[00:01.920 --> 00:02.980]  Thanks very much.
[00:03.220 --> 00:04.540]  I'm Tom Lowenthal.
[00:04.680 --> 00:10.120]  I'm the staff technologist at the Committee to Protect Journalists and I'm here to talk to you about journalists.
[00:10.760 --> 00:16.430]  Before I get started, I want to let you know that this talk is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike license.
[00:16.820 --> 00:23.600]  The presentation that I'm about to give is a performance of my written script and the audio and video recording is also subject to that license.
[00:24.400 --> 00:24.680]  Great.
[00:26.160 --> 00:34.600]  This session is for everyone because everyone here cares about computers and about what the future holds.
[00:35.300 --> 00:40.780]  It's hard to build the future that you want, that you can imagine a good future.
[00:41.020 --> 00:44.120]  Some of that's because making great things is difficult.
[00:45.060 --> 00:47.320]  But that's not the only obstacle.
[00:48.120 --> 00:52.780]  Sometimes the hardest part of doing good work isn't the work part.
[00:53.200 --> 00:56.660]  It's getting all the obstacles out of the way.
[00:57.680 --> 01:05.640]  While this isn't a technical talk, it will be useful to people who make software, who make tools, who build things.
[01:05.920 --> 01:17.720]  I hope you'll come away thinking a little differently about the tools you develop and, in particular, about the people you're developing those tools for.
[01:18.940 --> 01:24.920]  I've been the staff technologist at the Committee to Protect Journalists for a little over two years.
[01:25.500 --> 01:29.180]  Before that, I was project coordinator at the Tor Project.
[01:29.180 --> 01:36.080]  And paranoia advocate on Mozilla's privacy and public policy team in San Francisco.
[01:37.020 --> 01:41.680]  As organizations go, the Committee to Protect Journalists is a pretty descriptive name.
[01:42.020 --> 01:48.940]  Our job is to protect journalists and, like a committee, we're swift and nimble and make decisions real quick.
[01:50.540 --> 01:52.520]  Overall, we're a watchdog.
[01:52.740 --> 01:55.580]  We track press freedom violations around the world.
[01:56.100 --> 02:07.160]  We enumerate every single journalist who's kidnapped, arrested, detained, assaulted, attacked, beaten, raped, or murdered.
[02:07.760 --> 02:26.040]  Every year, we publish a comprehensive, meticulously researched list of every single journalist who's imprisoned at the point of January 1st and everyone who's been murdered in retaliation for or in the course of their journalism that year.
[02:26.620 --> 02:29.420]  So our blog is a little depressing.
[02:31.000 --> 02:39.620]  We also provide direct assistance and support to journalists when they need help paying for medical or legal expenses.
[02:40.420 --> 02:47.000]  And occasionally we assist people when they need to leave a very dangerous situation.
[02:47.880 --> 02:53.420]  I'm incredibly proud of the work that we do to protect and assist journalists.
[02:54.140 --> 02:58.640]  I work with a team of smart, driven, talented people.
[02:58.640 --> 03:03.600]  people who work incredibly hard at our mission.
[03:05.020 --> 03:14.020]  We do the hard work of reporting and advocacy, but those things only go so far.
[03:14.880 --> 03:19.640]  When a journalist is kidnapped by Daesh, their life's at risk.
[03:19.960 --> 03:24.000]  And there's not a lot that we can do to help.
[03:24.360 --> 03:29.320]  We can help a little bit, but that's a dangerous situation.
[03:30.200 --> 03:36.140]  And reporting and advocacy aren't all that persuasive to Daesh.
[03:37.680 --> 03:45.740]  When a journalist has been beaten in retaliation for their reporting, we can help them out with medical bills.
[03:45.840 --> 03:48.920]  We may be able to assist them in other ways.
[03:49.060 --> 03:53.380]  But we can't erase that terrifying trauma that they've experienced.
[03:54.660 --> 03:59.740]  When a journalist is murdered, there's nothing that we can do to bring them back.
[03:59.960 --> 04:07.360]  The best we can hope is to hold their murderers accountable and prevent more murders in future.
[04:08.220 --> 04:17.200]  What I really want to do is stop journalists from getting kidnapped, arrested, detained, assaulted, attacked, beaten, raped, or murdered in the first place.
[04:17.490 --> 04:20.850]  And that's what I want your help for.
[04:23.170 --> 04:33.150]  I want to talk to you about how to help journalists by thinking about journalists by thinking about them and talking about them in the first place.
[04:34.760 --> 04:41.760]  I'm sure that by deciding to show up or tune in, you're expressing that you care about journalists.
[04:41.760 --> 04:45.030]  You care about the practice of journalism, of free press, of fourth estate.
[04:45.550 --> 04:50.020]  But I'm not just asking you to help me because it's the right thing to do.
[04:50.350 --> 04:51.550]  And it really is.
[04:53.590 --> 05:01.110]  I think that thinking and talking about journalists helps helps make a better world in other ways.
[05:01.260 --> 05:02.960]  It helps you write better software.
[05:03.270 --> 05:04.900]  It helps you build better tools.
[05:05.110 --> 05:10.790]  It helps the advocacy, the conversations that you're already having be more effective.
[05:11.790 --> 05:22.260]  Whether you're advocating against backdoors or for the free and open Internet or just arguing with an acquaintance or a colleague who just doesn't get it.
[05:24.550 --> 05:32.930]  Coincidentally, the advice that I'm giving you here is is also pretty useful at making a world where journalists are protected from harm.
[05:33.220 --> 05:35.520]  So we win in both ways.
[05:35.670 --> 05:39.780]  You get to make better stuff and I get a world where journalists are better protected.
[05:39.840 --> 05:41.900]  So I think it's a pretty good deal all around.
[05:43.730 --> 05:45.840]  So cast your mind back.
[05:48.610 --> 05:49.610]  Like way back.
[05:49.780 --> 05:55.380]  Like not just HOPE 10, HOPE 9, but I want you to think about the 20th century.
[05:55.850 --> 06:06.790]  If you're as young as me, you might not remember much of it, but maybe you can piece together some bits and pieces from the baby boomer focused pop culture from the last few decades.
[06:08.340 --> 06:13.550]  So once upon a time, in the 20th century, it was really expensive to be a journalist.
[06:14.580 --> 06:18.080]  If you wanted to publish a newspaper, you needed a printing press.
[06:18.290 --> 06:20.040]  That's a huge machine.
[06:20.320 --> 06:25.880]  It's loud and it's hot and it needs a team of engineers to make sure that it doesn't catch fire or jam.
[06:25.880 --> 06:31.820]  If you think that a printer jam is difficult, that's got nothing on a printing press.
[06:32.080 --> 06:35.320]  Like you know when you try to pull the piece of paper out and it doesn't quite come out?
[06:35.640 --> 06:37.780]  A printing press will literally kill you.
[06:40.080 --> 06:42.880]  Making a newspaper used to be really hard.
[06:43.170 --> 06:53.430]  If you wanted to make video news, you needed bulky cameras and camera operators and boom microphones and grips and magnetic tape.
[06:53.640 --> 06:57.540]  Just like reels and reels and reels of magnetic tape.
[06:58.640 --> 07:08.980]  And then even after you've edited all that work and produced the documentary or the program or what have you, you need to broadcast it.
[07:09.400 --> 07:12.140]  And that requires a huge antenna.
[07:12.600 --> 07:18.430]  And again, even more engineers and copper cabling and all kinds of junk.
[07:19.120 --> 07:22.200]  So it's a lot of work to be a journalist in the 20th century.
[07:22.480 --> 07:23.980]  So people teamed up.
[07:24.260 --> 07:26.600]  Someone with a lot of money buys the printing press.
[07:26.780 --> 07:33.730]  And then they hire a bunch of reporters and editors and photographers and advertising sellers and delivery staff.
[07:34.040 --> 07:41.080]  And they build a big old business and somehow find a building to put that printing press in.
[07:41.080 --> 07:44.600]  And so you could tell who was a journalist.
[07:44.840 --> 07:55.790]  Because if you were employed by a company that had a printing press or a radio station or hundreds of people with TV cameras, you were a journalist.
[07:56.080 --> 07:57.050]  That's who was a journalist.
[07:57.290 --> 07:59.990]  And anyone else wasn't a journalist.
[08:01.580 --> 08:10.700]  If I, in the 20th century, felt like popping out for an afternoon and polishing off a spot of journalism, it wasn't going to happen.
[08:12.160 --> 08:15.140]  Like, maybe I could go out and do some research.
[08:15.230 --> 08:16.930]  And maybe I could write a story.
[08:17.400 --> 08:21.920]  And maybe I could, you know, find the truth at the heart of whatever it is I'm talking about.
[08:21.920 --> 08:25.170]  And, you know, make sure to check my facts and write it up well.
[08:25.420 --> 08:27.850]  And edit it into some Hemingway-esque prose.
[08:28.110 --> 08:30.840]  But then, I'd have one copy of that.
[08:30.990 --> 08:34.950]  And I'd have to keep typing it out to send to all my friends who wouldn't read it anyway.
[08:37.000 --> 08:41.240]  And if I really want to be a journalist, I need that printing press.
[08:41.360 --> 08:44.240]  I need access to the radio station.
[08:44.430 --> 08:47.310]  And if you want to do that, you need to do a lot of it.
[08:47.360 --> 08:51.740]  Because the person with the printing press wants to have consistent journalism every day.
[08:51.830 --> 08:53.070]  They want their rules followed.
[08:53.480 --> 08:59.210]  They want that big business that sells the advertising and sells the copies.
[08:59.210 --> 09:05.140]  So, you can't be a journalist some of the time.
[09:05.280 --> 09:08.710]  You either are or you aren't in the 20th century.
[09:09.360 --> 09:14.430]  And journalism was... it's for the professionals.
[09:15.100 --> 09:18.380]  If you're a journalist, you do journalism.
[09:18.380 --> 09:22.450]  And if you're not a journalist, you don't do any journalism.
[09:22.930 --> 09:24.400]  No one else does any journalism.
[09:24.540 --> 09:25.330]  And that's just how it is.
[09:26.140 --> 09:28.210]  But, you know, things changed.
[09:29.120 --> 09:35.900]  We built a couple of things in the last few decades that make it a lot easier to receive and impart information.
[09:37.450 --> 09:57.620]  Almost everyone in this room, certainly everyone watching the live stream, has a camera with them that in every measurable aspect is superior to the ones that those 20th century journalists were using to film Kennedy or take photos of Reagan.
[09:58.730 --> 10:10.000]  You can immediately send out text and videos and recordings and documents and databases and pretty much any other way to encode information or express an idea.
[10:10.290 --> 10:13.280]  You can send that out to anyone you can imagine.
[10:13.450 --> 10:17.830]  Anyone you can just decide how to reach immediately.
[10:18.450 --> 10:20.170]  It makes journalism a lot easier.
[10:20.640 --> 10:25.020]  I mean, I guess it has other purposes too, but I care about the journalists.
[10:25.970 --> 10:32.260]  So right now, if I'm boring you, you can do some journalism right now.
[10:32.400 --> 10:35.020]  You could go and spend 20 minutes doing some journalism.
[10:35.190 --> 10:36.790]  You could spend an hour doing some journalism.
[10:36.950 --> 10:42.040]  You could spend a week taking, you know, every other evening and do some journalism there.
[10:43.370 --> 10:46.740]  In fact, I'm sure that most of you have done some journalism.
[10:47.830 --> 10:59.710]  When you tweeted a Vine of someone being arrested or you posted a photo of a car crash or that really pithy one-line Foursquare review of the bagels that you didn't really like.
[11:00.280 --> 11:01.280]  That's journalism.
[11:01.540 --> 11:03.830]  It's a small piece of journalism.
[11:04.210 --> 11:06.780]  It doesn't mean that you spend all your time doing it.
[11:06.860 --> 11:09.680]  But those were acts of journalism.
[11:09.680 --> 11:15.700]  And I'm sure that many of the people in this room have done even larger acts of journalism.
[11:16.020 --> 11:20.960]  You've written longer articles or you've shot a longer video or you've recorded a podcast.
[11:21.440 --> 11:22.680]  That's journalism too.
[11:24.360 --> 11:27.820]  So which of you are the journalists?
[11:28.560 --> 11:33.140]  It's certainly not just the people in this room who work for the BBC and the New York Times.
[11:34.420 --> 11:51.460]  It's certainly not even just those people and the freelancers who are out there putting life and limb on the line to get the news without even a major organization backing them.
[11:52.160 --> 11:57.980]  What about someone who hosts a podcast or runs a YouTube series?
[11:58.400 --> 11:59.960]  What about someone who writes a blog?
[11:59.960 --> 12:04.040]  Does having a Twitter account automatically make you a journalist?
[12:04.460 --> 12:06.280]  Maybe there's a word count.
[12:06.440 --> 12:12.280]  And if you do enough journalism every day, you count as a journalist and everyone else is still a not-journalist.
[12:12.980 --> 12:17.040]  So as you can probably guess, I don't believe in any of those explanations.
[12:18.120 --> 12:23.140]  Even though I'm talking about journalists, I don't think we should talk about journalists at all.
[12:23.140 --> 12:36.120]  The idea of a journalist as a distinct identity, as a particular sort of person that some people are and some people aren't, that doesn't really mean as much as it did 50 years ago.
[12:37.560 --> 12:45.620]  It's a 20th century word that encodes a 20th century way of thinking about the world and categorizing people and deciding what people do.
[12:46.900 --> 12:50.900]  So I don't really talk about journalists any more than I have to.
[12:51.280 --> 12:58.140]  I much prefer to talk about acts of journalism and the people who undertake acts of journalism.
[13:00.040 --> 13:03.980]  So I dragged you all in here under the pretense of talking about journalists.
[13:04.280 --> 13:07.740]  And now I'm telling you that I don't really want you to talk about journalists.
[13:08.320 --> 13:09.820]  That sounds like a bait and switch.
[13:13.340 --> 13:25.180]  When all sorts of people are performing acts of journalism all the time, the idea of protecting journalists has to transform.
[13:25.380 --> 13:26.830]  It has to reflect that new reality.
[13:27.160 --> 13:35.560]  So it becomes the idea of making it safe to conduct journalism, safe to perform acts of journalism.
[13:35.560 --> 13:44.330]  We're not protecting people anymore, although we are protecting people, but we are protecting a behavior.
[13:44.600 --> 13:50.140]  We're creating an environment where journalism can happen safely.
[13:51.400 --> 14:01.710]  So it's not just about getting reporters out of prison or paying medical bills after they get beaten up or making sure that their murderers face justice.
[14:01.710 --> 14:08.700]  Although those things are still important because there are still professional journalists and, you know, at least a couple of them do a good job.
[14:10.880 --> 14:24.780]  We need to change the playing field so that it's safe to perform journalism without being afraid of censorship or reprisal or retaliation.
[14:26.390 --> 14:28.300]  And you might have noticed this.
[14:28.460 --> 14:29.300]  I don't know.
[14:29.400 --> 14:31.080]  Maybe this crowd is not super into it.
[14:31.200 --> 14:38.640]  But a lot of this new journalism that's conducted by people who aren't professional journalists, a lot of that happens on computers.
[14:39.460 --> 14:40.710]  And that's kind of my thing.
[14:40.830 --> 14:42.400]  I'm really into computers.
[14:43.120 --> 14:44.400]  I think you might be too.
[14:45.140 --> 14:49.980]  I care about an open Internet built on freely available interoperable standards.
[14:50.360 --> 14:55.830]  I care about computers that are trustworthy and which obey and protect their owners.
[14:56.780 --> 15:04.560]  I want people to be able to trust their computers, to rely on them, to be able to talk privately.
[15:04.560 --> 15:08.600]  And be confident that when you're talking privately, you really are talking privately.
[15:08.780 --> 15:16.210]  That that conversation that you entered into under the guise that it is confidential remains confidential.
[15:16.520 --> 15:26.700]  And that when you decide who you want to be friends with or who you want to talk to, you don't need to worry about some large men in dark suits and glasses knocking on your door next week.
[15:26.700 --> 15:32.820]  Because that's terrifying enough in the United States, but it's deadly in other places.
[15:33.260 --> 15:38.820]  And hopefully you care about some of those same things, because that's what I want to build.
[15:39.500 --> 15:42.380]  A little while ago, as I said, I worked at Mozilla.
[15:42.640 --> 15:49.210]  And a lot of my job there was advocating for an open Internet and supporting free and open-source software.
[15:49.460 --> 15:51.520]  And all of that good stuff.
[15:52.710 --> 15:55.080]  And my job was to persuade people.
[15:55.640 --> 15:56.920]  To cajole people.
[15:57.260 --> 16:02.200]  To get people to agree to that vision of a world.
[16:03.230 --> 16:05.980]  And then get down to the nuts and bolts of building it.
[16:07.400 --> 16:08.980]  So, I was very lucky.
[16:09.140 --> 16:14.200]  And a lot of the time, I talked to folks who already basically agreed with me.
[16:14.520 --> 16:22.620]  And we could skip the pitch part and get straight to the, how do we work together to build a techno-utopian ideal of our dreams.
[16:23.420 --> 16:24.520]  Those were good days.
[16:25.260 --> 16:28.200]  But sometimes, I got a completely different reaction.
[16:28.360 --> 16:29.710]  And you may have experienced this too.
[16:30.920 --> 16:33.100]  So, sometimes people would say, Tom.
[16:33.520 --> 16:35.460]  Tom, I get what you're saying.
[16:35.640 --> 16:36.800]  I really do.
[16:37.140 --> 16:42.500]  But what if the person who wants to talk privately is a terrorist?
[16:43.420 --> 16:46.400]  I mean, a terrorist who's a wizard.
[16:46.980 --> 16:48.210]  With a nuke.
[16:48.680 --> 16:50.800]  And, because obviously that's not enough.
[16:51.060 --> 16:52.080]  Those are dime a dozen.
[16:52.360 --> 16:54.740]  A terrorist wizard with a nuke who hates America.
[16:56.620 --> 16:58.380]  And that's the important part there.
[16:59.060 --> 17:12.960]  And then after this, you know, that conversation, I had to take time out of my busy schedule of building this techno-utopia that I want to see in the world and explain to this person that there's no such thing as wizards.
[17:13.680 --> 17:17.230]  And if there were, why would a wizard need a nuke?
[17:17.340 --> 17:18.360]  That doesn't make any sense.
[17:18.600 --> 17:26.540]  And, yes, it's understandable to be afraid of terrorism, of other threats.
[17:26.700 --> 17:28.710]  But that's really an improbable scenario.
[17:28.960 --> 17:35.120]  And did you know that terrorists have other really good ways to communicate secretly without having Raiv S. Shamir and Alderman do their math homework?
[17:37.740 --> 17:52.490]  And not only is that conversation exhausting, and it really is exhausting to have that conversation over and over again, but it takes away that important time that you could be spending building the bright future that awaits us all on the oft-world colonies.
[17:53.160 --> 17:55.460]  And I think that's what we're all really here for.
[17:56.960 --> 18:01.400]  So, again, I haven't really connected all this with journalism yet.
[18:01.400 --> 18:03.710]  But here's the trick.
[18:03.920 --> 18:07.250]  This is the one weird trick that you read in the session description.
[18:07.820 --> 18:24.140]  I learned that you can sidestep the wizard terrorists with a nuke debate almost every time if, instead of just talking about people and their fundamental human right to receive and impart information free of interference, instead of talking about people,
[18:24.490 --> 18:26.380]  you say, journalists.
[18:27.720 --> 18:29.750]  Journalists need to be able to talk privately.
[18:30.440 --> 18:31.900]  Journalists need secure computers.
[18:32.200 --> 18:34.600]  Journalists need to be able to protect the anonymity of their sources.
[18:34.880 --> 18:44.580]  Journalists need to know that their computers aren't spying on them or covertly recording their conversations or discreetly telling Vladimir Putin where they are and who they're talking to at every moment of every day.
[18:44.940 --> 18:46.160]  And don't get me wrong.
[18:46.380 --> 18:50.270]  I don't think that anyone should be subjected to Putin's unwavering attention.
[18:50.700 --> 19:01.300]  But when I start out talking about journalists in particular, I generally dodge any discussion of a wizard terrorist with a nuke and get straight to the important part, the words that are music to my ears.
[19:01.880 --> 19:02.990]  So how can I help?
[19:04.420 --> 19:08.770]  And that's what I want you to be able to get to by talking about journalists.
[19:09.200 --> 19:14.940]  But it gets better than that because let's say someone's still conflicted.
[19:14.990 --> 19:19.120]  They still, in the back of their mind, are thinking about the hypothetical wizard terrorist with a nuke.
[19:19.120 --> 19:25.080]  But they also want to help out journalists for journalism.
[19:25.080 --> 19:28.880]  Because that's an important valued ideal in our society.
[19:28.880 --> 19:31.360]  Freedom of speech and of the press.
[19:32.140 --> 19:42.400]  So if they were worried about the terrorist wizard with a nuke, but they also wanted to help out journalists, what would that work look like?
[19:42.860 --> 19:49.100]  Well, now we don't know who's going to be performing acts of journalism tomorrow.
[19:50.180 --> 19:52.440]  We don't know who their sources are going to be.
[19:52.620 --> 19:56.160]  We don't know what they're going to be reporting on or where or why.
[19:56.990 --> 20:02.880]  We can't pin down this constituency of journalists the way that we might have been able to do in the 20th century.
[20:04.200 --> 20:15.770]  So if we want to protect journalism, we can't make tools that are just safe when they're used for journalism, but not when they're used for making dinner plans.
[20:15.940 --> 20:23.460]  Because if you're not a professional journalist, you're probably not installing a journalist-only tool.
[20:23.710 --> 20:27.660]  You're not using the special journalist communication platform.
[20:27.660 --> 20:37.470]  You're using the same tools that you use to share cat pictures and tell someone that you need a pint of milk and make dinner reservations.
[20:37.840 --> 20:44.230]  You're not suddenly going to switch as soon as you're gathering and reporting information about something that happened.
[20:44.230 --> 20:54.100]  So the only way to make journalism a safe practice is to make everything else safe to begin with.
[20:54.470 --> 20:56.880]  The Internet needs to be a safe place.
[20:57.270 --> 21:01.510]  The cell phones that most of us carry need to be safe and trustworthy.
[21:01.840 --> 21:06.960]  As do your thermostat and your robot vacuum and every other technical tool.
[21:06.960 --> 21:11.840]  It needs to follow your instructions and keep you safe.
[21:12.180 --> 21:26.660]  So if you want to build a world in the 21st century where journalism is safe, the only sensible way to do that is to build that same techno-utopia that I was talking about before.
[21:28.730 --> 21:34.840]  This is a great strategy, I think, to use when you're talking to anyone.
[21:34.840 --> 21:38.940]  You know, whether it's your uncle at Thanksgiving or a senator in D.C.
[21:39.790 --> 21:41.560]  Because fear is distracting.
[21:43.360 --> 21:47.750]  And humans, we are very good at thinking about a worst case scenario.
[21:47.990 --> 21:52.060]  At obsessing over the worst possible outcome no matter how likely it is.
[21:52.600 --> 21:58.720]  And especially people who live in North America, we're constantly told that there are things to be afraid of.
[21:58.720 --> 22:04.880]  We are shown images of very unlikely events that have occurred once somewhere.
[22:05.320 --> 22:13.740]  And told sometimes plausible, sometimes less plausible stories about people who want to kill us or things that can cause us harm.
[22:13.920 --> 22:15.880]  It's very easy to be afraid.
[22:16.200 --> 22:21.120]  And when you're afraid, you literally can't think straight.
[22:21.120 --> 22:30.380]  It's not possible to have a reasoned process for working through information when you're afraid.
[22:30.600 --> 22:32.840]  Your brain literally can't do that.
[22:33.400 --> 22:38.840]  So when people are afraid, they dwell on those negative outcomes, on those downsides.
[22:38.840 --> 22:47.420]  But for some reason, when you talk about journalists, it disengages that fear part of your mind.
[22:47.580 --> 22:49.020]  You stop thinking about being afraid.
[22:49.320 --> 22:53.000]  And it lets you remain rational and engage with that conversation.
[22:54.600 --> 22:55.180]  Hopeful.
[22:55.380 --> 22:57.020]  You can have hope.
[22:57.140 --> 22:58.940]  It engages the idealism part of your brain.
[22:58.940 --> 23:03.260]  Because the idea of journalism is this fourth estate.
[23:05.310 --> 23:12.060]  This noble, principled activity that people do that is part of an honest democratic society.
[23:12.520 --> 23:17.960]  So it gets you into an idealist state of mind and lets you imagine that better future.
[23:18.400 --> 23:29.500]  So when you're talking about privacy and security, places where it's already easy to descend into nihilism and think about the worst possible outcomes and the worst things that are happening.
[23:30.260 --> 23:31.520]  Think about journalists.
[23:32.000 --> 23:33.240]  Talk about journalists.
[23:33.660 --> 23:36.060]  Cue up your idealism lobe and other people's.
[23:36.860 --> 23:42.000]  Paint a portrait for yourself and for others of a positive future.
[23:42.280 --> 23:45.660]  Of the ways that we can make the world better.
[23:47.140 --> 23:48.580]  But you don't need to stop there.
[23:48.880 --> 23:55.220]  You don't just need to think about journalists and talk about journalists when you're advocating with someone else.
[23:55.220 --> 23:57.260]  When you're communicating your values.
[23:59.660 --> 24:04.780]  Use the idea of journalists and journalism when you make things too.
[24:05.680 --> 24:09.380]  If you're building a tool that you want people to use.
[24:09.440 --> 24:10.880]  That you want people to use safely.
[24:11.140 --> 24:13.020]  That follows their expectations.
[24:13.020 --> 24:14.180]  That protects them.
[24:14.760 --> 24:17.720]  Make sure that one of your user profiles is a journalist.
[24:18.580 --> 24:22.000]  This is helpful because journalists are mostly human.
[24:22.000 --> 24:26.240]  And in many ways have the same needs as other people.
[24:26.500 --> 24:27.840]  They need to talk to people.
[24:27.980 --> 24:31.140]  They need to take pictures and share videos and write documents and take notes.
[24:31.440 --> 24:37.220]  They also do not have one jot of time to wrestle with your garbage software.
[24:37.500 --> 24:39.200]  They have journalism to do.
[24:39.780 --> 24:42.060]  Important incisive investigative journalism.
[24:42.340 --> 24:44.560]  They have sources to interview and stories to write.
[24:45.400 --> 24:48.220]  Even though they don't need to wrangle the printing press.
[24:48.340 --> 24:49.420]  That still takes a lot of time.
[24:50.360 --> 24:55.840]  So if you write software that takes a degree in graph theory and a relatively robust understanding of discrete mathematics.
[24:56.380 --> 24:57.920]  No one can use it.
[25:00.050 --> 25:01.980]  And if you're writing a software.
[25:02.680 --> 25:03.720]  A piece of software.
[25:03.880 --> 25:05.660]  You probably do care about how it works.
[25:05.760 --> 25:07.540]  You care about the implementation details.
[25:07.540 --> 25:09.640]  How elegant your design is.
[25:09.820 --> 25:12.220]  And how carefully you solve the interesting technical problems.
[25:13.420 --> 25:16.500]  Because that's what motivated you to write this piece of software.
[25:17.320 --> 25:18.800]  Your users do not care.
[25:19.120 --> 25:21.480]  They do not care how elegant your solution is.
[25:21.740 --> 25:23.400]  They do not care how nice your code is.
[25:23.680 --> 25:26.360]  They care that their messages go to the person they're talking to.
[25:26.900 --> 25:32.940]  They care about the thing that they are going to do as soon as they can get away from using this piece of software.
[25:32.940 --> 25:35.580]  Because using your software is not their end.
[25:35.820 --> 25:37.280]  They care about sending emoji.
[25:38.720 --> 25:59.240]  Journalists and all other humans want to spend the absolute minimum amount of time, thought, and effort using software so that they can go back to reporting and communicating the truth in a world made of spin and fear and the Republican National Convention.
[26:00.700 --> 26:03.580]  They want to spend as much time as possible not using your software.
[26:04.040 --> 26:12.340]  If you design for a user who wants to get away from your tool as soon as humanly possible, you will make software that is a joy to use for everyone.
[26:12.980 --> 26:16.960]  So I know that I've been a little flippant during this talk.
[26:17.240 --> 26:19.960]  Certainly the description of it is pretty tongue-in-cheek.
[26:20.180 --> 26:25.120]  But the need that I'm talking about, the urgency, is deadly serious.
[26:25.120 --> 26:32.120]  I haven't been telling you this just because it's a neat trick to avoid tedious conversations with your uncle at Thanksgiving.
[26:32.520 --> 26:38.320]  If you watched Biella's talk about Anonymous yesterday, you know that technology isn't value-free.
[26:38.560 --> 26:41.220]  It's not neutral and it doesn't exist in a vacuum.
[26:41.540 --> 26:46.100]  And it's sure as heck not viewed from a place of dispassionate technical detachment.
[26:46.100 --> 26:50.300]  There's a moral component to the development of software.
[26:51.400 --> 26:52.420]  Labels matter.
[26:53.220 --> 26:54.480]  People's opinions matter.
[26:54.960 --> 26:57.860]  I know that that's not what you want to think when you're writing software.
[26:58.200 --> 27:08.000]  You enjoy the purity of the experience, the way that what you write is immediately translated into information processing truth.
[27:08.000 --> 27:13.320]  But what people think of your work makes a difference to your community.
[27:13.660 --> 27:20.480]  It makes a difference to the people who support you and the people who might want to support your work.
[27:20.480 --> 27:40.180]  As Christopher Soghoian said at his presentation last year at HOPE 10, it really does make a difference whether you tell people that Signal and Tor are tools for LGBT activists in Sudan, or critical cybersecurity technologies that protect valuable American intellectual property.
[27:40.400 --> 27:41.460]  That matters.
[27:41.860 --> 27:42.920]  That makes a difference.
[27:43.180 --> 27:50.280]  And if you are someone who focuses on the technical, it can be easy to elide that difference.
[27:50.280 --> 27:52.800]  But it does affect your technical work.
[27:53.200 --> 27:57.460]  Now, of course, Signal and Tor are both of those things because they're tools.
[27:57.740 --> 27:59.020]  And you know that.
[27:59.020 --> 27:59.980]  And I know that.
[28:00.620 --> 28:04.340]  And tools are just tools and they do what they use at once.
[28:04.560 --> 28:07.440]  But the way that we represent our community matters.
[28:07.820 --> 28:14.400]  It matters because it affects who's interested and who's comfortable joining us.
[28:14.400 --> 28:18.260]  And what type of direction they take our work in.
[28:18.380 --> 28:20.280]  And what type of direction they work in.
[28:20.760 --> 28:36.880]  And if you talk about the work that you do in the context of making the world a better place through technology, you'll make friends and colleagues and coworkers and have supporters who have those same goals in mind.
[28:36.880 --> 28:43.480]  And that affects the actions of others who have the opportunity to support and agree with you.
[28:44.060 --> 28:45.700]  Even if they don't already.
[28:46.140 --> 28:47.420]  So that's my pitch.
[28:47.740 --> 28:49.640]  I want you to start talking about journalists.
[28:50.260 --> 28:52.680]  If you do, you will save lives.
[28:52.820 --> 28:54.760]  And you'll make the world a better place.
[28:54.940 --> 28:56.660]  And that's not so bad an outcome.
[28:57.400 --> 28:57.920]  Thank you.
[29:05.480 --> 29:08.120]  So now we have time for questions, if anyone's interested.
[29:11.320 --> 29:15.640]  If you want to walk up the aisle here, because I think there's only one microphone, so we'll have to share.
[29:18.120 --> 29:18.520]  No?
[29:18.740 --> 29:19.120]  All right.
[29:19.260 --> 29:20.420]  You have half an hour back.
[29:20.720 --> 29:21.720]  Thank you very much.
[29:21.720 --> 29:21.820]  Thank you very much.