A vision of crimes in the future - Marc Goodman

[Music] [Music]

I study the future of crime and terrorism, and frankly, I'm afraid. I'm afraid by what I see. I sincerely want to believe that technology can bring us the Techno Utopia that we've been promised.

But you see, I've spent a career in law enforcement, and that's informed my perspective on things. I've been a street police officer, an undercover investigator, a counterterrorism strategist, and I've worked in more than 70 countries around the world. I've had to see more than my fair share of violence and the darker underbelly of society, and that's informed my opinions. My work with criminals and terrorists has actually been highly educational; they have taught me a lot.

I'd like to be able to share some of these observations with you today. I'm going to show you the flip side of all those technologies that we marvel at—the ones that we love. In the hands of the tech community, these are awesome tools which will bring about great change for our world. But in the hands of suicide bombers, the future can look quite different.

I started observing technology and how criminals were using it as a young patrol officer. In those days, this was the height of technology. Laugh though you will, all the drug dealers and gang members with whom I dealt had one of these long before any police officer I knew did. 20 years later, criminals are still using mobile phones, but they're also building their own mobile phone networks, like this one, which has been deployed in all 31 states of Mexico by the narcos. They have a national encrypted radio communication system.

Think about that. Think about the innovation that went into that. Think about the infrastructure to build it. And then think about this: why can't I get a cell phone signal in San Francisco? How is this possible? It makes no sense. We consistently underestimate what criminals and terrorists can do. Technology has made our world increasingly open, and for the most part, that's great. But all of this openness may have unintended consequences.

Consider the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai. The men that carried that attack out were armed with AK-47s, explosives, and hand grenades. They threw these hand grenades at innocent people as they sat eating in cafes and waited to catch trains on their way home from work. But heavy artillery is nothing new in terrorist operations. Guns and bombs are nothing new.

What was different this time was the way that the terrorists used modern information communications technologies to locate additional victims and slaughter them. They were armed with mobile phones, they had Blackberries, they had access to satellite imagery, they had satellite phones, and they even had night vision goggles. But perhaps their greatest innovation was this: we've all seen pictures like this on television and in the news. This is an operation center, and the terrorists built their very own op center across the border in Pakistan.

There, they monitored the BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN, and Indian local stations. They also monitored the internet and social media to track the progress of their attacks and how many people they had killed. They did all of this in real time. The innovation of the terrorist operation center gave terrorists unparalleled situational awareness and a tactical advantage over the police and over the government.

What did they do with this? They used it to great effect. At one point during the 60-hour siege, the terrorists were going room to room trying to find additional victims. They came upon a suite on the top floor of the hotel, kicked down the door, and found a man hiding by his bed. They said to him, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

The man replied, “I'm just an innocent school teacher.” Of course, the terrorists knew that no Indian school teacher stays at a suite in the Taj. They picked up his identification and phoned his name into the terrorist war room, where the terrorist war room Googled him, found a picture, and called their operatives on the ground. They said, “Your hostage, is he heavyset? Is he bald in front? Does he wear glasses?” “Yes, yes, yes,” came the answers. The op center had found him, and they had a match.

He was not a school teacher; he was the second wealthiest businessman in India. After discovering this information, the terrorist war room gave the order to the terrorists on the ground in Mumbai. We all worry about our privacy settings on Facebook, but the fact of the matter is our openness can be used against us. Terrorists are doing this. A search engine can determine who shall live and who shall die.

This is the world that we live in. During the Mumbai siege, terrorists were so dependent on technology that several witnesses reported that, as the terrorists were shooting hostages with one hand, they were checking their mobile phone messages in the very other hand. In the end, 300 people were gravely wounded, and over 172 men, women, and children lost their lives that day.

Think about what happened during this 60-hour siege in Mumbai. Ten men armed, not just with weapons but with technology, were able to bring a city of 20 million people to a standstill. Ten people brought 20 million people to a standstill. And this traveled around the world. This is what radicals can do with openness.

This was done nearly four years ago. What could terrorists do today with the technologies available that we have? What will they do tomorrow? The ability of one to affect many is scaling exponentially, and it's scaling for good, and it's scaling for evil. It's not just about terrorism, though. There's also been a big paradigm shift in crime.

You see, you can now commit more crime as well. In the old days, it was a knife and a gun. Then criminals moved to robbing trains; you could rob 200 people on a train. A great innovation moving forward. The internet allowed things to scale even more. In fact, many of you will remember the recent Sony Playstation hack. In that incident, over 100 million people were robbed.

Think about that: when in the history of humanity has it ever been possible for one person to rob 100 million? Of course, it's not just about stealing things. There are other avenues of technology that criminals can exploit. Many of you will remember this super cute video from the last T.T., but not all quadcopter swarms are so nice and cute. They don't all have drumsticks; some can be armed with HD cameras and do counter-surveillance on protesters.

Or, as in this little bit of movie magic, quadcopters can be loaded with firearms and automatic weapons. Little robots are cute when they play music to you, but when they swarm and chase you down the block to shoot you, it’s a little bit less so. Of course, criminals and terrorists weren't the first to give guns to robots; we know where that started. But they're adapting quickly.

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