Hakeem Anwar: Your Phone is Eroding Your Privacy, Dignity, and Humanity - And How to Take Back Your Tech - Deconstructing Conventional

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone, welcome to episode number 50.
My guest today is Mr HakeemAnwar, and I was excited to do
this interview for a few reasons.
This in many ways marks amilestone for me personally.
To be ready for the interview,I needed to accomplish something
I've been meaning to do for awhile now, and that was breaking
up with my iPhone and switchingmyself and my wife to phones

(00:22):
that offer real privacy.
So I'll tell you more aboutthat process of switching in
just a second.
But if you heard my lastinterview with Mr Glenn Meter,
or, as you'll hear Hakeem and Italk about in this episode, our
personal privacy is notsomething big tech or big
corporations or the governmentvalues at all.
In fact, the reality is theopposite.
They want to know everythingthey can about us, including

(00:45):
where we are all the time, ourpersonal biometric data, our
spending habits, everything welook at online and I mean
everything what comments youmake, who you vote for, what
opinions you have, and so on.
And now they have the tools tocapture and centralize all of
that data.
So some of you history buffsmay know this quote, but the
first message ever sent acrossthe telegraph was what hath God

(01:09):
wrought?
Which is an interestingquestion because the message
could also have read what hathSatan wrought right?
The point is, technology isneutral and that can be used for
good or for evil.
It can be used for freedom andflourishing, or tyranny and
enslavement and friends.
There are a lot of people inpower today who have their
sights set on enslavement andhigh-tech data mining, which has

(01:30):
exploded with AI, is theirtechnological control mechanism
of choice, and what I find whenI discuss this topic with others
is one of two typical responses.
Many people are eithersleepwalking into this kind of
digital containment zone they'reeither unaware of the dangers
of tech or they suffer from somelevel of willful blindness,
thinking it just can't be thatbad.

(01:51):
And, by the way, if that's you,have you seen what's happening
in Europe?
If not, I'll encourage you togo back and listen to my last
episode.
But the second response I getwhen I talk about these topics
and given that you're listeningto the show, there's a good
chance you're like me and thatyou're aware of the problem.
But the barrier to exit fromthe walled garden of big tech,
the friction of learning newtech, just feels like too much

(02:14):
to take on in an already busylife, and or you just don't know
how to part with some of theconvenience you're used to.
If that's you, I get it.
That was my barrier to exit.
So if the latter scenario isyou, you can kind of consider
this episode my gift to you tosay that you can do this.
I have lived it.
So before I play the interviewwith Hakeem, let me set you up

(02:34):
with some honest expectationsand give you a couple of lessons
from the road I've walked inswitching to a genuinely private
phone and learning a newdigital ecosystem.
So, yes, you will have somefriction in switching your phone
.
I won't tell you that it'ssuper easy with no hiccups.
But what I can say is sometimesyou go huh, why is this app not
working like I thought it would?

(02:55):
Or what setting do I need tochange?
Sometimes it's usuallysomething as simple as that.
So you will have your ownsimilar moments if and when you
make the switch.
But here's what I can also tellyou you do not have to wander
in a digital wilderness to makethe switch.
You might appreciate that thosewho sell you a new device also
know something can come, thatthere's unique challenges with
every person, and so, at above,each device comes with a

(03:17):
personal coaching session to getyou up and running.
Plus, they have a live chatfeature and regular calls where
you can get your questionsanswered.
That made it so much easier forme to make the switch.
So, knowing that I would not beleft adrift when I cut the cord
from my iPhone, I found thesupport was great and it was
patient, and the switch awayfrom the big bro you know, the

(03:37):
tech bro ecosystem has neverbeen easier and gosh, I wish I
had done it sooner.
So, to reinforce my point, letme tell you a couple of other
things that helped me make theswitch more easily.
Knowing that I was going to dothis, what I started doing was
taking inventory of what I usedon my iPhone the most, and
essentially I was asking whatwould be painful to not have

(03:59):
access to.
And what I found was two things, and the first, I guess, is a
semi-embarrassing level of whatI'll call mental laziness, or
even this Pavlovian response ofmindlessly pulling out the phone
when there was really no reasonto do so.
I realized pulling out my phonehad become some sort of
substitute for letting my mindwander or have white space or
just think about other thingsand, as my wife put it, the new

(04:23):
phone has become less and lessof an appendage Like, in other
words, one of you know it's it's.
The use of it is morepurposeful Now.
It serves us and we don't justmindlessly consult with it.
The other important frictionpoint I had to solve to fully
make the switch was getting myhead around how to not interrupt
my day-to-day workflow ofeasily switching between my
phone and my laptop to openfiles or click links, etc.

(04:46):
So as a digital entrepreneur, Itend to do a lot of that each
day and I'm happy to say Icracked the code and there are
many ways.
My new above phone can easilycommunicate with my Mac computer
and I haven't lost any level ofefficiency.
That was a great problem tosolve that I had to figure out.
So, as you'll hear us talkabout in the interview, one of
the coolest things about theabove phone is that you can have

(05:06):
multiple profiles.
So if you're someone who has touse various big tech tools for
work, you can put them in theirseparate profiles outside your
private ecosystem.
And for me it's almost beenkind of a fun game to think,
okay, what can I do to replacethat app?
And sure enough, there arealways ways to do almost
anything you're talking about,and thinking one app at a time

(05:27):
was a helpful process for me.
So my point is you don't haveto change everything at once,
but I just love deleting an appfrom what I call my matrix
profile, knowing that I've cutoff one more place where my data
is being mined and now I'm backin a profile where my phone is
not constantly listening toeverything I say or that my
microphone or camera can't beturned on by a hacker.

(05:47):
There's a peace of mind thatcomes with making that switch.
So if you've listened to otherepisodes, you know my show is
not just about deconstructingconventional.
It's about finding bettersolutions, and Hakeem and his
team have some much neededsolutions to the gross invasion
of our privacy.
Much needed solutions to thegross invasion of our privacy,
and it's not hyperbole to say,at least in my opinion, that the

(06:11):
digital realm is the frontlines in the timeless struggle
between freedom and tyranny.
Okay, a few last details beforeI play the conversation you
droid lovers can rub it in.
I will admit yes, it's hard forme to say this, but the droid
is a better phone than theiPhone, and once I got familiar
with the interface I will say,yeah, it's much more efficient.
So there you have it.
Second detail is that a fewtimes during the interview,
hakeem did a screen share tovisually reference what he was

(06:32):
talking about.
So for those of you who want towatch the interview, I will
upload that to our Odysseychannel and I will put a link to
the video in the show notes.
Also, when I first met Hakeemyears ago, he went by the name
Romero, so late in the episode Iaccidentally slipped and used
his old name.
So forgive me for that gaffe.
But lastly, and perhaps mostimportantly, hakeem gave me a
coupon code for you to get adiscount on a new phone and,

(06:55):
above now, offers payment plansif paying in full for a phone is
just a bridge too far.
So those are two ways you canreduce the cost barrier to
becoming digitally free.
You can use the code TRUE50,t-r-u-e-5-0, for $50 off a new
phone, and I'll put a link forthat in the show notes as well.
Okay, quick shout out to thoseof you listening to the podcast

(07:18):
inside the Healing United app.
That, as you know, is an easyway to find the show notes for
every episode.
And if you're there, welcome toa free speech friendly app
where we don't mine or sell anyof your data.
By the way, if you want atranscript of any episode, make
sure you subscribe to ourmailing list at
healingunitedtoday.
When I send out a newsletterabout each episode, I also send

(07:39):
out a link where you can get thetranscript.
Okay, my friends, please jointhe privacy revolution.
It is so worth the effort andyou will feel great about
getting all the creepy trackingtech out of your life.
So vive la revolution.
Spread the word and thanks forlistening.
Okay, without further ado, hereis my interview with my fellow

(07:59):
freedom friend and free speechlover, mr Hakeem Anwar.
All right, hello everyone.
Welcome to today's show.
My guest is Mr Hakeem Anwar,and he and I have known each
other for about three years now,isn't it?
I think, yeah, that's aboutright.
So we, it's been.
It's been a while.
It's been a while Christian,it's good to be back.
It is good to be back.
So do not know, he is the facebehind the website.

(08:21):
Take Back Our Tech and thecompany Above, which offers
privacy-focused laptops, phones,tablets and a suite of
applications to keep big techfrom spying on you, profiling
you and commoditizing everythingabout you.
So welcome back, buddy.
Good to have you.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
It's good to be back and yeah, I mean, I feel like
now this is becoming moreimportant than ever, and I'm
interested to hear too You'vebeen using your above phone a
lot more.
How's it been it is?

Speaker 1 (08:50):
a process that I'm emotionally calibrating.
It took me a while because mybig barrier to exit was just the
inevitable friction I'm goingto go through and waiting for
the perfect time and I realizedthere isn't one, so let's get on
with it.
My wife had the unfortunateexperience of my one-year-old
throwing her iphone in the pooland we're like, well, I guess we
gotta get a new phone and we'regonna have to live out our

(09:12):
values now.
So let's go do this.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
so we've made thanks to your baby for being the great
, uh the privacy advocate fromthe iphone in the water yes, he
has this sixth sense about him.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Like this is this is not good for you, mom, get rid
of this.
And so, yeah, he helped us out,all right, so, before we get
too much into the meat of thisepisode, give people a sense of
your backstory.
What got you so involved in theworld of privacy focused tech?
What events led you to the workyou're doing today?

Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, well, I've.
I've been thankful to havementors from a young age, like
around college, where I wasexposed to how the world
actually works and kind of likethe hidden machinations of
different industries.
So I've been awake for a reallylong time.
And then I kind of justswitched into my career as a

(10:02):
software engineer and I've doneeverything under the sun built
web applications, mobileapplications, robotic process
automation, all these differentsorts of things that I was
picking up.
But you know, I just knew mycareer wasn't really fulfilling.
And working for startups andbig tech companies alike, I was
like, ok, how is this actuallyhelping people?
And I also got to see how theywere treating their data on the

(10:24):
other side, and it wasn't good,and so I was just kind of
holding out, waiting forsomething.
And then, in 2019, I met upwith the guys behind the Freedom
Cell Network, derek Brose andthe team there, and they needed
help with their techinfrastructure and I decided at
the time OK, why not, let's helpout a social movement and see
what happens?

(10:45):
I really believed in it and itturned out to be a really good
idea, because the next year wasCOVID 1984.
And so we had this.
It was really interesting,right, we?
We see the Internet, we see thereal life as the place where
things get done.
But in those early days whereeveryone was going crazy, we
were turning to the internet tofind common ground and to find

(11:07):
people who still had their headon their shoulders.
And so we had this giantmovement form, and I found
myself on the platform and foundmyself being able to be of
service of others.
And what I realized is peoplealready have the important stuff
down taking care of theirhealth, not taking
pharmaceuticals, you know beinggiving informed consent to what
they care of their health, nottaking pharmaceuticals.
Giving informed consent to whatthey put in their body, all

(11:27):
those good things like growingtheir own food.
But they were kind of beingnaive on the technology side,
and what was scaring me is theywere building all these projects
but they were depending onthings like Google or Apple
products, and for me I was waytoo paranoid to let that happen.
So, with my team, I decided hey,guys, let's figure out the best
way we can work together whilebeing completely self-reliant on

(11:49):
our own software and our owninfrastructure.
And so we did that.
We found a phone along the waythat worked well with everything
we were doing and six monthslater we had something so good
it's like OK, maybe we can sharethis with others.
So I launched, I startedteaching people about friendly
software, linux and de-googledphones, and then just turned

(12:12):
into a company because there wasso much demand.
So we've been doing that forabout four years now and we've
got the phones, laptops,different communication services
, now a data sim, and so all thegood stuff.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Right on.
Well, I can't wait to get intosome of that, just because it's
so much friendlier to move outof big tech now than it used to
be, and you guys have been partof that.
But let's see if we can framethe problem or just kind of
ground people a little more onwhy this is worth the effort.
So we've we've probably all hadthe creepy experience of we're
talking about something and thenthe next day we get ads for
that thing, but, um, that'stalked about it, not searched

(12:44):
for it, right.
And I even heard a.
There's an article I readrecently where groups of people,
they turned their iPhones offand they sat around a table and
talked about.
You know, they just picked atopic on just the real estate in
Nashville or whatever it was,and then the next day they would
get ads for that Well, fromtheir phone, listening to them
when it wasn't even on, which isa different level of creepy,

(13:06):
right.
So you were the one that tippedme off a few years ago to just
kind of what I've come to callApple's fake privacy policies,
and you guys have been able todemonstrate the differences
between what, let's say, appleor big tech states as their
privacy policy and what'sactually happening.
So give us some examples of,maybe, where we're being
hoodwinked by the idea that bigtech companies are actually

(13:26):
looking out for our privacy.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, well, to give them some credit.
So they say we're really,really private, and that might
be true as long as your datastays within their ecosystem.
So it's like, yeah, they can beprivate because they own the
advertising platforms.
Right, they're only sharing itwith all of their different
tools and services.
And when you think about it,apple has a ton of different

(13:51):
things.
They've got an app store whichmakes billions in revenue.
They've got their own webbrowser.
They've got their owncommunication system.
So maybe it's private withinthat ecosystem, but that
ecosystem is immense, it'sabsolutely immense.
And so that's what we see whenwe look at Google and Apple is
that they have ownership andstake in the analytics and

(14:13):
advertising services on the appsthat run on the phone.
They have visibility into howthe phone works and there's all
this creepy stuff going on withthe phones listening to us, and
it's really unclear.
Are the phones listening to uswhen they're off?
Is there another device in theroom that's also connected to
one of your accounts that cankind of integrate the two?

(14:33):
You know, do you have an AppleTV?
There's all of these questionsyou have to answer, and the
problem is, when these big techcompanies get way too big.
They invade in every singlepiece of your life and there's
really no stop to it.
I mean, recently I've beenlearning about the new
biosensors that they're puttingin the Apple AirPods and the

(14:53):
Apple Vision Pro headsets.
And that's really scary,christian, because now we're
getting into a point where yourhealth data is also going to be
surveilled.
So, yeah, these companies, youknow they act like they're
protecting your privacy, but inreality they're absorbing huge
amounts of data and they'reusing you as the unwilling
participant.
I mean, you probably don't eventhink about it, but if you do

(15:15):
have someone who has an iPhonethat come to your house to
connect to your Wi Fi.
They send off your Wi Finetwork along with the location
of your house and that getsadded to Apple's Wi-Fi
positioning database and thenother people can use that to
figure out where they are in theworld.
They don't use GPS anymore,they use these new sorts of
systems.
So, yeah, it's reallyinteresting to see how you

(15:37):
become a part of thesurveillance when you use these
products, and I think that it'sgoing to take a lot of us to
break apart and do our own thingto be off the grid.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah Well, and you were telling me before we
started recording about the waythese wearables not just track,
you know, intimate personalthings like brainwaves and heart
rate and our women's cycles,but it's also has there's a
backdoor for the government tocome in and look at all that.
So tell people a little bitabout that.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah.
So Apple has been working on aseries of health studies over
the past few years and they'reusing these new wearable
products that I think we're allused to right.
A lot of people use the AppleWatch to track their workouts
and heart rate and stuff.
That's all fine and dandy.
But now Apple's released thisnew Apple Research app where you
can enroll in a study and thesestudies will accept data from

(16:28):
your Apple Watch.
They will send you differentquestionnaires.
So there is a women's healthstudy that they did and they
were asking women questionsabout their menstrual cycles,
and also from their AppleAirPods, which can do hearing
tests.
So with all of these threedevices combined, they set along
to do this really wideobservational study of it,

(16:51):
gathering every data point theycan.
They weren't going into it witha single question they wanted
to answer, but they were likelet's just collect all the data
and we'll figure out the trendsand insights later down the line
.
So that doesn't sound privateto me.
And then I guess I was the onlyone to go look at their privacy
policy and if you look and yousee that when you enroll in a
health study, that data getssent off to the FDA and Health

(17:14):
and Human Services.
So I was like, oh my God, why,why is that?
Why is that happening in thefirst place?
And I think it's this trendtowards biosur, bio surveillance
that we're moving into.
You know, we're kind of we'reseeing how governments and
countries are trying to getahead of the pandemic by doing
more surveillance, even thoughit's all it's, you know, it's,

(17:35):
it's all a scam.
So I think Apple products andGoogle products eventually will
be a really big shoo in for that.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yeah, yeah.
And one thing I've seen isthere's kind of been somewhat a
I guess I'll call it an apathyor malaise among some people,
like, yeah, they're trackingeverything, but what can I do
about it?
Or they'd kind of berationalized.
They're like, well, I, I don't,I'm not doing anything illegal,
and if they want my data it'skind of boring and I'm not it
seem not so bad.
So sell me on the idea that Ineed to be concerned about this.
What are risks we may not bethinking of?
Is there anything you haven'tmentioned in your comments so

(18:11):
far?

Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yeah, I mean for sure , I think, the analyzing your
brainwaves.
That's far.
I mean, it's probably nothappening right now, but it will
happen in the future.
I think the things people haveto worry about right now are
things like digital ID, whichyou know.
Apple and Google wallets arenow being used as a form of
digital ID here in the UnitedStates.

(18:33):
They're already being acceptedat TSA in a handful of states
like Maryland and others, and sowe're getting close to a
complete biometric ID system,and that's pretty dangerous.
And what's crazy is that thisfeature becomes available to the
billions of people who havephones all at once One software

(18:55):
update and then this feature isavailable to you.
They could also force you touse the feature if they wanted,
if they wanted any of thesefeatures, like there was this
case of the Department of PublicHealth in 2022 that they worked
with Google in Massachusetts,massachusetts Department of
Public Health and they were ableto enable contact tracing.

(19:16):
You remember, with contacttracing?

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah, that was creepy .

Speaker 2 (19:20):
It was super, super creepy and people forget that
was a collaboration betweenGoogle and Apple.
These are supposed to be likehuge competitors, but they come
together for you know the commongood, or so they say.
And so the way contact tracingworked is it turned on your
phone's Bluetooth and sendpulses out.
At the end of the day, yourphone would be like hey, here's
the pulses I've got from otherphones, and it would send it off

(19:42):
to, like, your local departmentof health.
And if any of those pulses camefrom someone who was infected,
that's how they knew.
Okay, you were in the presenceof someone you know, go get
tested.
And it was absolutelyridiculous.
Bluetooth was not a goodindicator for distance, but the
crazy part is is they turn thison for every Google user.

(20:06):
In Massachusetts that's myspeculation, it was at least it
was at least 1 million peoplethey turn this on for without
their knowledge, without theirconsent.
So it just goes to show likeyou think you own your phone but
you actually don't.
You don't know what's going onin the code, and if they decide
to roll out an update like that,who knows what they could do
next?
Right?
So it's scary to be usingtechnology like that, but there

(20:29):
is a better way.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah, well, and that's you.
Think about that.
I love technology.
There's so many amazing thingsit does now, but in the hands of
people who've broken our trustor tipped their hands to let us
know, you're a commodity, excuseme, and we're just going to
track and do what we want.
That should give us pause tosay why wouldn't you do it again

(20:53):
?
So you had a recent articlethat you wrote about just
different vulnerabilities orways that we are digitally, I
guess, in danger.
So you talked about the massivedata breach it was last year at
all the major telecom companies, the problem of SIM swapping,
sms based attacks and then justkind of internet enabled crime.

(21:14):
So talk to us about some ofthose things we may not be aware
of and how vulnerable our datareally is.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, so, yeah.
So I was talking about cellulardata, and so cellular data in
the United States goes throughfour major carriers and you get
a phone number along with yourlittle SIM card.
You put in your phone.
Any intelligence agency relatedto cybersecurity I'm talking

(21:43):
like CISA, NSA, FBI, Interpol,like a lot of these
international agencies cametogether to say that, oops,
there's Chinese hackers inWestern cellular infrastructure.
And then they went as far as tosay guys, don't send phone
calls or text messages becausethey're probably being
intercepted.

(22:04):
And now this has been going on,I want to say, since October of
last year is when they disclosedoh, we think something's going
on.
There's still no answers.
I mean, for you know, theseforeign actors supposedly
alleged foreign actors are sodeeply embedded in the cellular
infrastructure they still don'thave any answers for us and they

(22:24):
still haven't gotten them out.
So they are recommending peopleto use internet-based
applications right tocommunicate.
So instead of using a phonecall and a text, you use
something like you could usesomething like a video
conference, like what we'redoing now.
But what the these?
What ended up and what everyoneended up recommending I also

(22:45):
don't agree with, becausethere's like there's Signal
which is funded by the USgovernment.
There's WhatsApp, which is aFacebook product.
Right, these aren't, thesearen't, these really aren't the
go to technology.
So what we've been doing iswe've been finding the solutions
that actually do work, aredecentralized or bottom up
Anyone can run themselves.
And so what I'll bring on thescreen for people watching at

(23:08):
home, I'll kind of explain whatI'm doing.
But you can get an internetphone number or you can use an
encrypted messaging service,which is called XMPP, and this
is like a 25-year-old protocol,and when I say protocol, think
of it just like a language thatcomputers speak, and so anyone

(23:29):
can write software thatcorresponds to this language and
have a working messenger.
Now the really cool part is youcan send people messages, you
can make calls to people, youcan even make video calls, all
the stuff that iMessage does.
You can do it completely forfree, and it's way more private

(23:51):
because, instead of trustingApple, anyone can run an XMPP
server.
You can even run your own.
So the article was about hey,let's stop using cell service if
it's going to be spied onanyways, and the people who
manage and operate our cellservice and they're supposed to
protect it they're now sayingnot to use it, Then we should

(24:13):
really be using internet-basedcommunications.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
Yeah Well, and it stops something like SIM
swapping, where somebody canpretend to be you and get their
SIM card or your SIM card putinto their phone or your numbers
now in their phone, and theycan do all their two factor
authentication, get into allyour stuff or pretend to be that
they can get to you throughyour SMS and they get you to
click something and now theyhave access to your phone.
And what you're talking aboutis a way around that, if I'm

(24:39):
understanding it correctly.
Is that right?

Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, yeah.
So this SIM swapping like you,like you described, is anyone
could go to a cell phone storein the United States and be like
hey, I'm Christian, I need anew SIM card, and if they have
enough information about youChristian, they could pretend to
be you, successfullyimpersonate you and then get the
SIM card installed on theirphone.
Now, once they have your phonenumber, that's the backup phone
number for your bank accounts.

(25:08):
When you log into your bankaccount, you can even change
your password with it a lot oftimes.
I have a lot of friends herethat were SIM swapped and it's
horrifying the things that theygo through, like the level of
abuse and attack that they gothrough from the SIM swappers
right, because just because theydecided to use the phone number
as their second factor.
And a lot of the times you knowthey don't even need to

(25:29):
impersonate you.
Sometimes it's just someoneworking on the inside at one of
these big telecom companies,right, there's tens of thousands
of employees, there's some badeggs in there, and so our
thought was okay, there's theserisks to people.
Why don't we make a data SIM oran eSIM that doesn't have a
phone number attached to it?
It's only data, and then youcould use internet-based

(25:50):
communications to talk over itand you're never at risk of
there's really no incentive.
Nor could someone steal yourseller service because there's
no phone number attached to it.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
Okay, well, we'll get into that a little bit more
when we talk about some of theproducts and solutions and
features you guys have, but Iwant to stay high level for a
second and just.
This is not a political showand but whenever I record an
episode, someone is in office.
So talk to us about, maybe,what you see developing in terms
of the digital landscape sincethe Trump administration has
been in place.
Have we all been saved anddigital privacy is becoming the

(26:24):
new standard, or are therereasons to be concerned that
efforts to implement digitalcontrol are still moving forward
?

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Yeah, well, it really doesn't look good.
It feels like the surveillancelandscape is accelerating, and
it's under the guise ofprotecting us, which is really
common Hegelian dialect, right.
But with the Trumpadministration they came in and
they had this big mess to cleanup of all these these illegal

(26:53):
immigrants that are in theUnited States now.
And so what did they do?
Well, they decided to build asmart border wall and also to
surveil social media in thehopes of capturing and rounding
up these people and getting themout of the country.
But it ends up having a verytightly locked and surveilled

(27:16):
entry and exit for the borders,which, you know.
That sounds like a good thing,but it's also us that are being
surveilled.
It's also our movements thatare being surveilled, and it's
pretty scary to see that.
Then there's also the jointventure between OpenAI and
Oracle and SoftBank, wherethey're investing $500 billion.

(27:37):
Now, I don't think thegovernment's directly involved
in this, but there is a massiveamount of spending going into
building data centers around thecountry, which are being used
to house data scraped from AI orjust ingest more forms of
surveillance.
So I do think we're headinginto an age where it's becoming

(27:58):
synonymous, and that's reallyworrying to see.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, is what you're speaking about?
The Stargate project?
Is that?
All the tech bros got togetherand talked about how great it's
going to be.
We're going to take the lead indigital and AI and everything
is going to be on the cloud, soto speak.
And is that what you're?
It's like a few days into hisadministration.
That was one of the first pressconferences they had.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yep Project, stargate that's the one.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Yeah, that's the one where Larry Ellison if you guys
didn't hear him talk a few timessince then, that is like he is
saying the quiet part out loudand telling us that AI will soon
be so sophisticated the quietpart out loud and telling us
that AI will soon be sosophisticated we can get
information to police to preventcrimes before they happen,
which is the scariest, like it's.
That's.
That's back to the minorityreport, to the idea that we can

(28:46):
prevent you from even doingsomething if we sniff that you
might be doing something wedon't approve of, and that's the
kind of people that are in thetech bros puzzle, and I think
it's nothing else wise for us tobe aware of that.
And then all the billionaireswho are they've been virtue
signaling for years about savingthe planet and the green energy

(29:07):
, and now they're all gettingbehind the need for nuclear
power because they just don'thave enough energy to power
these massive data centers.
Those are significant.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, there's another thing too.
Derek Brose has been doing somegood reports, along with
Whitney from Unlimited Hangout,about Palantir, which is you
know, we know that's the.
It's like the venture capitalarm of the CIA, and they just
recently won a contract tomodernize the IRS, and so you
know, now they're getting accessto the nation's financial

(29:39):
taxpayer data.
Additionally, they're helpingout with the deportation and
helping out with immigrationsand custom enforcement.
So it's like we're moving intothis era where the government is
being more and more privatized,and that's really scary.
Right, the government?
We only have so muchaccountability, but to these

(29:59):
private corporations we haveeven less.
And some people might feel well,hey, you know they're carrying
out a problem that needs to besolved, but what it really feels
like is they're building thesurveillance infrastructure.
Right now, it's the immigrantsthat are the problem, but you
know who's next?
Is it people that are opposedto big pharma?
Is it people that want to growtheir own food?

(30:20):
And with all these tools thatthey're building now, could they
be used against us?
That's what people really needto think about.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
Yeah, it's just when they break your trust or when
there's reason to be concernedabout downsides, we ought to
have our eyes wide open and notjust be like, whew, we've all
been saved.
So I was most disappointed.
I saw Kristi Noem recentlytalking about this urgency that
everyone needs to go get theirdriver's license and turn it
into a real ID, and it'sshockingly.
I can't believe the optics onthis.

(30:46):
The real ID comes with a goldstar on the ID, which, for those
of you who don't know, that's athrowback to Nazi Germany, when
all the Jews had to walk aroundwith a literal gold star that
others could see to tell whothey were and for them to do
something like that or to telleveryone we need to have your ID
digitized.
Just I mean, at least pick adifferent color or give me a

(31:06):
diamond instead of a star.
But that's part of what's outthere in the public and if we
don't at least say that maysmell funny.
I think we may be walked intosomething we don't want.
So hopefully this episode cangive you guys a clarion call to
say maybe I should take a lookat this and take this seriously.
But even if somebody thinkswe've been saved theoretically,

(31:27):
we're one election away fromreverting back to this dystopian
censorship and central ofeverything in a kind of a social
credit digital enslavementsystem.
So, anyway, that's some of mythoughts, but add to that, or?
Yeah, I think.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
I believe with the whole real ID, I'm pretty sure
you can still fly with yourpassport.
So, if people are really notwanting to get it, which I
totally understand yeah, becauseI mean a real ID is basically a
digital ID.
It's just, instead of it beingstored on the server, it's
stored on a chip in your phoneand, of course, it's stored on
your local state ID system.

(32:05):
But yeah, so it's like we'recreeping, inching along closer
to this like national unifieddigital ID system, but it's
being built in pieces, so that'sreally scary.
The other thing, too people whohave traveled have already
noticed is they're starting todo facial recognition at
airports all across the countryyeah, yeah, do you.
So you see, did you see it?

Speaker 1 (32:25):
yeah, I have to decline it.
They just the the tsa agentslazily, just point to that, like
, look at this.
I'm like I don't want to usethis.
I have my id.
You have to, you have tovocalize and I went to Europe in
two different countries.
In both of them that was theoption.
You just have to look at thiscamera.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
There's no other option right.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
Yeah.
So just eyes wide open thatthis is coming and your
opportunity window to dosomething about it.
We have it now.
If they could install all thisright now, they would have.
They would have locked us in it.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
But we have a time, and that's what that's why I'm
excited to get this episode outthere and give people options.
So can always say no to you canat least the us.
You can always say no to thechecks.
You can always say no tointernational flights too, um,
and so that's what we have tokeep doing, even though it kind
of seems hopeless because, likeeight out of ten people are
doing that.
Everyone's going along with it.
But hey, you could be the oneto say no and hopefully inspire

(33:20):
the other people in line behindyou.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yeah, yeah, cool, all right.
So before we get to some of thesolutions you guys have, let's
define a few terms so people cankind of track with us as we go
through this.
So define for me the differencebetween centralized and
decentralized and maybe applythat to servers or whatever it
is.
That is the easiest way forpeople to understand that.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
Yeah, so centralized would mean that one organization
or set of servers, set ofcomputers, is supporting all of
the users.
So like let's take an examplesomething like Facebook
Messenger or WhatsApp orsomething there is one single
unified infrastructure.

(34:00):
You can kind of think of it asone single unit that is handling
the communication for everyone.
And so with that, becausethere's one organization behind
it, they're able to seeeverything who is messaging whom
behind it.
They're able to see everythingwho's messaging whom, who's
signing up to the platform, whatare the amount of messages

(34:25):
coming through that.
And so this was kind of the oldWeb 2.0 model of building
internet applications, thiscentralized infrastructure.
Now we see it's more common touse things like Web 3.0, which
are decentralized, meaning thatmany people can set up their own
services.
So XMPP is a really goodexample of this.
Anyone can set up an XMPPserver.
It's just like email.

(34:47):
Email is a really good exampleof this too.
Anyone can set up an emailserver, but an email server
knows how to talk to other emailservers, so it's your server
that is responsible for thedecentralization and you can
store all your email on there.
You can store all your messageson there and there's less
surveillance because it's notone organization in charge of

(35:09):
everything.
Every person is responsible fortheir own email Now, this has
changed a lot.
Right.
Is responsible for their ownemail Now, this has changed a
lot, right.
We've had things that werepreviously decentralized, like
email, go into these mega emailgiants like AOL, yahoo, gmail,
all of them, but I think we'reheaded back towards
decentralization now, as peoplerealize these services are just

(35:29):
rotten.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
Yeah, yeah, Some people may remember Hillary
Clinton was famous for settingup her own email server when her
time in the State Department,when she wasn't supposed to have
done that.
So there's reasons to have yourdata private and so
decentralizing.
Basically having your ownserver sounds like oh my gosh, I
got to have a warehouse, or,like you know, people some make

(35:50):
it feel a little moreapproachable the idea of having
a server.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
Yeah, well, I mean mean it could.
It could be your own server.
It's literally, you know, youcould think of it as a computer
running at your house that'sopen to the internet.
Um, it does take a little bitof effort, but also, you know,
decentralization could also meanhey, there's someone in your
community that you trust, right,so a friendly neighborhood tech
guy or even a company likeabove or there's.
There's a lot of optionsnowadays that you can go to and

(36:18):
they keep your server up andrunning, um, and also connect to
the internet.
I've, I've, ran stuff for myhouse.
It's not as easy, right,because your local internet
service provider is not going tobe good as an internet provider
in a data center, but, um, yeah, it's.
Uh, there there are differentoptions which I'm happy to talk
about, like when it comes tousing xmpp, easy ways to set up

(36:40):
your own server so there's,there are a lot of options right
on.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Well, hopefully that the skeleton we're outlining can
give people just a little moreinsight into how they how to
think about this puzzle.
So another term I want you todefine is open source versus
closed source.
What's the difference when itcomes to that?

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yeah, so this has to do with the software code, right
?
So when you're using somethinglike Facebook or Apple or Google
, the software running on thephone is, nine times out of ten,
it's hidden, it's proprietary,closed source, meaning that you
can't see the program, you don'treally know what it does,
you're going off of actuallyusing the device and it's not

(37:23):
clear to you what informationit's actually gathering.
You could be putting all yourpersonal info in.
You don't know if that's justletting the phone do its thing
or if that's actually being sentoff to Google and Apple.
And so information securityresearchers typically find out
through other means, not bylooking at the source code, but
observing, like, what the phoneis connecting to, how private

(37:45):
something is, and it's beenreally bad.
When they've looked at it, theyfound that your phone will
connect back to Google and Appleevery five minutes.
It'll share IDs, unique IDs andstuff like that.
Then, on the other hand, opensource is code that's actually
visible to people, and there'sdifferent licensing schemes.
Some open source licenses maysay hey, you can use this code,

(38:09):
just don't sell it to otherpeople.
So there's a bunch of differentschemes within open source, but
at the end of the day, it comesdown to.
You can read the code, you cansee what's actually in it.
It's kind of like having aningredients label for the snack
you just bought at the storeversus just nothing.
Here you go, here's some chips.
What's in the chips, I don'tknow.
So everything that you get andmaybe on a de-Google phone or

(38:33):
with our company is built onopen source software.
Everything from the softwarerunning on the phone to the apps
on the phone Pretty mucheverything is running open
source software.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
Yeah, great, I love that analogy too.
Like, and just eat these chips,trust us.
That's kind of what we're askedto do with our apps.
Like, yeah, every time I get anupdate on my phone or computer,
I'm like great, what kind ofwhere are you trying to track me
?
Now it's like I don't even wantto update it anymore because I
don't perceive it has my bestinterests in mind.
So, okay, well, one last termand that's end to end encryption

(39:04):
.
Give people a sense of whatthat is, or what it pretends to
be.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yeah, so encryption?
Encryption is taking a piece ofdata.
It could be like a letter toyour mom and it's taking this
piece of data and just shufflingit around, making it into
gibberish so no one can actuallyread what it says.
But you know the order in whichyou shuffled it right, so you

(39:28):
have the key to the encryption.
Now, end-to-end encryption is alittle bit different, because
the way most encryption works isyou trust someone else to
encrypt it for you.
So if you upload it somewhere,maybe it's stored, encrypted,
but it's your service providerthat's actually encrypting it.
So end-to-end encryption meansno, you're the one actually

(39:51):
shuffling it up on your device.
So you have the key on yourdevice, you shuffle it up and
then you upload it to whereverit needs to go, and so the
server in between, whoeveryou're communicating through,
they can't actually even seewhat's being said.
So end-to-end encryption isreally important.
I mean, it's the higheststandard for private
communications and securecommunications.

(40:13):
You're responsible forencrypting it, and I know that
sounds hard, but a lot of appshave made it really easy, for
instance, the XMPP app that weuse, which I'll bring up right
here for those of you watchingthe show.
So all of these messages areend-to-end encrypted.
They're actually encrypted onyour phone and they pass through
the XMPP server we run for you,but in reality we can't even

(40:37):
see the messages that arepassing through our servers.
So that's the gold standard.
Everyone should try and be NTENencrypted.
Now there's other things too.
There's the VPN on the phone,which will NTEN encrypt your
network traffic.
So it's encrypted on your phone, it's sent out to a VPN server,
it's decrypted there and thenit goes out to the internet.
You get a response and then wesend it back to you.

(40:58):
So that also gives you a lot ofdifferent protection.
But it's not.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
It's not the same end-to-end encryption you'd
think about when messaging orcalling people yeah, yeah, no I
love it because I've been usingthat app you're talking about
and it's nice to know like it'slike mailing something.
You know the post office can'topen the mail, like this thing
is only going to be read by thetwo people who are intended to
get that, and so, anyway, thoseare some terms I wanted people
to be familiar with because theygot thrown around a lot when I

(41:25):
was getting my head around thetech world and I'm like hang on,
what are you guys talking about?
So thank you for helping mehelp others understand that.
So, all right, before we get tosome of your solutions, the, I
guess last thing I want to askyou is just kind of some of the.
I can imagine somebody'shearing this and thinking, okay,
you're making a compelling case, I ought to consider this
switch, and yet there's this,there's friction or there's

(41:48):
barriers to exit when it comesto doing that.
So talk, I guess, on aphilosophical level, about the
mindset, whether that's ethicalor logistical.
What types of mindsets orframing concepts are helpful as
one endeavors to disentanglefrom so many of the tools we've
become familiar with?
Give us some measured realismabout this process.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
I think a little bit of it is a trust fall, because
you have all these tools thatyou take.
You don't take it for granted.
They're a part of your life,right, like iMessage and
FaceTime.
Like you, you understand nowhow you're going to communicate
with your friends and family,and then you're moving on to a
phone.
It's a little bit of a trustfall, but the trust piece is
that know that there aresolutions for pretty much

(42:31):
everything.
It's just about you finding andwalking through those doors.
There's not really any barriersto entry.
Once you have the phone in yourhands and you read the
resources, you realize oh okay,instead of FaceTime, I'll do a
Jitsi video conference.
And, my friends, they don'teven need an Apple iPhone to do
it, they can join it from theirweb browser.

(42:51):
So there's a lot of littlethings like that.
You need to trust that thereare alternatives for pretty much
everything, and there are.
When it comes to navigation, oranything from navigation to
office work, to conferencing,all of these things, they exist
outside of these, out of thesebig tech platforms.
In fact, all the big techplatforms are using the same

(43:14):
software underneath the hood,but they're not telling you what
it actually is.
So I think that really helpsknowing that there is something
out there.
And the other thing is thatbeing willing to research a
little bit, and we've done a lotof the groundwork for you.
When you get a phone, you alsoget access to a course.
I think the course is likethree to six hours long, but you

(43:38):
don't have to watch all of it.
You just go to the points thatare necessary to you.
The getting started one isquite short and it explains
everything you need to do Goingup, opening up the phone, just
basic usage.
If you've used an Android phonebefore, I think you can rest a
little bit easier because thisphone is based on Android, so a

(44:01):
lot of things will be similar tofor an iPhone user.
Things will be a little bitdifferent.
But yeah, yeah, and what didyou think?
How long did it take you?

Speaker 1 (44:11):
I'm still in process.
I guess what's been helpful forme, and if it's helpful for the
listener, was just taking this,taking on the mindset of a
student.
I'm here to learn.
I'm not expecting this to be africtionless process or like I
instantly know where everythingis and how to use it, and I've
just taken on the mindset tochip away at it.
The number of apps you alreadyhave on the phone.

(44:33):
I was like, oh, and here's thenew weather app, and here's the
new podcasting app, and here'sthe replacement for the maps,
and it's all there.
I just have to get comfortablewith other tools.
But slowing down and allowingtime just to okay, I've got
Saturday afternoon or I've gotsome time to play and learn a
little bit more.
And I found over time, becauseI've been doing this digital

(44:57):
disentangle for a while, I'veuntangled several things about
my digital footprint.
But like moving a big rock ofgoing from one phone to another
or from one laptop to another,those to me I thought more like
give me a half day and, sureenough, that's plenty to your
point.
Like the tutorials are here andI found you guys offer great
support.
I had really good support on mykind of enrollment call, if you

(45:17):
will, when you get the phoneand you kind of get your first
orientation.
That was super helpful and Ijust had to stop waiting for the
perfect time and do it and so,yeah, it's been.
It's been like.
You guys greased the shootreally well.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Thank you and and and .
Yeah, I really liked what yousaid about coming into it with a
student mindset.
It's like, yeah, you know youwill need to learn, you need to
learn these things, but I alsofind that practice is the number
one thing.
You can read about it.
That's great, but also justlike mess around with the phone
and see what you can change,what you can do, how that
changes things.
That's you know.

(45:53):
That's why we're in business isbecause we have the best support
when it comes to these types ofthings.
You know, with every devicethat you get, you get free email
and chat support.
So we're, we're online, youknow, five days out of the week
and you can ask us questions,any questions that you have.
And then we also did the uh,the free support call, the
enrollment call, like you said,which I like that word, I might

(46:14):
take it when you spend 45minutes with you when you first
get the phone and we help moveeverything from your old phone
to your new phone, so that'sreally really helpful for people
.
It's also a face-to-face call,like with a real person, right?
So it's tailored to you, right?
However, you want to use thephone and there's a lot of ways
to use this phone.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
Yes, there are.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
We'll make sure you're set up.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Yeah, well, a couple other things that were helpful
were just the reality.
I'm doing this as much formyself as my kids.
I want them to grow up to nothave to go through a big digital
disentangle.
I want them to just this is theecosystem they live in.
They know what XMPP is or theyknow what open source is, or
they they're familiar with allthe de-Googled stuff and Linux

(47:00):
and graphene.
It's so easy and intuitive.
There's.
It's so similar and I rememberwe all had a day, if we're you
know of age, where there wasn't,we didn't have an iPhone, and
now we have one, or we didn'thave a smartphone and it was
unfamiliar to us the first timewe did it.
Well, okay, just go throughthat one more time and and
you're free and that's there'svalue in doing that.

(47:21):
So, um, one other thing youtalked to comment on that if you
want.
But one other thing youmentioned to me years ago that
really helped me understand theprocess was this idea of a
privacy and convenience spectrum.
So answer or comment onanything I just said, but also
tell people about that spectrum,because it helped me kind of

(47:42):
figure out where to go first.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
Yeah yeah, the privacy convenience spectrum.
So On one hand, you have moreprivacy and security.
You're completely responsiblefor everything you're doing on
the phone.
I mean, in a lot of cases youcan use this phone almost
offline.
So I'm talking like you candownload all the maps to your
phone.
Once you have all your photosdownloaded on the phone, they're

(48:07):
on your phone.
Just don't lose your phone.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
Back them up somewhere.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
And so that's kind of the trade-off is that, as you
get privacy and security, butit's less convenient, and there
are ways that the phone can bemade more convenient too.
But at first it seems like youlose a lot of convenience.
But there is also, like, behindthe convenience of Apple and
Google and their photos, it'slike, okay, you use Apple and
Google photos, that's great, butdo you know your photos are

(48:35):
scanned by AI?
You know your photos of yourkids are being looked at by
algorithms.
I mean, that's like supercreepy.
So there are some things thatare just more important than
life than you know havingconvenience, and so we want to
have, we want people to have thebest of both worlds.
We think that it's wrong thatthere are two companies that spy
on 99 of what people are doing.

(48:58):
It's just wrong.
And the more of us step up andsay no, it's the better.
It's just that what are yougoing to sacrifice?
Just a little bit ofconvenience, um, and so, uh,
yeah, depending on where you'reat on the spectrum, um, it might
seem harder at first, but it'smore valuable in the end,
because you can't just break youknow, you can't break Apple

(49:19):
terms of service and they can'tjust take everything away from
you like they have in the past.
To like regular, everydaypeople.
They've shut down people'saccounts, but people's really
important info on their like,pictures of their kids and stuff
They've just taken that away.
So it's like, do you want to bethe arbiter of your own data or
do you want someone else to be?

(49:40):
And I'm doing a webinar,actually in the next couple of
days it's next Monday, april28th, at 12 pm where I kind of
talk about okay, hey, so what isyour privacy score?
We can kind of look at all thedifferent options that you're
using when it comes to yourlaptop, when it comes to your
phone web browser, search engine, all of these things and to

(50:01):
just help you get get a bigpicture of how it all works and
how how also our products canfit into that.
So at the end of it, you cankind of check off the boxes I
use this, I use this, I use this, I use this.
What's my privacy score?
It's here and what are my bestways to improve?
Okay, well, I can do this, thisand this.
So it's really really important.

(50:21):
Right now we're at the phasewhere it's not affecting our
lives, but it's going to getthere soon, right?
I mean, we can kind of seewhat's happening in China.
If you want like a glimpse intothe future, it's really not far
away, I imagine like two tofour years.
But an everything app whereyour entire identity is
connected to your phone and thenyou can get locked out of your

(50:42):
finances, your whole life, justfrom a third party controlling
your phone.
Why would you let it do that?

Speaker 1 (50:49):
Right yeah, why take that risk that nobody would ever
do that or that there's nopeople in power who would want
to do that, and just blindlytrust?
Give yourself an ability andthe beautiful thing is we have
time to do that now.
Enough of us in mass can dothis and it really gets hairy
for them to keep going with thatagenda.
But anything else you want tomention related to that kind of

(51:13):
the philosophical, kind ofcalibrating your emotions or
your mindset toward making thismove.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
Yeah, and so there's.
There's this thing called thenetwork effect.
Network effect is the morepeople that are using something,
the more valuable it is.
So why is Google Maps sovaluable?
Because everyone uses it,because it has all the traffic
data on it.
All the businesses want to beon it.
You want to be on it to findnew restaurants, and so we're
kind of at like the startingpoint for some of these new

(51:44):
platforms.
But just know, you're buildingtowards the network effect.
The more that you use thesesolutions, the more useful they
are.
You get all your friends andfamily on something like XMPP,
then it becomes even more andmore useful.
You can set up group chats forthem, and that's really where we
are.
We're at the starting stages ofthis and it's really
interesting to see too, like themapping app OpenStreetMaps,

(52:08):
which I'll bring up on the phonehere.
But you can see that it's mapsfrom all over the world.
But when you look at, I thinkI'm in Tennessee, here somewhere
, yep, in Tennessee.
So when you look in Tennesseeand you zoom in, you're not
seeing all the restaurants popup on the map and fortunately
there are some, mind you.
But when you go to, like Europeor the UK.

(52:32):
Every restaurant, every storeis on that map and it's useful.
I actually didn't even need touse Google Maps, which blew my
mind, but it's because there'smore of this digital sovereignty
movement there.
People contribute to these maps, so just know that the more
people using this, the moreeffort that gets put in it, it
becomes useful and eventuallywe're back to square one, where

(52:56):
these aren't just alternatives.
They're better than big tech.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
Yeah, and we're just living out our values and you're
part of the solution.
It feels good to be doing thatand in some ways I've heard one
of my mentors describe it as notdoing business with criminals.
It just feels better to not bein business with serial felons
who just pay a fine when theyget caught doing something they
shouldn't be doing, and so allright.
Well, let's talk about thephone just a little bit more,
because that's been my big pushto get ready for this interview

(53:20):
and to take the next step in,you know, protecting my family
and our future.
So there's three things Ireally have appreciated about
the phone.
One is the privacy suite.
You talked about where to yeah,you can have a server and or
you could just find somebody youtrust and they can have a suite
of options to kind ofdisentangle.
So what have you got insidethis privacy suite at above that

(53:42):
is useful to help make thetransition to a new ecosystem
better yeah, absolutely so, withthe privacy suite.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
I'll just bring myself up on here.
The privacy suite is it's likethat last layer for your
communications and the softwareon the phone.
Okay, so there is a VPN right.
Which VPN is super important toyour internet privacy.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
Tell people what a VPN does.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
So VPN will tunnel your traffic.
So normally you know you sendyour internet, you access the
internet through your internetservice provider.
So they know exactly everywebsite you go to.
They know exactly what you'redoing online, and so when you
use a VPN, instead of goingdirectly through the internet
service provider, you go throughan encrypted tunnel.

(54:29):
So now your internet serviceprovider they just see gibberish
.
They don't actually know whatwebsites you're visiting, and
that's super important on thataspect.
Also, the website you'revisiting let's say you're going
to like a big tech website theydon't actually know where you're
coming from.
From their side it looks likeyou're coming from the VPN
server.
So that's an importantdistinction there.

(54:50):
It's probably the mosteffective and most impactful
thing you can do for yourprivacy.
So we do run a VPN service.
It works on the phone.
It also works on the laptop.
We run an email private email.
We run a calendaring software.
So with the email and calendar,you can start your own business

(55:12):
with that.
You can start to take clients,you can hold meetings, and we
also have a video conferencingsoftware that I mentioned
earlier that you can use too.
It's a lot like zoom, butprivate.
Once you end the call, there'sno, you know, there's nothing
left, um, so there's that.
And then there's also a searchengine which allows you to
search from 60 other searchengines, so you kind of get to

(55:34):
choose.
Actually, let me see, I I won'tdemo it here, but you can
actually go and say, all right,I want it to search from bing,
from google, from brave yahoo,and you can turn all those on or
off, so it gives you even morechoice in that.
And the last thing is theencrypted messaging, which is
based on xmpp, is the encryptedmessaging which is based on XMPP

(55:56):
.
So anyone can sign up for freeto an XMPP account.
But we run a professional serverfor you which doesn't log.
It is more private, it's veryreliable, it's running all the
time.
So that's why you can pay forour XMPP service and you get all
these services, which I thinkis like six now, and we're
coming up with another servicetoo, which will be released
really soon.

(56:16):
So you get all those servicesfor a hundred dollars a year.
And, yeah, it essentiallyreplaces all your needs for like
a Google suite or for like anApple suite, where we're making
those services obsolete and youcan use these instead.
And they're all built on opensource software and they work
really well.
Another thing I didn't get tomention is the internet phone

(56:36):
number.
Um, have you messed around withthat at all?

Speaker 1 (56:39):
I have.
Actually I set that up, so partof my switch where my wife had
to go instantly and keep herphone number, I have the luxury
of like I'm playing with anotherphone number on that phone and
getting familiar with like wait,I can make a call over the
internet and I still have anumber, and that's been fun to
say.
Because the second thing,there's the above suite.
But then there's this new thing.

(57:00):
I'm still getting my headaround this data sim or the
e-sim that you guys have.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
So tell people about what that is and the benefits of
it yeah, so the data sim, likewe mentioned earlier, we're
talking about sim swapping.
We're talking about how phonecalls and texts aren't private.
So the data SIM is a eSIM.
It's like a virtual SIM card.
You might remember putting theSIM card in your phone.
You don't need to do thatanymore.
Most modern phones support eSIMand so we have an eSIM that.

(57:27):
We've worked with the bestpartners in most countries and
we found really reliable, highspeed data that you can just
activate within five minutes.
So if you purchase our data sim,which you can go to
abovephonecom slash data sim andthere are a number of different
plans you can get, so you canget it for the US, you can get

(57:49):
it for Canada, you can get itfor the UK and Europe and you
can also get it for Australia,new Zealand and Mexico.
So you have all these differentplaces and once you purchase a
data sim, just scan the QR codeand then, when you enter that
country, you can activate it andthen you have reliable, high
speed data.
Now you won't be communicatingwith a phone number in the

(58:12):
normal sense, but you can usethings like you can use any
internet-based app, so thatcould be the internet phone
number, like we were talkingabout, that will work anywhere
in the world.
So the internet phone number,you have a us or canada phone
number and now you can use thisanywhere in the world to make
international calls with thisdata sim as well.
Yeah and so?
Uh, yeah, we've, we've testedit, we've gone into, like, the

(58:34):
remote regions of the us to testhow fast it is, and it's, it's
super fast and reliable.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
So that's why I can validate that.
My wife is out of town and Iwas able to use that.
I think it's jmp or something,is it?
That's whatever the app is.
I just dialed that.
She's got my new phone numberin her phone now and and we can
talk just fine, it sounds.
I don't notice any differenceor drop off, so that's a cool
feature I had not heard, everseen anywhere else yes and um,

(58:59):
your, uh, your wife too.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
If she wants to keep the same phone number, she can
also port her phone number intojmp, the internet phone number.
So you also have that optiontoo.
Like I said, there's there's alot of options.
Once you get on your free callwith us, you know we'll show you
exactly what you do or we'lltalk, talk over some options
with you.
But okay.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
well, the third thing I wanted to highlight because
that may maybe the coolest partwas this idea that you can have
different profiles on the samephone, which I guess in some
ways is especially important forpeople like me, who we have
businesses that still need tointeract with a lot of these old
big tech tools that we've cometo depend on.
So I actually named my otherprofile, the matrix, so now I
can log into big tech and theycan have their little bubble and

(59:41):
they they can't trackeverything I'm doing and I can
log out of that on the samedevice and log back into my
private ecosystem.
So tell people a little bitabout that.
That maybe I didn't cover in mycomments there.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
Yeah, so the user profiles feature.
So that's a feature on thephone, and so what it lets you
do is it lets you set upencrypted, separate containers
on the phone that are completelyseparate data-wise.
They can't access data withinthe container.
So you've got your main profile.
It's the first profile you getinto when you go on the phone,

(01:00:13):
but you can create a phonewithin a phone and within the
first profile you get into whenyou go on the phone, but you can
create a phone within a phoneand within the secondary phones
you can throw in the apps thatyou probably don't want running
all the time.
Now, these are the apps that aremost likely to listen on you
Facebook Messenger, games,social media apps.
I mean these apps thattypically all have microphone
permissions, and that's actuallyhow they listen to you.

(01:00:35):
You can put them in thesecondary profile and then, when
you're on the main profile, thesecondary profile will be off,
but when you want to switch back, it's always there.
So it's perfect for socialmedia too, right, there's this
health aspect to it, where youdon't want this social media
like.
You don't want to be doomscrolling all day, so it's off.
Uh, it's only there when youneed it.
And then another cool thingthat I guess it's worth

(01:00:57):
mentioning too is if you usethings that are dependent on
Google services, like YouTube orGmail, normally that won't work
out of the box, but you caninstall Google services, and you
would normally do it in asecondary profile, so you can
have your cake and eat it too,too, and it'll be completely
separate from what you're doingon the main phone yeah, I found
that to be a way to just it's.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
It's slowly just weaning me because there's just
one extra layer of friction toswitching.
It's not that convenient, likeI'll just do it, and my wife
even described it.
She's like this phone hasbecome strangely less of an
appendage, so it like it's notthis constant thing at my hip
all the time and there's justenough friction.
I'm like I know why I have thisnow I'm trying to get away from

(01:01:40):
that and we're putting it insmaller containers where it
serves us now rather thanmindless, whatever engagement we
may have before.
So that's been a side benefit.
I guess in hindsight it makessense, but we didn't really see
it coming as much as Makes mereally happy to hear that.
Yeah, so it's been.
There's obviously frictionpoints and there's elements

(01:02:03):
where, like I kind of feel likewho moved my water dish, like
where is the thing?
And I don't know how to usethis yet, and yet I've been able
to temper that.
Okay, I'm not going to let thatfrustrate me, I'm just going to
accept.
I did this for a reason I wantto be an example to my kids.
I want to make sure that I'mdoing what I can to honor my
values, and so we made the jumpand it's just been rewarding.

(01:02:24):
So thank you for what you doand for putting all this
together.
As I went through some of thelearning curve or just the calls
, I've been on getting up tospeed.
It's been, man, I'm so gladsomebody else is taking care of
this.
I feel like it's what I do as ahealth coach.
For other people they getoverwhelmed with so many shiny
objects and layers of complexityand to me I don't see the
complexity.
I'm just like, oh, I can fixthat, I know right what to do,

(01:02:47):
and you guys do that with allthis tech.
So well done.
Anything else you want to sayabout the data or the that we
didn't cover, specific to thephone or your ecosystems there.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
No, I just want to say thank you for for being
adventurous enough to do that,and I hope it doesn't.
I know there's like tinyfrustrations, but yeah, it's a
little bit of persistence, it'sa little bit knowing that we're
always here to help you when youneed it, and so I hope you
reach out.
I've been hearing good thingsfrom my team too.
They like help you when youneed it, and so I hope you reach
out.
I've been hearing good thingsfrom my team too.
They like supporting you andyou have really good questions.

(01:03:20):
So, yeah, yeah, so right now,we so we have a special code for
everyone who's listening.
You can use code true, true, 50, t R U E 50 for $50 off, and
then this will get you a $50 offany device in the store.
If you go on our front page,you'll see that we have the

(01:03:44):
phones, we have the laptops.
I'll just talk a little bitabout our phones briefly, then
our laptops and what you canexpect.
So phones, we have a number ofdifferent models.
We've got the 9 Pro XL, whichthis is a bigger phone, hence
the XL.
We also have the 9, which thisis a really nice phone.
This is the phone I usecurrently, and the 9 is just
very modern.
So it's got 12 gigabytes of RAM, meaning that you could have

(01:04:06):
open like a billion apps.
It's got an amazing 48megapixel excuse me, 50
megapixel camera, so this islike the best phone that you can
get on the market, and you canget it private right now too.
And the pixel 7 and 6 are verygood phones too.
Just their updates will only goon for a few more years,
whereas the 9, in the 9 pro xl,you'll have updates till 2031,

(01:04:29):
so I mean your phone willoutlive cloud schw, which is a
pretty cool thing, Right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:40):
I did not expect that reference, but anytime we can
outlive Klaus Schwab and hisillness, that would be great.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
And then we have the Pixel tablet as well.
So this is everything you loveabout the privacy phone.
We put it in a tablet.
The only thing the tablet can'tdo is it can't connect to cell
service.
But it can do everything elseright.
You connect it to Wi-Fi at home.
You can use it to watch videosI didn't get to show a lot of
the stuff off, but maybe we cando it later.
You can actually like record.

(01:05:05):
You can download the YouTubevideos you're watching directly
to your tablet.
So it's a really nice device toentertain the kids, download
some educational content, somepodcasts and stuff, and just use
it at home.
And lastly, we also have thelaptops, which I really like the
Aluminum 6.
That's our latest and greatestlaptop here.
It's got a really nice metalbody.

(01:05:29):
It also flips around 360degrees so you can kind of turn
it into a tablet.
It comes with this handy dandyum, let's see if I can pull it
out.
It comes with a nice stylus aswell.
Here we go stylus in my handright here and so you can draw
on the screen and all that kindof stuff, um, which is really
really nice.
So it's kind of for more, morefor creatives, but it's a really

(01:05:51):
powerful laptop too.
Then we have some of the oldermodels here the Carbon, which is
a two and a half pound businesslaptop, so super light, super
sleek, really powerful.
The Aluminum 5 and the Starter,which are on our budget line,
but all of these are running aLinux-based operating system.
Same thing with the phone.
We found all of thealternatives and you can also

(01:06:13):
get the programs that you'reused to running, like I'm
talking Zoom, microsoft Teams,spotify.
You can still use this stuff onabove book, which is what the
laptop is called.
So don't be afraid, ask us ifyou have questions.
There's a little chat with usbutton on the bottom right hand
corner and we'd love to talk toyou and see how we can help you
out.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
So what you're saying is, we don't have to also go
back to 2015 in our techhardware in order to go private.
We can have the best stuffavailable today and be private.

Speaker 2 (01:06:43):
That's right.
It's not just an alternative.
It's better than big tech.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
Nice, I love it, Okay .
Well, one last question I wantto ask you is the carrier.
So do you have any?
I'd love an excuse to break upwith AT&T, and I have the
impression and I want you toconfirm it I think I can
actually save money on themonthly bill by switching to
somebody else.
Now what would you suggest ifI'm looking for a new carrier
related to my digital footprintor being able to connect with

(01:07:08):
other people?

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
Yeah, so if you just want that, do you want the data
or do you also want the phonenumber?

Speaker 1 (01:07:15):
yeah, let's say both, just so people listening can
can consider what they're.
They can compare their phonebill to what they might save
yeah, just if it's just savingon your phone bill.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
There's a number of different ones.
There's a us mobile which welike, and there's a mint mobile
as well, but there's a lot ofthese resellers which will just
work off AT&T or the other bigones but may give you a cheaper
plan.
So if you look into like mobileresellers or any of the
companies I mentioned, you cansave a lot on your plan and

(01:07:46):
hopefully that gives you somemore spending cash for yourself.
Also, our data sims are alittle expensive, however.
You can get plans that start at$18.
So that also might be somethingif you don't need a cell phone
attached to it traditionally.
And, of course, you can use ourinternet phone number.
So let's say you got themonthly five gigabyte plan,

(01:08:08):
which is $19 a month.
Then you would get yourinternet phone number, which is
$5 a month.
So all in all, you're paying$24 for an internet connected
phone, which is really reallycool, and then the larger plans
are more expensive.
But hey, there's lots ofchoices for people.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
Yeah, okay, cool.
Well, I just wanted people tosee that there's options there
and maybe a name or two.
That's a little more privacyfocused in terms of telecom.
So thanks for that.
All right, ramiro.
I'm sorry, hakeem, is thereanything particular?
It used to be Ramiro Last timeI talked to you.
So, hakeem, is there anythingelse that we did not cover today
that you want to let peopleknow about?

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
Let's see.
Yeah, please join us for thewebinar.
Again, it's happening April28th at 12 pm Central Time and
you can go to abovephonecomslash webinars.
It's the Privacy Score webinarand if you want to learn more,
if you're like, okay, that was alot of information at once I
encourage you to go tolearnabovephonecom.
My team has committed me todoing one large webinar.

(01:09:11):
That's one to two hours everymonth, and we do this for free.
We don't charge anything.
We just ask for your email andthen you get access to all of
these.
So if you want to learn aboutprivacy and how it actually
works on the phone, we have lots.
I think it's like 12 differentwebinars now.
So please check this out.
It's free and you'll learn alot.
So I hope it gives you somegood leeway.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
But, Christian, I'm really excited.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
Yeah, I'm excited because I think you're turning
out to be pretty handy on thephone, and it's really cool that
it's a family thing right,because I'm sure when your wife
has trouble you can help her out, and vice versa.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
Yeah, or actually my kids.
We got them a Gab phoneoriginally as their first phone,
which eventually will move tosomething more like this.
But the um they're helping usactually like oh, I know how to
use a droid.
Like I don't know how to dothis thing, where's the
flashlight?
Like so, or how to turn, like,vibrate, like where is the
button?
Oh, there is no button forvibrate, okay, anyway.

(01:10:06):
So, yes, it's become easier.
They speak that language, theydo.
I want them to grow up with thisrather than fumble around with
an old fuddy-duddy like me whenthey're older, like I don't know
how to do this.
So, yeah, thank you for makingthis easier.
It's great to call you a friendand I appreciate the hard work
you guys have put in.
Man, it's so much easier todigitally disentangle than it

(01:10:27):
used to be.
So if you guys can't make it tohis webinar coming up, then the
replay will be available.
You webinar coming up, then thereplay will be available.
You can always find this stuff.
But, yeah, there are goodpeople out there doing good work
making this, you know neededoption easier and easier for us.

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):
So thanks for what you do.
Thank you, Christian.
It's been awesome being a wholehuman with you here.

Speaker 1 (01:10:46):
Yeah, buddy, all right, we'll talk to you again
soon Bye.
Bye.

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Hakeem Anwar: Your Phone is Eroding Your Privacy, Dignity, and Humanity - And How to Take Back Your Tech

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Hakeem Anwar: Your Phone is Eroding Your Privacy, Dignity, and Humanity - And How to Take Back Your Tech