Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining this session. We are now welcoming Viktor, who is
a privacy activist, researcher and writer. He is the head of communications at IPPN and
the founder of the Privacy Issue, an editorial platform. Today he will be elaborating some
spicy questions about surveillance. Let's hear Viktor for more.
Hello. Thanks for the intro. Hi, everyone. As Silva said, my name is Viktor. I'm a privacy
researcher from Hungary. I've been a PIVIC and Matomo user for close to 10 years now,
so I'm really excited to be here. I would like to kick off this talk with a quote about the question
of technological determinism, the question of do we have an agency over the effect of new technology?
And Lynn White Jr. said, technology merely opens the door. It does not compare one to enter.
And for this gentleman called Marvin Kranzeberg said, true, we are not
compelled to enter White's open door. But an open door is an invitation. Besides,
who decides which doors to open? And are not our future directions guided by the chamber into
which we have stepped? Equally important, once we have crossed the threshold, can we turn back?
So just to give you a little bit of context about why I'm really motivated to give this talk.
I've been at IPPN for three years now, and we've been talking and thinking and discussing the
topic of privacy quite a lot internally and within communities and with customers. And the question
regularly comes up, why does it matter? Why privacy matters? What is this end state that we
would like to protect ourselves against? And there are many theoretical, philosophical,
historical and legal answers to this. But what I would like to explore today is like,
if we would be living in a surveillance state or we are headed to a surveillance state,
how it will all go down? Would we notice it? And to explore this, I will talk about technological
adoptions, surveillance and its relationship with power, and slippery slopes. So to get started,
I would like to talk a little bit about privacy and surveillance and some definitions.
There are many possible ways to define these terms. But for me, the best one for privacy is
that it's the ability to selectively reveal ourselves to others. And this is universally
applicable, and it depends on different contexts and relationship and the parties involved. But
ultimately, it's about giving you autonomy and having agency over our own actions and thoughts.
So they can be used to judge us and nudge us, and it gives us a unique character. So surveillance,
for me, is a method of encroaching on that privacy. And this creates an interesting
dynamic that the surveyor knows more about us than we know about them. The surveyor knows
what it knows, what they know, and they can define the rules of the game and the capabilities and
what information to collect. So in this sense, they have an advantage over us. So I think these
methodologies have evolved way beyond the 80s movies, like people following you around in vans
and rifle mics and all this kind of stuff. These capabilities have exploded. They are massive.
And the actors who are doing this have their own reasons for not revealing these. So on the state
side, when the state's doing surveillance, they usually have secret committees, secret decision
making, and obfuscation, as we'll see in examples. And on the corporate side, on the corporate
surveillance side, it's made available by the market, the open market, the last of our approach
and the lagging regulations. So why this is very important for me is I think privacy is power.
That's the core of the issue for me. Because if there is surveillance, that means there is a
lack of privacy, and you lose that power. Because information about you can be used against you,
and that creates this power imbalance. And this power can be used for control in the name of
national security and the interest of the people. And it can be used for profit in the name of
progress and convenience. And this power can manifest in many different ways. And one way is
the soft power, where there is maybe not a very clear way of this happening. Maybe it's just like
a softer nudges and influence and giving benefits and rewards and taking away some benefits.
But on the other end of the spectrum, there's this hard power, which is taking away the freedoms and
jails and camps. And both can be exerted on citizens and customers. So exploring soft power
a little bit. The clearest example for me of this soft power on the state side is the social credit
system in China. Many of you, most of you probably heard about it, but I'm going to give you an
overview. So in China, surveillance and AI is used for control, for rewards and benefits, and some,
let's say, softer punishments. And it's important to note that these Chinese social credit systems,
there is no centralized ubiquitous system where everyone is controlled everywhere and there is
one all-seeing guy. These systems are tested in a decentralized fashion in different areas
with various rules. And just to give you an overview, I'd like to show this clip.
This is from a French movie that the French friends watching this stream might have seen it.
7 billion suspects. And they've sourced the clip from the Chinese TV on the social credit system.
This is a one-minute clip about this introduction. So I'd like to show you this. I hope it's going to
show all right.
So, feel free to launch it. I think that's an interesting take on this whole thing. You see,
it's like there's this cartoonish, easygoing introduction to this. But I would argue that
this is probably not so much fun, especially for the people on this discredited backlist.
Although it's important to note that, you know, to make this happen, there is a lot of things
happening on the technological side, facial recognition systems, data from different
applications, payment system, banking information, police records. All this data is fed into an AI
to make decisions and give discourse. And many people in China like it, as per the reports and
what we know about this. There's some clear benefits. You know, your latte in the morning
might arrive earlier, or you don't have to put down a deposit to rent a car. Great. But on the
other end, you know, the people punished by the systems are pushed out to the edges. They become
biased. There is a small chance for rehabilitation. And there is a serious chilling effect on what you
can do and how far you can push the edges of the system. And when I was researching this whole
topic, I was interested in the question of how is this all possible in China? And I encountered one
concept. I think it's really important to describe here. It's the concept of legalism or Faji,
which says that there is a cost and benefit approach to applying the laws in China. Not
everyone is equal in the eye of the law. And the party and the leader decides what is good for
society. And laws can be bent and applied selectively and unchallenged to be used for
their end. There's not a lot of democratic input. And this is framed as like an extrapolation of
the existing laws. We are doing it for you. We are doing it for the betterment of societies.
And all this soft power is exerted because it's for the people. But ultimately, there's one person,
you know, and he charges to make these decisions, decide, like, what's a good behavior? Like,
we will tell you how to behave. And you might have a chance, you know, to decide whether you
comply. But ultimately, you cannot make this choice. And I think, you know, the thinking
behind this is opposite to the liberal social values that I personally think is better for
democracies and the advancement of free ideas. So after exploring this soft
power part on the state side, I would like to move on to the corporate side and what's happening
there. As you might know from reports and analysis over the years, like, on the corporate side,
these surveillance-based business models, especially by Facebook and Google, these have
created enormous power and wealth for them, trillions of dollars in market capitalization.
So as we move into the direction of spending more time online, especially after these COVID
dynamics, shaking things up, spending more time online, doing work online, meeting friends and
family online, leisure time, there is more and more data generated. And now we have seen these
reports coming out of the vision of Mark Zuckerberg changing the company name to Meta to build this
Metaverse. This part of the talk, I've prepared for a couple of months now. And
these news that they are renaming the companies is pretty fresh, but it lines up really well with
the things that I wanted to share about this, is that in these Metaverse, these real-world dynamics
are recreated with their own boundaries and own rules. And people are going to be spending a lot
more time there. And we can argue about different aspects, whether it's good for society and what
are the downsides. But for me, this surveillance aspect is what's really interesting.
In this context, because so far they had the power to sell our attention and
not just into ways the algorithm sinks, it's best for engagement and the highest bidder,
but it was kind of confined into that space. But in the Metaverse, Facebook is going to own
the entire stack, the hardware gateways, the payments, the commerce, social graphs, messaging,
and this creates an option for this aggregated ID system. And what Mark Zuckerberg thinks about
Facebook, they have to re-transform it into something like the state, because they will
have to write the rules of the engagement and the behavior, and they have to kind of do some sort of
police work. And to show you, he already thinks along these lines, because when he was asked
recently about misinformation and moderation and content policy on Facebook, he said that
when you think about the integrity of a system like this, it's a little bit like fighting crime
in a city. No one expects you that you're ever going to fully solve it, but the police will
have to do a good enough job of helping to deter and catch the bad thing when it happens. So
right now on Facebook, this is kind of like encapsulated, but in the Metaverse, this is
going to be a much more important question. And in this context, there is no need for Fagi or legalism.
Let's just lose regulations and the opportunity for one person to make these kind of decisions
and say who and why is rewarded, what is acceptable, and this will be closed systemated
by constant surveillance. So I just want to note here without trying to pass any big judgments here
that Black Mirror series was not an operating manual. So maybe this is something to think
about for people working on this stuff. Okay, so after exploring the soft power, I would like
to move on to hard power, like the more egregious and scary violations on privacy and the examples
where surveillance is used to exert hard power on populations. We have seen this before in history.
You know, we know this from the history books. Oppressive states, authoritarian leaders,
xenophobia, you know, feeling into this. But what's happening now, and this is also something that
was widely reported and I hope you've heard about it, this is happening now in China, in the province
of Xinjiang, where at least tens of thousands of Uyghurs are put into these re-education camps,
which are actually concentration camps, because there is evidence of violence and coercion. So
they are put into these camps because of their religion, mainly, because they are not conforming
with the idea of how Chinese people should behave. And they have not seen a lawyer, they were not
convicted. And, you know, these tens of thousands is just the confirmed numbers, you know, activists
and researchers say it's probably in the hundreds of thousands. So all this project was carried out
with the help of surveillance technology, facial recognition, monitoring of communications,
behavioral data, biometric information, feeding into these data points and feeding into this AI.
And this system is called IGOP. And like the Chinese secret police use this, and with the
help of military police, they put QR codes on houses, monitor people, set up checkpoints. And
this algorithm actually makes the decision of who is this, who are the subversive elements and who
pose the biggest risk and they are sent into these camps. So this example is the most chilling
example of use of surveillance technology. But I want to make the point here that this same logic
applies as with the soft power, you know, separate the good and bad, use the data and use these kind
of AI systems and these kind of methodologies for the same purpose. So data and tech, we can say
it's neutral and it's benign, but it can be introduced and scaled and tested and repurposed
for more sinister end. This actually happened in China. So to conclude this part, I would like to
talk a little bit about the outsourcing of surveillance, because I've talked about this
parallel of state and corporate application of these technologies. It's good to note here that
they have similar motivations and they have an interest in working together. And there is big
money to be made in surveillance on the private side. And some of the examples here, LexisNexis
is a data broker, mainly operating in the U.S. but there are other areas as well.
They have 10,000 data points on hundreds of millions of people collecting it from different
sources, location, information, license plate data, and different other stuff. And this is all used by
law enforcement in the U.S. Another example is the Clearview AI, who build these big facial recognition
database systems and they use it from, and they do it with the help of public and private sources.
So this is the part where the data collection part is outsourced to private companies. But
there's also the next step, which is the making sense of the data. And Palantir is an excellent
example here. We are going to see some examples from the U.S. and some other areas as well.
Palantir is a data analytics company worth 50 billion now in U.S. dollars, give or take,
and dozens of states around the world use it. In the U.S., they deploy so-called fusion centers
where they help with the LAPD uses this and New Orleans Police uses this. They help with the
comprehension and this kind of like predictive policing system. And they use the state databases
and private databases, what we've seen before, and aggregate all this data to make sense of
what is happening. And it's called GADM. That might give you an indication of what they think
about the whole city and the crime there. So anyone can look at anyone in there who have
access to the system. But for example, in L.A., half of all the police officers have access to
the system and they look at anyone. And they've also used this like chronic offender test there
where they give like points to people in the system to identify who is likely to be offended.
And they also list like nonviolent offenders and non-suspects and persons of interest,
people who are in different areas getting that kind of like geofenced information from them.
So this really feeds into the idea of everyone can become a suspect. So, yeah, this is about
the outsourcing of the surveillance. So now I've given you kind of like an overview of what's
happening and some of the capabilities. Just moving back to the question of the title of the
talk, are we there yet? I think in some places we are definitely there. It depends on where you live
and who you are. And to help you determine at your place whether you are there yet,
it's important to, I think, to talk about the concept of slippery slopes. So the slippery
slope argument is that when we take one small step in a specific direction, it can have a snowball
or domino effect. It can have dire outcomes. And this question came up with the questions of
Apple's deployment of client-side scanning for child exploitation images when they scan your
iPhone if you are synced to iCloud and check against these hashes. Now, the technical details
are more complex than I could get into in this timeframe. But the point here is that privacy
advocates and researchers and information security professionals warned that this whole thing can
make us end up in a bad place. And it will lead to more privacy issues. It will lead to more
surveillance. It will give capabilities to authoritarian governments. And a lot of people
are eager to jump in, like, OK, come on. Don't use the slippery slope argument. That's a fallacy.
And that won't happen. If you enable iCloud, you're not going to end up in a concentration camp.
That's just silly. But my argument here is that that's not what privacy advocates are saying.
I think the slippery slope argument is only a fallacy if the steps following each other would
not lead to the proposed outcome. And we cannot demonstrate that. But the inference of these steps
is warranted after careful evaluation of these steps. Then we can agree and we can agree
objectively about these steps. And then it's a valid argument. And it's not a threat.
It's a threat. And it's not a fallacy. So it's valid to talk about these things.
And what we've seen in China as a possible end state, it's not an imaginary situation.
We can easily get there if there are different steps to happen. And for this part of the talk,
I wanted to create this thought experiment, how this slippery surveillance slope would look like.
Well, that's a tongue twister. So there are six steps that I've identified. And we are going to
look at them and how they happen in different countries now. So first, that data about citizens
is abundant. I think this is given in most areas of the world now. Both in the state and on the
corporate side and the sharing on these two ends. And then the second step on the slope is targeted
surveillance and easy and normalized. So hacking into people's accounts, giving a lot of legal
space for that, getting around different legal protections, getting stuff without obtaining
warrants. So we'll see an example in the next part and example from Hungary, where I'm from.
And so this is the next step I've identified. And the third one is that the state increases
the scope without any kind of pushback. So after this targeted surveillance is easy and normalized,
after this targeted surveillance is easy and normalized, and we can see there is no oversight,
there is a lot of dodging questions, and there is more data points, and there is more information
to be had, they start to build these systems. So I think in some of the states, we definitely
know about the Snowden revelations. It's happened already there. China is definitely there. In the
EU, I think some of the countries are moving into this direction, as we're going to explore
a little bit later. So this is the third step. This is moving into this dragnet and mass surveillance
and using that for different purposes. And then a fourth step is very important here,
is the interventions due to political need. So when there is like this loosening grip on power
or that there is this challenge from civil society, from journalists, there is this part
where this data is actually getting used. And then as a fifth step, you can become the subject of
surveillance. And the first step, only the journalists and only the opposition party members
and people of interest in that kind of groups. But then it's very easy to say that, okay,
so we don't want any kind of gay propaganda going on here. There are some voices sounding that in
different parts of the world, like in Hungary. So it's very easy to move to that direction.
We need to create this list and we need to survey more and more people. And the sixth step,
you can be discriminated. Your rights can be denied and you can end up in confinement or worse,
depending on the legal protections that you have or how much your state want to honor them.
And so going back to this normalizing surveillance part, I think it's very instructive,
like what happened in Hungary about the Pegasus scandal. If you haven't heard about that,
Pegasus is a spyware. It can be installed on phones. It's pretty costly and it's very targeted.
And in Hungary, we had this leak where it involved many other countries as well. Not just Hungary,
but in Hungary, there were at least a hundred people on this list. And in some cases, at least
10 cases, it was demonstrated that these phones have actually been hacked. But on the list,
there was opposition politicians, lawyers, investigative journalists. And this whole thing
came out in July and there were no clear answers. There was no admittance, like who have done this,
why they have done this, why it was a good idea. There was always just obfuscation. And finally,
yesterday, after a couple of months, the Hungarian government admitted it. Yes,
we have purchased the software. But still, the line is that we have done everything legally.
Yeah, of course. I mean, the laws are written in a way to help states like ours get away with
this kind of surveillance and normalize this surveillance. And they can use this for their
own ends and goals to get the grip on power and sustain that power. And a very interesting line
from yesterday is that the person, the government officials who were announcing this for journalists
said, it's OK, because tech giants do more spying than the state. And he went on to talk about how
law-moner ads follow their friends around and stuff like that. Well, of course, that's a valid
point in itself, but not when you want to escape accountability and hide your own actions. It's
moving this whole conversation away from that. So yeah, so just thinking a little bit about
giving you an overview about what's happening with the adoption of these technologies. That's the
next section I want to talk about. It's important to note that many countries, China especially,
but even some of the European surveillance tech, is getting exported into other countries. China,
that's if you put it in your favorite search engine, which is, I really hope it's not Google,
China surveillance technology plus a country, you can play this game and many countries will end up
with some reports of China trying to push their surveillance tech to them. Ecuador, Chile, and many
African countries cooperate with them. And they use this to legitimize their whole reasoning.
It works here. It will work for you. Look at all this success. And they want to make money off of
it, of course, and this whole technological dominance. But this is not the end of the story.
I mean, most of the EU countries, we have some cooperation with the Chinese, but I think it's
getting a little bit more like a hot topic. So some of the states are pulling back. But
in terms of cooperating with companies like Preview AI or Palantir that I've talked about,
there is a lot of things going on. So like in the EU, Palantir is partnered with Europol,
French intelligence services, Danish national police, and other countries. And like the Dutch,
authorities have revealed that they are holding more than 45,000 documents relating to Palantir
and their cooperation, but they don't show these. And Danish police have refused freedom of
information requests on these documents. Europol reportedly have 69 documents, but they refused
access to almost all of them on the grounds of public security. So you can see there is
this obfuscation going on in these areas as well. And one other crazy story about Preview AI and
this facial recognition databases is from Finland. Like Buzzfeed, a journalist went and explored
these leaks about who is using Preview AI and who's testing it. And Swedish police have tested it
and French Ministry of Interior have tested it. And they went to a Finnish government official
and asked them, okay, so have you used it? Because we have some conflicting reports here. And the
Finnish official said like, we don't know what Preview AI is. But then after this conversation,
they researched it and have started testing it. So yeah, so this is the downside of awareness,
I guess. So moving on and thinking about these adoptions and putting it a little bit into like
this long-term and historical perspective and this longer term trajectory. I would like to
show you this framework by Carlotta Perez, a scholar who is researching technological revolutions.
And this is about this technology search cycle. And she says that there are two phases of these
revolutions, the installation period and the deployment period. And these general purpose
technologies, last time it happened with the car and oil and mass production in the early 20th
century, there is this first phase where there is this rapid testing and creative destruction
and new paradigms coming and there is a cultural shift. Industries collapsed, loss of jobs,
wealth inequality, and there's usually a financial bubble. And this creates a lot of disillusionment,
this creates a lot of chaos. And then in the last time this happened, there were these wars and
like Hitler happened. So I'm not saying that's going to happen again. But what Ms. Perez is
saying right now, she has explored this in the current context with the computer and information
technology, energy, clean energy revolution, nanotech and biotech. She argues that we are
somewhat halfway there. So we had some bubbles now and we had some crisis, like two bigger
crises in the past 20 years. But she says that we are still in this turning point. And why it's
important in this context is because it brings a lot of disillusioned people and it creates a lot
of upheaval. And this creates an opening for messianic type of authoritarian leaders,
just like it happens in the 30s, who come in and offer a direction, offer a solution,
I will tell you and I will help you to make sense of this work. And my argument here is that
surveillance helps them a great deal to create this kind of stability and order. And we can argue,
if you look at what's happening in China, they're already in this synergy phase. There was enormous
growth based on all these technologies in the past 5-10 years. And it came together with the
rapid deployment of surveillance. So this golden age that comes with this deployment period,
just like it happened after the wars, it might come with a big surveillance for us.
So we bring it all together. I think we are in this moment where it's ripe for this rapid
and wide adoption of surveillance technologies. And if you think about this long-term trajectory,
there could be new capabilities and really hocus-pocus growth of adoption like we see
with other technologies. And I think we are not at the point of this sci-fi, all-seeing guy,
everyone is monitored all the time in real time, but it's possible. And we can really get there.
It might take 5 years, 10 years. It might happen in China first. But if there is success there,
which can be emulated, it's without legislation, without awareness, without pushback from people
like us, there might be more progress towards that area. So all this makes me want to make
a couple of points. First is like autocratic states love surveillance, so we love surveillance.
They benefit a lot from these technologies and the framing of the security and betterment
of societies. And I would expect to see more of this against the others, migrants, subversive
elements. And this whole security incentives and this whole national security drum can be beaten
and say that we will sway the public opinion towards this surveillance being a good thing for
you. And the next question for me is, who can push the button tomorrow? Who are going to be the
future rulers? Yuval Harari, writer and thinker, recently noted that perhaps a future autocrat is
going to be an Instagram star and not a Bond villain. They will use these technologies in a
very methodical way. They will know all the ins and outs. And also they will know a lot about
branding and propaganda. And who will be their advisors? Who will make these kind of decisions?
I think these questions are not asked enough. And right now we are in this phase where there is this
veil of fake accountability and leader knows best rhetoric of one party state. This is creeping
into our democracies. And the question also comes like what is lost? And I think the open societies
right to self-determination, freedom to experiment and human rights equally to all and religious
freedoms, these are all under attack. And I think in liberal democracies, these values are given
and often fought for. And privacy helps these values. But surveillance has a chilling effect on
them. And I think this whole question is a defining topic in our lives. And a push away from these
can support increased surveillance, strengthening autocratic systems and help new autocrats come
into power will be harder to challenge. And last question before we are wrapping up, who benefits?
This hunger for information and more data and creation of more data points is kind of endless
now because of its value. It has been demonstrated and tested for this power. And the trust in
governments and corporations are eroding. All the measurements and all the service shows that.
And to rebuild that, if you want to rebuild that, we need to have awareness and oversight
and transparency and accountability from state and corporations. And there has to be some sort of a
real democratic process to decide from citizens and customers, not just a black box and like
obfuscating everything in the name of security. So ultimately, if you want to ask for the question
of the title of the talk, I think you have to decide. Now you have some view, you have some
frameworks, and you have some ideas about my thinking about this. But you have to decide for
yourself, how deep is this slippery slope? Where does it lead? How far we are on it? You might
disagree with some of my conclusions. But what I know is that without these checks and
balances and the ability and willingness to understand and oppose these changes,
we are going to get pushed down on these slopes by others. So I have a short plea to you. If you
agree with me about these values and these questions and threats, please don't work on
surveillance technologies and these capabilities to deploy them for control and creating these
power imbalances. Palantir is looking for a lot of people in a lot of European countries.
You know, so that's something that I would argue for you and others to not take that step. But
maybe we'll end up with the finished preview example and someone will start working for
Palantir after this. Yeah, I hope that's not gonna happen. So what you can do instead is working on
giving power to the people and like with building encryption, privacy preserving software, activism,
education. And together, we can envision new models of governance and new business models.
And since you are here at Matomo can be watching this talk, you might already do some of this work
and I really applaud you. And I would like to, you know, ask you to keep doing that. I'm more
than happy to help you and be a partner in that. And together, we can support the public to conduct
their affairs in private, communicate in private, and do all this without the undue and unjust
surveillance. So before we part, I would like to finish with the the other end of this quote
from Malin Kranzberg that we have started with. He says that technology is neither good nor bad,
nor is it neutral. Many of our technology related problems arise because of the unforeseen
consequences when apparently benign technologies are employed on a massive scale. As many technical
applications that seem the boon to mankind when first introduced become threats when they're used
become widespread. So thank you for your attention. I think we have something like 10 minutes for
questions. But if there's no way of doing that, you know, you can just email me at
victor.ivp.net. So I'm happy to talk about any of these topics and help you with research or anything else.
I have shared some questions in the chat for you, Victor. Okay, I'm just gonna read them out loud
then and try to answer them. So life like house and money are often two big factors which are
making people move. According to you, how is it possible for citizens feel more concerned about
privacy? If I understand the question correctly, it's like perhaps that there are more important
or more like pressing things on people's lists than than privacy. I think you can connect,
you know, these topics to privacy, for example. So the health data is exploited as well and states
are sharing health data. For example, the NHS in the UK is sharing health data with Palantir.
So if we summarize my talk and its possible outcomes and you connect it with
these kind of issues of health and money, that's one way to get there. But of course, you know,
we have this massive hierarchy of needs to think about. So I think if some really have like really
pressing matters that would prevent them to think about these issues and they don't have the
options to switch to different other solutions, like using other providers, that are usually more
costly. So I see that as a challenge. But if there is more awareness, there is more demand,
there's going to be more solutions that are more private. So I think that's one way to get there.
Second question, do you have any proof or leak or any other sort of information showing that
a gay fan can track an individual along the website's apps he's visiting? For example,
being loaded to Google account and being able to know that this user is visiting a given website
thanks to tracker with GG funds. Well, I have to tell you that this is not my specific area of
expertise. So I won't have to get back on you on that about the technical details. But, you know,
I don't think we need any leaks for this. There's actually, you know, third party trackers. So,
for example, if you visit sites that have Google Analytics or like a Facebook pixel,
that immediately analyzes your persona, based on different information, like your IP address,
and like your screen size and different unique, there is this unique fingerprint,
and that is passed on to Google and that is passed on to Facebook. And then they are able
to track you across sites. I think this is pretty well documented. So I hope I understand the
question well. So yeah, this is happening. If you're concerned about this, you can use
tracker blockers and perhaps VPN and some other issues. But yeah, I don't want to promote any of
the things that we are doing. So next question, like any websites, sources of information,
of reference that we can refer to in order to find that the technologies you mentioned about
surveillance? Well, I think if you are looking for something specific, I think you should email me
and I can help you get back to you with a couple of links. Well, my source of information, one is
that there are many great technology writers, investigative journalists, who really try to track
this stuff down. And they publish in different like in the Verge, Vice and different other
mainstream publications. And there are also independent bodies. So EDIRI are a good resource
in Europe for this. Privacy International, it's mostly concerned with Europe. And there are the
similar organizations in the US to document this kind of stuff. So I think I would go to that kind
of sources. Any ideas on how Pegasus got into the smartphones? Was it like installing a special
Android app? Yeah, I think I've listened to a discussion with a Hungarian journalist about this
just recently. So the Pegasus malware is based on so called zero day exploits. So they work with
hackers and like callers who try to find exploits in the operating systems, which are not have been
have not been discovered before. So for example, they could manage to do a like an installation
methodology, where they send just a link to someone on WhatsApp. So for example, for investigative
journalists, here is an interesting leak about something that's happening in my country, and
there is a link. And if you follow that link, you don't have to do anything. It just uses your
this exploit in your phone and this vulnerability in your phone to restart the system and, and jail
break it, which means that there is like a change in the whole operating system. And after that,
they immediately take care of that phone. And there was like another thing that was discovered
that they didn't even have to click any links. I think it was through Skype or some sort of
video call technology. If you had that app running in the background, they could send requests through
that app, through that app, and no links, you wouldn't have to do anything. If you are sleeping
and that happens on your phone, they were immediately installed. So this is this is the
scariest thing about that, that you know, you might not have to do anything wrong for that.
That you know, you might not have to do anything wrong for this. Yeah. And the last last question,
how to fight crime while protecting the integrity of people? Yeah, this is this is the biggest
biggest question, at least for me, this is the one I grapple with the most, like the ethical and more
implications. I think this would could warrant the talk itself. Maybe it's a good idea for
next talk, I'll think about it. I think there are ways to do all this kind of like crime fighting
without going into surveillance or limiting it to very specific needs. So I think this is a scale.
And on that scale, we are moving into the areas where a lot of like rights to freedom and freedom
of association and stuff that I talked about, I really encroached on now. And and this is all
done with the obfuscation. So I think we can tone it down a little bit and move back a couple of
steps. And I think warranted, targeted surveillance on people that are, you know, proven to
be a threat, and they have to be investigated, even like the child pornography and the terrorist
stuff. So I think that should be done. I'm not arguing against any any type of any type of
surveillance. But what is done with the with the increase in that scope, that creates a dragnet
where everyone can become a suspect and you get you can become a suspect and it creates this kind
of opening this kind of open door, where people use it for for others. So I think this crime
fighting can be done maybe not as efficiently as right now, maybe a couple of percent less
efficient. But the but this freedom protections and this right protections that that's not going
to increase with the 10%, it's going to increase the manifold. So I think it's trade off. And I
think it should be discussed because many people perhaps disagree with me. But there is a lot of
methodologies available already to police the good old fashioned policing that can be done.
And the stores that we are deploying now, so like the encryption for everyone, everyone should use
signal I think for for communications just for these reasons that I've I've told you about. But
I think that this is kind of like a utility that is available to everyone should be available to
to everyone. So and utilities like like the roads and the water and everything else that's
that's also available to criminals. And it's you cannot say that like people who are suspects or
people who may might do some crime in the future, they cannot use our roads, you know, how do you
how do you scan against that? So I think, you know, this is an interesting discussion. As I said,
I'm just exploring these topics. These are all the tools that I had had for now. So but I'm really
happy to continue conversation about this by email, because I'm really interested in this topic as
well. So yeah, I think it's 45 now. Yeah, thanks for thanks for all your questions and your and
your attention. So many thank you for many thank you for this session, Victor, we were very happy
to have you here. Thank you. Thank you for the facilitation and have fun in the next couple of
hours. Goodbye. Goodbye. Thank you.