WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.140 Hello Internet. We need to talk about locks 00:00:02.140 --> 00:00:04.280 The physical and the digital. 00:00:04.280 --> 00:00:07.620 In the physical world, locks aren't as good as you think they are. 00:00:07.620 --> 00:00:10.900 The lock on your door stops worries, not burglars, 00:00:10.900 --> 00:00:13.320 As two minutes of searching will reveal. 00:00:13.320 --> 00:00:17.300 Spend more, get more; but all fail with tools and time enough. 00:00:17.300 --> 00:00:21.120 That physical locks are bad at locking mostly doesn't matter in normal life, 00:00:21.120 --> 00:00:24.180 Because burglars are constrained by the physical world. 00:00:24.180 --> 00:00:27.540 A burglar must cruise the neighborhood, spending their time to pick a target, 00:00:27.540 --> 00:00:31.440 Which makes a house that looks secure most of the way toward being secure. 00:00:31.440 --> 00:00:34.660 Each target house can then only be attacked one at a time, 00:00:34.660 --> 00:00:37.600 And comes with a risk of being physically caught in the act. 00:00:37.600 --> 00:00:42.040 But digital is different. The constraints of the physical no longer apply. 00:00:42.040 --> 00:00:46.100 On the Internet, a digital lock must protect you from, not just the neighborhood burglar, 00:00:46.100 --> 00:00:52.040 But all burglars everywhere. For, on the Internet, there's no such thing as distance. 00:00:52.040 --> 00:00:55.800 Internet burglars don't crack digital locks personally, they build burglar bots 00:00:55.800 --> 00:00:59.680 That try millions of combinations just to see what opens. 00:00:59.680 --> 00:01:04.860 One lock down the street or a country-full on the other side of the world — it's all the same. 00:01:04.860 --> 00:01:09.720 Actually, other side of the world is better — a dude in East-whatever-landia stealing your identity 00:01:09.720 --> 00:01:12.540 Has a near-zero chance of getting caught. 00:01:12.540 --> 00:01:17.380 This is bad news, but thanks to mathematics, digital locks can be made unbreakable. 00:01:17.380 --> 00:01:22.740 This is encryption — a digital lock that, without the password, cannot be opened. 00:01:22.740 --> 00:01:26.420 Burglar bots will plough through all the possibilities, but a secure password 00:01:26.420 --> 00:01:29.720 Will take longer than the heat death of the Universe to guess. 00:01:29.720 --> 00:01:33.840 No password, no entry. No matter how much of a l33t hacker your mom is 00:01:33.840 --> 00:01:36.300 Your private files stay private. 00:01:36.300 --> 00:01:40.600 Which might just be the greatest social good mathematics has done mankind. 00:01:40.660 --> 00:01:45.260 But it's easy to imagine unbreakable digital locks as bad news. 00:01:45.260 --> 00:01:48.900 Maximum lazy: ticking time bomb, the location and off-code of which 00:01:48.900 --> 00:01:51.300 Are locked on the phone of a dead man. 00:01:51.300 --> 00:01:55.700 Now, were the information on a piece of paper in a safe room, no problem: 00:01:55.700 --> 00:01:59.740 In the physical world, if you can't crack the lock, then you crack the wall. 00:01:59.740 --> 00:02:05.820 Society agrees, under this scenario, it's reasonable for police to get in, no matter what it takes. 00:02:05.820 --> 00:02:11.740 Note: this means real-world locks aren't just physically weak, but also legally weak. 00:02:11.740 --> 00:02:16.500 We could live in a world with privacy laws that forbade police to break into all locks, 00:02:16.500 --> 00:02:19.760 no matter how flimsy, but we don't, because that would be dumb. 00:02:19.760 --> 00:02:20.760 Hmmm... 00:02:20.760 --> 00:02:24.220 This is where gears turn in government heads. 00:02:24.220 --> 00:02:29.940 If digital locks are physically invulnerable, maybe they can be made legally vulnerable: 00:02:29.940 --> 00:02:35.220 To require digital locks be built with a keyhole for which police have the key. 00:02:35.220 --> 00:02:39.600 Highly secure, top secret, for emergencies only, surely. 00:02:39.600 --> 00:02:44.200 This legal vulnerability to ban citizens from owning perfect digital locks, 00:02:44.200 --> 00:02:47.760 To require companies manufacture their devices with keyholes, is an idea 00:02:47.760 --> 00:02:50.220 That many, many governments are interested in. 00:02:50.220 --> 00:02:54.560 And governments point out that a warrant which lets police into your house and into your papers 00:02:54.560 --> 00:02:56.580 Should let police into your phone. 00:02:56.580 --> 00:03:01.460 If your home is your castle, but the need, pressing enough, the police bring a battering ram. 00:03:01.460 --> 00:03:06.180 But there's no battering ram to crack open a well-locked phone to comply with a warrant. 00:03:06.180 --> 00:03:07.600 Not helpfully, anyway. 00:03:07.600 --> 00:03:14.120 Which is a problem: again, we all ideally want police to crack digital locks sometimes. 00:03:14.120 --> 00:03:20.160 But at our current level on the tech tree, digital locks that cannot be opened are a thing that exists. 00:03:20.160 --> 00:03:24.780 And because they are made of math, something a skilled coder can build at home, 00:03:24.780 --> 00:03:31.000 Trying to ban digital locks for everyone is pretty close to trying to ban an idea. 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:32.540 Good luck with that. 00:03:32.540 --> 00:03:38.500 But even were it possible to successfully ban perfect digital locks in a country, remember: 00:03:38.500 --> 00:03:41.260 On the Internet, there is no such thing as distance. 00:03:41.260 --> 00:03:45.860 Even if your government is a Xanadu bureaucracy of the Seraphim Incorruptible, 00:03:45.860 --> 00:03:47.480 There are demons elsewhere. 00:03:47.480 --> 00:03:52.260 Unbreakable digital locks are the foundation upon which computing and Internet-ing is built. 00:03:52.260 --> 00:03:54.980 Banking, buying, blogging, vlogging, gaming, tweeting, beating, meeting — 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:58.340 All of this is possible because of unbreakable digital locks. 00:03:58.340 --> 00:04:02.300 They've existed since computers filled rooms, but now, with computers in our pockets, 00:04:02.300 --> 00:04:08.300 We rely on those locks to protect the content of our lives — the content of our minds. 00:04:08.300 --> 00:04:13.920 Forced weakness, even with the best of intentions, places everyone in danger. 00:04:13.920 --> 00:04:16.660 The nature of a keyhole is to be cracked, 00:04:16.660 --> 00:04:20.300 And the nature of the Internet is to bring demons to the door. 00:04:20.300 --> 00:04:25.360 No matter how much we might wish it, there is no way to build a digital lock 00:04:25.360 --> 00:04:28.720 That only angels can open and demons cannot. 00:04:28.720 --> 00:04:32.240 Anyone saying otherwise is either ignorant of the mathematics, 00:04:32.240 --> 00:04:35.520 Or less of an angel than they appear. 00:04:38.340 --> 00:04:41.200 This video has been brought to you in part by Audible.com, 00:04:41.200 --> 00:04:45.320 where there's more than 180,000 audio books and spoken audio products. 00:04:45.320 --> 00:04:49.440 Get a free trial today at Audible.com/grey. 00:04:49.440 --> 00:04:52.500 This time, I'm going to recommend Daemon by Daniel Suarez. 00:04:52.500 --> 00:04:55.780 I never like to say anything about fictional books, I don't like spoilers, 00:04:55.780 --> 00:05:00.300 but if you've made it to the end of a video about encryption, this one's for 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