ABOUT THE SPEAKER
David Birch - Digital money and identity consultant
David Birch is a digital money and ID consultant paving the way for a 21st-century identity.

Why you should listen

David G.W. Birch is a Director of Consult Hyperion, an electronic identity and transactions consultant. He is the Chairman of the annual Digital Money Forum and Digital Identity Forum in London and he has written for several publications including more than a hundred Second Sight columns for The Guardian newspaper. In 2007, he published Digital Identity Management: Technological, Business and Social Implications under Gower Publishing Ltd. He hosts the Consult Hyperion podcast -- conversations with identity and digital transaction experts.

More profile about the speaker
David Birch | Speaker | TED.com
TEDxSussexUniversity

David Birch: A new way to stop identity theft

Filmed:
236,526 views

Bartenders need to know your age, retailers need your PIN, but almost no one actually needs your name -- except for identity thieves. ID expert David Birch proposes a safer approach to personal identification -- a "fractured" approach -- that would almost never require your real name.
- Digital money and identity consultant
David Birch is a digital money and ID consultant paving the way for a 21st-century identity. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:13
So I thought I'd talk about identity.
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That's sort of an interesting
enough topic to me.
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And the reason was,
because when I was asked to do this,
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I'd just read, in one of the papers,
I can't remember,
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something from someone at Facebook
saying, well,
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"we need to make everybody
use their real names."
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and then that's basically
all the problems solved.
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And that's so wrong,
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that's such a fundamentally,
reactionary view of identity,
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and it's going to get us
into all sorts of trouble.
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And so what I thought I'd do
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is I'll explain four
sort of problems about it,
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and then I'll suggest a solution,
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which hopefully you
might find interesting.
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So just to frame the problem,
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what does authenticity mean?
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That's me, that's
a camera phone picture of me
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looking at a painting.
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00:59
[What's the Problem?]
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That's a painting that was painted
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by a very famous forger,
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and because I'm not very good
at presentations,
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I already can't remember the name
that I wrote on my card.
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01:08
And he was incarcerated
in, I think, Wakefield Prison
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for forging masterpieces by,
I think, French Impressionists.
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01:15
And he's so good at it,
that when he was in prison,
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everybody in prison,
the governor and whatever,
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wanted him to paint masterpieces
to put on the walls,
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because they were so good.
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And so that's a masterpiece,
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which is a fake of a masterpiece,
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and bonded into the canvas is a chip
which identifies that as a real fake,
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if you see what I mean.
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(Laughter)
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So when we're talking about authenticity,
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it's a little more fractal than it appears
and that's a good example to show it.
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I tried to pick four problems
that will frame the issue properly.
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So the first problem, I thought,
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Chip and PIN, right?
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[Banks and legacies
bringing down the system from within]
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[Offline solutions do not work online]
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I'm guessing everyone's got
a chip and PIN card, right?
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So why is that a good example?
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That's the example of how
legacy thinking about identity
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subverts the security
of a well-constructed system.
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That chip and PIN card
that's in your pocket
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has a little chip on it
that cost millions of pounds to develop,
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is extremely secure,
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you can put scanning
electron microscopes on it,
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you can try and grind it down,
blah blah blah.
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Those chips have never been broken,
whatever you read in the paper.
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And for a joke,
we take that super-secure chip
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and we bond it to a trivially
counterfeitable magnetic stripe
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and for very lazy criminals,
we still emboss the card.
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So if you're a criminal in a hurry
and you need to copy someone's card,
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you can just stick a piece of paper on it
and rub a pencil over it
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just to sort of speed things up.
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And even more amusingly,
and on my debit card too,
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we print the name and the SALT code
and everything else on the front too.
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Why?
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There is no earthly reason why your name
is printed on a chip and PIN card.
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And if you think about it,
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it's even more insidious and perverse
than it seems at first.
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Because the only people that benefit
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from having the name
on the card are criminals.
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You know what your name is, right?
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(Laughter)
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And when you go into
a shop and buy something,
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it's a PIN, he doesn't care
what the name is.
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The only place where you ever have
to write your name on the back
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is in America at the moment.
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And whenever I go to America,
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and I have to pay with a mag stripe
on the back of the card,
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I always sign it Carlos Tethers anyway,
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just as a security mechanism,
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because if a transaction
ever gets disputed,
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and it comes back and it says Dave Birch,
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I know it must have been a criminal,
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because I would never sign it Dave Birch.
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(Laughter)
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So if you drop your card in the street,
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it means a criminal
can pick it up and read it.
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They know the name,
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from the name they can find the address,
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and then they can go off
and buy stuff online.
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Why do we put the name on the card?
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Because we think identity
is something to do with names,
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and because we're rooted
in the idea of the identity card,
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which obsesses us.
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And I know it crashed and burned
a couple of years ago,
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but if you're someone in politics
or the home office or whatever,
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and you think about identity,
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you can only think of identity
in terms of cards with names on them.
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04:00
And that's very subversive
in a modern world.
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04:04
So the second example I thought I'd use
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is chatrooms.
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04:08
[Chatrooms and Children]
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I'm very proud of that picture,
that's my son
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playing in his band with his friends
for the first-ever gig,
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I believe you call it, where he got paid.
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(Laughter)
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And I love that picture.
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I like the picture of him
getting into medical school a lot better,
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(Laughter)
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I like that picture for the moment.
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Why do I use that picture?
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Because that was very interesting,
watching that experience as an old person.
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So him and his friends,
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they get together, they booked a room,
like a church hall,
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and they got all their friends
who had bands,
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and they got them together,
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and they do it all on Facebook,
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and then they sell tickets,
and the first band on the -
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I was going to say "menu,"
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that's probably
the wrong word for it, isn't it?
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The first band on the list of bands
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that appears at some
public music performance of some kind
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gets the sales from the first 20 tickets,
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then the next band gets the next 20,
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and so on.
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They were at the bottom of the menu,
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they were like fifth,
I thought they had no chance.
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He actually got 20 quid. Fantastic, right?
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But my point is,
that all worked perfectly,
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except on the web.
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So they're sitting on Facebook,
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and they're sending these messages
and arranging things
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and they don't know who anybody is, right?
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That's the big problem
we're trying to solve.
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If only they were using the real names,
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Then you wouldn't be worried
about them on the Internet.
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And so when he says to me,
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"Oh, I want to go to a chatroom
to talk about guitars" or something,
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I'm like, "oh, well,
I don't want you to go into a chatroom
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to talk about guitars, because
they might not all be your friends,
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and some of the people
that are in the chatroom
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might be perverts and teachers
and vicars."
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(Laughter)
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I mean, they generally are,
when you look in the paper, right?
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So I want to know who
all the people in the chatroom are.
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So okay, you can go in the chatroom,
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but only if everybody in the chatroom
is using their real names,
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and they submit full copies
of their police report.
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But of course, if anybody
in the chatroom asked for his real name,
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I'd say no.
You can't give them your real name.
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Because what happens
if they turn out to be perverts,
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and teachers and whatever.
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So you have this odd sort of paradox
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where I'm happy for him
to go into this space
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if I know who everybody else is,
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but I don't want anybody else
to know who he is.
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And so you get
this sort of logjam around identity
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where you want full disclosure
from everybody else,
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but not from yourself.
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And there's no progress, we get stuck.
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And so the chatroom thing
doesn't work properly,
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and it's a very bad way
of thinking about identity.
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So on my RSS feed,
I saw this thing about -
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I just said something bad
about my RSS feed, didn't I?
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I should stop saying it like that.
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For some random reason, I can't imagine,
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something about cheerleaders
turned up in my inbox.
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And I read this story about cheerleaders,
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and it's a fascinating story.
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This happened a couple of years ago
in the U.S.
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There were some cheerleaders
in a team at a high school
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in the U.S., and they said mean things
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about their cheerleading coach,
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as I'm sure kids do
about all of their teachers
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all of the time,
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and somehow the cheerleading coach
found out about this.
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She was very upset.
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And so she went to one of the girls,
and said,
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"you have to give me
your Facebook password."
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I read this all the time,
where even at some universities
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and places of education,
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kids are forced to hand over
their Facebook passwords.
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So you've got to give them
your Facebook password.
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She was a kid!
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What she should have said
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is, "my lawyer will be calling you
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first thing in the morning.
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It's an outrageous imposition
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on my 4th Amendment right to privacy,
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and you're going to be sued
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for all the money you've got."
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That's what she should have said.
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But she's a kid,
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so she hands over the password.
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The teacher can't log into Facebook,
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because the school
has blocked access to Facebook.
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So the teacher can't log into Facebook
until she gets home.
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So the girl tells her friends,
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guess what happened?
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The teacher logged in, she knows.
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So the girls just all logged into Facebook
on their phones,
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and deleted their profiles.
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And so when the teacher logged in,
there was nothing there.
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My point is, those identities,
they don't think about them the same way.
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Identity is, especially when
you're a teenager, a fluid thing.
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You have lots of identities.
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And you can have an identity,
you don't like it,
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because it's subverted in some way,
or it's insecure, or it's inappropriate,
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you just delete it and get another one.
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The idea that you have an identity
that's given to you by someone,
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the government or whatever,
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and you have to stick with that identity
and use it in all places,
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that's absolutely wrong.
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Why would you want to really know
who someone was on Facebook,
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unless you wanted to abuse them
and harass them in some way?
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And it just doesn't work properly.
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And my fourth example is
there are some cases
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where you really want to be -
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In case you're wondering,
that's me at the G20 protest.
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I wasn't actually at the G20 protest,
but I had a meeting at a bank
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on the day of the G20 protest,
and I got an email from the bank
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saying please don't wear a suit,
because it'll inflame the protesters.
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I look pretty good in a suit, frankly,
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so you can see why it would drive them
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into an anti-capitalist frenzy.
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(Laughter)
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So I thought, well, look.
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If I don't want to inflame the protesters,
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the obvious thing to do
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is go dressed as a protester.
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So I went dressed completely in black,
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you know, with a black balaclava,
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I had black gloves on,
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but I've taken them off
to sign the visitor's book.
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(Laughter)
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I'm wearing black trousers, black boots,
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I'm dressed completely in black.
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I go into the bank at 10 o'clock,
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go, "Hi, I'm Dave Birch,
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I've got a 3 o'clock
with so and so there."
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Sure. They sign me in.
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There's my visitor's badge.
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(Laughter)
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So this nonsense
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about you've got to have real names
on Facebook and whatever,
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that gets you that kind of security.
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That gets you security theater,
where there's no actual security,
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but people are sort of playing parts
in a play about security.
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And as long as
everybody learns their lines,
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everyone's happy.
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But it's not real security.
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Especially because I hate banks
more than the G20 protesters do,
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because I work for them.
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I know that things are actually worse
than these guys think.
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(Laughter)
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But suppose I worked
next to somebody in a bank
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who was doing something.
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Suppose I was sitting
next to a rogue trader,
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and I want to report it
to the boss of the bank.
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So I log on to do
a little bit of whistleblowing.
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I send a message,
this guy's a rogue trader.
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That message is meaningless
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if you don't know
that I'm a trader at the bank.
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If that message just comes from anybody,
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it has zero information value.
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There's no point in sending that message.
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But if I have to prove who I am,
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I'll never send that message.
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It's just like the nurse in the hospital
reporting the drunk surgeon.
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That message will only happen
if I'm anonymous.
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So the system has to have ways
of providing anonymity there,
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otherwise we don't get
where we want to get to.
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So four issues.
So what are we going to do about it?
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10:39
Well, what we tend to do about it
268
627133
4663
10:43
is we think about Orwell space.
269
631820
2364
10:46
And we try to make electronic versions
270
634208
3122
10:49
of the identity card
that we got rid of in 1953.
271
637354
2283
10:51
So we think if we had a card,
272
639661
2733
10:54
call it a Facebook login,
273
642418
1315
10:55
which proves who you are,
274
643757
1273
10:57
and I make you carry it all the time,
275
645054
1867
10:58
that solves the problem.
276
646945
794
10:59
And of course, for all those reasons
I've just outlined,
277
647763
2134
11:01
it doesn't, and it might, actually,
278
649921
968
11:02
make some problems worse.
279
650913
1048
11:03
The more times you're forced
to use your real identity,
280
651985
2799
11:06
certainly in transactional terms,
281
654808
2216
11:09
the more likely that identity
is to get stolen and subverted.
282
657048
2858
11:11
The goal is to stop people
from using identity
283
659930
2240
11:14
in transactions which don't need identity,
284
662194
2153
11:16
which is actually almost all transactions.
285
664371
2485
11:18
Almost all of the transactions you do
286
666880
2273
11:21
are not, who are you?
287
669177
1664
11:22
They're, are you allowed to drive the car,
288
670865
2110
11:24
are you allowed in the building,
289
672999
1524
11:26
are you over 18,
290
674547
833
11:27
etcetera, etcetera.
291
675404
2091
11:29
So my suggestion-I, like James,
292
677519
1807
11:31
think that there should be
a resurgence of interest in R & D.
293
679350
3137
11:34
I think this is a solvable problem.
294
682511
761
11:35
It's something we can do about.
295
683296
1796
11:37
Naturally, in these circumstances,
296
685116
1924
11:39
I turn to Doctor Who.
297
687064
1350
11:40
Because in this,
298
688438
2112
11:42
as in so many other walks of life,
299
690574
1620
11:44
Doctor Who has already shown
us the answer.
300
692218
2929
11:47
So I should say,
301
695171
790
11:47
for some of our foreign visitors,
302
695985
2307
11:50
Doctor Who is the greatest
living scientist in England,
303
698316
3830
11:54
(Laughter)
304
702170
1553
11:55
and a beacon of truth and enlightenment
to all of us.
305
703747
2776
11:58
And this is Doctor Who
with his psychic paper.
306
706547
4046
12:02
Come on, you guys must have seen
Doctor Who's psychic paper.
307
710617
2146
12:04
You're not nerds if you say yes.
308
712787
1976
12:06
Who's seen Doctor Who's psychic paper?
309
714787
2112
12:08
Oh right, you were in the library
the whole time studying I guess.
310
716923
2406
12:11
Is that what you're going to tell us?
311
719353
2046
12:13
Doctor Who's psychic paper
312
721423
1238
12:14
is when you hold up the psychic paper,
313
722685
2096
12:16
the person, in their brain,
314
724805
1514
12:18
sees the thing that they need to see.
315
726343
2325
12:20
So I want to show you a British passport,
316
728692
2335
12:23
I hold up the psychic paper,
317
731051
1002
12:24
you see a British passport.
318
732077
1456
12:25
I want to get into a party,
319
733557
1772
12:27
I hold up the psychic paper,
320
735353
1583
12:28
I show you a party invitation.
321
736960
1429
12:30
You see what you want to see.
322
738413
2051
12:32
So what I'm saying is we need
to make an electronic version of that,
323
740488
3191
12:35
but with one tiny, tiny change,
324
743703
2173
12:37
which is that it'll only show you
the British passport
325
745900
2572
12:40
if I've actually got one.
326
748496
1192
12:41
It'll only show you the party invitation
327
749712
1195
12:42
if I actually have one.
328
750931
1373
12:44
It will only show you that I'm over 18
if I actually am over 18.
329
752328
3000
12:47
But nothing else.
330
755352
2300
12:49
So you're the bouncer at the pub,
you need to know that I'm over 18,
331
757676
4751
12:54
instead of showing you my driving license,
332
762451
2000
12:56
which shows you I know how to drive,
333
764475
1817
12:58
what my name is, my address,
all these kind of things,
334
766316
2572
13:00
I show you my psychic paper,
335
768912
1555
13:02
and all it tells you is
am I over 18 or not.
336
770491
3142
13:05
Right.
337
773657
1412
13:07
Is that just a pipe dream?
338
775093
1314
13:08
Of course not, otherwise
I wouldn't be here talking to you.
339
776431
1669
13:10
So in order to build that
and make it work,
340
778124
3060
13:13
I'm only going to name these things,
I'll not go into them,
341
781208
2747
13:15
we need a plan,
342
783979
1153
13:17
which is we're going to build this
343
785156
1225
13:18
as an infrastructure for everybody to use,
344
786405
2000
13:20
to solve all of these problems.
345
788429
1830
13:22
We're going to make a utility,
346
790283
2024
13:24
the utility has to be universal,
347
792331
1524
13:25
you can use it everywhere,
348
793879
859
13:26
I'm just giving you little flashes
of the technology as we go along.
349
794762
3191
13:29
That's a Japanese ATM,
350
797977
1359
13:31
the fingerprint template
is stored inside the mobile phone.
351
799360
3084
13:34
So when you want to draw money out,
352
802468
963
13:35
you put the mobile phone on the ATM,
353
803455
1473
13:36
and touch your finger,
354
804952
1241
13:38
your fingerprint goes through
to the phone,
355
806217
2048
13:40
the phone says yes, that's whoever,
356
808289
1667
13:41
and the ATM then gives you some money.
357
809980
2180
13:44
It has to be a utility
that you can use everywhere.
358
812184
3013
13:47
It has to be absolutely convenient,
359
815221
1762
13:49
that's me going into the pub.
360
817007
3143
13:52
All the device on the door
of the pub is allowed is,
361
820174
2769
13:54
is this person over 18
and not barred from the pub?
362
822967
3649
13:58
And so the idea is,
you touch your ID card to the door,
363
826640
3306
14:01
and if I am allowed in,
it shows my picture,
364
829970
1935
14:03
if I'm not allowed in,
it shows a red cross.
365
831929
1437
14:05
It doesn't disclose any other information.
366
833390
1591
14:07
It has to have no special gadgets.
367
835005
1888
14:08
That can only mean one thing,
368
836917
1611
14:10
following on from Ross's statement,
369
838552
1667
14:12
which I agree with completely.
370
840243
1454
14:13
If it means no special gadgets,
371
841721
1088
14:14
it has to run on a mobile phone.
372
842833
1350
14:16
That's the only choice we have,
373
844207
1079
14:17
we have to make it work on mobile phones.
374
845310
1855
14:19
There are 6.6 billion
375
847189
910
14:20
mobile phone subscriptions.
376
848123
900
14:21
My favorite statistic of all time,
377
849047
2012
14:23
only 4 billion toothbrushes in the world.
378
851083
1953
14:25
That means something,
379
853060
1035
14:26
I don't know what.
380
854119
1233
14:27
(Laughter)
381
855376
354
14:27
I rely on our futurologists to tell me.
382
855754
3439
14:31
It has to be a utility
which is extensible.
383
859217
1686
14:32
So it has to be something
384
860927
1261
14:34
that anybody could build on.
385
862212
1566
14:35
Anybody should be able
to use this infrastructure,
386
863802
1864
14:37
you don't need permissions,
licenses, whatever,
387
865690
2430
14:40
anyone should be able
to write some code to do this.
388
868144
3167
14:45
You know what symmetry is,
389
873176
1241
14:46
so you don't need a picture of it.
390
874441
2323
14:48
This is how we're going to do it.
391
876788
1140
14:49
We're going to do it using phones,
392
877952
1010
14:50
and we're going to do it
393
878986
602
14:51
using mobile proximity.
394
879612
1132
14:52
I'm going to suggest to you
395
880768
1112
14:53
the technology to implement
396
881904
1312
14:55
Doctor Who's psychic paper
397
883240
1262
14:56
is already here, and if any of you
398
884526
1620
14:58
have got one of the new
Barclay's debit cards
399
886170
2455
15:00
with the contactless interface on it,
400
888649
1205
15:01
you've already got that technology.
401
889878
1667
15:03
If you've ever been up to the big city,
402
891569
1900
15:05
and used an Oyster card at all,
403
893493
1477
15:06
does that ring any bells to anybody?
404
894994
2071
15:09
The technology already exists.
405
897089
722
15:09
The first phones
406
897835
1366
15:11
that have the technology built in,
407
899225
606
15:11
the Google Nexus, the S2,
408
899855
2275
15:14
the Samsung Wifi 7.9,
409
902154
685
15:14
the first phones that have
410
902863
1468
15:16
the technology built into them
411
904355
1068
15:17
are already in the shops.
412
905447
810
15:18
So the idea that the gas man
413
906281
1688
15:19
can turn up at my mom's door
414
907993
2168
15:22
and he can show my mom his phone,
415
910185
2178
15:24
and she can tap it with her phone,
416
912387
1311
15:25
and it will come up with green
if he really is from British Gas
417
913722
2283
15:28
and allowed in,
418
916029
1188
15:29
and it'll come up with red if he isn't,
419
917241
1646
15:30
end of story.
420
918911
586
15:31
We have the technology to do that.
421
919521
1826
15:33
And what's more,
422
921371
1211
15:34
although some of those things
sounded a bit counter-intuitive,
423
922606
2121
15:36
like proving I'm over 18
without proving who I am,
424
924751
2764
15:39
the cryptography to do that
not only exists,
425
927539
2201
15:41
it's extremely well-known
and well-understood.
426
929764
2205
15:43
Digital signatures, the blinding
of public key certificates,
427
931993
2631
15:46
these technologies have been around
for a while,
428
934648
1720
15:48
we've just had no way
of packaging them up.
429
936392
2048
15:50
So the technology already exists.
430
938464
2693
15:53
We know it works,
431
941181
3664
15:56
There are a few examples
of the technology being used
432
944869
1724
15:58
in experimental places.
433
946617
1646
16:00
That's London Fashion Week,
434
948287
1304
16:01
where we built a system with O2,
435
949615
1850
16:03
that's for the Wireless Festival
in Hyde Park,
436
951489
2743
16:06
you can see the persons
437
954256
1099
16:07
walking in with their VIP band,
438
955379
1737
16:09
it's just being checked
439
957140
460
16:09
by the Nokia phone
that's reading the band.
440
957624
1076
16:10
I'm only putting those up to show you
441
958724
1674
16:12
these things are prosaic,
442
960422
1205
16:13
this stuff works in these environments.
443
961651
1858
16:15
They don't need to be special.
444
963533
1429
16:16
So finally, I know that you can do this,
445
964986
5895
16:23
because if you saw
the episode of Doctor Who,
446
971789
2880
16:26
the Easter special of Doctor Who,
447
974693
1876
16:28
where he went to Mars in a bus,
448
976593
3352
16:31
I should say again
for our foreign students,
449
979969
1538
16:33
that doesn't happen every episode.
450
981531
1649
16:35
This was a very special case.
451
983204
1447
16:36
So in the episode where
he goes to Mars in a London bus,
452
984675
3217
16:39
I can't show you the clip,
453
987916
1649
16:41
due to the outrageous restrictions
of Queen Anne-style copyright
454
989589
3000
16:44
by the BBC,
455
992613
1869
16:46
but in the episode
where he goes to Mars in a London bus,
456
994506
2715
16:49
Doctor Who is clearly shown
getting on to the bus
457
997245
4110
16:53
with the Oyster card reader
458
1001379
1276
16:54
using his psychic paper.
459
1002679
1544
16:56
Which proves that psychic paper
460
1004247
2068
16:58
has an MSE interface.
461
1006339
1691
17:00
Thank you very much.
462
1008054
2010

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
David Birch - Digital money and identity consultant
David Birch is a digital money and ID consultant paving the way for a 21st-century identity.

Why you should listen

David G.W. Birch is a Director of Consult Hyperion, an electronic identity and transactions consultant. He is the Chairman of the annual Digital Money Forum and Digital Identity Forum in London and he has written for several publications including more than a hundred Second Sight columns for The Guardian newspaper. In 2007, he published Digital Identity Management: Technological, Business and Social Implications under Gower Publishing Ltd. He hosts the Consult Hyperion podcast -- conversations with identity and digital transaction experts.

More profile about the speaker
David Birch | Speaker | TED.com