November 4, 2024 • 19 mins
In this episode of Privacy Please, uncover how cutting-edge technologies are transforming voting, and enhancing privacy and integrity in the digital age. Explore decentralized platforms like Mastodon for greater user control and transparency, and see how Bitcoin is shifting power away from traditional authorities. Dive into the potential of cryptographic tools and blockchain to authenticate media and voting information, reducing misinformation and boosting election transparency. Tune in to discover how these innovations promise a bright future for trust in technology.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another episode of Privacy Please, where
we break down complicated techstuff into bits everyone can
understand.
We're your hosts, Cameron Ivoryand Gabe Gumps.
I'm gonna break a little bitdown of enhancing transparency
in that overall election process.
How you been, Cam.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Doing well, doing well.
What are we talking about today, gabe?
Actually, you know what, howyou doing.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I'm solid.
No complaints out here.
We've got a couple hurricanesbehind us at this point, so you
know things are looking up.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
They are looking up and outward and, yeah, we got
some decent fall weather theselast few weeks, which is nice
yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
As we roll into election season.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Actually, I mean technically, I guess we're
already in election season.
We've been in election season,by my count, for like 20 years,
though I don't know if theelection season stopped since
2014 or maybe even before that.
But yeah, that's what we'regoing to.
We're going to break some ofthat down today.
We're going to break a littlebit down of enhancing
transparency in that overallelection process through
(01:20):
technology.
Privacy and security are veryintimate parts of our election
process, extremely importantparts of our election process
the validity of every vote oneman, one woman, one vote and the
privacy with which we canestablish ourselves under that
rule.
So we should get into thattoday.
(01:43):
There's a lot of technology atthe center of elections.
A couple of years ago it waselection voting machines were at
the center of elections from atechnology perspective and there
was a lot of hand-wringingabout whether or not those
machines did their jobs properlyand things of that nature.
And so again, transparency inthe process, jobs properly and
(02:05):
things of that nature.
And so again, transparency inthe process.
Those machines veryintentionally spit out paper
records still, because astransparency goes, believe it or
not, nothing beats good oldfashioned papers.
Nothing beats good oldfashioned paper.
But as an election process goes, and, as transparency goes,
there's a need for transparencythrough other parts of the
process, not just the actualvoting part of the process, but
(02:28):
the information that peopleconsume to make those ever so
important decisions as to whothey're casting their vote for.
And so there's been a lot of AIgenerated misinformation.
We can talk about the deadinternet theory, where there's
more bots online than humans.
I believe it.
I put a handful of those botsout there myself like guilty as
(02:51):
charged, but they're not spewingmisinformation, but AI
generated misinformation fromdeep fakes.
So you've got your video andyour audio, just to the written,
is really good, really reallygood.
And so it's not easy for evensometimes the more experienced
of us to discern what thiscontent is, the validity of it,
(03:13):
where it comes from, et cetera.
And so there's a lot oftechnology.
That has been well.
We've been at this show now forfive years, and in that five
years alone we've seen a lot ofprivacy preserving and privacy
enhancing technologies reallytake off, including the
decentralized privacy preservingand protecting space right.
(03:36):
There's been a lot of-.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
That was my first question for you.
Yeah, Since we're on that topic, just for the listeners and
everything.
When it comes to decentralizedtechnology, Gabe, from your view
, how does decentralizedtechnology differ from
traditional systems?
Or in the context of somethinglike the selection or security
or whatever?
Speaker 1 (03:54):
lot about things like censorship on those closed
platforms, right?
So if you take X, for example,aka Twitter, it is a centralized
platform.
It's owned and operated by oneindividual right Like one person
(04:15):
, one entity, if you would.
However, there are othersimilar platforms, right?
Mastodon comes to mind.
Mastodon is probably the mostknown popular decentralized
federated network that looks,feels, acts like Twitter does.
It's an alternative to Twitterand so there's a lot more
(04:36):
transparency, for example, inwho is making decisions about
what content ends up on Mastodon.
And there are differentMastodon instances, so you can
run one, I can run one, and thenyou and I can federate so that
your post that ends up on yourserver is also in mine and vice
versa.
Or you could say you know what?
Cam's gone off the deep end.
I don't trust the content onthat network any longer.
(05:00):
You can remove, you candeassociate, you can defederate
from that network, right.
So there's some transparency inthe who controls the platform.
That's not to still say thatyou know there isn't trust
involved, like anyone on ourMastodon networks has to trust
that Cam and Gabe are actuallydoing all of the right things by
us from a privacy perspective.
(05:21):
But the primary differencebetween centralized and
decentralized is ownership, andwith that ownership comes the
ability to make decisions,privacy impacting decisions,
censorship decisions.
Do I let them advertise it, doI not?
Do I silently suppress some ofthe things they try to share, do
I not?
There's all of those things.
Are there people havingconversations on the platform
(05:43):
that we find problematic to ourown agenda and so we retaliate?
There are all of those things.
Decentralization has been verypopular across a number of
things.
In the money world, we've seena lot of all the random coins
pop up, all the random digitalcoins.
(06:04):
Decentralizing who owns themoney?
Right, you know, we takeBitcoin as the primary example.
But you have a central bankingauthority held in the World Bank
.
You have that in the USgovernment.
You have a central bankingauthority, et cetera.
But things like Bitcoin giveyou a decentralized option for
(06:26):
that.
No one gets to control thecreation, distribution, et
cetera, of that money.
So, that's a lot of what we seecoming to the forefront of how
do we enhance transparency inthe overall election process as
it pertains to information, andI think things like
(06:47):
decentralized social networksare a really really, really,
really good place to start withthat Really good place to start.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, and since we're on that topic, when you
mentioned the things that wetalk about on the show, just as
a reminder, disclaimer, it's notlegal advice.
We're not lawyers.
Everything we say is ouropinions, not our companies.
You know things like that.
So, again, we appreciateeveryone that tunes in.
So these anyways.
I am indeed not a lawyer, so donot at me.
(07:17):
Do not at me.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
I know a thing or two about decentralized networks,
so if you want to at me on thattopic, go ahead and take your
chances.
For sure, go ahead and takeyour chances.
But no definitely not legaladvice.
This is just good life advicewe're slinging out to you.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
That's right.
What about blockchain?
What does that have to do withelections, Gabe?
What role does that have to dowith elections, Gabe?
What role does that have inelections?
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Blockchains provide a mechanism for openly recording
transactions.
Right Like, you, can openlyrecord a transaction and make
that transaction immutable,namely no one else can ever
change that.
So you can track the history ofit, and so you know.
There's been talks of usingblockchain-like technology in
(08:02):
the voting process itself.
Right Like, I cast my vote on ablockchain.
It should ostensibly bepreserved there forever.
It is also not quite as private, though, right?
So one of the things aboutblockchain is it is posted for
all to see.
That is part of thetransparency in it.
So when you, for example, whenyou use Bitcoin and you send
(08:26):
money from one wallet to another, that transaction is publicly
posted.
It is very much capturedforever and all time to always
see.
But you could also tell likewallet A sent $10 to wallet B,
and I know that wallet A belongsto Gabe and wallet B belongs to
Cam.
So there is so muchtransparency in things like
(08:49):
blockchain that it doesn'talways serve well for also
preserving privacy.
There's a lot of things thathave sprung up in the world to
help with that, like tumblers,et cetera, but that probably
wouldn't work in.
Maybe it would.
I don't know how well thatwould work in the voting
scenario, but then again,there's still the.
(09:12):
Now you have to trust the nodesin this blockchain system that
they are indeed not.
They haven't been, for example,some blockchain technologies.
It's a majority vote thingright, like all of the checks
are done, and if 51% of all ofthe nodes agree that this is
accurate and right, then it is.
But there are ways in which onecould take over such a system.
(09:37):
They're not silver bullets.
Things like blockchain aredefinitely not silver bullets to
decentralization, but a very,very important cog in that, in
that machine yeah, it's good toknow.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
How much do you know about cryptographic tools?
Speaker 1 (09:51):
decent amount.
It depends on how far down thestack we want to go.
I dabble dabble as as as anarmchair understander of topics
in that realm specifically, butdefinitely not a lot deeper than
that.
We've got some friends in thenetwork, though, and the Friends
and Family Network we couldprobably bring on to talk about
it.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, I'd be interested to know about that
because you know, when it comesto tracking media providence and
changes, and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Is that piece of information?
Who it said it's from?
So back to the deep fake thing.
Right like I can stand up awebsite that looks and feels
like a new independent websiteand then repost an article that
I claim to be from theassociated press, right which is
a thing that, like other news,agencies cite other news
agencies and most people don'tgo check those sources but the
(10:42):
associated press as an entityand pretty much everyone in
their newsroom.
They all have their own publickeys that they use to secretly
share, or not even secretly.
Let me rephrase that tovalidate who they are sharing
information with and vice versa,so that you can actually, for
example, validate, say, theprovenance of the email you got
(11:05):
came from Joe Smith at theAssociated Press, extending that
all the way out, so that thenews articles themselves use
some similar type of method,which would be great, just basic
PGP right, like just public key, private key pair, where every
time an article is posted, itposted its key and then you
could import into your browser.
(11:26):
You know your key and then itcan check.
And so, like you can, just likewhen you see the little lock in
your browser that says, ah, mysite is secure, like I went to
chasecom and I logged in, youknow, you can, you should,
should be able to, should beable to beyond.
Theoretically we could, wecould implement such technology
in the real world to to provethe providence of things like
(11:47):
news articles.
But there's, there's very mucha nesting doll of that all the
way down like a.
I have to now also trust theassociated press and although I
might, you might not right likeyou know, that's that's pretty
common I hear people voice theiropinions on different news
agencies Like I trust theWashington Post, I don't trust
the Washington Post and so evenif you can prove the provenance
(12:08):
of it being from the Post, thenthere's still always a trust
element.
But today there's a doubletrust element there's.
I have to trust that.
I trust the source and then Ihave to trust where I get that
information from.
If I didn't get it directlyfrom a known location that the
Washington Post postsinformation, like their webpage,
(12:28):
their Twitter feed, then maybeI shouldn't trust it.
But we see a lot again of fakesand they're really, really good
at just convincing you thatthat source is real and that
story is real yeah, it's goingto be interesting to see what
happens over the next coupleyears.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
For sure, when it comes to the ai thing.
Um, you know, you see videoswhere they're clearly ai
generated but I mean the impactof misinformation, especially
when it comes to something likethe election like we were
talking about offline back in2016, 2015,.
That election, was it 16?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
16,.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
I think, yeah, there was always that big concern of
just you know, the voting andthe ballots and the and the dis
and misinformation that wasswirling all around this.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
I'd argue it's still there to today.
It feels like it's not as loudas it has been in the past, but
maybe some of us have justgotten better at filtering it
out or just more deaf to some ofit.
But it hasn't exactly gonecompletely away.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
No.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
We can almost guarantee, given currently how
close you know polls, air quotes, however accurate those things
are.
But you know, if they're fairlyaccurate and this race is as
tight as it is here stateside,then there's almost guaranteed
to be some voices that are goingto call foul play.
So you know again, transparencyin that entire process.
(14:00):
How can technology come to itsrescue?
Speaker 2 (14:02):
That's a good question.
Yeah, going back to thedecentralized technologies, do
you think that there's any,would you know of any potential
barriers on kind of implementingthose technologies into, like
an existing, the existingelectoral systems that we have
right now?
Speaker 1 (14:21):
your biggest barriers , everyone and everything.
It take a lot of work toconvince the entire american
public to trust the processpurely to technology.
I think.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah, because paper is a big thing.
Still, paper is still a bigthing.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I don't know how much people really trust digital.
Maybe, they do right, BecauseI've heard people say things
like well, my bank, I don't needID to deposit a check into my
bank account from my phone.
It's like that's true, but haveyou ever seen how much fraud
goes on in the banking world?
Have you ever seen how muchmoney is spent on anti-fraud
(15:00):
systems in the banking world?
It's a lot.
Do you know how much actualdigital shenanigans occur in
that world?
I think that would be one ofthe biggest barriers.
It's convincing the people totrust the system.
And then again it goes back towho's going to control the
system.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
It's a decentralized system.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Even the decentralized systems have to be
owned by someone.
Is this where we bring back awell-regulated cloud militia, a
properly armed DevOps militia,to own and operate our
decentralized technology stack?
There's definitely still somethings that would have to occur
(15:38):
there.
Yeah, but I think your numberone hurdle is I don't know.
Are you going to convinceeveryone of voting age from 18
to 80 and above right that theyshould trust this system?
I don't know.
I will tell you right now.
You would have a hard timeconvincing me.
I would just as soon stick topaper.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, agreed, you would have a very difficult time
convincing me.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I, by contrast, have been an ethical hacker for a
healthy number of years, and soyou know I live in my brain
lives a different picture oftechnology and the ease with
which it can be abused, so Idon't think you can convince me.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yeah, it's like bending the light.
Yeah Well, I mean to kind ofwrap things up here in terms
like we've kind of alreadytouched on this, but you know,
the privacy and ethicalconsiderations of blockchain and
decentralized networks,technologies, whatever.
I mean, what do you, what doyou kind of see happening?
What do you think we're goingto see if this is going to start
(16:41):
to be implemented?
I mean, is this something yousee that actually will pay off
in the end, or is it just goingto be another thing?
I think we are.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
I think we're a long way away from seeing it make a
meaningful impact in oureveryday lives, but I don't
think it's going to fade.
You know, again, it hasn'tquite gotten groundswell amongst
all the masses, but platformslike Mastodon are really taking
off right, like decentralizedTwitter.
There are decentralizedversions of YouTube out there,
(17:09):
right, similar platforms.
I think at the ground level,like starting now, we'll see
more of that.
We'll see more of thistechnology build itself up from
the ground floor, moregrassroots and, uh, eventually
make its way into into more ofof our lives in this, in this
way yeah, a lot of things tothink about.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yeah, Just with future elections, and this topic
of the thing that I alwaysthink about is and you talk
about as well is, like you know,balancing that innovation and
privacy and trust, and I thinkthat's always going to be a
challenge, but I'm glad thatit's something that our leaders
and our nerds, all the smartpeople that are figuring these
(17:52):
things out and putting themtogether it's I think it's top
of mind for most of them.
There's just so much that cango into this, I mean, especially
with AI.
Ai is it's going to startgetting more and more
implemented for more and more,more and more businesses and
organizations too.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
It's going to be interesting Because who you know
?
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I mean, that's another, that's a whole other
episode.
Right there we're talking aboutthe government, but We've never
done an episode on just thegovernment yes.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
We should do an episode on the government.
We'll invite the smoking man onand actually go as him for
Halloween.
The smoking man.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
That could be interesting.
Gabe, any other thoughts forthe listeners before we wrap
this one up.
Anything to leave them.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Remember to trust but validate.
Trust but validate that's yourbest weapon in today's world.
Believe nothing you read andhalf of what you see.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
That's good, that's good.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
That's just good, solid advice right there.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, I would have to agree.
Yeah, all right.
Well, ladies and gentlemen,thank you so much for always
supporting us.
Gabe, as always, pleasure,always good to see you.
Yes, sir, and we'll see youguys next week.
Appreciate you.
Don't forget to like, share,subscribe, smash that button.
Smash that button.
We'll see you guys next week.
Welcome to another episode of Privacy Please, where
we break down complicated techstuff into bits everyone can
understand.
We're your hosts, Cameron Ivoryand Gabe Gumps.
I'm gonna break a little bitdown of enhancing transparency
in that overall election process.
How you been, Cam.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Doing well, doing well.
What are we talking about today, gabe?
Actually, you know what, howyou doing.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I'm solid.
No complaints out here.
We've got a couple hurricanesbehind us at this point, so you
know things are looking up.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
They are looking up and outward and, yeah, we got
some decent fall weather theselast few weeks, which is nice
yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
As we roll into election season.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Actually, I mean technically, I guess we're
already in election season.
We've been in election season,by my count, for like 20 years,
though I don't know if theelection season stopped since
2014 or maybe even before that.
But yeah, that's what we'regoing to.
We're going to break some ofthat down today.
We're going to break a littlebit down of enhancing
transparency in that overallelection process through
(01:20):
technology.
Privacy and security are veryintimate parts of our election
process, extremely importantparts of our election process
the validity of every vote oneman, one woman, one vote and the
privacy with which we canestablish ourselves under that
rule.
So we should get into thattoday.
(01:43):
There's a lot of technology atthe center of elections.
A couple of years ago it waselection voting machines were at
the center of elections from atechnology perspective and there
was a lot of hand-wringingabout whether or not those
machines did their jobs properlyand things of that nature.
And so again, transparency inthe process, jobs properly and
(02:05):
things of that nature.
And so again, transparency inthe process.
Those machines veryintentionally spit out paper
records still, because astransparency goes, believe it or
not, nothing beats good oldfashioned papers.
Nothing beats good oldfashioned paper.
But as an election process goes, and, as transparency goes,
there's a need for transparencythrough other parts of the
process, not just the actualvoting part of the process, but
(02:28):
the information that peopleconsume to make those ever so
important decisions as to whothey're casting their vote for.
And so there's been a lot of AIgenerated misinformation.
We can talk about the deadinternet theory, where there's
more bots online than humans.
I believe it.
I put a handful of those botsout there myself like guilty as
(02:51):
charged, but they're not spewingmisinformation, but AI
generated misinformation fromdeep fakes.
So you've got your video andyour audio, just to the written,
is really good, really reallygood.
And so it's not easy for evensometimes the more experienced
of us to discern what thiscontent is, the validity of it,
(03:13):
where it comes from, et cetera.
And so there's a lot oftechnology.
That has been well.
We've been at this show now forfive years, and in that five
years alone we've seen a lot ofprivacy preserving and privacy
enhancing technologies reallytake off, including the
decentralized privacy preservingand protecting space right.
(03:36):
There's been a lot of-.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
That was my first question for you.
Yeah, Since we're on that topic, just for the listeners and
everything.
When it comes to decentralizedtechnology, Gabe, from your view
, how does decentralizedtechnology differ from
traditional systems?
Or in the context of somethinglike the selection or security
or whatever?
Speaker 1 (03:54):
lot about things like censorship on those closed
platforms, right?
So if you take X, for example,aka Twitter, it is a centralized
platform.
It's owned and operated by oneindividual right Like one person
(04:15):
, one entity, if you would.
However, there are othersimilar platforms, right?
Mastodon comes to mind.
Mastodon is probably the mostknown popular decentralized
federated network that looks,feels, acts like Twitter does.
It's an alternative to Twitterand so there's a lot more
(04:36):
transparency, for example, inwho is making decisions about
what content ends up on Mastodon.
And there are differentMastodon instances, so you can
run one, I can run one, and thenyou and I can federate so that
your post that ends up on yourserver is also in mine and vice
versa.
Or you could say you know what?
Cam's gone off the deep end.
I don't trust the content onthat network any longer.
(05:00):
You can remove, you candeassociate, you can defederate
from that network, right.
So there's some transparency inthe who controls the platform.
That's not to still say thatyou know there isn't trust
involved, like anyone on ourMastodon networks has to trust
that Cam and Gabe are actuallydoing all of the right things by
us from a privacy perspective.
(05:21):
But the primary differencebetween centralized and
decentralized is ownership, andwith that ownership comes the
ability to make decisions,privacy impacting decisions,
censorship decisions.
Do I let them advertise it, doI not?
Do I silently suppress some ofthe things they try to share, do
I not?
There's all of those things.
Are there people havingconversations on the platform
(05:43):
that we find problematic to ourown agenda and so we retaliate?
There are all of those things.
Decentralization has been verypopular across a number of
things.
In the money world, we've seena lot of all the random coins
pop up, all the random digitalcoins.
(06:04):
Decentralizing who owns themoney?
Right, you know, we takeBitcoin as the primary example.
But you have a central bankingauthority held in the World Bank
.
You have that in the USgovernment.
You have a central bankingauthority, et cetera.
But things like Bitcoin giveyou a decentralized option for
(06:26):
that.
No one gets to control thecreation, distribution, et
cetera, of that money.
So, that's a lot of what we seecoming to the forefront of how
do we enhance transparency inthe overall election process as
it pertains to information, andI think things like
(06:47):
decentralized social networksare a really really, really,
really good place to start withthat Really good place to start.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, and since we're on that topic, when you
mentioned the things that wetalk about on the show, just as
a reminder, disclaimer, it's notlegal advice.
We're not lawyers.
Everything we say is ouropinions, not our companies.
You know things like that.
So, again, we appreciateeveryone that tunes in.
So these anyways.
I am indeed not a lawyer, so donot at me.
(07:17):
Do not at me.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
I know a thing or two about decentralized networks,
so if you want to at me on thattopic, go ahead and take your
chances.
For sure, go ahead and takeyour chances.
But no definitely not legaladvice.
This is just good life advicewe're slinging out to you.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
That's right.
What about blockchain?
What does that have to do withelections, Gabe?
What role does that have to dowith elections, Gabe?
What role does that have inelections?
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Blockchains provide a mechanism for openly recording
transactions.
Right Like, you, can openlyrecord a transaction and make
that transaction immutable,namely no one else can ever
change that.
So you can track the history ofit, and so you know.
There's been talks of usingblockchain-like technology in
(08:02):
the voting process itself.
Right Like, I cast my vote on ablockchain.
It should ostensibly bepreserved there forever.
It is also not quite as private, though, right?
So one of the things aboutblockchain is it is posted for
all to see.
That is part of thetransparency in it.
So when you, for example, whenyou use Bitcoin and you send
(08:26):
money from one wallet to another, that transaction is publicly
posted.
It is very much capturedforever and all time to always
see.
But you could also tell likewallet A sent $10 to wallet B,
and I know that wallet A belongsto Gabe and wallet B belongs to
Cam.
So there is so muchtransparency in things like
(08:49):
blockchain that it doesn'talways serve well for also
preserving privacy.
There's a lot of things thathave sprung up in the world to
help with that, like tumblers,et cetera, but that probably
wouldn't work in.
Maybe it would.
I don't know how well thatwould work in the voting
scenario, but then again,there's still the.
(09:12):
Now you have to trust the nodesin this blockchain system that
they are indeed not.
They haven't been, for example,some blockchain technologies.
It's a majority vote thingright, like all of the checks
are done, and if 51% of all ofthe nodes agree that this is
accurate and right, then it is.
But there are ways in which onecould take over such a system.
(09:37):
They're not silver bullets.
Things like blockchain aredefinitely not silver bullets to
decentralization, but a very,very important cog in that, in
that machine yeah, it's good toknow.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
How much do you know about cryptographic tools?
Speaker 1 (09:51):
decent amount.
It depends on how far down thestack we want to go.
I dabble dabble as as as anarmchair understander of topics
in that realm specifically, butdefinitely not a lot deeper than
that.
We've got some friends in thenetwork, though, and the Friends
and Family Network we couldprobably bring on to talk about
it.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, I'd be interested to know about that
because you know, when it comesto tracking media providence and
changes, and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Is that piece of information?
Who it said it's from?
So back to the deep fake thing.
Right like I can stand up awebsite that looks and feels
like a new independent websiteand then repost an article that
I claim to be from theassociated press, right which is
a thing that, like other news,agencies cite other news
agencies and most people don'tgo check those sources but the
(10:42):
associated press as an entityand pretty much everyone in
their newsroom.
They all have their own publickeys that they use to secretly
share, or not even secretly.
Let me rephrase that tovalidate who they are sharing
information with and vice versa,so that you can actually, for
example, validate, say, theprovenance of the email you got
(11:05):
came from Joe Smith at theAssociated Press, extending that
all the way out, so that thenews articles themselves use
some similar type of method,which would be great, just basic
PGP right, like just public key, private key pair, where every
time an article is posted, itposted its key and then you
could import into your browser.
(11:26):
You know your key and then itcan check.
And so, like you can, just likewhen you see the little lock in
your browser that says, ah, mysite is secure, like I went to
chasecom and I logged in, youknow, you can, you should,
should be able to, should beable to beyond.
Theoretically we could, wecould implement such technology
in the real world to to provethe providence of things like
(11:47):
news articles.
But there's, there's very mucha nesting doll of that all the
way down like a.
I have to now also trust theassociated press and although I
might, you might not right likeyou know, that's that's pretty
common I hear people voice theiropinions on different news
agencies Like I trust theWashington Post, I don't trust
the Washington Post and so evenif you can prove the provenance
(12:08):
of it being from the Post, thenthere's still always a trust
element.
But today there's a doubletrust element there's.
I have to trust that.
I trust the source and then Ihave to trust where I get that
information from.
If I didn't get it directlyfrom a known location that the
Washington Post postsinformation, like their webpage,
(12:28):
their Twitter feed, then maybeI shouldn't trust it.
But we see a lot again of fakesand they're really, really good
at just convincing you thatthat source is real and that
story is real yeah, it's goingto be interesting to see what
happens over the next coupleyears.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
For sure, when it comes to the ai thing.
Um, you know, you see videoswhere they're clearly ai
generated but I mean the impactof misinformation, especially
when it comes to something likethe election like we were
talking about offline back in2016, 2015,.
That election, was it 16?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
16,.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
I think, yeah, there was always that big concern of
just you know, the voting andthe ballots and the and the dis
and misinformation that wasswirling all around this.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
I'd argue it's still there to today.
It feels like it's not as loudas it has been in the past, but
maybe some of us have justgotten better at filtering it
out or just more deaf to some ofit.
But it hasn't exactly gonecompletely away.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
No.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
We can almost guarantee, given currently how
close you know polls, air quotes, however accurate those things
are.
But you know, if they're fairlyaccurate and this race is as
tight as it is here stateside,then there's almost guaranteed
to be some voices that are goingto call foul play.
So you know again, transparencyin that entire process.
(14:00):
How can technology come to itsrescue?
Speaker 2 (14:02):
That's a good question.
Yeah, going back to thedecentralized technologies, do
you think that there's any,would you know of any potential
barriers on kind of implementingthose technologies into, like
an existing, the existingelectoral systems that we have
right now?
Speaker 1 (14:21):
your biggest barriers , everyone and everything.
It take a lot of work toconvince the entire american
public to trust the processpurely to technology.
I think.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah, because paper is a big thing.
Still, paper is still a bigthing.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I don't know how much people really trust digital.
Maybe, they do right, BecauseI've heard people say things
like well, my bank, I don't needID to deposit a check into my
bank account from my phone.
It's like that's true, but haveyou ever seen how much fraud
goes on in the banking world?
Have you ever seen how muchmoney is spent on anti-fraud
(15:00):
systems in the banking world?
It's a lot.
Do you know how much actualdigital shenanigans occur in
that world?
I think that would be one ofthe biggest barriers.
It's convincing the people totrust the system.
And then again it goes back towho's going to control the
system.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
It's a decentralized system.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Even the decentralized systems have to be
owned by someone.
Is this where we bring back awell-regulated cloud militia, a
properly armed DevOps militia,to own and operate our
decentralized technology stack?
There's definitely still somethings that would have to occur
(15:38):
there.
Yeah, but I think your numberone hurdle is I don't know.
Are you going to convinceeveryone of voting age from 18
to 80 and above right that theyshould trust this system?
I don't know.
I will tell you right now.
You would have a hard timeconvincing me.
I would just as soon stick topaper.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, agreed, you would have a very difficult time
convincing me.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I, by contrast, have been an ethical hacker for a
healthy number of years, and soyou know I live in my brain
lives a different picture oftechnology and the ease with
which it can be abused, so Idon't think you can convince me.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yeah, it's like bending the light.
Yeah Well, I mean to kind ofwrap things up here in terms
like we've kind of alreadytouched on this, but you know,
the privacy and ethicalconsiderations of blockchain and
decentralized networks,technologies, whatever.
I mean, what do you, what doyou kind of see happening?
What do you think we're goingto see if this is going to start
(16:41):
to be implemented?
I mean, is this something yousee that actually will pay off
in the end, or is it just goingto be another thing?
I think we are.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
I think we're a long way away from seeing it make a
meaningful impact in oureveryday lives, but I don't
think it's going to fade.
You know, again, it hasn'tquite gotten groundswell amongst
all the masses, but platformslike Mastodon are really taking
off right, like decentralizedTwitter.
There are decentralizedversions of YouTube out there,
(17:09):
right, similar platforms.
I think at the ground level,like starting now, we'll see
more of that.
We'll see more of thistechnology build itself up from
the ground floor, moregrassroots and, uh, eventually
make its way into into more ofof our lives in this, in this
way yeah, a lot of things tothink about.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yeah, Just with future elections, and this topic
of the thing that I alwaysthink about is and you talk
about as well is, like you know,balancing that innovation and
privacy and trust, and I thinkthat's always going to be a
challenge, but I'm glad thatit's something that our leaders
and our nerds, all the smartpeople that are figuring these
(17:52):
things out and putting themtogether it's I think it's top
of mind for most of them.
There's just so much that cango into this, I mean, especially
with AI.
Ai is it's going to startgetting more and more
implemented for more and more,more and more businesses and
organizations too.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
It's going to be interesting Because who you know
?
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I mean, that's another, that's a whole other
episode.
Right there we're talking aboutthe government, but We've never
done an episode on just thegovernment yes.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
We should do an episode on the government.
We'll invite the smoking man onand actually go as him for
Halloween.
The smoking man.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
That could be interesting.
Gabe, any other thoughts forthe listeners before we wrap
this one up.
Anything to leave them.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Remember to trust but validate.
Trust but validate that's yourbest weapon in today's world.
Believe nothing you read andhalf of what you see.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
That's good, that's good.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
That's just good, solid advice right there.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, I would have to agree.
Yeah, all right.
Well, ladies and gentlemen,thank you so much for always
supporting us.
Gabe, as always, pleasure,always good to see you.
Yes, sir, and we'll see youguys next week.
Appreciate you.
Don't forget to like, share,subscribe, smash that button.
Smash that button.
We'll see you guys next week.
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