speech does not 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:17.160 give you absolute freedom to say anything without governmental interference. 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:22.880 As it turns out, uh first, the right typically protects 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:26.640 against governmental abuse. Only that's something a lot of people 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:30.400 don't seem to understand, is that this concept of censorship 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:35.720 and denying someone their First Amendment rights. The Constitution protects 0:03:36.280 --> 0:03:41.040 citizens against the government doing this. It's not meant to 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:44.400 be a an overall protection against any entity doing this 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:48.280 under any circumstances. So in other words, I make a blog. Alright, 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:51.160 create a blog, and I include a comments section. But 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.120 I decide that I'm going to monitor those comments, and 0:03:54.240 --> 0:03:57.280 anything I see that's left in those comments I don't like, 0:03:57.880 --> 0:03:59.880 I decide I'm just gonna go ahead and delete it. 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:04.960 That's perfectly fine. It's not the government that's restricting anyone's 0:04:04.960 --> 0:04:08.840 free speech. But if the government was forcing me to 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:13.160 erase comments for whatever reason. That would be a violation 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:17.679 of free speech from a legal standpoint. So I can 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:20.919 I can create a space, whether it's online or maybe 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:23.320 I'm hosting a party, and if someone says something I 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:25.520 don't like, I can tell them that they can't say 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:29.000 that in my space. Because I'm not the government, I'm 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:33.600 not violating their First Amendment rights. This is more about 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:37.400 them being in my space and not just a fundamental 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:40.280 right as a citizen of the country. Also another thing 0:04:40.279 --> 0:04:42.760 that considers that freedom of speech does have limitations. I 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:46.440 cannot make false claims against others in an effort to 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:49.720 harm them in some way. For example, that would be 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:54.720 slander or libel. Both of those are referencing making these 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:58.599 untrue claims in an effort to cause harm to another individual. 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:02.080 That harm might be physical, it might be financial, it 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:05.200 might be harm to their reputation. Uh, that is not 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:08.919 a protected form of speech. I also have no legal 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:12.120 protection if I use my speech to incite others to violence. 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:16.279 But this gets to be a tricky area. So you 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:20.000 might find court cases where there's an argument about whether 0:05:20.080 --> 0:05:23.799 or not someone was calling people to violence, and sometimes 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:26.280 there are specific criteria that must be met, such as 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:30.960 was there a sense that the call to violence was 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:35.400 for an immediate response or for some predetermined time. Because 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:39.560 if that's the case, absolutely not protected by freedom of speech. 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:43.240 If it's more of a general let's resist, then you 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:46.200 could argue that should be protected under freedom of speech. 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:48.560 So it's it's not so cut and dry, it's not 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:52.960 black and white. A lot of these subtle variations have 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:55.960 to be hashed out in court cases which can go 0:05:56.040 --> 0:06:00.720 either way. Accords not automatically going to decide in favor 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:04.240 of one side versus the other, and sometimes they decisions 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:08.960 can actually be surprising. But speech is protected within certain limits. Now, 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:13.000 communication online gets to be pretty complicated because you've got 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:18.480 Internet service providers, you've got financial services, you've got lots 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:21.880 of different working parts to the Internet, and a government 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:27.160 can lean on any component within that infrastructure. Right, a 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:32.120 government agent might come to an Internet service provider and say, hey, 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:38.800 we're looking for any signs of of criticisms against this 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:43.200 specific person. We want to suppress that, uh, and we're 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:45.520 going to do it through your service. Well, that would 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:48.120 be a form of censorship, and it would be a 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:53.279 violation of First Amendment rights. Um Even though the actual 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:56.040 silencing would seem to come from the Internet service provider, 0:06:56.240 --> 0:07:00.279 which you might be able to argue has that capac city. 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:03.760 It would be ultimately due to government interference or a 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:08.880 financial company saying, hey, don't allow for any transactions to 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:12.640 happen with this particular entity because some of the stuff 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:17.240 they do is illegal. Uh. Because unless everything is illegal 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:20.480 in that, you know, and unless you can prove that 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:24.200 all those transactions are illegal, that gets super tricky because 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:28.600 if there are legal transactions happening, you're preventing those legal 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:32.480 transactions from actually occurring. So it's a very complicated mess, 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:35.000 and that's part of the reason why the Electronic Frontier 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:39.040 Foundation is getting involved in these sort of discussions. It's 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:43.000 to try and make sure that the rights of citizens 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:47.400 remain protected. The e f F is also dedicated to 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:51.720 protecting creativity and innovation, and that's their words. That's a 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:54.680 big playing field there. Some of the ideas that the 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:58.320 FF have are pretty simple. So, for example, the e 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:02.600 f F views copy right law as being somewhat problematic, 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:07.080 particularly when the entities that own intellectual property overstepped their bounds. 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:11.480 Copyright definitely has a place. It exists to protect a 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:14.920 creator or in some cases an owner of intellectual property 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:18.840 who did not themselves create the content, but they own 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:22.119 the content. But it protects them from those who would 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.520 reproduce that intellectual property for their own profit. But it 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:30.480 can also lead to draconian practices and even abuse. Another 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.400 example of protecting creativity and innovation comes in the form 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:36.200 of fighting patent trolls. So, if you don't know what 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:39.520 a patentrol is, um, a patentrol is an entity that 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:44.640 purchases patents not for the purposes of creating or implementing 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:50.760 a particular technology, but rather withholding that design from other 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:54.520 entities that could actually put it to use. So it's 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:56.840 kind of like, let's say you've got an inventor and 0:08:56.880 --> 0:08:59.520 the inventor has come up with a brilliant way of 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:04.000 create eating a very efficient solar panel, and you pay 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:07.720 the inventor for the rights to the inventor's patent, and 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:09.719 she hands the patent over to you, and you've got 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:11.240 the patent in your hands, and you're like, ha ha, 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:13.839 it's mine now. And instead of going forward and then 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:17.200 manufacturing these solar panels and trying to make a business 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:19.920 that way, you just sit on the patent and you 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:22.320 look around and you pay attention, and you try and 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:26.600 see if anyone out there is making solar panels using 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:30.000 the method that you talked about or that is talked 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:32.760 about within the patent that you own. Now, patents are 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:37.600 public documents. Anyone can read them, but you have to 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:40.240 get the permission of the patent holder in order to 0:09:40.400 --> 0:09:43.320 use the technology, and typically this is done through licensing. 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:49.760 Some patentrols will license the the technology or processes that 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:53.040 are in patents. They might charge quite a bit of money, 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:57.400 but they'll license it. Others won't, and instead, what they 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:01.000 do is they look for instances of someone using that 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:05.040 technology or that process and then threaten them with lawsuits, 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:10.280 typically very hefty ones. And uh it usually is an 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:13.000 attempt to get the other entity to settle out of court. 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:15.920 And that's how the patentrol makes money. It's not making 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:19.439 money by creating technology. It's not even making money by 0:10:19.480 --> 0:10:23.400 licensing technology. It's making money by waiting until someone else 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:27.280 has tried to use that idea and then pouncing on them, 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:30.000 which legally they are allowed to do because they own 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:33.160 the patent. But ethically you might argue, well, all they're 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:36.160 really doing is withholding something that could be of value 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:38.920 to people, and they're doing it just so that they 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:43.319 can jump on any company that has the the desire 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:47.239 to actually make that technology. So it's a sticky situation 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:49.360 because on the one hand, you don't want to get 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:54.319 a get away from the concept of protecting intellectual property. 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:57.839 You want people to have a reasonable expectation of protection 0:10:58.240 --> 0:11:01.280 so that they can profit from ideas and the work 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:05.120 that they do. But on the other hand, you don't 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:10.760 want entities hoarding knowledge and not letting it out unless 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:16.400 companies are paying exorbitant fees, because that stifles innovation. So 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:21.199 e f F is very much against the whole patentrol approach. 0:11:21.880 --> 0:11:26.000 One huge area of interest for the e f is privacy. 0:11:26.040 --> 0:11:28.439 This is one of those topics that some people don't 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:32.600 really consider until the worst has already happened to them. 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:36.360 So we've been conditioned as citizens of the Internet to 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:40.319 surrender more and more of our privacy in our online interactions, 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:46.200 sometimes without knowingly doing so, and occasionally it's because we're 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:50.120 sharing stuff about ourselves with our friends. So interactions on 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:54.920 Facebook are a great example. We willingly share information about ourselves, 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:58.800 it's part of our socialization. But that information isn't just 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:02.400 going to our ends, it's going to Facebook, which is 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:06.360 making very good use of that information. They're profiting off 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:11.000 of it. That is their business, it's how they make money. 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:15.360 And if we didn't share all this information, then Facebook 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:19.040 would not have a huge revenue source. Uh, it's certainly 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:23.360 wouldn't be as successful as it is today. Other times 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:26.880 we're sharing information because it's a matter of convenience. So 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:31.680 for example, Amazon has algorithms that will present you with 0:12:32.080 --> 0:12:35.920 suggested items that you might be interested in based upon 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:41.040 your past browsing and shopping sessions. But again, that means 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:43.800 that it's collecting information about you and about your habits 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:46.000 in order to make these kind of suggestions in the 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:48.080 first place. Now for some people that's not a big deal. 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:52.040 For other people, they think it's super creepy. And in 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:54.560 many cases, there's another game going on that's going on 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:58.040 behind the scenes. That's where the information about us gets 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:01.319 collected into ever growing dos a's. It might be a 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:03.760 dossier that doesn't have your name on it, but it 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:06.760 has all the information that would anyone would need to 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:10.120 be able to identify you anyway. There's also this other 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:14.240 kind of slippery slope where companies will say, hey, we 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:17.839 we use anonymous data. We don't. We don't connect an 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:21.160 identity to the information we get. We want the information 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:24.200 so that we can run analyzes, but we don't want 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:27.920 to say, oh, well, that's that's Bob Smith. That's clearly 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:30.360 Bob Smith. The problem is the more points of data 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:33.439 you have about any individual person, the easier it is 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:37.160 to identify who that person is. And you could even 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:39.959 argue that the person's name is the least important thing 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:44.839 about that person from a certain perspective. Knowing all about 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:47.960 that person in their habits and what they want and 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:50.520 what they don't want, what they like, what they hate, 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:55.839 all that is valuable information. The name is superfluous at 0:13:55.880 --> 0:13:59.559 that point, and we should still be concerned about all 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:03.559 that other information about us. That's the Electronic Frontier Foundation's 0:14:03.600 --> 0:14:06.719 point is that we need to be cognizant that all 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:09.520 of this information about us is being shared and and 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:14.719 it's being h collected and stored and sold. There are 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:19.840 entire companies that exist just to buy and sell user information, 0:14:20.480 --> 0:14:23.800 and that gets a little creepy. Beyond that, there are 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:27.480 also organizations that are actively spying on people. They're not 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:31.360 just passively collecting information or or building dossiers. There are 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:37.720 some that are really performing surveillance upon folks. Take the 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:39.840 n s A for example, and I don't mean the 0:14:39.920 --> 0:14:44.120 National Scrabble Association, but I do mean the National Security Agency. 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:46.840 Over the last few years, details about the n S 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:50.960 AS various surveillance programs have raised lots of red flags 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:55.560 among numerous civil liberties organizations, including the e f F. Now, 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:59.760 another issue that the organization concerns itself with is online 0:14:59.800 --> 0:15:04.320 s purity, which often goes hand in hand with privacy, 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:07.880 and this goes from supporting various encryption strategies to help 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:13.560 protecting communication from prying eyes to launching the Coders Rights 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:16.120 Project to protect programmers rights as they work on the 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:19.800 bleeding edge of technology. The FF advocates for a secure, 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:25.600 supportive online environment, and they also argue for transparency from 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:28.320 the various entities that either make up the infrastructure of 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:31.240 the Internet or use the Internet in some fundamental way, 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:36.040 which includes holding government agencies accountable and demanding that these 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:40.680 agencies are forthright about their online activities, which isn't always easy. 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:43.720 It can sometimes require extraordinary efforts to get the real 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:46.680 story out of various government agencies about what is actually 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:50.400 going on, and sometimes it even requires legal action to 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:54.320 force government offices to change their policies when those policies 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:58.000 aren't aligned with constitutional protections. That's a fancy way of saying. 0:15:58.040 --> 0:15:59.960 The e f F is sort of a watch dot 0:16:00.360 --> 0:16:04.800 and just making sure that governments are doing the right 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:09.800 thing for their citizens and they're not working against their citizens. 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:13.040 And transparency is absolutely important for that because if you 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:17.480 if you have a policy that's not transparent, that does 0:16:17.520 --> 0:16:20.640 not tell the citizens, hey, this is what's really going on, 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:26.480 then you've introduced a reason to distrust the government. And 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:28.520 I would argue the e f F has got a 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:33.080 very healthy distrust of government and in many ways it's justified. 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:35.720 In some ways, it may be over zealous, but in 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:39.560 most ways, I think, uh, the government has given plenty 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:43.840 of of reasons why the FFS position is not unreasonable. 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:46.640 You may not agree with it, but you probably would 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:49.400 at least come to the conclusion that they have reason 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:52.880 for their behaviors. The e f F also works to 0:16:53.000 --> 0:16:56.840 help free people who are held prisoner for speaking out online, 0:16:56.880 --> 0:17:01.600 particularly people who are journalists or activists, and they also 0:17:01.640 --> 0:17:05.000 try to raise awareness about potentially abusive policies, such as 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:09.040 electronic media searches conducted at border crossings. You may have 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:12.080 heard of this in the last several years, where people 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:16.160 who are crossing over the US border, whether on land 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:20.199 or by air by sea, will be greeted by border 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:24.000 officers or custom officials and they will say, hey, we 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:26.920 want to get hold of your mobile device or your 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:29.919 computer and make an electronic search of the materials to 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:35.600 make sure there's nothing questionable on there. And the FF 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:38.400 steps in and says, hey, unless you've got a warrant, 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:41.240 then you really can't do that would be unreasonable search 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:47.640 and seizure to just search somebody randomly like that. Um 0:17:47.680 --> 0:17:50.240 so that that's another one of their big positions. Of course, 0:17:50.240 --> 0:17:52.280 when the e f F first got its start, its 0:17:52.320 --> 0:17:55.679 mission wasn't quite so methodically organized. It all began with 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:59.120 that court case with Steve Jackson Games bringing it against 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:02.399 the Secret Service, and that case was instrumental because it 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:06.000 established in a United States court of law that electronic 0:18:06.080 --> 0:18:10.720 mail should receive the same protections and considerations as telephone communication, 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:13.960 which means that law enforcement does not have the authority 0:18:14.040 --> 0:18:18.760 to intercept or otherwise read electronic communication without first securing 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:21.399 a warrant from a judge, and that was just the 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:25.320 beginning of the FF. The next big case that they 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:29.120 became involved in was Bernstein versus U S Department of Justice. 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:31.639 And you might have heard the phrase the pen is 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:35.440 mightier than the sword. Well, Daniel J. Bernstein's pen must 0:18:35.440 --> 0:18:39.280 have been a real whopper. The US government identified Bernstein's 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:41.880 work as so dangerous that he was told he need 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:45.639 to secure an arms dealer license to talk about it 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:49.560 or to publish his work outside the United States. What 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:52.680 you might be saying, I know I did. Well, let's 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:56.240 backtrack a bit. In fact, we're gonna backtrack a lot, 0:18:56.280 --> 0:18:58.720 because that's what I do on this show. So we're 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:02.560 gonna talk about cryptography. The cryptography branches off of an 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:06.280 ancient strategy of hiding messages in some way so that 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:09.520 the person or persons you are contacting are the only 0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:13.119 ones who get the information you're actually sending. And there 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:16.600 are lots of different ways to do this. There's steganography 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:20.840 that involves hiding data within some other non secret formats, 0:19:20.880 --> 0:19:23.760 such as inside the code of an MP three file 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:27.280 or inside of an image. Uh, you could hide it 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:30.680 with tiny little micro dots on microfilm, which would be 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:32.840 very difficult to detect unless you knew what you were 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:36.000 looking for. Or there's encryption in which you take a 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:39.240 message in one format, you apply some sort of process 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:42.520 to the message to transform it in some way, and 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:46.280 then you send that transformed message to the recipient, who 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:49.280 presumably has a method for reversing this process and gaining 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:52.919 access to the original message. So a simple version of 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:55.520 this is just a cipher where you have a set 0:19:55.520 --> 0:19:58.639 of rules, and the simplest of all ciphers would be 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:03.040 just shifting all the letters down by a slot, so 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:05.520 A is B B, S C, C is D, that 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:07.280 kind of thing, and then writing it all out, and 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:10.000 because the person you're sending it to knows the rules, 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:15.440 they can reverse that and they can then decipher the message. Obviously, 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:18.080 cryptography tends to be a little more complicated than that, 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:21.800 because people are onto us. They figured out the whole 0:20:21.840 --> 0:20:25.200 A S, B, B is C thing, the clever clever people. 0:20:25.640 --> 0:20:30.399 According to the site tech Target, cryptography has four objectives. 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:33.960 The first is secrecy, which means only the person with 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:37.920 the proper key, as in the intended recipient, can read 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:42.040 the original message. The second is integrity, which means the 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:45.119 message cannot be changed in any way between the sender 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:49.960 and the recipient without being detected. Next is non repudiation, 0:20:50.080 --> 0:20:52.640 which means that there's no plausible deniability on the part 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:55.359 of the sender. Uh This is to remove the possibility 0:20:55.400 --> 0:20:58.480 the sender could leave a recipient out to hang by 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:02.080 denying they ever intended to create or send the message. 0:21:02.160 --> 0:21:05.240 And fourth is authentication, which means that both the sender 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:08.280 and the recipient can be assured of each other's identities. 0:21:08.760 --> 0:21:11.760 Now that does not mean that all cryptographic systems meet 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:16.320 all four of those objectives, but a good cryptographic system 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:19.840 should meet at least most of them, and an ideal 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:22.919 system would meet all four criteria. So with such a system, 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:25.359 you can be sure that any message you sent would 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:28.119 be secure until it got to the right person, and 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:31.439 that only that right person would be able to decrypt it. 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:33.640 And further, both of you could be sure the message 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:37.000 came from and went to the right people. Cryptography is 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:39.600 used for all sorts of communication, but it's clearly of 0:21:39.600 --> 0:21:43.120 critical importance if you want to send someone information that 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:46.560 other people absolutely should not see. For this reason, it's 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:50.680 a big part of diplomacy. For espionage for financial operations 0:21:50.680 --> 0:21:54.600 and other supersensitive activities, and the United States, like many 0:21:54.640 --> 0:21:58.600 other countries, places a very high value on cryptographic strategies, 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:02.200 which is why the US government decided to include cryptographic 0:22:02.240 --> 0:22:08.560 systems in its documentation for International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Now, 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:12.119 this is a document that effectively defined cryptography as a 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:16.280 weapon itself under a category thirteen of Title twenty two, 0:22:16.600 --> 0:22:21.359 Chapter one, sub Chapter M of the Code of Federal Regulations. 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:25.840 You'll see the title Auxiliary Military Equipment. And here's an 0:22:25.920 --> 0:22:31.080 excerpt from that section. Information Security systems and Equipment, cryptographic devices, 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:36.400 software and components specifically designed or modified therefore including cryptographic 0:22:36.480 --> 0:22:42.080 including key management systems, equipment assemblies, modules, integrated circuits, components, 0:22:42.160 --> 0:22:45.840 or software with the capability of maintaining secrecy or confidentiality 0:22:45.880 --> 0:22:49.720 of information or information systems. Now, the reason why I 0:22:49.960 --> 0:22:52.040 just give the whole list is to show that the 0:22:52.160 --> 0:22:55.800 United States government to find cryptographic systems as a weapon 0:22:56.400 --> 0:23:00.359 under the official United States Munitions List, and as such, 0:23:00.520 --> 0:23:04.120 only a licensed authority would be allowed to export such 0:23:04.160 --> 0:23:07.000 a weapon. In the case of cryptographic systems, that meant 0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:09.359 you would need a license to either distribute the code 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:12.760 or publish the information. Now, Daniel Bernstein wanted to do 0:23:12.840 --> 0:23:14.919 both of those things. He actually wanted to talk about 0:23:15.000 --> 0:23:19.560 this cryptographic approach he had developed and to distribute electronic 0:23:20.119 --> 0:23:24.800 programs that could create these sort of cryptographic messages themselves, 0:23:25.320 --> 0:23:29.200 and he called it Snuffle. She's pretty harmless. And we'll 0:23:29.280 --> 0:23:32.359 learn more about Snuffle and his legal battles in just 0:23:32.440 --> 0:23:36.399 a second, but first let's take a quick break to 0:23:36.520 --> 0:23:48.639 thank our sponsor. So Bernstein developed a pretty straightforward system 0:23:48.680 --> 0:23:51.480 as a grad student at the University of California at 0:23:51.480 --> 0:23:57.400 Berkeley in ninet for cryptographic systems. It used an encryption 0:23:57.480 --> 0:24:01.359 key to generate some seemingly random tech XT, which then 0:24:01.400 --> 0:24:04.399 could be run in an x or process against a 0:24:04.480 --> 0:24:08.400 message you intended to incipher. This inciphered text could then 0:24:08.440 --> 0:24:11.440 be sent to your recipient and they would use their 0:24:11.480 --> 0:24:15.120 copy of the encryption key to essentially reverse the process 0:24:15.160 --> 0:24:17.159 and read the original message. It gets a little more 0:24:17.160 --> 0:24:19.520 technical than that, but that's really the key of it. 0:24:19.760 --> 0:24:23.720 Bernstein's method was called a zero delay private key encryption system, 0:24:23.720 --> 0:24:25.320 which I mean it could be used in real time 0:24:25.359 --> 0:24:29.000 communication between two individuals who are sharing a common private 0:24:29.400 --> 0:24:33.880 encryption key. Bernstein's approach relied on that cryptographic hash function, 0:24:34.440 --> 0:24:37.080 which in itself was a perfectly legal approach, should have 0:24:37.119 --> 0:24:41.600 been upheld as being not that's not a munition, it's 0:24:41.600 --> 0:24:46.880 not a weapon. But Bernstein's implementation created a strong encryption system, 0:24:47.240 --> 0:24:50.480 and that was what the United States government had determined 0:24:50.560 --> 0:24:53.359 was illegal to distribute. So it wasn't so much the 0:24:53.440 --> 0:24:56.520 encryption approach, but rather the description of how to use 0:24:56.600 --> 0:24:59.960 it that was deemed to be illegal for export. Bernstein 0:25:00.160 --> 0:25:03.159 sought out permission to publish his algorithm. He wanted to 0:25:03.200 --> 0:25:06.640