I know that you have spent decades navigating corporate privacy and business risk,

but a new legislative push called chat control 2.0 is raising red flags,

both with people who care about their privacy and their messages being read.

And if you assume your company's encrypted chats are secure.

This proposal changes the game entirely.

And here is what every executive needs to understand today.

And I'm I'm joined by Stephen J.

Manning, like I say, who's been in the business world for ~ decades and he's

had to navigate all sorts of ~ privacy and data security situations.

And I've been digging into this topic for

seven weeks now in a on a deep deep level and people who I talk to on

a daily basis don't know what to do.

They're they're stuck. They're like,

do I use telegram? Do I use this?

Do I use that? Do I use this? And the thing is is that the good news

is that is that chat control two point zero

has not quite been passed.

So we're we're pretty lucky

On that front. But I am very worried about it.

if it actually does pass in the next time when it goes in front

of the European Council, which will be,

I believe, in 2028, we are dealing with

a situation where apps are going to be scanned.

on people's phones before they even leave their telephones.

And that's a that's a big worry really as far as anyone that wants

any privacy really, Steve. It's very worrying.

Well, I think that as a baseline idea,

I believe that if you anyone out there believes they j have genuine privacy

in their lives, let me dispel that,

you don't. It's a barrage. unless you really are a hermit living

on a twenty thousand foot peak in the Himalayas.

don't d y you you need not believe me,

but if you live in a big city

London, for example, Los Angeles.

Estimates are that when you step out of your home in LA,

your picture is taken somewhere around 200 to 300 times in the course of the day.

A lot of that is private stuff.

You know, hey, guilty, walk into,

I won't name the major retailer,

and the minute you walk to the door,

we already know what cell phone you have.

~ and then we also know that you need toner because we read your retina.

talk about invasion of privacy at a very basic level.

Some people think that's really cool.

I can my shopping experience is better.

I get enraged, but then I'm also guilty of it.

London is worse. Not nearly as as as China,

where by some reports, Chang says,

Gordon says there are over two million C C T V cameras in just big cities.

That doesn't mean that's about

three percent of land mass in in in the entire country.

So there there's you know, the pr the the pretense of of genuine privacy is history.

It just doesn't exist. then we talk about history in communications

is what we're talking about. let me

Let me give you a for instance.

I have a relationship, a very deep business relationship of many,

many years. One of the preeminent network security people in the world.

Why he talks to me, well, that's a choice he makes.

It's not like I pick up the phone and call them.

It's not like I send them an instant message.

no, you know, let's use WhatsApp.

Secure. Not like I can use that.

I have to reach out and ultimately I get a handshake from

him that is in fact secure.

Some peer to peer stuff I don't understand,

frankly, don't want to know. so and then of course the

the the dichotomy where I want to protect my privacy fiercely.

But I also have I want to be able to stoop about you.

So where's the trade-off? I'm gonna shut the internet world off to you,

Nathaniel, so you can't s do any research about me ever.

Like because I don't want anyone knowing anything about me.

That will fail my prediction 95% of the time.

then the the the the real the real issue.

We're talking about having the big sharks in the ocean ask the government

to protect them from the ocean.

how do you police all this stuff?

How do you police it? How do you create the the genuine privacy that

you would like, I would like, we'd all would like?

The major issue though,

But

and this is the elephant in the room,

right? Is in a lot of these countries in Europe,

in the UK, we have people that want and in in many countries,

people that want to do us harm.

And those are the people that really need monitoring.

And I do agree with you, privacy is completely gone.

On my telephone here, there are probably 10 apps that have my microphone switched

on right now. So people probably listening to this.

And if I'm in a room and I want a conversation with someone,

I will take my phone and I'll put it in a different room.

Because if people want to listen to you,

they're gonna listen to you, in my personal opinion.

You know, but

but you see, ~ sometimes too too common is just allow me.

Where we used to live up in the hills

One day I was perturbed because my televisions were picking up some kind

of a interference. We went trying to figure it out.

Now we lived on a mountain. There was acres of mountain.

one of my people spotted a high gain antenna quarter of a mile from

my property line on top of that mountain.

My neighbour's fourteen year old was a budding sociopath,

a twenty four hour day kid,

was also listening in on my cell phone conversations.

The good news is that I didn't beat his father nor him.

And the cops said we know he's a bad kid.

Okay. Now the enormity of what you just said,

your cell phone, unless you put that in a Faraday bag,

all bets are off. A little tidbit of knowledge in terms of the enormity of this.

You're aware of my app,

Safeon.

The location database for this

is a safety security app which thrives on the exact location,

not GPS that says you're at twelve forty seven Elm Street,

Poughkeepsie, New York. No, you're on twelve forty seven Elm Street,

Poughkeepsie, New York, and you are in a second bedroom on the left hand corner

northwest. So it's it's really that precise.

How do you get that precise?

Okay, so Nat and Steve are having coffee at the Starbucks on that corner.

Well, that's an address in a shopping center.

No. Our database said it's not the address shopping center,

it's a northeast corner, ground floor,

the shopping center, room three.

No less than 300,000 mobile apps were feeding real-time data

to that database at all times.

So one of the reasons my database said Nat and Steve are

at the Starbucks because the analytics algorithm

in parlance identified that there are two other people that are heavy users

of some app.

Every morning at 8 30 have a cup of coffee at that Starbucks.

And Schooler and Manning are in proximity to one of those guys.

Okay, tell me about privacy.

That's just a little tidbit. Now if that doesn't blow you,

it blows my mind. I've seen it.

it blows my mind as well. It blows my mind as well.

I've seen it. ~

Mm-hmm.

Imagine you walk into a very large parking lot in Southern California and there,

I don't know, thousands of automobiles.

And then from 200 yards you look at that gray car and say

to the database who owns the gray car?

No license plates, no visuals other than that car and the location

of the parking structure. Forty seven seconds later,

you get three options. Nat Schooler,

Joe Johnson, Mary Ellen Mary Ellen ~ Kopekti.

And one of those is, in fact, right.

Well, guess what? Mary Ellen blew a red light three years earlier at this freeway,

about a half away in that car,

and has been and the data ba data suggests she travels at highway all the time.

And then it integrates with all the shopping data and the whole wonderful

AI goes to work and say, that's gotta be Mary Ellen.

Tell me about privacy. When I came up with some location based marketing stuff where

I was going to send you an email,

hey Nat, come by the Raoul supermarket,

a toilet paper on sale for 40% off.

You're due. People looked at me and said,

Are you kidding? You're gonna get handcuffed.

How dare you know that Nat's running on a toilet paper?

Well, we kind of get the data from the supermarket,

we know his ta habits.

We know where he drives when he drives.

by the way, do you know how he notifies you?

You're driving down the street,

you got a text message, you own that,

you're a block and a half way from the store.

Usually you should buy a toilet paper.

Yeah, it's funny that, isn't it?

The the whole the whole intrusiveness of these sorts of things.

It was really it's really interesting.

But this but this this regulation that the EU are trying to pass will have

far reaching implications.

Because what they're what they're basically saying is is that it's gonna require

digital platforms to scan private messages for illegal content

to bypass encryption

and it

Forces these apps to use client-side scanning,

placing an AI classifier directly on the phone,

right? So you know, i if if if if an AI tool inspects content locally

on your phone before encryption,

it destroys

Isn't that okay so

encryption. So so so basically it means that

you can access information on

basically on anybody's device and and and it's really worrying

to be honest.

a and and it's ~ you know what?

I I I I I absolutely hear it. I I get it.

I I know it. I fail to understand the legs of it,

how it goes from that to where we need to end up.

But then it's the same thing to me as not to worry,

Facebook and everyone else have they are going to do a bang up job making sure that

your children are protected.

That requires

Well this is the

point, isn't it?

that requires one of two things.

One, the parents have to completely totally buy in with the assumption that they

actually have control over the kids' devices.

statistically they do not, kind of,

but not really. So assuming that's true,

that the parents have to say, Johnny,

give me that thing, and they put in the right codes,

They don't have any control

whatever.

over they don't have any control.

I mean, I've got a friend. You got gone.

Right. But but assume me they do.

The other way to do that

They don't.

Yeah.

is we used to say, ~ good. Why don't I,

Facebook, whoever, I'm going to go and put they came

up with a wonderful list just a couple of days ago.

We're going to limit kids of certain age to certain hours,

we're going to limit usage, we're going to limit access and all that.

Okay, good. And you're going to do that by compelling the parents to do the order.

There's another way to do it.

When the kid logs on, AI identifies who the kid is.

wait a minute, this is sixteen and a half years old.

Block him. Or some version of that or AI pushes,

the app pushes those box onto the kid's phone.

Now, mom and dad are gonna say,

no, that's a really good thing.

And then an hour later, mom and dad are gonna call a cousin who's

a constitutional lawyer.

And they're gonna file a lawsuit.

yeah, that's a good that's a very good point.

You want to tell me you want

tell me how now how is that gonna h how many ways can that go wrong?

So you know it's it's it's a Hobson's choice.

And the only way, if there's a way,

is that you you make it canonical,

you codify it. And codify it were real hardcore penalties.

Now, okay, good. So then mom and dad,

if Johnny

If Johnny can log on to that on his iPhone after 4 30 in the afternoon,

you in violation. Can you spell

a hundred million lawsuits? How dare you?

I'm raising my kid, not you. i I I

you know the answer my answer to you,

very specifically, I just ain't smart enough to have an answer.

Yeah, I mean there isn't one. I mean there isn't one,

right? But the but the the major issue that you know,

we've got major issues from a business point of view.

you know, there are false positives that can that can happen here,

trade secrets, you know, all these sorts of things.

you know, so private information will basically get sent to

databases for review. And then that means that actually all that information

can be hacked. So it's like you upload a picture of yourself with an ID,

or your kid does, and then that can be hacked,

right? So all these things can can be hacked.

Yeah, but it it it isn't that

isn't that a horse that left the barn already?

I've studied it a lot more now and and I didn't realise what this chat control

one point zero is doing. One point zero is the precursor to the two point zero,

and what one point zero does is

it

It gives tech companies and email providers such as Google Meta or Microsoft,

et cetera, they are able to voluntarily scan private

messages to find child sex abuse material and online grooming behavior,

which this should have happened a long,

long time ago, right? So this is in this is in Europe,

okay? So what that means is

Is it can also be used in unencrypted storage.

So if you've got storage that's in the cloud,

they can go and they can scan all your photos,

they can scan your webmail, they can they can scan basically everything,

right? Every single thing that you've got.

And so EU lawmakers have extended this through April 2028,

whilst this debate over chat control 2.0 continues,

which isn't in yet, but but

People are really angry about it.

They're really angry. my my personal opinion ~ is the same as yours.

Privacy does not exist. The moment you pick up a smartphone,

someone can hack it. Someone can hack it very,

very easily. And if they want to catch child abusers,

they can catch them, in my personal opinion.

And what they need to do, rather than this chat control ~ BS,

they need to turn around and go,

hold on a minute. We know who the people are.

We're gonna create some sort of loophole in the law that says if we know you're

a child abuser and you are doing these things,

that we can look at your messages.

And it does they don't have to be encrypted.

I I think that you can go

They can just go and look at them.

you can go to court and get a s get get a court order subpoena,

whatever or warrant to do that.

Ultimately comes down to hey,

all you folks out there, including the st the screamers on both ends of

the of the pendulum swing, how much of your privacy are you willing to give

up for the common good? How much?

~

That's the point.

here in the in the United States.

We have some fringe people screaming their heads off because a

lot of municip municipalities put on these lost cameras.

Cameras that photograph your licenses as you go by.

And my God, the invasion of my privacy.

And of course, it's being used to issue citations,

to track criminals, etc.

Now the whole thing blew up because some

obscure police officer was taking pictures of his soon-to-be ex-wife.

Where she was she was following her f following her around.

And that has become a big big to do.

The smartest thing is is Paul Morrow,

who's a well known ~ public figure,

a police of a law enforcement guy.

They said, I don't care. There's nothing I'm doing.

That warrants me. You guys want to know where I'm I'm driving down Wilshire

Boulevard? That's okay. I don't do anything that I don't want that I have

a problem with somebody knowing.

The whole thing about invasion of my privacy to him is ethereal.

It is to me too. I don't want you taking pictures of me when knowing what

I'm driving down the street to someone.

Why are you surveying me? And what are you gonna do with it if you're malintended?

On the

Mm-hmm.

other hand,

~ I remember clearly when last broke the law.

Cost me one hundred and twelve dollars.

I shouldn't drive that fast. That is true.

Other than that

But I

think I look I think everybody breaks the law all the time when they're driving

and and and on their motorcycle,

whatever.

There

is no way you're gonna get across town and Los Angeles without breaking

a traffic law. But that's not the

Not not.

point. The po the point is, okay,

so how much of your privacy are you willing to trade for the common good?

And then let's even break down a common good even more further.

Child molesters, rapists, murderers,

and so on. As far as I'm concerned,

I'm gonna take a deep breath, swallow the fact that.

Well, maybe I should have been working instead of taking in that matinee show

on Thursday. Now you do who knows it?

What's on film? Okay. But at the same time they nailed some child molester.

I'm good with that.

Well but

you see that is the that is the extreme,

isn't it? That's the that that's the th that's the argument that people keep giving

me. That's the argument that the government have proposed and said that's what this

is for. And I understand,

I understand completely. We've both got kids,

and you know, I know loads of people with children and

We're emotional. someone messes with our kids and there's a problem,

We won't mess with them.

right? But but but actually what we're giving

up though is potentially control

to whatever ruling party is in power

at that specific time when these regulations

That specific time.

are introduced, because then democracy.

my opinion, could be absolutely finished.

It could be game over. And then that

Well, okay.

damages businesses, it damages lives.

It because it it it becomes a dictatorship instead of the free society that

we are know what that we know and love,

right? And it's a major issue for me.

You are as accurate as

you could possibly be.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay? And then the next best thing is Are you kidding me?

You mean we're all going to get landlines again?

Well this is true. You know, it is a bizarre,

it is a bizarre situation. And you know,

and then obviously you've got the prevention of terror,

which is which is the rest of it.

And then you've got what are we going to use all these AI data centers for?

Why are we building all these AI data centers?

And actually, you know, it perhaps this is actually what we need

to.

to to have in in the world because we've been what you know you look

at 15 minute cities right why is why are they creating a 15 minute city

why why why do they want people to have front facing cameras in their cars that face

their faces right why why are all these cameras being

out there and but but but then actually some of this some of this

is actually really useful, right?

Because what you can do is you can

whole a whole lot of it

w well we inventory a whole lot of that Nathaniel as just an improvement our lives,

our daily lives. It's easier. You know,

Right. Right.

you get

your Tesla and say, hey, I want to go to ~ Nat's house and I want

to drive five miles over the speed limit.

And then I get to re I can sit back and read the London Financial

You know,

It's

all data. It's data analysis. All this stuff is data.

Look at all the social media data,

right? What you know, why do you think Elon Musk bought bought X,

bought Twitter? Because it it is probably the only platform that's actually free

speech in this world. Where you can go and argue with someone who's talking about

Russia. You can argue about Ukraine.

You can argue about anything that you want to argue about.

But the beauty of it is, is that that data is publicly visible

to everyone who who knows how to crunch it.

And what that means is that public opinion

can be gauged and it yeah.

Yeah.

~ well.

~ social media of course it it it ~

Crazy.

Social

media fosters super superficiality

Mm-hmm.

and democratizes thought. And it it it it it it pushes misinformation.

it it creates group think. It erodes intellectual wherewithal

in nanoseconds. You can launch that forest fire

to fry that egg.

And the egg said, I'm already fried,

what do you want from me? And then now again,

just a a a nagging idea,

concept, if you will, in life,

in business, in these discourses,

we all try to arrive to zero sum.

You know, it has to in accounting has to cross foot.

It has to work out in debits, credits has to cross foot.

Here's a conversation that's never gonna never gonna ride to zero sum.

Never. There's never going to be an unanimity of opinion.

Now, to the extent to which social media democratizes thought,

if you will, while reducing it to the lowest common denominator,

some dude or do that in a cabin and some forest in Zimbabwe

can have an opinion, and there's of the 20 word

insipit post, two will resonate somehow.

Bingo, three point one million people say,

yeah, I agree with him. by the way,

he is in fact illiterate and he eats tree bark.

But that's it doesn't matter. so here's a this is a massive topic.

And I I

Huge.

know I don't know. I fear I have feel very strongly,

we'll never achieve a real balance.

It's not a zero sum because you have to balance some very,

very emotional ideas here.

Very.

well, exactly. So where do you see this going in the ne in

the n by 2028 when they're gonna be reviewing this?

What what do you think is gonna happen?

Do you think that do you think that people are gonna companies are gonna

get better at analysing relationships between terror suspects

and paedophiles and and because a lot of these applications like

In the back of these applications,

it logs who you speak to, how often you speak to them,

it also logs location. And some of these some of these will give away telltale

signs. So that will mean, in my opinion,

we probably will not need to go the full chat control two point zero,

in my opinion.

I have an

answer for you that's as bad as

Okay.

everybody else's bad answer.

Okay. As bad as my bad answer,

~ now mine's probably worse.

yeah, okay. I doubt I doubt I doubt it.

A lot as smart as you are, but let me

let me ask this question of all you fine folks watching and listening.

Ha ha

What do you think? One of the first things the victims of muggings,

robberies, all matter of attacks,

what are one of the first things they say to the constabulary,

the cops, to people around them when that happens?

After they

ordinary stuff they say. I never thought that would happen to me.

Okay. So nah. child abusers, sex traffickers.

drug kinkpins, et cetera. And that's not me.

Until it happens to you or someone near and dear to you.

Then you're off with that legislation.

~

Yeah, I know.

I think that I don't think it's gonna get through in two years.

I believe I believe they're going stop going because most people will come down

on nah I I don't want you know what I like by freedoms?

democracy is great until somebody tramples yours.

Then you want autocracy. You know,

Yeah, yeah. Yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

that's the the

failure of democracy is that that it it it champions the will,

the theoretical will of many.

It's all fine until sucks a trample on a small minority,

which is vocal. You know, if you if you take a look at the landscape in the UK,

who's screaming against it? This many people.

But they scream very loud and very effective,

True, true, true, true. True, true.

very efficiently. That's the American model,

True, true. Well if you're listening if you're listening to this what's that?

by the way. Let me make one. Right now,

the the United States Congress,

Sorry?

the US Congress just just dumped on a law.

They decide not to do it.

the con the Democrats in the Congress,

which happens to be an eighty percent issue for Americans.

Eighty percent of Americans want that.

The party

Wow.

said no and they voted against it.

So democracy is great until they trample on your on your end of the stick.

So

Mm-hmm.

I don't think this will pass because it's too broad a bra stroke.

But what it could happen, Nathaniel,

is let us not discount the immense power.

the regulatory agencies. Okay?

No, I really can't listen on your telephone call,

but I can get the metadata and I know

That's the point.

I can listen to the other dude's call.

He happens to live in Sierra Leone.

Well exact yeah, but that's the point is is if this

You toast.

but wait, if this if this pass so if this passed in Europe or so say

for example you got chat control one point zero,

which is what they have now

Those regulations would actually automatically work,

right? In other jurisdictions because platforms generally do not have

two or f two different regulations.

So if it passes, what that means is that scanning will occur

everywhere in the world because they're not gonna change it.

But in India, they've already

started these things in the past few days,

that's already in India, you know,

they can read emails, they can do all sorts of things.

So we're at a point where we're fighting for our rights and we're we've been there

for a few years. And I and I've I'm just a bit late really to

the party of understanding the implications of of all of this,

By the way, is is

to be honest.

there any doubt in your mind that a whole bunch of whizbang boys

and girls are working on the next WhatsApp or the next communication device that

truly is peer to peer, that's impenetrable?

yeah, absolutely. I mean there is,

Come on. Come on.

yeah, I

mean there is there is ~ so sit let me see so you can you can basically

you can basically get an Android phone with something called graphene,

which is an operating system, and then you can you can use that and

and I believe Proton Mail are actually creating their own encrypted chat which will

be, you know, secure within that environment.

Well, but not

So

You know, my next phone will be an Android phone.

I will remove everything and it will be like that,

Well, Nathaniel, not

to be honest.

to worry, I have it on good authority,

I I read that still today all the cartels,

the big drug cartels, Mexico,

Colombia, etc. and Western Africa,

when they wanna when I you and I are partners and been doing bad stuff,

and I want to tell you something.

I call in one of the guys and said,

Go to him and tell him I said this.

~ huh. Yeah yeah, it doesn't surprise me.

It's it's

w one of the problems that the the the constabula the federal the

the the all jurisdictions have is that they just can't it it's very seldom they

can intercept a great phone call or a mess or an email because they deliver still

deliver it human. Hey, it's it's it's the

That's funny. That's funny.

same thing. You you you know how to keep a secret.

You don't tell anyone.

That's funny.

You know, the minute there's secret shared by two people,

it's no longer a secret.

Now, how how do I know all this?

My life is so transparent, it's scary.

You know? Sometimes I wish some people would read my emails.

And if if you're watching this and you're like,

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we are doing here. We're trying to keep everyone informed and up to date with what's

going on. So thank you very much.

Thanks Steve.

Thank you, Nathaniel. My pleasure.

Thank you.