Name: What Led to the Creation of Signal
Uploaded: 2020-12-01T20:22:36.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'What Led to the Creation of Signal' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-12-01. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'What Led to the Creation of Signal' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-12-01. Transcript available.

The Joe Rogan Experience
There's like, fundamentally there's two ways to think about security.
One is like computer security, this idea that we'll somehow make computers
secure.
We'll put information on the computers and then we'll prevent other people from
accessing those computers.
And that is like a losing strategy that people have been losing for 30 years,
you know.
Information ends up on a computer somewhere and it ends up compromised in the
end.
The other way to think about security is information security, where you secure
the information itself,
that you don't have to worry about the security of the computers.
You could have some computers in the cloud somewhere, information's flowing
through them,
and people can compromise those things and it doesn't really matter,
because the information itself is encrypted.
And so, you know, things like SMS, you know, the iMessage cloud backups,
most other messengers, Facebook Messenger, all that stuff, you know,
they're relying on this computer security model.
And that ends up disappointing people in the end.
And so, you, why did you guys create it?
Like, what was unsatisfactory about the other options that were available?
Well, because the way the internet works today is like insane.
You know, that, you know, fundamentally, I feel like private communication is
important because I think that change happens in private.
And everything that is fundamentally decent today started out as something that
was a socially unacceptable idea at the time.
You look at things like, you know, obvious things like abolition of slavery,
legalization of marijuana,
legalization of same-sex marriage, even, you know, constructing the Declaration
of Independence.
Those are all things that required a space for people to process ideas outside
the context of everyday life.
And those spaces don't exist on the internet today.
And I think it's kind of crazy the way the internet works today.
You know, that like, if you imagined, you know, every moment that you were
talking to somebody in real life,
there was somebody there just with a clipboard, a stranger, taking notes about
what you said.
That would change the character of your conversations.
And I think that in some ways, like, we're living through a shortage of brave
or bold or courageous ideas,
in part because people don't have the space to process what's happening in
their lives outside of the context of everyday interactions, you know.
That's a really good way to put it, because you got to give people a chance to
think things through.
But if you do that publicly, they're not going to.
They're going to sort of like, like, basically what you see on Twitter.
You know, if you stray from what is considered to be the acceptable norm, or
the current ideology,
or whatever, whatever you're supposed to, whatever opinions you're supposed to
have on a certain subject,
you get attacked, ruthlessly so.
So you see a lot of self-censorship, and you also see a lot of virtue signaling,
where people sort of pretend that they espouse a certain series of ideas
because that'll get them some, you know, some social cred.
Yeah, exactly.
I think that communication in those environments is performative.
You know, you're either performing for an angry mob, you're performing for
advertisers,
you're performing for, you know, the governments that are watching.
Yeah.
And I think also the ideas that make it through are kind of tainted as a result,
you know, that like,
did you watch any of the, like the online hearing stuff that was happening over
COVID?
You know, where like, city councils and stuff were having their hearings online?
No, I did not.
It was kind of interesting to me because it's like, you know, they can't meet
in person.
So they're doing it online.
And that means that the public comment period was also online, you know.
And so it used to be that like, you know, if you go to a city council meeting,
they have a period of public comment
where, you know, people can just stand up and say what they think, you know.
And like, ordinarily, it's like, oh, you got to go to City Hall, you got to
like, wait in line, you got to sit there, you know.
But then when it's on Zoom, it's just sort of like, anyone can just show up on
the Zoom thing.
You know, they just dial in and they're just like, here's what I think, you
know.
And, you know, it was kind of interesting because particularly when a lot of
the police brutality still was happening in Los Angeles,
I was watching those city council hearings and, you know, people were just like,
you know, you know, they were just calling, you know, be like, fuck you, I
yield the rest of my time, fuck you, you know.
But like, it was just like, really brutal and not undeservedly so.
And, you know, what was interesting to me was just watching the politicians
basically, you know, who just had to sit there and just, they were just like,
take it.
And it was just like, you know, you get three minutes and then there's someone
else to get, you know, and they're just like, okay, and now we'll hear from,
you know, like, and, you know, watching that, you sort of realize that it's
like, to be a politician, you have to just sort of fundamentally,
not really care what people think of you, you know, you have to fundamentally
just be comfortable sitting, you know, and having people yell at you, you know,
for three minute, in three minute increments for an hour or whatever, you know.
And so it seems like what we've sort of done is like, bred these people who are
willing to do that, you know.
And in some ways that's like a useful characteristic, but in other ways that's
the characteristic of a psychopath, you know.
Yes, yes.
And I think, you know, what we're seeing is that that also extends outside of
those environments.
That's like, to do anything ambitious today requires that you just are
comfortable with that kind of feedback.
Like Trump's tweets.
If you watch, you know, if you look at Twitter and look at any of Trump's
tweets, when he tweets, watch what people say, it's ruthless.
They go crazy.
They go so hard on them.
So I'm assuming he doesn't read them.
I'm assuming he just, or maybe he does and just doesn't say anything, but he
doesn't go back and forth with people at least.
No, but, and I'm, I think, you know, Trump is perfectly capable of just not
caring, you know, just like people like, you know, grazing is just like, yeah,
whatever, what, you know, I'm the best.
They don't, you know.
And like, that's, you know, that's politics.
But I think, you know, the danger is when that, you know, to do anything
ambitious, you know, outside of politics or whatever, you know, requires that
you're capable of just not caring, you know, what people think or whatever,
because everything is happening in public.
I think you made a really good point in that change comes from people
discussing things privately because you have to, it's a, you have to be able to
take a chance.
You have to be daring and you have to be able to confide in people and you have
to be able to say, hey, this is not right.
And we're going to do something about it.
If you do that publicly, the powers that be that do not want change in any way,
shape or form, they'll, they'll come down on you.
And this is essentially what Edward Snowden was warning everyone about when he
decided to go public with all this NSA information.
He was saying, look, we, this is not what we signed up for.
You look, someone's constantly monitoring your emails, constantly listening to
phone calls.
Like this is not this mass surveillance thing.
It's very bad for just the culture of free expression, just our ability to have
ideas and to be able to share them back and forth and vet them out.
It's very bad.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I think when you look at the history of that kind of surveillance,
there are a few interesting inflection points, you know, like at the beginning
of, you know, the internet, as we know it, and like the early to mid nineties,
that were these like DOD efforts to do mass surveillance, you know?
And, um, they were sort of open about what they were doing.
Uh, uh, and, you know, one of them was this program called total information
awareness.
Uh, and, uh, it was, they were trying to start this office, I think called the
total awareness office or something within the DOD.
And the idea was like, they're just going to like collect information, uh, on
all Americans and everyone's communication and just stockpile it into these, uh,
databases.
And then they would use that to, you know, mind those things for information.
Uh, it was sort of like, you know, their, their, uh, effort to get in on this
at the beginning of the information age.
Uh, and you know, it was ridiculous.
You know, it's like, they called it total information awareness.
They had a logo that was like, um, you know, the, the pyramid with the eye on
top of it.
Oh yeah.
This is, this is their logo.
Oh God.
It's like the pyramid with the eye, like casting a beam on the earth.
That bit of Latin there means knowledge is power.
Oh wow.
And interesting.
This program was actually started by, uh, John Poindexter of all people who was
involved in the Iran-Contra stuff, I think.
Really?
Yeah.
And he, he like went to jail for a second and then was pardoned or something.
Uh, so anyway, you know, they're like, this is so fucked up.
These people are in charge of anything.
I know.
But what's also, I just kind of comical is that like, they were like, this is
what we're going to do.
Look at how crazy this is.
Like this, this is our plan.
You know?
And people were like, uh, I don't think so.
You know, like.
What year was this?
I, this is like early mid nineties.
Look at this.
Authentication, biometric data, face, fingerprints, gate, iris, your gate.
So they're going to identify people based on the way they walk.
I guess your gate is that specific.
Um, then automated virtual data repositories, privacy and security.
This is fascinating.
Cause if you look at, I mean, obviously no one thought of cell phones back then.
Exactly.
Right.
This is, so this is like kind of amateurish, right?
So it's like, they're like, this is what we're going to do.
You know?
And people were like, ah, I don't think so.
You know, even like Congress was like, ah, guys, I don't think we can like
approve this.
You know?
You need a better logo, you know?
Yeah, for sure.
But it's just this whole flow chart.
Is that what this would be?
What do you, what do you call something like this?
What are these called?
That works, I guess.
Flow chart, I guess, sort of.
Designed to dazzle you.
Yeah.
Approving there.
It's like baffling to figure out what it is.
Like, first of all, what are all those little color tubes?
Those little ones, those little cylinders.
Those are data silos.
Oh.
That's the universal.
They're all different colors.
There's purple ones.
Data.
Well, gate.
That's Prince.
That's where gate lives, yeah.
It's all Prince's information.
But so, okay, so that, you know, this, this stuff all sort of got shut down,
right?
Yeah.
They're like, okay, we can't do this, you know?
And then instead, what ended up happening was like data naturally accumulated
in different
places.
You know, that, you know, like back then, if you had been, you know, what they
were trying
to do is be like, our proposal is that everyone carry a government mandated
tracking
device at all times.
Like, what do you guys think?
You know, it'll make us safer, you know?
And people were like, no, I don't think so, you know?
But instead, everyone ended up just carrying cell phones at all times, which
are tracking
your location and reporting them into centralized repositories that government
has access to,
you know?
And so, you know, this, this sort of like oblique surveillance infrastructure
ended up emerging.
And that was what, you know, people sort of knew about, but, you know, didn't
really know.
And that's what Snowden revealed.
It was like, you know, instead, we don't have this.
Instead, it's like all of that, all of those things are happening naturally.
You know, you're, you know, gate detection, fingerprint, you know, like all
this stuff's
happening naturally.
It's ending up in these places.
And then, you know, governments are just going to those places and getting the
information.
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What Led to the Creation of Signal

The Joe Rogan Experience
There's like, fundamentally there's two ways to think about security.
One is like computer security, this idea that we'll somehow make computers
secure.
We'll put information on the computers and then we'll prevent other people from
accessing those computers.
And that is like a losing strategy that people have been losing for 30 years,
you know.
Information ends up on a computer somewhere and it ends up compromised in the
end.
The other way to think about security is information security, where you secure
the information itself,
that you don't have to worry about the security of the computers.
You could have some computers in the cloud somewhere, information's flowing
through them,
and people can compromise those things and it doesn't really matter,
because the information itself is encrypted.
And so, you know, things like SMS, you know, the iMessage cloud backups,
most other messengers, Facebook Messenger, all that stuff, you know,
they're relying on this computer security model.
And that ends up disappointing people in the end.
And so, you, why did you guys create it?
Like, what was unsatisfactory about the other options that were available?
Well, because the way the internet works today is like insane.
You know, that, you know, fundamentally, I feel like private communication is
important because I think that change happens in private.
And everything that is fundamentally decent today started out as something that
was a socially unacceptable idea at the time.
You look at things like, you know, obvious things like abolition of slavery,
legalization of marijuana,
legalization of same-sex marriage, even, you know, constructing the Declaration
of Independence.
Those are all things that required a space for people to process ideas outside
the context of everyday life.
And those spaces don't exist on the internet today.
And I think it's kind of crazy the way the internet works today.
You know, that like, if you imagined, you know, every moment that you were
talking to somebody in real life,
there was somebody there just with a clipboard, a stranger, taking notes about
what you said.
That would change the character of your conversations.
And I think that in some ways, like, we're living through a shortage of brave
or bold or courageous ideas,
in part because people don't have the space to process what's happening in
their lives outside of the context of everyday interactions, you know.
That's a really good way to put it, because you got to give people a chance to
think things through.
But if you do that publicly, they're not going to.
They're going to sort of like, like, basically what you see on Twitter.
You know, if you stray from what is considered to be the acceptable norm, or
the current ideology,
or whatever, whatever you're supposed to, whatever opinions you're supposed to
have on a certain subject,
you get attacked, ruthlessly so.
So you see a lot of self-censorship, and you also see a lot of virtue signaling,
where people sort of pretend that they espouse a certain series of ideas
because that'll get them some, you know, some social cred.
Yeah, exactly.
I think that communication in those environments is performative.
You know, you're either performing for an angry mob, you're performing for
advertisers,
you're performing for, you know, the governments that are watching.
Yeah.
And I think also the ideas that make it through are kind of tainted as a result,
you know, that like,
did you watch any of the, like the online hearing stuff that was happening over
COVID?
You know, where like, city councils and stuff were having their hearings online?
No, I did not.
It was kind of interesting to me because it's like, you know, they can't meet
in person.
So they're doing it online.
And that means that the public comment period was also online, you know.
And so it used to be that like, you know, if you go to a city council meeting,
they have a period of public comment
where, you know, people can just stand up and say what they think, you know.
And like, ordinarily, it's like, oh, you got to go to City Hall, you got to
like, wait in line, you got to sit there, you know.
But then when it's on Zoom, it's just sort of like, anyone can just show up on
the Zoom thing.
You know, they just dial in and they're just like, here's what I think, you
know.
And, you know, it was kind of interesting because particularly when a lot of
the police brutality still was happening in Los Angeles,
I was watching those city council hearings and, you know, people were just like,
you know, you know, they were just calling, you know, be like, fuck you, I
yield the rest of my time, fuck you, you know.
But like, it was just like, really brutal and not undeservedly so.
And, you know, what was interesting to me was just watching the politicians
basically, you know, who just had to sit there and just, they were just like,
take it.
And it was just like, you know, you get three minutes and then there's someone
else to get, you know, and they're just like, okay, and now we'll hear from,
you know, like, and, you know, watching that, you sort of realize that it's
like, to be a politician, you have to just sort of fundamentally,
not really care what people think of you, you know, you have to fundamentally
just be comfortable sitting, you know, and having people yell at you, you know,
for three minute, in three minute increments for an hour or whatever, you know.
And so it seems like what we've sort of done is like, bred these people who are
willing to do that, you know.
And in some ways that's like a useful characteristic, but in other ways that's
the characteristic of a psychopath, you know.
Yes, yes.
And I think, you know, what we're seeing is that that also extends outside of
those environments.
That's like, to do anything ambitious today requires that you just are
comfortable with that kind of feedback.
Like Trump's tweets.
If you watch, you know, if you look at Twitter and look at any of Trump's
tweets, when he tweets, watch what people say, it's ruthless.
They go crazy.
They go so hard on them.
So I'm assuming he doesn't read them.
I'm assuming he just, or maybe he does and just doesn't say anything, but he
doesn't go back and forth with people at least.
No, but, and I'm, I think, you know, Trump is perfectly capable of just not
caring, you know, just like people like, you know, grazing is just like, yeah,
whatever, what, you know, I'm the best.
They don't, you know.
And like, that's, you know, that's politics.
But I think, you know, the danger is when that, you know, to do anything
ambitious, you know, outside of politics or whatever, you know, requires that
you're capable of just not caring, you know, what people think or whatever,
because everything is happening in public.
I think you made a really good point in that change comes from people
discussing things privately because you have to, it's a, you have to be able to
take a chance.
You have to be daring and you have to be able to confide in people and you have
to be able to say, hey, this is not right.
And we're going to do something about it.
If you do that publicly, the powers that be that do not want change in any way,
shape or form, they'll, they'll come down on you.
And this is essentially what Edward Snowden was warning everyone about when he
decided to go public with all this NSA information.
He was saying, look, we, this is not what we signed up for.
You look, someone's constantly monitoring your emails, constantly listening to
phone calls.
Like this is not this mass surveillance thing.
It's very bad for just the culture of free expression, just our ability to have
ideas and to be able to share them back and forth and vet them out.
It's very bad.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I think when you look at the history of that kind of surveillance,
there are a few interesting inflection points, you know, like at the beginning
of, you know, the internet, as we know it, and like the early to mid nineties,
that were these like DOD efforts to do mass surveillance, you know?
And, um, they were sort of open about what they were doing.
Uh, uh, and, you know, one of them was this program called total information
awareness.
Uh, and, uh, it was, they were trying to start this office, I think called the
total awareness office or something within the DOD.
And the idea was like, they're just going to like collect information, uh, on
all Americans and everyone's communication and just stockpile it into these, uh,
databases.
And then they would use that to, you know, mind those things for information.
Uh, it was sort of like, you know, their, their, uh, effort to get in on this
at the beginning of the information age.
Uh, and you know, it was ridiculous.
You know, it's like, they called it total information awareness.
They had a logo that was like, um, you know, the, the pyramid with the eye on
top of it.
Oh yeah.
This is, this is their logo.
Oh God.
It's like the pyramid with the eye, like casting a beam on the earth.
That bit of Latin there means knowledge is power.
Oh wow.
And interesting.
This program was actually started by, uh, John Poindexter of all people who was
involved in the Iran-Contra stuff, I think.
Really?
Yeah.
And he, he like went to jail for a second and then was pardoned or something.
Uh, so anyway, you know, they're like, this is so fucked up.
These people are in charge of anything.
I know.
But what's also, I just kind of comical is that like, they were like, this is
what we're going to do.
Look at how crazy this is.
Like this, this is our plan.
You know?
And people were like, uh, I don't think so.
You know, like.
What year was this?
I, this is like early mid nineties.
Look at this.
Authentication, biometric data, face, fingerprints, gate, iris, your gate.
So they're going to identify people based on the way they walk.
I guess your gate is that specific.
Um, then automated virtual data repositories, privacy and security.
This is fascinating.
Cause if you look at, I mean, obviously no one thought of cell phones back then.
Exactly.
Right.
This is, so this is like kind of amateurish, right?
So it's like, they're like, this is what we're going to do.
You know?
And people were like, ah, I don't think so.
You know, even like Congress was like, ah, guys, I don't think we can like
approve this.
You know?
You need a better logo, you know?
Yeah, for sure.
But it's just this whole flow chart.
Is that what this would be?
What do you, what do you call something like this?
What are these called?
That works, I guess.
Flow chart, I guess, sort of.
Designed to dazzle you.
Yeah.
Approving there.
It's like baffling to figure out what it is.
Like, first of all, what are all those little color tubes?
Those little ones, those little cylinders.
Those are data silos.
Oh.
That's the universal.
They're all different colors.
There's purple ones.
Data.
Well, gate.
That's Prince.
That's where gate lives, yeah.
It's all Prince's information.
But so, okay, so that, you know, this, this stuff all sort of got shut down,
right?
Yeah.
They're like, okay, we can't do this, you know?
And then instead, what ended up happening was like data naturally accumulated
in different
places.
You know, that, you know, like back then, if you had been, you know, what they
were trying
to do is be like, our proposal is that everyone carry a government mandated
tracking
device at all times.
Like, what do you guys think?
You know, it'll make us safer, you know?
And people were like, no, I don't think so, you know?
But instead, everyone ended up just carrying cell phones at all times, which
are tracking
your location and reporting them into centralized repositories that government
has access to,
you know?
And so, you know, this, this sort of like oblique surveillance infrastructure
ended up emerging.
And that was what, you know, people sort of knew about, but, you know, didn't
really know.
And that's what Snowden revealed.
It was like, you know, instead, we don't have this.
Instea