0:01 hey gang this episode is brought to you
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0:07 around after the episode to learn a bit
0:08 more about means and to snag a nice
0:10 little discount as a thank you for
0:16 channel okay so there's a building in
0:18 Tribeca that we think is an NSA base of
0:20 operations let's see how many cameras we
0:30 there now there are about 15,000 cameras
0:32 in New York and by best estimates you'll
0:34 pass about 100 publicly accessible ones
0:37 just to get to lower Manhattan here's a
0:39 map and you know what here's two random
0:43 blocks in Bushwick again 15,000 cameras
0:46 15,000 cameras that by some estimates
0:48 can identify you from over two blocks
0:51 away they're pretty much everywhere and
0:52 if cops have access to them you can bet
0:54 they'll be combined with automated
0:56 facial recognition software just between
1:00 2017 and 2021 the NYPD used facial
1:01 recognition Tech in
1:05 22,000 cases including to track down BLM
1:07 protesters back in 2020 that's because
1:09 this software according to the intercept
1:11 can automatically tag activities like
1:13 loitering no chance that's ever
1:15 problematic and automatically index
1:17 things like People's race and gender
1:19 nothing to worry about there either but
1:22 cameras are just one part of the Arsenal
1:24 of surveillance tools that cops have at
1:27 their disposal since they've become much
1:29 more common cops have repurposed body
1:31 cams for for everyday surveillance sent
1:34 out drones to film protests use special
1:35 automated license plate readers all over
1:37 the city set up fake cell towers to
1:40 collect phone call data and a lot more
1:42 to keep track of where people are who
1:44 they're talking to and what they do at
1:47 all times and they're not the only ones
1:48 regular apps on your phone have found
1:51 crazy ways to track you too a few years
1:53 ago a French app for finding hotels and
1:55 restaurants was found by the Yale
1:58 privacy lab to track its user location
2:00 not with the GPS on your phone mind you
2:03 but by having speakers in public
2:05 locations make a sound that humans can't
2:08 hear but our phones can pick up and that
2:11 pales in comparison with the mountains
2:13 of data companies like Google Facebook
2:16 and Amazon have on us Google stores your
2:18 search history indefinitely even in
2:21 Incognito but even when you're not using
2:23 the search function Google tracking
2:26 infrastructure is on 92 of the top 100
2:30 websites and 923 of the top 1,000 with
2:31 how much Google owns or can access
2:33 through the websites it has a back door
2:35 for the company has data on everything
2:37 from your location to your address email
2:40 and name all the links you click on how
2:42 long you spend on any one page what you
2:44 buy and who you talk to and since the
2:47 Snowden leaks we know that all that info
2:48 can get fed Upstream to surveillance
2:52 agencies like the FBI and NSA through
2:55 programs like prism boundless informant
2:58 and X key score the NSA Taps Microsoft
3:00 Google Facebook and Apple servers to
3:02 search through emails online messages
3:04 and browsing history and if that's not
3:08 enough these same programs allow the NSA
3:10 to use AT&T and Verizon's records to
3:13 collect the time location and people
3:15 involved in a phone call for millions of
3:18 Americans without any need for prior
3:21 authorization just to give you an idea
3:23 according to the Brennan Center the FBI
3:25 conducted 3.4 million warrantless
3:28 searches on Americans phone calls emails
3:30 and text messages in 2021 using a law
3:33 that on paper can only be used to spy on
3:35 foreigners overseas which is already
3:38 problematic this is a lot and there's
3:40 way more but we'll get to that in a
3:43 minute because first I want to know how
3:45 we got here the amount of surveillance
3:47 we can be subjected to at a moment's
3:50 notice is truly dystopian most of us
3:52 would rather not think about the public
3:53 private partnership between the Police
3:55 federal agencies and tech companies
3:57 built on collecting millions of hard
4:01 drives worth of personal data how did this
4:03 this [Music]
4:09 [Music]
4:13 happen our story starts here in Silicon
4:16 Valley here on Sand Hill Road is where
4:19 in 1999 the CIA backed the private
4:22 nonprofit Venture Capital firm inel
4:25 initially inel was a pretty unimportant
4:26 little office meant to keep an eye on
4:28 Silicon Valley fund a few things here
4:30 and there and see if tech companies were
4:32 coming up with anything useful for the
4:34 intelligence Community an experiment
4:37 meant to Last 5 Years nothing more just
4:39 down the road about a 20-minute drive
4:41 away and less than a year before Google
4:43 launched their own little company out of
4:45 a garage a search engine meant to
4:47 compete with the likes of Yahoo and
4:49 altav Vista and for a while neither of
4:51 these companies mattered very much
4:54 Google was a fledgling company just one
4:56 search engine of many and inel was
4:58 proving to be somewhat of a failed CIA
5:00 experiment a 5-year project that hadn't
5:02 really done much of anything neither was
5:04 this a great time for Advocates of more
5:06 surveillance the scale of the internet
5:08 was steadily growing in the late '90s
5:10 and Americans started feeling that this
5:12 might threaten their privacy so after
5:14 years of letting internet companies
5:17 self-regulate in 2000 the government
5:20 started moving Robert psky the FTC
5:22 chairman was in the New York Times
5:24 boldly coming after.com companies and
5:25 saying e-commerce threatened to intrude
5:27 on people's personal lives and
5:29 legislation was drafted to protect what
5:31 people did on the internet it required
5:33 companies to limit what personal details
5:35 they could collect as well as make it
5:37 clear what they were collecting how it
5:39 was used and give people the option to
5:42 correct it or delete it entirely so
5:44 basically everything Google Amazon and
5:46 Facebook do now would have either become
5:48 illegal or subjected to a lot of public
5:50 scrutiny with the law on the side of
5:53 Internet users to give you an idea in
5:55 the fall of 2000 the Clinton
5:57 Administration wanted to raise the legal
5:59 requirement before law enforcement could
6:01 access emails and was actually
6:03 criticized by Republicans for not doing
6:05 enough to protect
6:08 privacy and then everything changed after
6:10 after
6:12 9/11 okay let's go backwards from where
6:16 we just ended first the
6:20 legislation 45 days after 9/11 Congress
6:22 passed the Patriot Act pretty much
6:24 overnight all those concerns about
6:26 privacy went out the window a state of
6:28 emergency was declared and terrorism
6:30 became the main mainstream diet of
6:33 American Media consumption this neatly
6:35 paved the way for the Patriot Act and
6:37 the barrage of policies that followed
6:38 which all made it much easier for the
6:40 government to monitor phone calls and
6:42 emails collect Banking and credit
6:45 records and keep a closer and closer eye
6:47 on what Americans do online through what
6:49 are called national security letters for
6:52 example the FBI could obtain all sorts
6:54 of personal information about Americans
6:55 without the approval of a judge they
6:57 could hold on to it indefinitely and
6:59 prevent those who have been tapped from
7:01 even talking about it assuming they ever
7:05 found out second Google all those FTC
7:07 regulations went out the window too
7:08 internet companies had started getting
7:10 reasonably worried that the world wild
7:12 west and their cattle baren status
7:14 within it wasn't going to survive the
7:17 anti-surveillance FTC and the American
7:18 public's reasonable fear of mass
7:22 invasions of privacy after 9/11 though
7:24 every regulatory project that could have
7:28 threatened them was immediately canned
7:32 third in inel after 2001 gone were the
7:34 days of the temporary little CIA
7:37 experiment in Silicon Valley with 9/11
7:39 inel became a permanent fixture in
7:41 California and suddenly got a lot of
7:43 interest from Valley startups looking to
7:44 trade the surveillance Tech they had
7:46 developed and the data which they were
7:48 suddenly completely justified in
7:50 collecting legally speaking for
7:52 government cash and in the next decade
7:55 no one took greater advantage of that
7:58 than Google in late summer 2003 Google
8:01 scored a 2 million gig to set up Google
8:03 search technology at the NSA and
8:05 separately customized software for the
8:07 CIA then the next year Google deepened
8:10 The Connection by acquiring another CIA
8:13 inq fund Adventure called Keyhole a
8:14 satellite mapping company that would
8:17 become Google Earth in 2007 Google's
8:20 Peter norvig gave a presentation at the
8:22 pentagon's Highlands Forum an incubator
8:24 for SV companies that the intelligence
8:26 Community tapped for surveillance ideas
8:29 and in 2009 Google took things even
8:31 further joining forces with the cia's
8:34 inel again to fund a startup called
8:36 recorded future that monitored quote
8:40 every aspect of the web in real time in
8:43 order to predict future events all the
8:45 while top people are of course rotating
8:47 back and forth between these
8:49 intelligence agencies and Google point
8:52 is after 911 Google and the intelligence
8:54 Community kickstarted a process of
8:57 codependent growth if things looked a
8:59 little dicey for them in the '90s a
9:00 combin ation of close personal
9:02 relationships and quote direct
9:04 sponsorship and informal networks of
9:06 financial influence pushed Google
9:08 further and further down the path of
9:11 surveillance technology at precisely the
9:13 same time as the legal infrastructure
9:16 meant to protect privacy was dismantled
9:23 relationship intelligence agencies
9:26 needed surveillance capitalist companies
9:27 and they needed the intelligence
9:29 community's financial and institutional
9:32 support for companies getting cozy with
9:34 intelligence agencies protects their
9:36 ability to burrow ever more deeply into
9:39 our private data so long as cops can get
9:41 warrantless access to ring footage for
9:44 example Amazon can feel pretty confident
9:45 in its ability to develop what is
9:47 essentially become the largest corporate
9:49 aggregated network of CCTV cameras on
9:53 Earth and if this wasn't clear enough
9:55 they've even gone so far as to lay out a
9:57 four-part plan specifically for police
9:59 departments to follow so they can
10:01 increase the number of people in a
10:03 neighborhood who will get a ring camera
10:04 then on the other side of the
10:06 relationship intelligence agencies and
10:08 police forces are deeply dependent on
10:11 these companies no intelligence agency
10:12 can compete with the amount of
10:14 information a private company can
10:17 collect and store the NSA can't convince
10:19 anyone to willingly put a GPS tracker in
10:21 their pocket at all times the way Google
10:23 can there's another benefit for
10:25 intelligence agencies and police
10:27 departments though despite the Patriot
10:29 Act and the Avalanche of anti-privacy
10:31 laws that sailed through Congress after
10:34 911 the Constitution still makes it at
10:35 least a little difficult for government
10:38 agencies to spy on Americans not
10:40 impossible but either too slow or not
10:42 quite unlimited enough for the likes of
10:44 the NSA thankfully for the intelligence
10:47 Community there's a loophole to quote
10:50 legal scholar Jack Balan because the
10:52 Constitution does not reach private
10:54 parties government has increasing
10:56 incentives to rely on private Enterprise
10:57 to collect and generate information for
11:01 it in other words by Contracting out
11:02 both the labor of developing
11:04 surveillance technology and carrying out
11:06 the actual work of data collection then
11:08 simply partnering with tech companies to
11:11 parse that information surveillance can
11:13 be as comprehensive and immediate as the
11:15 NSA wants without having to contend with
11:17 what few legal protections limit
11:20 government spying on citizens and this
11:22 all perfectly coincided with some
11:24 internal developments at Google that
11:26 would supercharge this data collection
11:29 even further take a look at
11:33 this patent in 2005 Google filed a
11:35 patent for what it called generating
11:38 user information for use in targeted
11:40 advertising there's a lot of diagrams in
11:42 there that frankly don't make it any
11:43 easier to understand what they're
11:46 actually patenting but that's not what
11:48 really matters what you need to know is
11:51 the story behind this patent that for
11:54 years and years Google was struggling
11:56 they had raised tons of money from
11:57 investors and established a pretty
11:59 dominant place in the search engine
12:00 market now they just needed to figure
12:03 out how to actually generate Revenue
12:05 doing that Google knew they couldn't
12:07 really charge people a fee without
12:09 killing the business nor could they
12:10 start selling search results that they
12:12 had aggregated for free and without
12:14 prior consent from website owners so up
12:16 to that point Google was making do
12:18 running just a few ads related to what
12:20 you searched and providing web services
12:22 for bigger names like Yahoo nothing
12:25 terribly lucrative and when the crash
12:28 hit in 2000 investors realized this
12:29 wasn't going to make enough money to
12:31 justify taking a risk on the brand new
12:33 commercial internet they needed
12:37 something else it all clicked in April
12:41 of 2001 just 5 months before 9/11 Amit
12:43 Patel one of the first people to work at
12:45 Google found out that every time someone
12:47 ran a search through the engine Google
12:49 happened to collect information on that
12:51 search like quote the number and pattern
12:54 of Search terms how Aquarius phrased
12:57 spelling punctuation dwell times click
12:59 patterns and location data that up to
13:02 that point Google didn't really have any
13:04 use for and was just sitting in some
13:06 server somewhere what Patel and Google's
13:09 founder Larry Page realized in April
13:10 though is that all this information
13:12 could not only be used to improve
13:14 Google's public facing service the
13:16 search engine but could be of huge
13:18 interest to the much more profitable
13:21 advertising backend with all this data
13:24 at their fingertips Google realized that
13:26 they could not only know a lot more
13:28 about what people did on the internet
13:30 but actively predict and therefore guide
13:33 their behavior too making detailed
13:35 behavioral profiles that made them
13:37 incredibly attractive to a whole new
13:39 class of advertisers and financial
13:41 institutions desperate to understand and
13:43 find new profit opportunities in
13:45 people's behavior over the next few
13:47 years then Google went from accidentally
13:50 stumbling across this extra data to
13:52 reorienting its entire project around
13:55 acquiring more of it from every possible
13:57 Source not just their search engine
13:59 faster and in more granular detail than
14:02 any of its competitors and crucially
14:04 before regulation could catch up and at
14:06 the exact same time that 911 brought out
14:08 the intelligence community support and
14:12 money for massive data mining projects
14:14 that same year Larry Page made this new
14:17 Direction pretty explicit when asked
14:19 what Google was after it discovered all
14:22 this behavioral data Paige didn't just
14:25 say a search engine he said quote if we
14:27 did have a category it would be personal
14:30 information communic ations sensors are
14:33 really cheap storage is cheap cameras
14:35 are cheap people will generate enormous
14:37 amounts of data everything you've ever
14:40 heard or seen or experienced will become
14:50 searchable 20 years ago that probably
14:54 seemed impossible today that project has
14:56 become a reality now we all know that
14:59 Google sells algorithm generated results
15:00 results trained on our data to
15:03 advertisers but advertising is really
15:06 just the tip of the iceberg for example
15:08 financial institutions and their Tech
15:10 startups have recently started to use
15:11 the wave of big data that Google
15:13 Unleashed to assign things like
15:16 creditworthiness to people on scarily
15:18 specific data data like how often you
15:20 charge your phone your decision to add
15:22 last names to contacts or not what time
15:24 of day you make phone calls how many
15:26 miles you drive a day and if you send
15:29 more text than you receive based on on
15:31 this information these companies
15:33 calculate with more and more certainty
15:35 the risk of lending associated with
15:38 individual borrowers and sell that
15:40 certainty at a premium with the cost for
15:42 a loan going up for consumers the
15:44 algorithm has decided can't be trusted
15:46 because they save their contacts
15:49 wrong but anyway at at this point I
15:51 probably need to address something
15:53 that's been bothering some of you since
15:55 the beginning of this video most of us
15:57 already knew a lot of this stuff it's
16:00 scary it's dystopian and we don't often
16:01 actually think about just how much
16:04 companies police forces and intelligence
16:07 agencies know about us but we all knew
16:09 it was a lot we've seen the needle move
16:12 a little bit after Snowden but it's not
16:14 like any of this has really stopped so
16:16 for years now these tech companies have
16:18 told us that this is just the way it has
16:19 to be if we want to use their products
16:21 for free we have to accept that this
16:24 invasion of privacy is the trade-off and
16:25 we can trust them that it won't be used
16:28 problematically they won't be evil after
16:30 all it's that old saying if it's free
16:33 then you're the product but that's just
16:37 not true it's actually worse we're not
16:39 the product for these companies we're
16:41 the raw material they're not selling us
16:44 to advertisers and credit companies
16:46 they're selling the prediction models
16:48 they've built using our information as
16:50 fuel but it's not like these companies
16:53 don't have a choice when Google was
16:55 coming up other search engines like the
16:57 long gone Overture and inktomi made
16:59 money in other ways that still gave us a
17:01 free product either collecting revenues
17:03 from the pages they indexed or promoting
17:06 advertisers pages in the search results
17:08 the reason Google made it big isn't
17:10 because its mass collection and
17:11 re-engineering of our personal data was
17:13 the only way to make the service free
17:15 it's because it's the most profitable
17:17 way to make money when the state is
17:19 there to protect and directly Finance
17:22 this total disregard for privacy if
17:23 anything ring doorbells have made this
17:26 point clearer for 50 bucks you add yet
17:28 another CCTV to your street and they
17:29 still collect massive amounts of
17:31 information that can at any point be
17:33 turned over to the cops without a
17:36 warrant the product isn't free it's not
17:38 really clear how much of your privacy
17:40 you're handing over or what you can do
17:42 to limit it but it's so normalized that
17:44 the tired line about if it's free you're
17:47 the product doesn't even matter anymore
17:49 but okay if it doesn't have to be this
17:52 way and the whole free thing is BS at
17:54 least all this surveillance makes us
17:56 safer right we traded in some of our
17:59 privacy sure but at least we get gained
18:03 insecurity except that's not true either
18:05 we have so much data that shows how
18:08 useless the global post 911 surveillance
18:11 regime has been a 2014 study with a
18:13 sample of 225 terrorist cases found that
18:16 the nsa's metadata collection quote had
18:18 no discernable impact on preventing acts
18:21 of terrorism a 2015 Rand Corporation
18:24 analysis of 176 terrorist plots found
18:26 that quote plots are most often foiled
18:28 through conventional law enforcement
18:30 activities and that intelligence efforts
18:32 only intervened in a small percentage of
18:34 cases Keith Alexander former Chief of
18:37 the NSA famously claimed that his agency
18:39 had foiled 54 terrorist plots thanks to
18:41 the massive amount of data they
18:43 collected on Americans after the Patriot
18:44 Act then when he was pressed about it
18:46 under oath Alexander would only admit
18:48 that the NSA surveillance had played an
18:51 important role in one instance a case of
18:53 a cab driver sending 8500 bucks to
18:56 al-shabab surveillance doesn't make us
18:58 safe it isn't a trade-off we have to
19:01 accept for free products it is one thing
19:04 and one thing only an infection the
19:06 outcome of an insatiable surveillance
19:07 capitalism that took advantage of a
19:10 momentary weakness in our immune system
19:11 a little Gap in our Collective concern
19:13 for the importance of our personal
19:16 privacy to settle in and spread and now
19:18 that it's here police forces
19:20 intelligence agencies and private
19:22 corporations all collaborate to increase
19:25 its scope no protest is safe from being
19:27 tracked by Google's location services or
19:30 police drones Walmart calls the FBI at
19:31 the drop of a hat when its union workers
19:34 start striking tech companies can use
19:36 the weather app on your phone to track
19:37 when you attend an abortion clinic and
19:40 then sell that data to the CDC or anyone
19:42 with the cash to doxs people getting a
19:44 private medical procedure and with all
19:46 these systems in place to track all this
19:48 information the truth is that it doesn't
19:50 matter if you're actually being watched
19:52 or you think you have nothing to hide
19:55 the fact that the infrastructure is here
19:56 and the threat that it could be turned
19:59 on to you at any moment for any reason
20:02 is horrifying enough in this neoliberal
20:04 dystopia where financial institutions
20:05 are desperately looking for more
20:07 certainty about the future where
20:09 companies evade more and more regulation
20:11 that would protect the public and where
20:13 governments strip the budgets of every
20:15 institution but the Pentagon and the
20:18 police there's absolutely no reason for
20:21 anyone in power to stop this it's
20:23 already impossible to avoid this
20:25 invasion of privacy there's not going to
20:26 be a market solution to shutting down
20:28 this perfect Coalition of interests
20:30 between the institutions of the state
20:33 and those of capital but the thing is we
20:36 need privacy we need it to feel safe and
20:39 comfortable in our own homes we need
20:41 privacy to be able to organize voice our
20:43 discontent and challenge the entrenched
20:46 power of the ruling class without it
20:49 there's no possibility for change when
20:51 you've got Tech and intelligence groups
20:53 watching you shop listening to your
20:55 calls reading your private messages
20:57 actively trying to develop a real life
21:01 future crime division there's no safe
21:03 way to exist and engage with Society
21:05 even if right now your data is just
21:07 being used to sell you a more tailored
21:09 product realize that it could be used
21:12 for a lot more think about that the next
21:14 time you do anything online or through
21:16 text or under the watchful eye of the security
21:18 security [Music]
21:21 [Music]
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