first of all I need to make a little
apology the title that you see here is
not the title that I advertised on the
agenda talking with folks this morning
we've done a little bit of a
bait-and-switch we're looking at exactly
the same problem but from a little bit
of a different perspective from a
community perspective of you know how
why do we even need to do this and so I
just want to talk about the simple
reality that we need to confront the
digital winter is coming so some of the
things that we can't cover in this talk
if you have a look at the the two videos
that I've made from talks of while it
was at CCC camp a couple of months back
and then earlier in the year the next
comp in Christchurch in New Zealand
talking about the the megaphone device
and so everything that I'm talking about
you know the megaphone is what we are
doing to address this whole issue around
the coming digital winter so what on
earth am I talking about with a digital
winter and it's actually tightly
interrelated with the freedoms that we
have enjoyed in you know modern liberal
democracies really kind of came about at
the end of World War two right that the
Pax Americana for all of its other
problems kind of pushed this idea of
individual freedom and so we had you
know this huge growth in technology and
art and culture all sorts of things that
came about because of that freedom and
so around the 70s and 80s you know the
real digital spring happened where
digital devices started being useful
people started having computers at home
and at work and using them and mobile
phones came along and this was really
fantastic and with like so excited about
what this will mean when it comes to
fruition
we could see the flowers we could smell
what was going on we could see that
something exciting is going to happen
and then later in the 20th century and
really sort of until about now we've
been enjoying the fruit of that in fact
the fruit is so plentiful is sitting on
the ground we don't even have to reach
up to the tree you know we have a device
I mean
he doesn't have a mobile phone with them
I'm curious one of you excellent
everybody else has a mobile phone with
it because it's so easy and so
convenient and so tasty right it does
all of these things that we want the
trouble is in the digital summer and we
I think we've just passed the you know
we're at the endpoint of the digital
summer everything is plentiful
everything is easy but the seasons March
on and we have seen the use of
technology by nation states by all sorts
of you know malevolent forces being used
against people depriving people of you
know this food source on which they have
become dependent so you know you cut
communications off during elections now
to avoid you know unhelpful criticism of
government and we've seen this kind of
thing more and more and you know the
attacks on press freedom at home in
Australia right we have our government
basically backing police raids on
journalists to try and find out who
their secret sources are because they
embarrassed the government and so this
is a growing problem and so this is why
I say that we've actually I think in the
last decade we're actually no longer in
the digital summer were in the digital
autumn there are leaves that are going
funny colors the you know at the moment
there's still plenty of fruit on the
ground and there's still some fruit on
the trees but we can see the writing on
the wall the freedoms the digital
freedom the digital sovereignty that we
once enjoyed in the 1980s and early
1990s is now largely a thing of the past
and the thing about the digital autumn
is actually dangerous because autumn is
the most beautiful time of year with
trees right we have these beautiful
golden red colors no people go for
drives to see the autumn leaves we see
them on the ground it covers the ground
everything looks fantastic we still get
a still plenty of food coming from these
late harvests and so we're lulled into a
false sense of security saying oh it's
it can't be that bad winter is still a
long way off we'll figure out ways to
deal with you know these
you know increasingly diminished digital
freedoms on the ability for us to
maintain communications in the face of
adversaries the ability for us to create
hardware that we truly own that does
what we want there's not actually
meaning we pay for but but I can see an
Apple device there with its happy piece
of fruit facing me at the moment and
this is fantastic you know that Apple
devices are beautifully built lovely to
use but particularly for talking about
the phones do you really own an iPhone
or do you merely pay for an iPhone and
have its physical form in your hand to
enjoy but only to the extent to which
the vendor is willing for you to enjoy
and only in the ways in which the vendor
is willing for you to enjoy and so these
freedoms are being restricted and I
think there is a very real chance that
we are going to go into a digital winter
and the trouble with the digital winter
is once you're there and decide that you
should have prepared for the digital
winter it's now too late you are
fighting for your survival you are
fighting to maintain the remaining
digital capabilities that you have
supply chains I no longer trust able or
no longer working we're no longer
present at all depending on how the
future pans out now if we had a another
global scale unrest at some point this
whole you know interconnected global
supply chain that's largely focused in a
few countries is going to become
unavailable to most countries how do we
maintain the ability of people to create
digital artifacts to meet their needs
when you can't even manufacture a new
device or it might be that it's we don't
have outright wall we just move further
into this you know rights restricted
dystopia that we seem to be heading into
of you know all of these actors wanting
to restrict what we can do with the
digital device for economic reasons for
political reasons initially doesn't
matter what the reason is
so we need to prepare before the digital
winter comes so that we don't starve
before the digital winter ends because
the digital winter left to its own
course won't end quickly if we don't
have and if people around the world
don't have the means to communicate to
self-organize to hold governments to
account we will actually just drive
deeper and deeper into the digital
winter who was read or seeing the The
Chronicle of Narnia series liner which
in the wardrobe
right if we don't act we're actually
headed for a digital wit not just a
six-month digital winter we are headed
for a hundred years of snow and ice
under a variety of white witches because
as these actors deprived of enterprise
acid they're deprived us of the ability
to create our own digital futures they
will continue to set the agenda and work
against us having the ability and the
freedom to do these things you might say
that I'm being horribly you know
pessimistic about things but look back
at the history of individual freedoms in
this world the time that we have had
since World War two is an aberration in
the world never before in the history of
humanity has there been as much personal
freedom in at least some countries as
there has been in this post-war period
now what somewhat ironic is that it was
created in order to further commercial
gains for the United States in
particular but it had this side effect
of creating freedom but if we look back
prior to that you know European history
prior to that we had endless wars Asian
history prior to that plenty of wars
African history prior to that plenty of
wars and across the world
very limited freedom for the average
person to live to try and make the world
a better place
but we are not without hope I am
convinced that we can bring about a
second digital spring or possibly that
we can even avoid the digital winter by
if you like creating a digital food
source so that yes it might get cold
they are chilling times at the moment
but that as we hold governments to
account as we empower citizens and we
empower everyone to be a functioning
civil society because communications is
the basis of civil society and
transactions are of course merely a form
of communications so we need to find
ways to sustain these capabilities we
need to think very differently about how
we do things because what's clear is
that the current approach that you know
of devices of phones they are so complex
that they are just this beautiful garden
in which adversaries can plant the weeds
that will undermine those things that
will choke out the real important uses
and deprive us of the the sovereignty
that we need the agency that we need
over these devices so how can we make
sure that we come back to a digital
summer or that we can avoid a digital
winter altogether we need to act now we
need to start thinking how can we create
devices that are independent of the
internet that are independent of vendor
support that are possible to be secured
and for their security to be maintained
going forward in the absence of a global
Internet of you know global support even
you know from the communities that we
know today if things become more balcan
eyes than the internet it may not be
possible to have global open source
projects anymore how can we reduce that
capability burden currently maintenance
burden down to the level where one or a
few determined users are actually able
to you know to make something which will
be sustainable and in sustainable in the
face of you know determined adversaries
whose intention it is to deprive us of
these things and so this is where the
megaphone project
has come in so this is why this phone
it's bizarre we've made a phone device
is quite larger than mo we're obviously
going to make it smaller this is how
large it is just from making it in the
lab for 500 euros right but
miniaturization is totally doable
but this device is based on the
Commodore 64 architecture because this
is the week I think what is the simplest
ie the easiest to maintain the easiest
to inspect the easiest to detect
compromise in that can still do useful
things because you go back further than
the early home computers in the 1980s
they weren't user-friendly they weren't
usable there were mainframes that were
kind of crazy complicated or there was
extremely simple hobby devices but the
early 80s marked the first time where
you know you could have productivity
software on your computer at home and it
was usable and yet it was still just
tens of kilobytes so you know the
prototype dialer app that we've made for
this thing is about 28 kilobytes written
in Commodore 64 basics so this is
extremely easy to inspect you know we in
terms of can one determined user
maintain it well wonder - well one
possibly slightly determined user a
student working for one semester 20
hours a week wrote the dialer from
scratch and he had never touched a
Commodore 64 in his life before so we
know that it is possible to make these
kinds of devices what we need to do is
to grow the community that's looking at
these things and think about how we can
make hybrid devices where the simple
trustable architecture can enslave a
modern complex untrustable processes so
that we don't have to lose any
functionality and that's the next
iteration of the megaphone that we're
working on at the moment does exactly
that we're putting a Raspberry Pi that
can run Android as a slave processor the
8-bit computer pretends to be the touch
interface and the the video output and
everything so that the Android thinks no
that it's no it's a ship in a bottle
right it just continues as it was we
have to make no changes we don't have to
recompile it at all so we have no
capability maintenance burden whilst
someone else is maintaining the Android
port or even if it's unsupported
can run it in a complete isolated manner
we can still you know play pokemon
pokemon go requires internet right but
we could you know there's a whole bunch
of things that we can do offline we
could have encrypted email clients and
things that are in the complex processor
if we need to we also needed to think
about saying well you know we actually
could do email on 1980s computers let's
take that spirit of you know crazy
optimization that exists on the
commodore 64 in particular and say well
that's actually let's make an email
program that is sufficiently functional
to be useful but that can run in the
secure 8-bit environment so we can go
down we can suspend the running of the
8-bit computer we've designed this in
and we have what we call matrix modes we
have the nice cream let us come down and
then you can inspect the entire state of
the machine and it's frozen at that
point so there's nothing that malicious
software can do to hide and you could
actually have a printout of every byte
of your email program for example and
compare that if you're you know
particularly paranoid mode to not even
you know do not just confirm that it was
once secure but that right now it is
unsullied uncompromised and i know of no
other approach to you know digital
sovereignty in secure computing that's
able to deliver that the full
sovereignty back into the hands of the
owner of the device so that you can
truly own the device you can repurpose
it you can do whatever you want with it
and our next challenge is how we can try
and create a viable business model
around that we're actually looking at
creating bespoke mobile devices for
people living with disability because
this is a horribly underserved sector at
the moment there are people who you know
for example if you have cerebral palsy
you might not have fine motor control so
using a touchscreen is really hard
because under your hand only has really
coarse movements but they might be able
to for example use a joystick interface
so we can make the 8-bit you know
supervisor the Bacall the little brother
can pretend to be the touchscreen panel
but driven by a joystick you're right
here is now a phone like device that
someone who could never use a smartphone
before can now use and it can run all
the Android apps that they want they can
participate fully
the digital world and that this is a use
case that as I say can be economically
profitable socially profitable and that
the community the broad non-technical
communique this is great this is a we
need this kind of technology because it
bridges the digital divide it gives
agency to people who need agency and we
can no further show that the digital
sovereignty you know really helps in
that space and say okay we can actually
make a predictive text input model that
just kind of is general for folks that
might like that kind of device but you
know what I can actually modify that I
can change the code on this simple
machine because it's simple I don't have
to rethink about how do i compile
android i can modify it in real time on
the device and say oh look now i can do
this and i can now do input 40% or 400%
faster than i could with the
one-size-fits-all kind of approach so we
think that there are viable business
models around making this kind of device
and this is actually really important to
us because remember we're in the digital
autumn who knows the Aesop's fable of
the grasshopper in the end not many
maybe have a read so the the general
story is this grasshopper is you know
playing his fiddle and having a great
time in the summer while our ant is busy
putting food away to the winter because
the grasshoppers are but there's always
more food there's always more time we
don't need to do anything now the ant
knows winter is coming and so then when
winter comes and the ants are well fed
and warm and well supplied and the
grasshopper is begging the ants for food
let us not we are the community who are
aware of this need we know winter is
coming
let us not merely be idle as the
grasshopper was but let us work
diligently and have fun while we're
doing it to create these technologies
that will help us to survive a digital
winter where everything is stacked
against people being able to communicate
and maintain civil society and it might
even be that in that process we can stop
the digital winter in its
before it even happens are there any
questions feel free to come up to the
microphone
hello the set do you think this is a
profitable project with trouble hearing
no microphone maybe that sounds quite
okay okay that's it
do you see do you think this is a
profitable project do you remember what
happened to open moco predicted open
moco open moco M okay okay yeah yes so
they're making cellular modems and all
this I love what they're doing right the
more things we can do on the more fronts
the better but if the cellular networks
are not available we can't use open moko
cellular transmissions have been used in
the past so when Russia was invading
Crimea and the Russians were targeting
Crimean artillery by their mobile phone
emissions so we need
I love openwork oh and I want to see it
continue and do great things but we need
to have a whole variety of things so
that if there is any one particular
attack that you know society civil
society can be resilient to it we need
not a monoculture but we need to have a
diversity a complete ecosystem of
different things I don't want everyone
just to make megaphone so I want people
to make all manner of sovereign devices
so that we are truly resistant so that
if even one gets some terrible you know
disease to use the ecological model and
is wiped out the rest are there and more
keep coming up cool if there's any
further questions I'll be outside I'm
easy to find we have 15 seconds how do
we get friends and family to care about
this if we if we have believed this
story how do we get family and friends
to care about it this is hard this is
what I think the disability angle is a
good one and just the need for family
and friends to communicate with one
another and not have to pay for the
privilege I think is actually the best
angle to get family and friends to think
about it works in Vanuatu I can't see
why it can't work here in you know in
other countries as well so I need to
clear the stage but happy to catch
people outside
you