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A few years ago,
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an American defense consultant I know
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told me about a trip he took to Uzbekistan.
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His role there was to help sell technology
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that the Uzbek government could use to spy on its own citizens.
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He eventually shared with me the marketing material
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he'd presented to the Uzbek government.
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One glossy brochure featured technology that could not just intercept phone calls,
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but identify the caller,
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regardless of what phone number they were using,
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based on their unique voiceprint,
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and then identify their exact geographic location.
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This is a guy who had been involved with the arms trade for years.
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He wasn't some Hollywood-type gunrunner doing backroom deals.
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He was just a guy that worked with legitimate Western companies
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to help sell their weapons abroad.
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But he wasn't bothered by marketing this sort of technology.
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For him, it was just the next step in the arms trade.
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And it was even easier than, say, selling weapons to Iraq,
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because it didn't require an export license
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from the US State Department,
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the way most arms sales would.
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It turns out that these tools of surveillance
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are almost completely unregulated,
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because as of today, they're not defined as weapons.
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But they should be, and we need to regulate them that way.
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I'm a journalist who has spent the last two decades
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looking at how the military and intelligence world
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spurs the development of new science and technology.
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I've tracked the emergence of new weapons
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and looked to see what happens
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when companies start to market these weapons abroad.
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But what is a weapon in the information age?
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We know that armed drones are weapons,
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missiles and bombs are weapons,
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but the State Department actually classifies
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broad categories of technologies as weapons.
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So for example, a scientist going abroad on an oceanographic research vessel,
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they want to take the latest night-vision goggles?
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That, according to the State Department, is potentially a weapon.
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Why?
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Well, because though night-vision goggles are used today by scientists
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and hunters around the world,
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it was a capability first developed for the military.
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And yet, tools of surveillance
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that an authoritarian regime could use to spy on its own citizens,
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on dissidents, on journalists,
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that, according to the US government today, is not a weapon.
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And yet, these tools of surveillance
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are part of a growing secretive multi-billion-dollar industry.
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The genesis of this spy bazaar goes back some 18 years,
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to a Hilton hotel in northern Virginia,
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just a few miles away from the US Central Intelligence Agency.
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A few dozen people, mostly dark-suited men,
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gathered there in the spring of 2002
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for a conference with the unassuming name of ISS World.
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You know, at first glance, this conference probably looked like dozens of events
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that used to take place around the Washington, DC area.
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But this event was unique.
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ISS stands for Intelligence Support Systems,
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and the people who were there
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were from companies that built technologies to spy
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on private communications.
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In other words, these were sort of wire-tappers for hire.
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And the reason they were there was that less than a year earlier,
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the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington
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had spurred the Congress to press through legislation
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known as the Patriot Act.
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This gave the government broad new authorities
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to monitor communications.
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Emails, internet activity, phone calls,
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even financial transactions.
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This created an instant demand for data.
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And in the true American entrepreneurial spirit,
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an industry rose up to help collect this data.
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But back in 2002,
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this was still a pretty modest affair.
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Only about 10 percent of the world's population
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was even online using the internet.
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So most of what was being collected were simple emails and phone calls
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over landlines and cell phones.
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But over the next few years,
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the way that we communicate began to change rapidly.
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There was the introduction of Skype, Facebook
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and then, crucially, the iPhone,
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and within a few years,
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billions of us were walking around with little computers in our pockets
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that do everything from monitor our exercise habits
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to help us find romantic partners.
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And suddenly, you didn't necessarily need the advanced capability
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of the National Security Agency or big telecoms
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to monitor everyone's communication.
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In some cases,
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all you needed was access to that device in their pockets.
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And that gave birth to an entirely new type of industry.
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You know, not many companies can build missiles or aircraft,
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but it doesn't take a lot of capital to create software
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that can hack into someone's smartphone.
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Computer hackers have been around for years,
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but now their skills could be used to build technologies
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that were in high demand by law enforcement
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and intelligence agencies.
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And soon, dozens and even hundreds of companies
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were getting into this wire-tappers' market.
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And that little conference in Virginia,
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it grew and soon became known as the Wiretappers' Ball.
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Well, not much was known about the Wiretappers' Ball
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in those early years,
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because the conferences were closed to everyone
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except the companies and their government customers.
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But journalists did begin to see and hear reports
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of companies getting into this private spy market.
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Spooky entrepreneurs going around the world,
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doing deals,
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often with authoritarian regimes.
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And it was, from the start, a really loosely regulated market.
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Some countries do require permission to sell these technologies abroad,
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but rarely with the type of scrutiny that is given to traditional arms.
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So for example, the Italian-based company Hacking Team
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reportedly sold its technology to authoritarian regimes
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in Egypt and Kazakhstan.
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The Israeli-based company NSO Group has reportedly sold its technology
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to the regime in Saudi Arabia,
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which has been accused of harassing,
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and even, in one case, killing one of its political opponents.
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And we do think of weapons as things that kill people.
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But in the information age,
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some of the most powerful weapons are things that can track and identify us.
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This is something that the Pentagon and CIA have recognized for years,
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and they've tried to build technologies
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that can track people, suspected terrorists, around the globe.
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The Pentagon has invested in something called smart dust,
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little microsensors the size of specs of dust
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that you could scatter on people without them knowing it,
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and then use it to track their location.
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The Pentagon, through its venture capital firm,
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has invested in a beauty products company once featured in "Oprah Magazine"
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to build a device that could surreptitiously collect DNA
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just by swiping across the skin.
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But something remarkable has happened over the past decade.
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In many cases, what the private marketplace has been able to do
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has far outstripped what the Pentagon or CIA even thought was possible.
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Back in 2008,
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the Pentagon had a secretive database of DNA from terrorists.
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It had about 80,000 samples.
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Well, the private company AncestryDNA
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today has samples from over 15 million people.
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23andMe, the second-largest genealogical database,
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has samples from over 10 million people.
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So now, maybe you don't need these James Bond-worthy techniques
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of collecting DNA
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if we're willingly handing it over to private companies
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and even paying for the honor of doing it.
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Well, what could you do with a sample of someone's DNA?
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In the United States and China,
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researchers are working on using DNA samples
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to build images of people's faces.
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So if you pair DNA with facial recognition technology,
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you have the basis of a really powerful surveillance system
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that could be used to track individuals or entire ethnic groups.
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And if you think that sounds a little bit paranoid,
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keep in mind that the Pentagon last year sent out a memo
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to all of its service members,
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warning them precisely not to use those commercial DNA kits
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over concerns that information could be used to track them
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or their family members.
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And yet, even with the Pentagon raising concerns about this technology,
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almost nothing has been done to reign in this market.
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One American company, Clearview AI,
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has been collecting billions of images of people's faces
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from across the internet,
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like those pictures you post on Instagram of you and your friends and family,
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and then selling its facial recognition services
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to US government and law-enforcement agencies.
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And even if you think
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that's a perfectly acceptable application of this technology,
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there's nothing to stop them from selling to private individuals,
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corporations or even foreign governments.
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And that's exactly what some companies are doing.
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That Wiretappers' Ball that started in northern Virginia?
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Today, it's held in multiple cities around the globe.
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Thousands of people now attend the ISS trainings and conferences.
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And more of the companies showing up are coming from the Middle East and China.
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The spy bazaar has gone global.
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And at arms shows now around the world,
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you'll see companies displaying facial recognition technology
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and phone hacking software,
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displaying right next to traditional arms manufacturers
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with tanks and missiles.
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And walking around these arms shows,
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it's pretty easy to go down dystopian rabbit holes,
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thinking about future surveillance technology
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that will track our every move.
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And I remember one Pentagon adviser telling me
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that what the military really needed were space-based satellites
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that could track people anywhere on earth based just on their DNA.
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It's enough to make you invest in tinfoil hats.
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But the truth is,
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we don't know what sort of technology the future will bring.
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But we know that today, in the absence of regulation,
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this marketplace is already exploding.
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And in fact, one of those companies accused of selling surveillance technology
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to authoritarian regimes,
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today, it's offering to help track those infected with COVID-19.
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And of course, technology does offer the tantalizing promise
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of helping control a pandemic through contact tracing.
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But it also opens up another door, to privatized mass surveillance.
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So what do we do about this private spy bazaar?
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We can hide, go offline,
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get off social media, ditch our smartphones,
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go live in a cave,
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but the truth is, we're not trained to be professional spies,
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we can't live under false identities or with no identities.
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And even real spies are having a hard time staying below the radar, these days.
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It doesn't matter how many passports Jason Bourne has
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if his face or DNA is in someone's database.
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But if even governments have lost control of the tools of spying,
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is there anything we can do about it?
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One argument I've heard
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is that even if the US were to restrict companies
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from selling this sort of technology abroad,
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companies based in China might simply step in.
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But we regulate the arms trade today,
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even if we do it imperfectly.
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And in fact, there was a multilateral proposal several years ago
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to do just that,
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to require export licenses for surveillance software.
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The United States was among those countries
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that agreed to these voluntary regulations,
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but back in Washington, this proposal has simply languished.
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We have an administration that would rather sell more weapons abroad
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with fewer restrictions,
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including to some of those countries
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accused of abusing surveillance technology.
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I think to move forward, we would need to revive that proposal,
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but even go one step further.
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We need to fundamentally change how we think of surveillance technology
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and define these tools as weapons.
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This would allow government
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to regulate and control their sale and export
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the way that they control traditional arms,
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advanced aircraft and missiles.
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But that means recognizing that technology that tracks who we are,
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what we do, what we say,
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and even in some cases, what we think,
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is a form of advanced weaponry.
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And these weapons are growing too powerful,
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available to the highest bidder,