2021-12-20-A_Watchmans_Guide_to_Privacy-Interview_with_Gabriel

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00:00:14.160 | Today I'm radical personal finance expert interview with Gabriel custodiate author of the watchman guide to privacy

00:00:23.140 | [Music]

00:00:39.140 | Welcome to radical personal finance show dedicated providing you with the knowledge skills insight and encouragement

00:00:44.020 | You need live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less

00:00:48.660 | My name is Joshua sheets. I am your host and today we have an expert interview

00:00:52.460 | I've had a massive list of guests that have been wanting to get on the show and

00:00:56.300 | With the vagaries of my current lifestyle. I haven't been able to line them up. But today

00:01:00.440 | We're gonna get started on that list

00:01:03.820 | [Music]

00:01:11.780 | Topic of privacy digital privacy financial privacy lifestyle privacy personal privacy. This is a topic that is certainly of

00:01:21.680 | Significant and I think growing interest in our modern world. I think many of us understand that the need for privacy

00:01:28.000 | especially in an increasingly

00:01:30.540 | Connected world can be significant and yet the question is how do you actually do it?

00:01:36.100 | And so today I've got Gabriel here with me to talk about this Gabriel. Welcome to radical personal finance. I'm glad you're here today, Joshua

00:01:41.580 | I'm very glad to be here. Let's let's do this

00:01:43.940 | I have found myself recommending your book quite a lot over the last couple of months has come up on the public podcast

00:01:51.300 | The cops are coming for us. You hear them

00:01:53.660 | It's come up on the on the podcast in public a couple of times and then I've also had that come up several times with

00:02:03.340 | With private consulting clients, etc. People who asked me said Josh

00:02:07.520 | I'm interested in privacy and I'm looking for something that's a little bit that that gives me kind of the the starter steps

00:02:14.300 | To get me started and it's it's actually hard to do

00:02:17.280 | I have a few favorites right on the one end. I often recommend to people who've never heard of privacy

00:02:22.140 | I recommend JJ Luna's book on

00:02:24.140 | How to be invisible there we go how to be invisible I blanked on the title because it's it's so beautifully written

00:02:31.140 | It's very attractive, but it's getting a little bit dated and out of it is out of date at this point on some of the techniques

00:02:36.260 | I really admire what Michael Bazzell has done with his work

00:02:40.060 | But it's so hardcore that it's hard for me to hand a 500 page book to someone expect them to read it

00:02:44.780 | And so I love your book because you are current on all of the cutting-edge strategies

00:02:49.820 | But you're writing them in an accessible way that I think is is much more useful. And so we're gonna talk

00:02:55.020 | extensively about some of the content of

00:02:57.940 | This book because I think it's a really worthy manual for somebody who's looking for one book

00:03:04.580 | I want to begin though today not by talking about techniques, but I want to ask you a question

00:03:10.160 | That's a burning question. I have and it's how to know how much is

00:03:15.300 | Enough. So let me articulate it with my own personal experience when I became interested in privacy as I'm want to do

00:03:22.700 | I went hardcore. I went as hard into the deep end as I could I tried on all the techniques

00:03:28.300 | I did the simple ones. I did the intermediate ones. I did the advanced ones and I found that my life was basically unlivable

00:03:35.220 | It was so frustrating to do it all I couldn't keep it up and I had to make conscious decisions

00:03:40.660 | To back off of some of the hardcore techniques because it was unlivable for me personally. It was costing me money

00:03:48.280 | It was costing me relationships. It was costing me business and I'll give you a practical example of

00:03:52.980 | How I have how this has been important to me

00:03:57.660 | A number of years ago when I got into privacy

00:04:00.480 | I started moving everybody away from contacting me on my phone on my phone

00:04:05.300 | To contacting me on an application and I set up a variety of different applications signal

00:04:11.260 | Wire whatsapp even Facebook. I used various phone voice over IP services

00:04:16.980 | At the time I was really enjoying using

00:04:20.840 | Pseudo and I had a plan all set up and I was doing this partly for international relocation

00:04:26.860 | but one of the things that happened to me when I relocated outside of the United States is

00:04:31.960 | Bunch of my systems broke because I put in foreign SIM cards and all of a sudden pseudo stopped working because I said

00:04:37.140 | Oh, we're not authorized and I found myself

00:04:39.460 | Isolated from people and at first I didn't realize this big problem

00:04:43.200 | But my friends who used to used to would have sent me a text message or used to

00:04:47.280 | Call me now just didn't do it because they didn't know well

00:04:50.160 | Do I use how do I reach Joshua?

00:04:52.200 | and so I actually had to make an intentional decision to go back to kind of the normal world of

00:04:57.580 | Having a phone number and texting people instead of sending the messages

00:05:02.220 | Because I found that my relationships were suffering because people didn't know how to get a hold of me

00:05:06.060 | So, how do you think about this this question of how much is enough as a privacy consultant?

00:05:12.280 | Well, Josh, I think that a lot of people who get into

00:05:17.780 | Privacy in a serious way have probably encountered this scenario. I know that I have I think for most people

00:05:24.100 | This is not a concern for them for most people maybe listening

00:05:27.800 | They're just finding the the first way to get into privacy they haven't gone off the deep end

00:05:33.520 | but

00:05:36.620 | What I will say is

00:05:39.460 | for most people

00:05:41.580 | You know, if you if you haven't touched on privacy at all

00:05:45.740 | I appreciate the recommendation for my book. That's definitely the place to start just to just to get your feet wet

00:05:51.860 | But I think a lot of people when they get into it, they do want to be the James Bond

00:05:55.300 | they want to be hardcore and

00:05:57.300 | your situation is a little bit different because you're

00:06:00.420 | You're going back and forth between countries a SIM card will really mess you up

00:06:04.420 | Especially if you're using a an app like I recommend my pseudo which is really tied into

00:06:10.380 | Where you are located. So my pseudo is is a serious challenge

00:06:13.760 | Although signal and wire and some of these others even whatsapp, they will work just fine and especially

00:06:19.580 | Work very well if you're if you're in different countries

00:06:22.580 | But what you do have to decide and I think it's it's a lot more important to have good relationships to have good business opportunities

00:06:30.200 | Then to be very private and so some people talk about threat modeling where you

00:06:37.860 | sort of set your priorities who are you trying to be private from and I

00:06:43.340 | Personally tend not to do threat modeling

00:06:46.020 | I feel like people should just go as far as they can as far as they feel comfortable

00:06:49.820 | But when you do feel that you are losing out on opportunities because people can't reach you

00:06:55.660 | because you are postponing the

00:06:58.600 | Dental filling because you don't want to go in there and confront them about giving your social security number. I'm not speaking from experience

00:07:07.020 | but you you can't you you have to make a determination at that point and

00:07:11.020 | what I what I will say is if you are in that boat just kind of

00:07:15.440 | experiments a little bit with it push it a little bit and then and then let it go and learn from that lesson and

00:07:22.300 | Maybe find an alternative do a little bit better the next time. So let's begin with

00:07:27.300 | discussion on digital privacy

00:07:30.340 | Because well, obviously there are different levels

00:07:33.880 | I think most of us some of the simplest steps that we could take that can dramatically improve our

00:07:38.780 | Personal privacy is in the area of digital privacy. Let's say that I come to you and I'm concerned about

00:07:45.460 | About the internet. It's not that I have anything going on

00:07:49.900 | I'm just someone who's saying well, I noticed that people are getting doxxed or I noticed that you know

00:07:54.340 | Something could happen and my information could be made public and that could be really concerning to me

00:08:00.260 | What are some of the basic steps that you think everyone should take with regard to digital privacy?

00:08:06.100 | well

00:08:08.200 | You should definitely be concerned about

00:08:10.200 | Digital and internet privacy even if you're not a public figure

00:08:14.020 | Obviously if you are some kind of public figure you should be very concerned

00:08:16.820 | I give examples in the introduction to my book about how these days if you apply for a job

00:08:22.400 | They might do a background check on you. They might check all of your social media

00:08:26.040 | There's one guy who posted on Twitter a 300 page document

00:08:30.080 | categorizing all of his social media posts by various

00:08:34.340 | Fouls basically and suffice to say this guy didn't get the job

00:08:38.340 | So there's an endless 300 page document was the hiring companies analysis of him, correct?

00:08:43.620 | And there are entire companies that do these background checks. And of course, there's a new there's a new industry

00:08:49.320 | Called open source intelligence and they are looking for all kinds of your information that's out there on the internet

00:08:56.460 | Whether that's for marketing whether that's just to give to law enforcement. There's all kinds of things that can go wrong

00:09:01.400 | So number one, there are a few things you can do and these are not very difficult

00:09:04.920 | First of all you advocate using a VPN

00:09:07.880 | Definitely pay for a VPN. There are a few good ones out there. You can check out proton VPN

00:09:15.360 | Express VPN is getting a little bit too big for its britches, but that's still very good

00:09:19.960 | You have more that you have a variety of these

00:09:21.960 | what you're really looking for is something that's paid and is therefore going to be reliable and

00:09:26.680 | Something that is not logging your information a VPN will basically

00:09:30.480 | Make sure that your internet service provider whether you're at home and that's Cox or Xfinity or you're at the Starbucks

00:09:37.360 | down the road, they will not see your

00:09:40.080 | browsing activity

00:09:42.480 | and

00:09:43.800 | Likewise, if you go to Google or you go to some website, they are not going to

00:09:48.720 | See a recognizable IP address so there they won't be able to build up a dossier on you. So a VPN is

00:09:55.480 | Definitely the first thing that you should do number two, I would say definitely get into the private messaging

00:10:02.200 | Now you don't have to funnel everybody in your life into private messaging. One thing I do as I say

00:10:09.480 | Look close family. If you want to talk to me, this is where I'll be. I'll be on signal. I will be on wire

00:10:15.800 | I will be on session. Maybe even whatsapp whatsapp have some have some problems with it, but it's better than nothing

00:10:22.280 | It's still end-to-end encrypted. So I

00:10:24.360 | people cannot see whatsapp Facebook cannot see the content of your

00:10:29.520 | Conversation and your text but definitely get on to private messengers

00:10:34.340 | These are by and large free though. Of course, you want to donate to things like signal if you use them often

00:10:39.580 | So that's that's a big step. If you are messaging your girlfriend on Facebook, just tell her let's let's go to signal and and do that

00:10:48.340 | so VPNs

00:10:50.060 | private messaging, of course, I should have said this first which is to

00:10:52.860 | do more things offline and

00:10:55.620 | This is a difficult one most people when they want advice they want a list of okay

00:11:02.360 | What are all the services I should be using? What should I be paying for? How can somebody else give me privacy?

00:11:07.180 | and that's kind of a

00:11:09.180 | contradiction of

00:11:10.500 | What privacy is entirely?

00:11:12.380 | So you want to do fewer things online if you want privacy have have fewer accounts go

00:11:19.000 | first of all

00:11:19.940 | Go through your accounts and see what you all have out there and then start to go in there and get rid of the ones

00:11:26.140 | That you don't need

00:11:28.140 | Tone down social media. We'll get time. We'll get to that in a second

00:11:32.260 | I use a lot of I like to buy my books in print. I don't need

00:11:37.260 | Amazon seeing a list of how quickly I read on Kindle and

00:11:41.460 | What I'm interested in and what?

00:11:44.120 | Particular pages I focus on there's a lot of information they have on you

00:11:48.700 | So I just try to do more things in person buy more things in cash in person and to avoid

00:11:54.540 | Especially always online services. I prefer free and open source software

00:11:59.700 | So I don't use instead of an office 365, which is Microsoft's product now

00:12:04.940 | Where they're monitoring every keystroke. I just download in a Libra office and

00:12:10.220 | Sure, it takes there's a few different things, but I'm perfectly fine using Libra office

00:12:15.540 | It's a piece of software that is free and open source

00:12:18.860 | I can see everything that's going into it and it does not it's not connected to the Internet at all times. So just

00:12:27.020 | realize how much you are using the Internet and whether that's through your phone or

00:12:31.060 | Your entertainment or you just have all of these

00:12:34.860 | Even financial apps that are looking at what you're spending and and measuring

00:12:42.120 | I'm an advocate of going back to some of the

00:12:44.820 | physical

00:12:47.820 | Some of the physical methods and just doing a evaluation of

00:12:51.980 | Your Alliance on the Internet and cutting that down a little bit

00:12:55.180 | So I want to go back because I think if we're gonna approach this in a practical way, which is my intention

00:13:00.700 | probably the simplest place to start with privacy is

00:13:04.620 | publishing less I

00:13:07.620 | Think I don't want to gloss over what you said about social media

00:13:11.020 | It's astonishing the personal details that we share in a very public format

00:13:17.420 | And there are things that perhaps we know about hey, I'm on vacation right now for years

00:13:21.980 | That has been something that thoughtful police officers have warned people against don't post I'm on vacation. Don't post your vacation photos

00:13:28.900 | Because someone can easily track down your house and target it

00:13:32.460 | I don't know that it happens that much but it certainly does happen and it's fairly easy for it to happen in a modern world

00:13:39.340 | especially if your social media posts are in your

00:13:42.540 | Your legal name if you have a legal name, that's John Smith

00:13:46.780 | and you know that you're on vacation and I can go to your town and if your profile says where you live and I can

00:13:53.500 | go to your

00:13:54.580 | County recorders I can find your address and I know there's a pretty good chance that that house is unoccupied

00:13:59.580 | If you're actively posting photos when you're on vacation

00:14:02.780 | So I think you can minimize output with regard to social media to your point

00:14:07.620 | posting on social media is is a

00:14:11.980 | Significant risk for most people because the post that seems innocuous to you

00:14:17.660 | May be the post that eventually undoes your whole career

00:14:22.140 | I think the best example that I like to point to this was is Justine Sacco many years ago

00:14:27.780 | She was the lady who was flying to Africa and she posted a poorly worded joke

00:14:33.100 | But she was just making a joke and it was intended to be a form of self-deprecating humor

00:14:38.260 | Where she was pointing out that she was privileged and yet the joke was badly

00:14:42.180 | Misinterpreted and when she was on an airline flight her entire life unraveled because of a post she made on Twitter and we see this

00:14:48.500 | again and again and again where somebody posts something and they word it poorly and yet it winds up backfiring on them and

00:14:56.460 | So one simple strategy is post less. I

00:14:59.340 | Personally am NOT particularly skilled at the use of humor or sarcasm

00:15:04.860 | Especially in 240 characters or 280 characters

00:15:08.180 | And so I've tried to cut pull back from that because I don't do well in that format

00:15:12.420 | And I think that in a modern world of social media can actually be a competitive advantage for you to have fewer posts

00:15:19.340 | Do you think if you go for a job? Do you think an employer is suspicious if you don't have a social media presence?

00:15:25.420 | So yes, yes, they might be suspicious

00:15:30.060 | But they will just have to live with that now if you do find that

00:15:35.100 | Your employers and you're trying to get a job are suspicious

00:15:38.560 | You might keep your Facebook account and your social media and just pare it down

00:15:44.420 | So let's go into my my number four point then which is to tone down social media. Everything that you've said is is correct

00:15:52.140 | What you post on social media can cost you your job

00:15:56.620 | It can cost you I believe here's a

00:15:59.300 | statistic

00:16:01.940 | 31/3 of all

00:16:03.580 | divorce

00:16:04.620 | Hearings meant use the word Facebook in them. So there's all kinds of reasons why you might want to tone down the social media

00:16:11.220 | I'm not trying to ruin people's fun here. But what if you had a social media account and it wasn't your name

00:16:16.600 | It was your initials. What if you did not make it publicly available?

00:16:19.980 | What if you made sure that you were not tagged in your posts?

00:16:23.660 | What if you didn't use geolocation so people didn't know exactly where you were?

00:16:28.780 | what if you

00:16:31.380 | decided to

00:16:33.540 | Communicate with your followers or your friends outside of that social media on one of the private encrypted

00:16:40.300 | Messengers that we just discussed there are all kinds of ways to tone this down

00:16:44.220 | and

00:16:46.060 | Let's not forget that Facebook and a lot of these companies are using your images and they're using your text or AI and facial

00:16:53.380 | Recognition and all these kind of things that could be used later on in unsavory ways

00:16:57.980 | And of course we have all the stuff happening with kovat

00:17:01.580 | If you say X Y or Z that could absolutely

00:17:05.340 | There's all kinds of examples we could point to cost you your job cost you all kinds of things

00:17:10.020 | So tone down the social media

00:17:12.060 | I'm not I'm not saying to ruin your fun by doing that but there you can certainly do less

00:17:17.940 | You don't have to have your own photo on there. Just have a fun photo of a cat or something

00:17:22.700 | It doesn't have to be your face. You can interact with the people you want to interact with

00:17:26.500 | and

00:17:28.300 | But and say the witty things that you want to say

00:17:30.880 | But in a more pared down and thoughtful way and if you need examples of what can happen to you social media

00:17:36.680 | Just go to Amazon look at the first introduction of my book, which you can see for free. You'll get a list of many examples

00:17:42.580 | Tell us your favorite story. What's the one that usually is super surprising to people?

00:17:48.900 | Well, here's a here's a good example. So a guy I think he's a

00:17:53.140 | He was a he was a jeweler. I believe like a jeweler rapper kind of figure

00:17:59.140 | He was in Miami and he posts a photo of all of his bling spread out on his hotel bed

00:18:05.060 | well surprise surprise he goes out for the night and he comes back and his

00:18:09.180 | Room has been busted into and all of his stuff has been taken

00:18:13.460 | So of course thieves unsavory people saw that he posted it

00:18:18.300 | They knew he was in Miami because he said so

00:18:20.460 | so it was a matter of looking at the photos seeing where he might be calling around to a few hotels using a little bit of

00:18:26.620 | social engineering

00:18:29.380 | Discovering where he was and then breaking in there and and taking I think it was millions of dollars worth of his stuff

00:18:35.680 | so just one one small example of

00:18:39.580 | Of how you're not thinking about these things can come back to bite you pays to be thoughtful

00:18:44.340 | I think that my only comment is I

00:18:46.500 | I pared down my social media use when I got into privacy. I actually deleted a couple of my accounts

00:18:53.340 | And I regretted

00:18:56.060 | Isn't I regretted some of the deletions?

00:18:58.340 | But that was largely because I make money from my social media and it provides a valuable

00:19:05.140 | Way for me to keep in contact with my listeners. And so I

00:19:08.820 | Reestablished after fully deleting several of my accounts. I reestablished

00:19:13.860 | Several of my accounts and got them back because I realized that I needed them and I wanted them and I genuinely

00:19:21.360 | Appreciated them for their ability to influence my business

00:19:26.340 | And so my number one thing is if you're not making money with social media, then you should seriously consider just dumping it

00:19:32.860 | But I do understand kind of an in-between area

00:19:36.260 | it's hard to say that there is a

00:19:39.500 | It's hard to say that there is a positive

00:19:42.060 | Benefit for most people from social media the way that most people use it. My observation is that more people are angry

00:19:48.300 | They feel the the data is pretty clear that people are angry

00:19:52.260 | They're upset about the arguments that invade their life on a daily basis. Many people are upset. They feel less worthy

00:19:59.020 | They lack self-confidence because they see other people's continual flow of peak moments and they don't understand that

00:20:05.340 | Those are just peak moments even if you know it intellectually

00:20:08.460 | It feels like everyone else is sitting on a beach with a cocktail in their hand having a great old time with all their good

00:20:13.460 | Looking friends and here I am poor little old me dumpy old me sitting at home alone lonely right now. It's it's just not

00:20:19.820 | Overall productive unless you're using it to make money. One thing I've never regretted doing though is simply deleting past history

00:20:29.780 | On Twitter. This is the easiest I run tweet delete and I've been on Twitter since 2008

00:20:36.020 | But I have it set up various times where just automatically deletes all tweets older than a month

00:20:40.460 | You can set it where it's older than six months older than a year. I removed

00:20:44.660 | Over a decade worth of history from Facebook back when there was a Facebook tool that allowed me to do it fairly easily

00:20:51.420 | Facebook no longer allows that tool to work

00:20:55.820 | But they do offer more ability to archive things

00:20:58.820 | I've deleted a huge amount of history from all the other ones and that's always felt better because I

00:21:06.220 | Don't have any skeletons in my younger closet. I didn't say I didn't post racist stuff online

00:21:11.980 | I didn't do anything particularly scandalous and whatnot

00:21:15.580 | But still what you realize is that the person that I was is not the person that I am and while for my own records

00:21:22.540 | It's nice to sometimes go back and say hey, who am I now? And and what do I know now?

00:21:27.620 | I don't necessarily want to be judged by the person that I was back then

00:21:32.660 | So I think that even if you do have if you do have something that you're ashamed of in the past get rid of it

00:21:37.580 | Now before you're applying for something but even not I I just appreciate being able to be in the moment and not being so tied

00:21:44.180 | To my past. Do you have any great tools for people who want to kind of simplify their previous life without actually deleting accounts all the way

00:21:53.100 | Yeah, I don't know that

00:21:55.100 | Particular tools for social media come to mind

00:21:58.380 | I'm a big proponent of just making your own list and doing things manually

00:22:03.060 | But tweet delete that sounds like a that sounds like a good tool

00:22:06.820 | I was going to say when you when you say that you don't have skeletons in the closet

00:22:11.340 | I think that people who ten years ago said that

00:22:14.700 | There were two sexes right might these days

00:22:19.020 | Come to regret that and it might even be illegal in certain countries to say that by hate speech laws

00:22:25.860 | so you never know the the way that the

00:22:29.240 | winds

00:22:31.300 | Will be going and so you are you are correct and and right to want to keep control of that

00:22:38.660 | But I do want to speak to a demographic of your audience who is probably

00:22:44.500 | budding entrepreneurs people who are starting up businesses and when they go to YouTube when they when they listen to the podcast, they're told that

00:22:50.780 | they need to

00:22:53.580 | Be on all platforms and they need to be engaged with their audience and they need to be on Facebook and Instagram and all these

00:22:59.420 | Places I'm not saying that's not true

00:23:01.420 | But in my experience and I think this is something that you've done as well

00:23:05.140 | Joshua is if you have a very good product and you put it on enough places

00:23:11.940 | You will you will get a following and I think that some entrepreneurs go a little bit too far

00:23:17.580 | They think that they have to be everywhere that they have to reveal every part of their life that they have to treat their audience

00:23:23.420 | buddy, buddy

00:23:25.180 | But I know I know people who have done well by

00:23:28.500 | by not advertising by not being on social media in that kind of pronounced way and so

00:23:34.460 | You know, if you put your podcast on Spotify and Apple, that's most people right there. You put it on YouTube

00:23:41.140 | You put it you create a patreon account. You're probably doing pretty well. And if you have a good thing it it will get noticed

00:23:47.060 | and just a

00:23:49.580 | just some thoughts on the entrepreneurs out there who

00:23:53.340 | Are told that they need to be on social media. Maybe that's not the case. Let's switch to

00:23:59.420 | financial privacy you talked briefly about

00:24:03.420 | Spending privacy, which I think is some of the simplest areas to ways to be private

00:24:10.020 | first make the case as to why somebody

00:24:12.820 | it's always easy to say I've got nothing to hide and we are without question fully agreed that

00:24:20.500 | Saying we've got nothing to hide and actually having nothing to hide

00:24:25.020 | Are two different things right the the quote we were talking earlier. You said the quote

00:24:30.680 | Do you remember who to attribute it to?

00:24:32.940 | Cardinal Rishalu

00:24:34.500 | He says that give me six lines from the hand of the most honest of men and I will find something in them

00:24:40.500 | Which will hang him. Yeah, so

00:24:42.500 | Yeah, you're right that you don't know. Well, let's let's let's give one example

00:24:47.260 | There's a lot of Americans listening one in 20 of you are going to spend time in jail

00:24:51.500 | That's just how our justice system is in this country

00:24:55.300 | We incarcerate a lot of people or the United States incarcerates a lot of people and so you have your Christmas gathering here

00:25:01.300 | And you have 20 of your family in there

00:25:02.580 | one of them is going to or has spent time in jail and so the way it works is you might go to a

00:25:07.740 | jury and

00:25:08.740 | Maybe if the attorney and the judge are a little bit tech savvy they might for example want to subpoena your your Amazon

00:25:16.860 | Shopping list. I think that would be something that I would push for because your Amazon shopping list tells a lot about you

00:25:23.820 | Let's say that they go to the Amazon shop list and they see that you're into

00:25:28.580 | Hardcore privacy or that you bought a Glock holster or X Y & Z now imagine how an attorney could spin that in a particular way

00:25:35.980 | So that an emotional jury could change their verdict based on what they find just one example about how?

00:25:42.300 | Being more careful in this case. You have an Amazon account

00:25:46.140 | There there ways we can we can talk about to to hide your Amazon purchases

00:25:50.060 | Of course

00:25:50.340 | The best way is simply to buy more things in person

00:25:52.340 | Especially sensitive things buy things in person with cash as opposed to buying them online

00:25:57.500 | But just one small example of how it can cost you and always practice kovat safety when you're doing that, right?

00:26:02.760 | Oh extra extra large mass for extra

00:26:05.660 | social responsibility

00:26:07.500 | Exactly. Exactly. So, how do you let's go let's talk about spending money privately. So the simplest way is

00:26:14.300 | You pull out physical currency you go to a place that has what you want. You make sure to wear your kovat mask

00:26:22.140 | for good protection of your fellow shoppers, and of course it has a side benefit of providing a little bit more privacy from all the

00:26:29.260 | cameras and

00:26:30.780 | You simply buy it that's obvious. But what if it's not that simple? What if there's something that's only available on Amazon?

00:26:37.540 | What if it's a digital product? How do you protect your privacy and buy things privately?

00:26:40.780 | Yeah, let me let me speak to cash really quickly. What what you said is true, and I think people

00:26:46.460 | Intellectually understand that but they don't go about doing that

00:26:50.460 | so if you believe in privacy and you don't want to live in a world where there are central bank digital currencies and

00:26:55.500 | the Federal Reserve is dictating what you can and can't purchase or where visa recently is

00:27:00.740 | setting limits on the carbon emissions of particular

00:27:04.420 | Purchase or they're talking about this about the particular purchase you buy

00:27:07.760 | Then you are a big proponent of cash and you want a cash culture and you want to fight against the war on cash

00:27:13.260 | So I would advocate anybody who's listening who believes in this stuff

00:27:16.700 | Seriously, stop the credit cards as much as you can take out cash

00:27:20.420 | Go to a bank that lets you that has a that has a high limit of taking out cash

00:27:24.940 | Stockpile some cash be careful how you

00:27:27.380 | How much you take with you where you put it hide it

00:27:30.700 | I have some suggestions for that in my book and then use it use more cash, please for

00:27:36.060 | For the good of your fellow man good of your fellow man, please use more cash now, obviously some things you have to buy online

00:27:43.900 | And I have some maybe more controversial chapters sections in my book about how to acquire things for free online

00:27:50.280 | We can talk about that only if you want to Joshua

00:27:52.980 | You can acquire all kinds of things for free online and make it up to the company in in various ways

00:27:57.900 | But for that thing on Amazon or wherever that you want to buy, of course Americans have

00:28:04.020 | privacy.com

00:28:06.500 | Which is one option now privacy.com

00:28:08.620 | Very popular. It's highly recommended

00:28:12.300 | The basically here's how this works. You set up an account with privacy.com

00:28:16.820 | I'm sure the audience actually now that I think about it knows because Josh you talked about this you set up the account you attach

00:28:22.100 | Your bank account. Alright, so there's no privacy that privacy.com knows what's going on here

00:28:27.300 | But the merchants in this case does not know

00:28:30.860 | So if you want to buy the poop hurry online and have it shipped to your house or not to your house

00:28:38.260 | In this case, you can use a privacy.com debit card, which you can create on the fly

00:28:43.900 | You can put whatever name you want

00:28:45.500 | You can put whatever address and billing address you want and it will it should go through

00:28:50.300 | So that's kind of how privacy.com works

00:28:52.220 | It allows you to hide your personal information from the merchants from the merchants and as well as from your bank because it will just say

00:28:59.280 | Transaction from privacy.com. That's one small way and an easy way and this is a free service because privacy.com makes their money

00:29:08.100 | as part of the as part of the

00:29:10.460 | Card fees so it's actually a free service

00:29:14.100 | So privacy.com is a way use as many gift cards as you can you can buy gift cards in cash

00:29:19.840 | this is a great way to

00:29:22.500 | Get all kinds of stuff online whether that's eBay eBay has gift cards or Amazon

00:29:27.980 | and

00:29:30.420 | That's a that's also a great way

00:29:32.100 | Of course if you really want your privacy then you're going to have to create a new Amazon account to use this gift card

00:29:37.900 | That is not attached to some of your personal information

00:29:40.220 | Let me just throw out kind of extreme scenario here of how to buy something privately on Amazon

00:29:46.420 | You would go to a public Wi-Fi spot. Let's say a Starbucks create a new Amazon account

00:29:53.360 | Put a small gift card onto it. Not a big one a small one

00:29:58.300 | Test that out with a very small purchase send that to a delivery place like a Whole Foods

00:30:02.620 | And this is how you train your account Amazon's becoming a little bit more

00:30:05.860 | Cracked down about how they how they view these kind of transactions

00:30:10.500 | So you'll have trained your account at that point if you wanted to you could just use

00:30:13.900 | Amazon gift cards purchase things and have them sent to a Whole Foods you arrive at the Whole Foods. I

00:30:19.160 | Like a little sticky note. I approach from the side

00:30:21.980 | I cover the camera at the Whole Foods drop-off and I pick up my stuff and I'm on my way

00:30:27.020 | So just a couple examples we can pivot whichever direction you want. I know that was going a little bit extreme for a second there

00:30:33.160 | well, it's it's an interesting thing because I've I've tested and done some of this stuff and I

00:30:39.520 | Consider myself a privacy enthusiast, but these are some of the things that I have discovered are a

00:30:47.540 | Step too far for me based upon the benefits for my life. So I've I've done this

00:30:56.660 | But I have discovered from several years of living without Amazon. I've discovered that

00:31:02.780 | Amazon is a major quality of life

00:31:06.660 | Improvement for me. In fact when my wife and I were talking about moving back to the United States

00:31:12.300 | We're talking about the benefits of why we would want to move back to the United States on the top three list was Amazon

00:31:18.660 | Because you it's such an amazing, you know

00:31:22.580 | Same day next day two days here comes the product as any product in the world shows up to my door. It's high quality

00:31:29.920 | I can see the reviews. It's just fabulous and for me and my family went three years and really didn't buy

00:31:35.660 | Well, excuse me

00:31:36.660 | We bought very little on Amazon because we were traveling who didn't want to wait for the boxes, etc

00:31:41.540 | And but what we would do is it was such a big deal that whenever we came to the United States

00:31:45.260 | We'd wind up with thousand fifteen hundred dollar Amazon orders to pick up and go home with bulging suitcases

00:31:51.700 | so what I wonder here is

00:31:53.700 | for the people who are so there's the hardcore guys like you who will go all the way and

00:31:59.620 | I believe that's the ideal but in this case maybe a good way to do it is

00:32:05.340 | First to say to someone think do it at least a couple of times because here's what I'm trying to articulate

00:32:11.540 | I have pulled back on privacy, but I'm glad that I have tested the things that I've done

00:32:16.620 | And so knowing how to do it if you need to do it is I think better than not knowing how to do it and never

00:32:22.660 | Having done it. So maybe for the in-between people you might maintain most of your Amazon stuff

00:32:28.460 | But it's fairly innocuous the fact that you order a certain brand of diapers for your child and that's on subscribe and save

00:32:34.620 | But practice setting up something and practice ordering things not

00:32:39.180 | Not anything that you're actually concerned about

00:32:41.500 | So that you have the skills of knowing how to do it in case the time comes when you might want to buy

00:32:46.760 | Something else for example

00:32:48.380 | I think for me the biggest thing that would be concerning if it were exposed for me personally as my library

00:32:54.420 | Because I read a huge amount and you could take any number of dozens and dozens of books in my library

00:33:01.060 | And you put those on a big screen with a lawyer and I'd be shocked

00:33:06.180 | I'd be scared stiff of what he could say about Joshua

00:33:08.740 | But anybody who knows Joshua knows that this is just Joshua

00:33:12.100 | So I refuse to buy books on Amazon for this reason, but I don't mind buying a lot of other stuff

00:33:18.260 | So maybe there's a balance that someone could integrate. Yeah, and I think of

00:33:22.540 | Somebody who may be the listeners are aware of Doug Casey. He recently

00:33:28.180 | Published a novel called assassin where he where he defends that practice. So of course if you have that on well

00:33:35.020 | That was after drug lord. That was after the what was the first one in the series?

00:33:39.620 | Speculating. Yes

00:33:42.180 | So yes, there's you're correct about this. So how about this? I

00:33:46.580 | did advocate a very hardcore strategy if you get a privacy.com account and

00:33:51.860 | You I have I have plenty of Amazon accounts. They use privacy.com card

00:33:58.340 | fairly simple

00:34:00.500 | Don't use my real name. Okay, great

00:34:03.340 | And you could send them either to a UPS box or to an Amazon drop-off location in that scenario

00:34:10.820 | What does Amazon know about you? They don't know your name. They don't know your address

00:34:15.700 | They don't really know anything about you. And so a subpoena could draw these things together

00:34:20.880 | But Amazon in that case doesn't know anything about you. So that's a less hardcore way of going about it

00:34:27.460 | Start start small, but I agree it can be important to and fun sometimes to push this all the way

00:34:33.240 | But some of this stuff just you have to sit down think about okay. What does this company know about me?

00:34:39.400 | What do I not want them to know and how can I get around that?

00:34:41.920 | Sometimes the solutions are fairly straightforward if you know some of the right tools privacy.com for instance

00:34:48.120 | All right. We talked about spending money

00:34:50.480 | What about

00:34:53.840 | Making money. What are the suggestions or thoughts you have about privately generating money?

00:35:00.960 | Yeah, this is a this is a topic of course that this show is all about

00:35:04.440 | Of course if you are self-employed then you are doing privacy correctly. We

00:35:09.920 | were talking about

00:35:12.160 | Being employed earlier in this episode and if you're getting a job these days, of course, you have to give your information to that company

00:35:19.760 | You will have to

00:35:21.240 | Give your social security number in the United States at the point of employment

00:35:24.480 | I wouldn't give it before then you might have to be part of that company's LinkedIn page

00:35:29.200 | You might have to give them your photo. You might have to post on your personal account various things

00:35:33.400 | you might have to use that company's equipment, which is

00:35:36.640 | by the way, be careful about mixing the the personal in the business always have your

00:35:41.960 | business device separate if that were the case

00:35:44.640 | But there's all kinds of exposing thing if you are exposing things if you are an employee if you are self-employed

00:35:50.760 | Of course, you don't have to give out that information

00:35:53.480 | You do business and you have a bank account in a name of your creation and that LLC or that business?

00:36:00.040 | Should be a fairly innocuous name that does not tie

00:36:03.040 | Tie things to you. And so when you have that you have the vehicle to acquire money privately now, how can you do that?

00:36:10.760 | Well, I would suggest going back and listening to all the episodes that

00:36:13.960 | Joshua talks about in my experience. I'll just kind of boil it boil it down

00:36:18.400 | You obviously have something to offer the world because you do that right now as a job

00:36:23.480 | You probably also have some kind of hobby that people would be interested in knowing

00:36:26.920 | so find a way to offer that service or offer that perspective in a very compelling way and

00:36:34.480 | starts to approach people get clients get some kind of a web presence and

00:36:40.800 | If you have the right work ethic

00:36:43.560 | And you follow some of the basic advice about there out there about how to be an entrepreneur

00:36:48.800 | You can have more clients and not be as vulnerable to the single client

00:36:54.520 | Who is your boss when you are employed? I think that that's a key idea

00:37:00.680 | I mean there's there are diminishing returns on business privacy and privately generating income

00:37:06.120 | There are some people for whom their ability to to generate income privately is literally a matter of life and death

00:37:11.440 | It's protecting them from from people who are tracking them down

00:37:14.880 | but for most of us it's not that big of a deal, but when you combine the lifestyle benefits and you combine the

00:37:20.840 | when you combine the lifestyle benefits you combine some of the

00:37:25.600 | Career benefits when you combine some of the security that can be had and then you add privacy on top of it

00:37:31.960 | it can be a compelling factor for many people to be able to generate money privately and

00:37:39.240 | It's I

00:37:41.240 | Thing I'm most passionate about is just simply helping people support their families

00:37:45.440 | There are a lot of people who if they couldn't generate income privately, especially through self-employment

00:37:50.360 | They're their children wouldn't eat because they don't have the right papers. They don't have the right permissions

00:37:54.880 | They're not the don't have the right, you know working documents

00:37:57.960 | and so the ability to generate money privately is a big big deal to a man's ability to feed himself and feed his children and

00:38:05.640 | It's important for all of us to maintain that and to help encourage the ability that people have to generate income privately

00:38:12.120 | yes for sure, I'll just

00:38:14.800 | talk a little bit for a second about the mechanics because I

00:38:18.560 | left that out, let's say for example you have a

00:38:22.560 | Service that you want to offer somebody you're a plumber and you quit your company and you want to be your own plumber

00:38:28.080 | I don't know all the qualifications and certifications and all the rest

00:38:31.000 | so maybe that's not a good example, but what you can do is create a

00:38:35.640 | Bitcoin wallet for example with Electrum and you can give out one of the addresses

00:38:40.320 | To your clients and they can pay you in Bitcoin. You don't have to have a bank account in that case

00:38:45.360 | There could be various reporting requirements, etc

00:38:48.720 | If you wanted to be in full compliance of the IRS, etc

00:38:51.880 | But that's a very simple thing you can do in a matter of minutes to be able to

00:38:55.640 | Get money in the form of Bitcoin from a service that you offer. So things are getting increasingly easy for people to get money

00:39:05.140 | All right, you have crossed you have just crossed the magic

00:39:08.980 | barrier that I was going next is into

00:39:12.540 | Bitcoin and I want to spend a good amount of time here because I think this is some of the most important area for us

00:39:17.700 | To focus on as far as the opportunities that are available to us and then actually practically how to do it

00:39:23.200 | I'm deeply invested in this because as I see it the biggest impediments right now to

00:39:28.500 | privacy in the financial space are

00:39:32.740 | Banks and various financial institutions who?

00:39:36.780 | Number one our data hogs like they love to suck up your data in order for there to be

00:39:45.100 | Giant repositories of information for more effective marketing and while I respect the hustle, I don't want to be in it

00:39:52.980 | Number two is the fact that they're all spies

00:39:56.900 | All right, any person any person who is affiliated with the financial institution any financial advisor any banker?

00:40:03.460 | They're all spies. I used to be one too all unpaid spies for

00:40:07.900 | the federal government and

00:40:10.420 | That there's just this culture of a lack of privacy. Although there are

00:40:14.620 | Properly enforced consumer financial laws

00:40:18.040 | I could make some arguments as to why bank secrecy in the United States is actually pretty good

00:40:22.300 | And I think those are fair arguments. It is a big is a big deal

00:40:25.780 | And and when you get into the world of banking, it's as I as I concern it as I see it

00:40:30.340 | It's one of the biggest issues that we face right now where your individual transactions are

00:40:35.460 | compiled

00:40:37.500 | organized collated for marketing purposes across various credit cards, etc

00:40:42.500 | And what's more important is that your transactions themselves are being scrutinized?

00:40:48.180 | By institutions who have no idea what's happening

00:40:51.140 | If you make a transaction with the wrong person you buy the wrong thing you wind up on a blacklist

00:40:56.100 | It's a major major concern

00:40:58.040 | so I'd like to take a few moments before we get into Bitcoin and

00:41:01.420 | Just ask you like how do you see the financial space?

00:41:05.260 | Tell some some stories or share some of the the depth of the the market data

00:41:11.180 | That's being collected and compiled based upon the simple act of opening a bank account or swiping a credit card

00:41:18.020 | Yeah, sure

00:41:19.060 | So I think most people are have a sense of what's going on in banking

00:41:24.420 | of course post 9/11 in places like the US and consequently in other places, especially the

00:41:29.940 | 14 eyes countries who are it's basically a spy surveillance network of various countries and you have

00:41:37.860 | You have the five eyes nations, Australia, Canada, New Zealand

00:41:43.100 | UK and the United States and they're sharing a lot of this information and so

00:41:47.740 | Yes, there is all kinds of information being gathered by

00:41:51.820 | Banks and financial institutions. We just saw recently in the last month in the last few months and you've talked about this Josh

00:41:58.020 | the

00:42:00.020 | bar being suggested to be lowered for

00:42:02.380 | Transactions reported to the IRS. I can't recall did that did that what was the

00:42:08.160 | Conclusion to that pass didn't pass didn't pass but you can see it is certainly in the zeitgeist and so

00:42:16.700 | Here's the facts

00:42:18.700 | Anytime well, first of all, you have your money in a bank and I like to talk about self-sufficiency and as well as privacy

00:42:25.740 | You have your money in the bank and the bank essentially is the owner of that money. I don't like that

00:42:32.500 | That's why I like to hold as much cash in person as I can

00:42:35.680 | and when I hold more cash in person that not only gives me ownership, but it also gives me privacy because I am NOT sending

00:42:42.800 | that cash out to

00:42:44.580 | That money out to various people and places now

00:42:47.920 | Let's talk about some of the information being gathered on you. Of course if you're using a visa card

00:42:54.500 | Chase visa card whoever the company is

00:42:57.460 | They're collecting all kinds of marketing data people love to use their credit cards because they think that

00:43:03.500 | They're getting 5% back or whatever

00:43:06.680 | I think some of the studies show that people's depend on average 10% more when they use a credit card

00:43:11.620 | So I don't think in the end that you're winning in that

00:43:15.660 | In one of the greatest marketing campaigns in human history the the credit card and they're of course gathering all this all this information

00:43:23.220 | and

00:43:24.700 | Chase knows that you bought that gun at that store last week and this information is

00:43:32.300 | a

00:43:34.700 | Record of your life your interests where you were who you were with and

00:43:41.220 | In the same way we talked about the jury earlier on

00:43:44.180 | Chase can see your

00:43:47.940 | purchases on Amazon and everything and all of your other purchases

00:43:52.860 | So it is not a system that I want to be a part of I use more cash and you can use cryptocurrency

00:43:59.620 | Which is I think the direction that we're going. All right, so let's talk about cryptocurrency

00:44:05.660 | Bitcoin is totally secret right once what I spend out of my Bitcoin wallet is totally secret, right?

00:44:12.460 | Absolutely, Josh. So if if you were to send me some Bitcoin I could click on your wallet to see how

00:44:19.700 | Wealthy you are in terms of Bitcoin see

00:44:22.900 | Who else and everybody you have ever paid?

00:44:26.260 | Possibly where you were when you paid them if I was a little bit more savvy

00:44:30.540 | And of course the IRS can tell that and more and all of these open-source intelligence gatherers

00:44:35.820 | Can also see a whole lot more so Bitcoin the idea of Bitcoin is that there's no central authority

00:44:40.980 | which means that everybody is the authority and

00:44:43.380 | The way that works is you have a public ledger, right the blockchain and this documents

00:44:50.580 | Every transaction that occurs so that the entire Bitcoin community is verifying the transaction. They are the authority

00:44:57.860 | So we don't have a central authority. Okay, fantastic. Great

00:45:00.820 | But that also means that you can go back and analyze and study and see all of the connections

00:45:07.220 | How much Bitcoin is in each wallet all this kind of information? It's not

00:45:11.560 | Private in that sense, but you can make it private if when somebody traces it back it comes back to nothing

00:45:20.020 | So that obviously I'm joking

00:45:22.860 | But I think that it's often misunderstood that people think that well because people have used Bitcoin to buy drugs and it's all private

00:45:28.780 | It's actually far more public in terms of the transaction data. It's far more public than anything else

00:45:34.700 | It's far more public than a credit card transaction is in terms of publicness

00:45:39.380 | But that doesn't mean that there aren't ways to to use it privately

00:45:44.700 | So let's say that I did want to interact more with Bitcoin because I find it

00:45:50.740 | Doesn't matter why let's say that I wanted to

00:45:52.900 | transact more with Bitcoin

00:45:55.700 | what are some of the ways to

00:45:58.060 | Acquire and use Bitcoin in a more private way to support the growth of the Bitcoin

00:46:04.600 | Environment for whatever reason is important to you

00:46:08.820 | That is really the correct question and one that almost nobody

00:46:14.260 | Asks when I get into Bitcoin most people they're told to get into Bitcoin

00:46:19.020 | I think for the wrong reasons because they're told that it's going up and it will never go down and that's probably not the right reason

00:46:25.660 | And so people typically say well, yeah get a coinbase account or something like that

00:46:28.940 | well, the idea of Bitcoin is that there's no central authority that you own your thing and

00:46:34.660 | By going to a place like coinbase now coinbase owns your Bitcoin and they've reported all of that

00:46:40.580 | To the IRS and anybody else who comes with the proper government

00:46:45.140 | Documentation and you've seen recently in Congress in the United States. These crypto companies are bending over backward to be regulated

00:46:52.020 | they would love to be regulated because they're making a lot of money and

00:46:55.740 | they do not believe in what I see as the essence of Bitcoin, which is to be a

00:47:01.180 | Currency that is outside of any government structure. Of course, that is an existential threat. So

00:47:07.660 | To have private Bitcoin

00:47:10.720 | Okay, and we've already explained how the transactions

00:47:14.660 | Cannot be private, but if people trace that back and they can't find a name, they can't find a coinbase account

00:47:21.100 | They can't find any information. That's a good start. So, how can you do that? Well

00:47:25.100 | One simple way is to visit a Bitcoin ATM. There's a great website coin ATM radar

00:47:32.620 | calm coin ATM radar calm you can also try Google Maps and

00:47:39.820 | Find a Bitcoin near you unfortunately most of these or fortunately for the American audience most of these are in the United States

00:47:46.460 | But these are growing by the day now a Bitcoin ATM is a repository

00:47:52.260 | It looks like a regular ATM you walk up you approach from the side and cover the screen cover the camera because why not?

00:48:00.180 | and

00:48:02.540 | You go through the go through the prompts on the screen and hopefully it will let you insert your cash

00:48:09.500 | and

00:48:10.340 | Get Bitcoin to your wallet now in order to do that. Let's let's take a couple steps back

00:48:14.860 | so you'll want to have a

00:48:17.700 | Bitcoin wallet

00:48:19.980 | That is not

00:48:21.540 | Online only that's not really online except to interact with the blockchain

00:48:25.620 | The one that I recommend a lot of people recommend is Electrum. This is an easy wallet

00:48:30.400 | You can download it right now in a few seconds Electrum

00:48:33.740 | You download Electrum you go through the process of setting up the account make sure to note your seed phrase

00:48:40.420 | The seed phrase is the identity of your Bitcoin. Don't lose that

00:48:44.500 | Write that down somewhere put it in the safe

00:48:47.060 | And at that point you have your Electrum wallet and you can receive and send Bitcoin with it now

00:48:53.920 | When the Bitcoin ATM asks for your address you would give it that address

00:48:59.620 | Hopefully it's accepted your cash without you giving any information and then you it will process that transaction in about 30 minutes

00:49:06.660 | Now Bitcoin ATMs have some problems a lot of them have

00:49:09.720 | Know your customer KYC things that you have to do

00:49:13.960 | It will want you to scan your driver's license, obviously, I don't advocate

00:49:19.860 | Doing that it might want various information from you if it asks for a name

00:49:25.020 | Give it a name if it asks for a phone number. There's a great website that I use sometimes

00:49:30.860 | It's called free phone num and you am free phone num

00:49:35.740 | calm and you can make use of a few different numbers that typically can

00:49:42.100 | Receive SMS text messages. And so if you were to go to the ATM and you have your phone out you go to the website

00:49:49.140 | free phone num calm then you can use one of those phone numbers and

00:49:54.380 | Hopefully if you give them a phone number and a name

00:49:56.660 | you can be on your way and get your

00:50:00.060 | Bitcoin from the ATM. I know I'm kind of going on and on there are a lot of variables here

00:50:05.220 | It's really not easy to get Bitcoin

00:50:08.020 | Privately the ATM is is simply one method and of course the ATM is going to charge you 10 15 percent

00:50:14.780 | For for your for your troubles a few of the other ways to get Bitcoin privately

00:50:19.380 | I'll just kind of cover them and you can tell me if you want to

00:50:23.100 | Go into more detail, of course, if you are part of some kind of community you can go to a conference

00:50:28.700 | You can buy Bitcoin in cash. You can see if your store

00:50:33.120 | Excuse me. You can you could try to sell something for Bitcoin

00:50:37.740 | a lot of it is simply some of this hustle that you've talked about of finding somebody who has Bitcoin and

00:50:42.980 | Offering them something for it. There. There are some other ways to get Bitcoin privately, but those are

00:50:49.100 | Quote-unquote the easiest ways if you don't want to be part of the the coinbase

00:50:53.420 | centralized

00:50:56.060 | KYC

00:50:58.060 | Bitcoin route which in my opinion cuts against the a lot of the purpose of

00:51:02.940 | Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies

00:51:06.500 | Why do you think people?

00:51:08.500 | Well first I guess I could ask this question. I'm pretty sure I know the answer

00:51:12.260 | Do you think people should have the right to

00:51:17.980 | financial privacy in their affairs

00:51:19.980 | Assuming that you do think that why do you think that should be the case philosophically?

00:51:24.860 | Why should you have any right to privacy with regard to your money?

00:51:28.660 | After all, the only reason you would want to do it is because you're a tax cheap, right?

00:51:31.860 | well

00:51:34.820 | That is what people would say and they would have

00:51:37.980 | entirely

00:51:39.980 | Missed the point. The point is there are a few things that are immoral in life. I would consider

00:51:46.180 | stealing from somebody to be

00:51:48.180 | absolutely

00:51:49.460 | Immoral hurting somebody would be immoral if you're not doing one of these very basic things

00:51:54.580 | Then you are not doing anything wrong. The government may disagree

00:51:57.700 | Voltaire once said that it's it's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. That will remain to be the case

00:52:03.940 | but

00:52:05.660 | financial privacy you

00:52:07.660 | Are not directly harming somebody

00:52:09.860 | Whatever you're doing with your money, and so I see no justification

00:52:15.820 | whatsoever for

00:52:17.420 | banning of

00:52:19.020 | transactions, of course we can talk about

00:52:21.900 | Where we can talk about the banning the criminalization the

00:52:29.700 | Justice system as it pertains to harming people physically and such but money itself is a

00:52:38.140 | Neutral thing just like the air we breathe just like weapons just like any kind of thing

00:52:44.580 | It's not a it's not an easy

00:52:46.580 | an easy

00:52:48.780 | Question to answer and I think that unfortunately well in some ways it is an easy question to answer

00:52:53.660 | You don't really need I don't need to justify anything that I want to do

00:52:58.400 | As long as I'm not harming another person

00:53:01.980 | All right, I can do pretty much anything I want to do as long as I'm not harming another person

00:53:06.180 | But I think to me one of the reasons why I'm quite passionate about helping people enhance privacy

00:53:14.340 | of

00:53:15.700 | Communications privacy over your life activities privacy over your financial transactions, etc

00:53:22.260 | Is because I see it as one of the best things that you can do to minimize the worst-case outcomes

00:53:26.860 | There's not a single point in history that you can point to where giving a government agent more data ever did anything good

00:53:33.660 | Even in the short term when you say oh, it doesn't look good. You go back and you look at it

00:53:37.940 | And you find that the biggest I

00:53:39.940 | guess

00:53:42.900 | it

00:53:44.900 | It's a massive risk to have a repository of data I think about it kind of like this

00:53:51.980 | Do you remember the the explosion that happened in Lebanon a couple years ago, right? You have this giant

00:53:57.500 | Concentration of

00:54:01.340 | explosive material

00:54:03.340 | You are a fool if you ever put massive amounts of explosive material in one central warehouse

00:54:09.900 | You're a fool now. There may be reasons and times at which you amass certain amounts of explosive material

00:54:16.700 | You might be getting ready for a firework show. You might be ready ready to bomb somebody, right?

00:54:21.180 | There are maybe reasons and times but in terms of a general practice

00:54:25.020 | You don't put large amounts of explosive material in a central depository

00:54:29.860 | And it doesn't matter whether the guards of that central depository are totally honest and totally good-hearted

00:54:35.660 | Let's assume that they are when you put the material in one place

00:54:39.140 | You put all the financial data you put all of the current all of the contact data, etc

00:54:43.860 | You put all the explosive stuff in one place

00:54:46.380 | You create an incredible target for someone else to try to attack you create the target by making it a rich target

00:54:53.060 | And so maybe everyone who's guarding the warehouse is perfectly honest and perfectly right and perfectly moral

00:54:59.180 | It's still dumb to put the repository all the information there on the other hand

00:55:04.300 | What do you do when you get more and more material in one place?

00:55:07.340 | Will you raise the stakes you raise the temptation for somebody to use that data?

00:55:10.980 | And so whether it's in this case a government agent or a non-government agent doing it

00:55:16.480 | You have to protect the data and the only way again, the only way to protect it is through putting

00:55:22.180 | barriers and

00:55:24.140 | Watertight doors through segmenting the data out properly in in diverse

00:55:29.900 | Institutions and so this is the one of the basic problems that we face in the modern world is that because of the digital

00:55:35.860 | Connectedness if we were to go back a hundred years where you were working with a bank and you had all of your records

00:55:41.620 | With a local banking institution didn't matter right? So what the local bank knows something of my institutions. It's not that big of a deal

00:55:48.460 | Yes, somebody could go and they could rob that bank and they could possibly get that data. Okay, that's fine

00:55:54.860 | They might get a hundred people's data or a thousand people's data, but they're not gonna get millions of people's of data

00:56:01.020 | But today if a hacker goes in and accesses the Bank of America

00:56:05.700 | Databases that hacker gets the data for four hundred four millions of people and then you get some goofy email from Bank of America

00:56:13.940 | Oh dear customer. We're so sorry that your data has been exposed in a data breach

00:56:17.380 | We're taking actions to quickly fix this problem in here

00:56:20.620 | We're gonna offer you 12 months of free credit monitoring from blah blah blah blah blah

00:56:24.380 | And so you're creating the temptation and it's vastly worse when you're creating the temptation for people who have the power

00:56:32.500 | And authority to put you in prison for people who have the power and authority to take your stuff, etc. And so

00:56:39.300 | it's philosophically stupid to support the centralization of data because even the most honest and moral and upright of

00:56:48.860 | Men can be corrupted by when the temptation is too big

00:56:52.980 | And so to me that's my reason is that we live in a world where there's massive risk

00:56:56.780 | And I don't particularly care for anybody to have access to your data about what?

00:57:02.420 | About your life your communications because it simply creates too many opportunities for trouble

00:57:09.140 | So, I mean that's not the most eloquently stated of arguments

00:57:13.840 | But to me, I don't want a bunch of explosive material in one place if explosive material has to be created

00:57:19.140 | I want it to be separated it out

00:57:20.940 | And since I don't see anybody on the public space who's who?

00:57:25.180 | Everyone around just wants to put more and more explosives in a giant warehouse in the center of town

00:57:30.020 | I think that's unsafe. And so I just keep trying to move a little bit farther out of town

00:57:33.640 | Well, that's that's well said Joshua. That's a that's a typical Joshua sheets

00:57:38.540 | analogy there which I which I always appreciate and

00:57:42.420 | You're right a lot of people we like to talk about monopolies Amazon this and that the only monopoly in your life is

00:57:48.100 | Government because government is the only institution

00:57:50.460 | Which you have knows you have no say in the matter when I didn't want to use Facebook

00:57:55.140 | I stopped when I didn't want to use Google I changed when I didn't want to use Amazon

00:58:01.080 | That's a little bit more difficult, but I can go elsewhere. That is not the case with government if you

00:58:05.780 | Continue to go around believing that Santa Claus is real or that government is there to help people

00:58:11.720 | I would encourage you to listen to one of my episodes called privacy and psychopaths

00:58:16.260 | I think that right there might in itself change your mind about

00:58:20.260 | whether government is there for you or

00:58:23.140 | Whether it's there for its own interest as all

00:58:26.860 | organisms in the world are

00:58:29.420 | and so you're right what you've touched on is the fact that privacy and

00:58:33.520 | decentralization are sister terms and

00:58:37.280 | If you want to have privacy in your life and privacy ultimately is protection against any of the many threats out there

00:58:43.560 | Then you are going to aim for more decentralization in your life when one broker is

00:58:48.540 | planning things out when one broker has all of the authority all of the information then you don't have that and

00:58:56.120 | When they get exposed and they will get exposed they always get exposed

00:59:01.700 | They there are always breaches breaches every day Coinbase and all these places are hacked all the time

00:59:07.920 | I deal with clients just in the last few weeks

00:59:09.920 | Their their money's gone from their bank accounts. Their crypto is gone from their Coinbase accounts

00:59:15.380 | You have trusted to a central authority. You've given them the keys. You don't have the keys yourself

00:59:20.160 | you have not

00:59:23.400 | Made sure to possess your own finances your own information on your own local

00:59:29.380 | computer or in your own house and you are at risk of

00:59:32.580 | Every you are at risk of all the things that follow from centralization. I would add to those companies

00:59:40.860 | Lest we be accused of beating too hard on government was it five eight years ago when the Department of Defense database

00:59:49.560 | was breached and basically anybody who had ever had any kind of clearance or relationship with the Department of Defense their information was released and

00:59:57.300 | For crying out loud right now

00:59:59.300 | I mean hold on Gabriel. I'm sure you're shocked

01:00:02.820 | Do you recognize that they haven't yet found the whistleblower at the IRS?

01:00:08.000 | Who mailed the private data of hundreds of the wealthiest Americans to the newspaper?

01:00:13.860 | Articles, can you can you believe they haven't yet come to the bottom of this yet?

01:00:18.100 | It should be America's most wanted somehow

01:00:20.500 | It's not somehow it's not because it's politically convenient and even if my guys are in control today

01:00:25.780 | I know that my guys will be out of control tomorrow and I don't trust any of the guys and so I've got to put

01:00:31.860 | Some some things in place. I want to go back to the Bitcoin question

01:00:36.220 | Okay, because here is the catch-22 first question. Is it possible to?

01:00:41.220 | acquire store and

01:00:44.140 | transact Bitcoin without a cell phone

01:00:48.020 | Yes

01:00:53.140 | Yes, you can do that

01:00:55.140 | it becomes a

01:00:57.140 | Little bit more tricky, of course to transact in Bitcoin you either need the address which is a long

01:01:06.340 | numerical alphabetical address that you would give to somebody or type in or it is often abbreviated most people use a

01:01:14.500 | QR code. Okay, and so you could for example

01:01:18.340 | Remember your code or write it down

01:01:21.660 | Take a photo of your QR codes

01:01:24.740 | And okay and carry around carry them around with you on paper. Of course, you could do that

01:01:30.540 | Is there a kind of intermediary?

01:01:32.900 | step where

01:01:34.940 | You're not because in this scenario

01:01:37.580 | You would have to go back to your computer and look at your account and all this kind of stuff

01:01:41.900 | Is there a kind of intermediary way?

01:01:43.900 | That's a good question, I'll have to get back to you

01:01:50.180 | The reason well the reason I I lift it up because because in my opinion one of the hardest things to do for most people

01:01:55.620 | In the privacy space is to have a private cell phone

01:01:59.380 | It's not that it's not possible right in your book you lay out some of the solutions. It's totally possible

01:02:04.860 | It's just very difficult and I see that the set in my opinion

01:02:08.940 | The cell phone is what is the biggest privacy breach that most of us have right?

01:02:12.420 | We carry around a personal location device to page basically everywhere we go

01:02:17.660 | virtually all of our most important information is is stored on or

01:02:22.100 | Accessed through that device and yet that device is not particularly secure and when we add on to it

01:02:28.980 | Using it for Bitcoin, then it becomes more more difficult. There are a couple of devices on the market

01:02:35.100 | I've been meaning to get and look into as far as some of the the hardware the device wallets that are trying to solve this

01:02:43.100 | But I think it's an interesting area of interesting area focus for us. Yeah, that's an important question. I can I mention the

01:02:50.500 | That's an important question. And I'm performing all the research to have the

01:02:56.220 | Have the extreme worst-case scenario. Let's say you're you're you're fleeing a country and you can't bring your phone

01:03:02.780 | and we might have more to say about that and in a crypto course that that we're working on and so

01:03:10.180 | It's a good question. It's a good question because you obviously

01:03:12.980 | The phone we haven't even talked about phones yet phones are not your friend and privacy surprise

01:03:18.220 | and you don't want to be walking around with an extra phone or

01:03:21.460 | An iPod touch or something like this an iPod touch doesn't have all of the the various GPS

01:03:27.700 | Chips and such in it like a like a phone does you don't want to be?

01:03:31.160 | encumbered with all that stuff and you still want to use your Bitcoin, of course, the easiest way is to go around with your laptop and

01:03:39.460 | Pull up your Electrum wallets not always convenient

01:03:42.380 | hopefully

01:03:44.460 | There are people coming up with some intermediary options and I'll have some more to say about that soon

01:03:48.860 | Yeah, I want to add one more comment

01:03:50.860 | Because there is a good segment of the audience that agrees with you are in my position

01:03:56.020 | There's also a good segment of the audience that doesn't see the point

01:03:58.860 | I want to add one more point and this is why I'm so

01:04:01.900 | Enthusiastic about trying to be involved and help to see these areas grow

01:04:06.680 | You and I can easily afford to have bank accounts you and I can eat our wells

01:04:12.140 | You and I are well served by the financial industry. We have phones. We have computers. We have bank accounts

01:04:17.680 | We get low-cost banking low-cost investment low-cost transactions

01:04:21.380 | Yeah strike charges me a good amount of money

01:04:23.620 | But it's not that much in the grand scheme of things given the the convenience of it PayPal. It's useful, etc

01:04:29.020 | But there is a massive massive percentage of the world that does not have access to these services

01:04:35.180 | And what my hope is that we can use the exciting prospects of Bitcoin

01:04:39.660 | The growth I used to see is a major problem. I don't see it as a major problem anymore. I see it as something that

01:04:45.380 | Requires consideration

01:04:49.540 | the devices etc

01:04:51.260 | Just using it will help to bring the services that we take for granted to an increasing segment of the world

01:04:57.100 | Population and that is going to help us create an exceedingly exciting future

01:05:02.540 | when more and more of the smartest people in the world that are currently

01:05:05.820 | Blocked locked out because they don't have the right passport. They don't have the right government ID number. They don't have the right

01:05:12.160 | Ability to get with a certain merchant processor as those people come into the global economy

01:05:17.900 | it's just gonna turbocharge the current great growth that we enjoy and and

01:05:23.140 | Bitcoin is a major component of that going forward as I see it, but unfortunately Josh, there's no accountability with Bitcoin

01:05:30.900 | So what you're looking for is a one world government digital currency

01:05:34.220 | Hopefully we'll get maybe the Chinese version will be the one that will bail us out lovely

01:05:48.500 | Anything we've missed anything that you think we should cover looking through the table of contents here for the book

01:05:54.900 | We could talk about

01:05:59.740 | Phones for a moment if you'd like. Yeah, let's do that because that's very practical

01:06:02.900 | so you just you just had a good summary of a phone it is a

01:06:06.100 | Device that has a camera pointing at you and at others. It has a built-in microphone

01:06:12.040 | It has multiple chips that are used to pinpoint your location when the phone is working within a few meters

01:06:19.660 | wherever you are in the world bouncing off of the

01:06:21.980 | satellites and cell towers

01:06:24.780 | This is very juicy information it by default uses something called SMS text messages, which are free floating in the air

01:06:30.980 | Which are easily captured with the right equipment, for example by police during protests. They have devices called stingrays

01:06:38.140 | They can read all of that all those SMS text messages being sent your phone calls

01:06:43.580 | Can be certainly documented especially the metadata

01:06:48.060 | Okay, and your phone as well has a operating system that is designed to integrate all of these things and make life more convenient

01:06:55.700 | so it's not your friend in privacy and

01:06:58.660 | What we will say with phones what I'll say with phones is first

01:07:03.500 | Learn to do more with a real computer as opposed to a phone

01:07:08.620 | I don't use my phone for almost anything. I use my phone as it's meant to be used as a

01:07:14.380 | communication tool when I'm away from home and

01:07:18.380 | Particularly using private encrypted end-to-end encrypted zero knowledge

01:07:23.660 | Messengers we've mentioned signal wire whatsapp doesn't have all those characteristics, but it's better than nothing

01:07:30.900 | And so that is what your phone is meant to do. It's not meant to be your bank account

01:07:35.780 | it's not meant to

01:07:38.540 | Well, let's put it like this let's let let's go back to some of the facts the Facebook app was

01:07:47.420 | found in a Wall Street Journal study to be communicating and getting information from

01:07:52.060 | Various other apps that were around in this case

01:07:54.980 | menstruation calendar apps

01:07:57.860 | Weather apps all kinds of stuff. This is information that's being gathered and attached to your Facebook profile

01:08:03.540 | I'm not very comfortable with that kind of stuff being shared, but that's just how phones work

01:08:10.140 | They're highly incestuous

01:08:11.860 | They are designed to do this now. It's quite simple if you commit to it to do these things on your computer

01:08:19.180 | More of these things on your computer get a good laptop. Not a Chromebook get a good real laptop

01:08:25.420 | You can get a cheap one

01:08:26.220 | I like cheap a sir laptops for example a couple hundred dollars or a few hundred dollars and you're on your way

01:08:31.980 | You can instead of going to the Bank of America app. Just go to the website

01:08:36.320 | When you want to check the weather, you don't need an app for that

01:08:39.940 | just go to a browser and type in the

01:08:43.260 | The weather weather comm or whatever you're searching for there

01:08:48.220 | So there are first of all you want to do more things away from your phone and on your computer

01:08:54.200 | As you can. All right. I've lost my train of thought. What what should we be talking about as regards phones?

01:08:59.380 | I think the first thing would be which which service provider right? You basically have two options

01:09:03.300 | Apple versus Android so I think you need to begin there, right? Okay, so

01:09:08.920 | We might let me let me try to do this without getting into the weeds so

01:09:13.220 | First of all, how do you have a private phone a private phone is a phone first of all that has been purchased

01:09:19.180 | Without a connection to your name. So that would be cash in this case

01:09:23.980 | It would be a phone that has service

01:09:27.220 | That is not in your name. So you could buy a prepaid SIM card and

01:09:34.700 | Re-up it with gift cards or any other way. This is not too difficult

01:09:39.820 | To do this kind of thing. So you will have purchased it privately

01:09:44.860 | You'll have purchased these service privately and I realize that you can't do that in all countries. I think Nigeria South Korea

01:09:51.100 | If you get a phone SIM card, this is highly tied to your national identity

01:09:56.460 | It's difficult to get around that now if you're using private messengers on your phone

01:10:01.180 | You can connect to Wi-Fi and use that and communicate just like normal

01:10:06.460 | Of course

01:10:06.780 | The benefit of phone is you have that satellite signal the data signal so that you can use the device

01:10:13.500 | When you're not near Wi-Fi, I understand them. That's the goal

01:10:16.140 | But in order to have the private phone you want to acquire the SIM card

01:10:19.980 | In cash gift cards, whatever the case may be

01:10:22.940 | So that's not tied to your name now you start up the phone. Is that an Android or an Apple?

01:10:28.180 | I don't really care. I don't I don't differentiate a whole lot between those two because what I'm looking for is a phone

01:10:34.500 | That's going to do the basic stuff for me and it's not going to be doing all this other stuff

01:10:39.220 | If you are downloading a hundred apps, then you don't care about privacy

01:10:43.780 | But in that case you could go with Apple because Apple is a little bit better out of the box

01:10:49.380 | When you create an Apple ID

01:10:52.460 | There's a process that you'll get to

01:10:55.860 | There's a process that you'll go through you don't want to give you a real name

01:11:00.500 | You want to have an email address perhaps a proton mail email address that is

01:11:05.180 | New and dedicated just to this don't obviously don't reveal

01:11:10.620 | Information about yourself. You'll have to give a phone number for that Apple account. You'll just have to give your

01:11:17.380 | Phone number attached to the SIM card. They probably already know that information anyway

01:11:22.620 | And so at that point you will have an Apple device or an Android device

01:11:26.500 | Purchased not in your name

01:11:29.380 | SIM card not in your name

01:11:31.420 | And you will then have to take your prudence your privacy prudence and apply that to what apps you download or don't download

01:11:38.660 | The information that you give it be careful about permissions things of this nature. You can use your VPN on a phone

01:11:45.500 | That's always wise

01:11:47.140 | we have things like

01:11:49.940 | Faraday bags which block out all signals if you don't want your phone to be pinpointing your location

01:11:56.580 | Where you are, you can slip it in the sleeve. You obviously can't use it. And so that's why

01:12:01.620 | That's why I kind of conclude in my chapter on phone privacy. It's it's

01:12:06.900 | It's almost impossible to have a phone privacy because if the phone is working it's pinpointing

01:12:13.020 | It's identifying you by your location by definition

01:12:16.260 | And so there's one way around that which we can talk about if you want. That's the my pseudo

01:12:21.540 | iPod touch version

01:12:23.900 | we could also talk about

01:12:25.900 | Graphene OS which is a custom software that you would have to install on your phone. These are these are more complicated things but

01:12:33.220 | in

01:12:34.780 | For them the primer version I would say

01:12:37.420 | Simply start using your phone less stop attaching as much information to it as you can

01:12:43.700 | And just kind of be more aware of what you're doing on your phone. Are you willing to say are you using?

01:12:50.340 | Do you continue to use the iPod?

01:12:52.940 | Trick or using the graph a graphing phone at this point

01:12:55.940 | What are you willing to say?

01:12:59.260 | Feel free to say no

01:13:02.100 | Privacy expert. What are you doing? Well, I'm using and testing out both and

01:13:09.020 | The the thing about graphene OS graphene OS as I said is a custom software you download on your computer. It strips out

01:13:15.420 | it strips out a lot of the

01:13:18.180 | Android functionality that was previously being reported to Google now when you're using the graphene OS

01:13:24.460 | It's still pinpointing your location with its data trail

01:13:27.620 | But it's not doing a whole lot else

01:13:30.420 | So if you've acquired that phone and SIM card privately that will do you fairly well now

01:13:37.260 | the other option is

01:13:39.260 | which you

01:13:40.780 | reference Joshua is the

01:13:42.780 | Apple

01:13:44.140 | iPod touch approach now. This is a little bit complicated. Let me just try to boil it down. So you have an

01:13:50.340 | Apple iPhone and

01:13:53.140 | You have an iPod touch

01:13:55.020 | Okay, the iPod touch is the thing and I don't take credit for this by the way

01:13:58.980 | This is something that Michael Bozell and and others have have worked out but the iPod touch is for at home

01:14:04.940 | Okay, the iPod touch stays at home

01:14:07.020 | your iPad your

01:14:09.020 | iPhone is what you take on you with journeys on your on journeys when you're outside of the house

01:14:16.020 | so when you start to approach your home you slip your

01:14:19.500 | iPhone into a Faraday bag and that does not get used anymore. You get home you use your you use your iPod touch

01:14:26.780 | which is not

01:14:28.780 | calling out to

01:14:30.780 | Geolocation at all and it doesn't have some other things that are

01:14:35.380 | Anyway, it is not calling out your geolocation and you can connect these two devices

01:14:42.260 | to

01:14:44.780 | Use the same apps that you would use on your iPhone. And so for example, here's the here's the main point

01:14:51.620 | There is a program called my pseudo Joshua has mentioned it before doesn't always work in countries

01:14:57.220 | outside of the US especially but

01:15:00.260 | My pseudo allows you to have

01:15:02.260 | Up to nine phone numbers

01:15:05.300 | Which are not sent through your typical phone wires

01:15:10.420 | It is through a data connection. You have nine phone numbers legitimate phone numbers and you can make your calls

01:15:16.100 | You can do your SMS

01:15:18.620 | Messaging you can do your code verification through these numbers

01:15:24.100 | And so that might be something you're interested in

01:15:28.060 | I realize I'm getting to the weeds again with this one. Let me just for the let me give the non

01:15:32.700 | Well sort of the non-technical reason as to why that that works

01:15:35.700 | so if we understand what a phone is and what it is doing you can see that it has a number of major

01:15:45.180 | vulnerabilities for those who care about privacy and

01:15:47.860 | The number one vulnerability that a phone has a cell phone a normal cell phone is it has a radio chip

01:15:54.860 | that radio chip in it is communicating with local cell phone towers and it's establishing a constant

01:16:01.300 | Connection through the local cell phone towers if your phone can reach a tower. It's reporting its position

01:16:07.500 | It's reporting its position through triangulation for the towers and they could tell exactly where it is

01:16:12.980 | So now you go back and let's use an event like say if you were in Washington DC on January 6 for a protest

01:16:20.540 | and

01:16:21.900 | You had your cell phone on you or if you were in downtown

01:16:26.140 | Insert City here for a protest and you had your cell phone on you

01:16:30.380 | If that cell phone is on you and it is powered on it is

01:16:33.980 | Communicating with a tower and it is creating a real-time record of your location

01:16:38.900 | This is for the most part for most of us doesn't matter right not going anywhere a place

01:16:44.780 | I shouldn't be right to go and protest as a First Amendment, right?

01:16:47.980 | There's no reason why I can't assemble on the streets of my local town. There's no problem with it

01:16:52.500 | But what happens is oftentimes there are events and then frequently in this case is law enforcement law enforcement will go and they will

01:16:59.260 | Solicit the request the subpoena the records from all the local cell phone providers and say tell us all of the phones that were

01:17:05.780 | In this certain place at this certain time and then continue their investigations and sometimes a protest that you went to

01:17:12.740 | that you thought was just a good ordinary protest for you to say say your mind downtown Kenosha, Wisconsin or

01:17:20.140 | You know downtown Washington DC, etc

01:17:22.540 | Can or just a local gathering of some kind?

01:17:25.380 | Call of a sudden loops you into some stuff that you really didn't want to be involved with and can wreck your life

01:17:30.180 | so the first vulnerability in a cell phone is the radio chip if a cell phone is powered on and if it has contact with

01:17:37.260 | a

01:17:38.220 | Tower it's creating a real-time record of your location

01:17:41.460 | Tower it's creating a real-time location now in some cases even if the phone is powered off if it's within contact with the tower

01:17:48.700 | It's creating a real-time connection

01:17:50.340 | I noticed with the most recent update from Apple on my iPhone that I had that it said

01:17:54.980 | We know that find my iPhone is going to work

01:17:57.780 | Even if your phone is powered off and we in the privacy community, they've been saying for a very long time

01:18:03.660 | Oh look, even if your phone is off

01:18:05.100 | It can still be accessed remotely and people weren't really sure well

01:18:08.620 | There was right on the screen of my iPhone last week saying find my iPhone is still gonna work

01:18:13.300 | even if your phone is powered off kind of a confirmation of that the second problem is that your phone has in it a

01:18:20.100 | GPS chip and so that GPS chip is also

01:18:23.820 | Absorbing and consuming data third problem is there's a wireless card

01:18:28.340 | And so it's keeping a record of all the Wi-Fi networks nearby the Bluetooth networks, etc

01:18:32.780 | And this is why even if you don't give Facebook author is your Facebook app on your phone

01:18:37.660 | Even if you don't authorize it to have access to your location

01:18:41.460 | It still knows exactly where you are. Even if it's not using your exact GPS chip

01:18:44.900 | It's using the information from all of those networks that are around

01:18:48.100 | This is why if you go into a foreign country and you want to navigate with your GPS

01:18:52.500 | even if you have your phone an airplane mode with Wi-Fi and

01:18:54.700 | Bluetooth on the phone can still figure out where it is because it has a GPS chip and it's accessing the local networks and

01:19:00.580 | Having an idea of where it is

01:19:02.820 | So now when you add to these sensors that it give real-time

01:19:06.740 | Geolocation data you add the other things that are in a phone you add the cameras and you add the microphone you get a very significant

01:19:14.320 | vulnerability now most of us are not being hunted by some by the US Marshals or by the NSA or by the

01:19:21.140 | Russian blah blah blah or the Chinese government most of us are not but some of us are right some of us have positions of

01:19:27.300 | power some of us have position where leaders and companies and there are people who are paying our competitors to

01:19:32.760 | to

01:19:34.200 | Going online and contacting a hacker and saying hey, I'd like you to study out the competitor who's leading the local

01:19:40.960 | You know fortune 500 company or who's in the the c-suite level

01:19:45.560 | I want to not find out where he is and this data is generally publicly available

01:19:49.800 | So if you're creating the data, although it's been denied many times

01:19:53.760 | There's ample evidence that the big cell phone companies were sharing this data and this data was available for purchase

01:20:00.200 | And so again think here again

01:20:01.800 | Most of us are not coming to the attention of law enforcement a lot of the time

01:20:05.920 | You simply might have a competitor or somebody who's trying to get inside industry information. So how do you get out of all this?

01:20:12.480 | Well, first way is you can just say I'm not gonna carry a cell phone. I'm gonna carry a CB radio

01:20:18.000 | Well that doesn't work for most people if you had the discipline where you could simply go around with a computer

01:20:23.520 | You could set up a secure computer and then you could find a Wi-Fi network when you needed one and you could do that

01:20:28.840 | But most of us don't want to fit a 15-inch Acer laptop running Linux in our back pocket. That doesn't really work

01:20:34.280 | So what are the alternatives to this you could if possible you could have some kind of device

01:20:40.080 | That would allow you to access information

01:20:43.320 | with minimal with with fewer of these radio chips and

01:20:48.000 | These devices would be known as an iPhone or an iPad right an iPad mini could also work

01:20:54.060 | So if you were to purchase sue me, I said iPhone I meant iPod

01:20:57.600 | if you were to Apple is for many years sold the iPod touch which

01:21:02.360 | Functionally works the same as the iPhone in terms of the apps that can be loaded onto it

01:21:07.240 | But it doesn't have a cellular card in it. It doesn't have a GPS chip

01:21:11.220 | So it's automatically creating fewer records and it's automatically communicating less with the local

01:21:17.500 | radio signals

01:21:19.040 | so if you take an iPod touch or you can do the same thing with an iPad mini or an iPad that doesn't have a

01:21:25.160 | Cellular card in it and you simply use it you use the Wi-Fi in it and you turn on a VPN

01:21:31.360 | You can access the information that you need from those applications without

01:21:35.000 | Creating all of the metadata all of the location data

01:21:38.660 | And so Gabriel is talking about as many people are quite sensitive about where do I sleep at night?

01:21:42.720 | and so they'll have the iPod touch which allows them to be in contact at home and then when traveling they might use an iPhone or

01:21:49.120 | some people who are super hardcore will take an iPod touch pair that with something like a

01:21:54.680 | What's it called the hotspot jetpack type of thing an internet jetpack device to get internet data

01:22:00.240 | And so this is one of your if you really if privacy were a big deal to you

01:22:04.360 | You were a big shot. You had a big risk profile or something like that

01:22:07.320 | Then this would be one way of accessing mobile data. You would have some kind of internet

01:22:12.640 | hotspot device

01:22:16.040 | Frequently the nice thing about those is they don't have cameras on them. They don't have

01:22:19.960 | Microphones they don't have speakers. They don't have GPS chips. They're just on the on the on the internet service

01:22:25.800 | also

01:22:26.480 | Frequently they have a removable batteries

01:22:28.240 | and so if you want to get them off the grid you pop the battery off and then you pair that with something like an

01:22:32.520 | iPod touch or an iPad mini that doesn't have a radio a cell phone radio chip in it and you have a pretty good

01:22:39.240 | Solution that allows you to stay connected when you want to be but have fewer of the vulnerabilities of the constant and never-ending metadata

01:22:46.120 | All I would say is I would personally never go to any kind of protest of any kind

01:22:49.960 | And carry a cell phone in my pocket. And so if you need to have something have information

01:22:56.160 | On it and again, remember it's just because for this simple reason my guys are in power today

01:23:01.720 | But my guys won't be in power tomorrow

01:23:03.680 | And so if all of a sudden my guys aren't in power anymore and I go from politically favored to politically disfavored

01:23:11.180 | I got a problem and so you want to be thoughtful about that and this is one way of potentially doing that

01:23:15.660 | a good summary

01:23:17.460 | that that was that was

01:23:19.460 | Great Josh. It's it's that time of the afternoon. My coffee's running out. So I'm glad you picked up the slack there

01:23:26.180 | Let me just bring it home real quick for for the people who are made

01:23:30.380 | May be lost in the last 15 minutes

01:23:33.240 | Your location. Why would you want to protect your location?

01:23:37.400 | You mentioned a couple things if you're involved in a protest

01:23:40.440 | Of course your location can and if you've watched looked at the news lately the people in January 6th

01:23:46.700 | Their location was pinpointed. They were inside

01:23:49.660 | Federal property. Okay, they there's proof right there or they

01:23:53.860 | Said X or Y via SMS. They interrupt you just to add because that's super politically charged

01:24:00.660 | The Australian government is knocking on people's doors right and asking you have you been to a protest in violation of kovat regulations?

01:24:08.460 | So don't just think this is about like right-wing ism in the US like all over the world people are doing this continue correct

01:24:14.620 | Yes, maybe it's it's best to use a neutral thing. And of course during the the kovat stuff. There was all kinds of geolocation

01:24:21.320 | and here's one example in in South Korea, there was a

01:24:25.660 | There was a man who went to a shop now in South Korea. They they had an app they were being

01:24:33.480 | They were being monitored their location by their their cell phone. And as I mentioned in South Korea your cell phone is

01:24:38.600 | deeply attached to your national ID now this man goes to a restaurant and

01:24:43.920 | He tells the restaurant owner that he has

01:24:47.600 | Kovat and if he doesn't give him something for free he is going to

01:24:52.920 | Yes, he's going to blackmail him so with kovat, of course you can understand the importance of

01:25:03.240 | Location, but let me just cover a couple of other things. Let's say that you visit a gold shop or a gun shop

01:25:10.420 | You bring your phone with you. Well, there's a record that you have visited those locations in the US

01:25:16.880 | There is a vice president who has publicly laughed at the idea that the Second Amendment cannot be overturned

01:25:22.500 | So don't be any doubt about what the future might hold for people who have visited

01:25:29.800 | Gun shops if you're being stalked or you're a CEO or you're a wanted person

01:25:33.840 | Obviously your location is the difference between life and death sometimes

01:25:38.380 | Verizon and a lot of other I think probably all phone services

01:25:45.480 | Offer a marketing service in Verizon's case that's called Verizon insights and basically they will sell the location information of their customers

01:25:53.080 | To businesses who want it. So let's say you are at a Trump rally

01:25:58.640 | Let's say that there are people at a Trump rally

01:26:00.560 | Well Verizon can sell the information of those people who are at the Trump rally to somebody else so you can you can kind of see

01:26:06.800 | How your your phone location can be a bit of a vulnerability one more story

01:26:11.760 | There was a man riding his bike through a neighborhood one afternoon

01:26:16.680 | He he rode it back and forth a couple of times now

01:26:19.960 | He had his phone with him and he gets a message from Google that they were going to share his

01:26:24.360 | Have you told this story?

01:26:27.520 | I don't know this one. So he gets a message from Google. They have shared that or they're about to share various information

01:26:34.840 | Including his location with law enforcement and so he kind of panics what what's going on here hires a lawyer burns through savings

01:26:41.760 | Burns through some of his family's money

01:26:44.200 | Fighting this he doesn't want to give this out

01:26:47.480 | it turns out that he just had a phone with him and he had a Google app on there which we most of us do and

01:26:53.120 | Google

01:26:55.360 | Was noting just like his phone service, right? Google is also noting your location

01:27:01.440 | When you have it on your phone and Google was aware that he was in this area

01:27:06.680 | law enforcement will oftentimes go to Google when there's been a crime in an area which was the case here and

01:27:12.920 | This gentleman not only was in the crime scene once but twice and so he has to fight this

01:27:19.080 | He has to defend this he burns through his family savings

01:27:22.520 | and just one more reason about why you might just want to

01:27:26.760 | Use your phone less use a Faraday bag use something like graphene OS or use the iPhone and

01:27:33.480 | iPod touch strategy which we've talked about just just a few examples there of why your location

01:27:40.120 | Can be a serious vulnerability and if you say oh, no, I you know back the blue I

01:27:47.640 | Beg you go and spend a little time on innocence project calm go and read some of the cases

01:27:53.840 | That are found and you'll see why this is a major a major concern for completely innocent law-abiding

01:28:00.800 | Citizens just always remember this in the United States

01:28:03.640 | You live in the statistics you said earlier Gabriel one in twenty you live in the country if you live in the United States

01:28:09.920 | You're dealing with the country that incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country in the world by a wide margin

01:28:16.820 | I need to go and check and see if it's double the next one

01:28:19.000 | But it's by a wide margin very much more than anyone and yet what percentage of those

01:28:25.240 | Incarcerations are justified and what percentage of them are actually of guilty people

01:28:31.960 | That's a very very different number. So I think it's best to be prudent in all affairs. All right last thing Gabriel

01:28:38.880 | Do you what ideas do you have for the person who like me says Gabriel listen, I'm into it

01:28:46.040 | I think it's so cool to set the stuff up. I love it. I can't do it Gabe. I can't live

01:28:50.840 | I can't live this way. I can't run my business from a my pseudo number

01:28:55.560 | I can't get that I can't get SMS reliably from the verification on my bank account

01:29:00.280 | I get like I can't do it as well as I'd like to do it because having been a privacy

01:29:04.960 | Enthusiast you got to be committed because it's a real hassle

01:29:08.320 | You have spent dozens and dozens and if not hundreds of hours of your life working out ways that work and fixing things when they go

01:29:15.180 | Wrong, do you have any ideas for how you can just simply have everything work?

01:29:21.800 | Without being so committed if not, I'll give you mine. But like let's say that you said, all right

01:29:27.880 | I don't want to have it. I can't do this all the time. It's all lost. Do I have to give up privacy?

01:29:33.120 | What do you think?

01:29:34.280 | Well, of course what I will say first is if you're doing something

01:29:38.480 | It's obviously better than nothing if you were going all the way

01:29:43.440 | then you would have to go very far indeed, and I can't say that I have

01:29:47.980 | Gone that far whatsoever. So if you're doing something

01:29:51.840 | That's great. If you were just switch to Linux a Linux operating system

01:29:57.980 | So you're not giving Microsoft and and possibly Apple your data. You have one small victory. So don't be

01:30:04.560 | Don't feel that you're a failure for not having gone all the way if you've gone any distance at all

01:30:12.600 | That's a great thing in terms of strategies for making this

01:30:15.680 | more smooth

01:30:17.800 | More efficient. I don't I don't know. I wish there were unfortunately. It's it says

01:30:23.200 | Tolstoy said everybody

01:30:26.200 | Thinks about changing the world. No one thinks about changing themselves

01:30:29.480 | Okay, that doesn't quite fit what I'm saying

01:30:32.640 | But my point being that if you want to have privacy that by definition means that you are doing everything yourself

01:30:40.360 | You're doing more things yourself. You're relying on fewer and fewer

01:30:43.200 | Third parties external services that is difficult that requires a lot of work

01:30:47.960 | Maybe it's not worth it in the end, but I want to just have one more pitch for privacy here, which is that privacy?

01:30:54.000 | Can shield you from the increasingly?

01:30:57.280 | ideological

01:30:59.880 | Constraints that are placed on the Internet's if you are

01:31:02.680 | if you're not using a VPN if you have your

01:31:08.040 | Cookies and history being remembered on your browser, which I would recommend

01:31:11.760 | Not it can change if you're only using Google and Google search and YouTube it can change your access to reality

01:31:19.880 | You will be shown things that Google and whoever else wants you to see you will not be exposed to other things

01:31:26.200 | So what we're talking here is not just about protection, which is important, but we're talking about how you have access

01:31:31.160 | to reality to what's really going on in the world as opposed to what somebody some company some

01:31:37.520 | Institution wants you to see what that said Josh. Let me know what what what you're thinking about making things easier

01:31:43.200 | Well the point you're making to drive off of that. I read this really great article the other day by I wish I could cite him

01:31:50.480 | He was talking about his

01:31:54.040 | The way that he controls his children's internet usage and this essay I make this I thought that made this point brilliantly

01:32:02.920 | Many times as parents you feel a little bit guilty controlling and monitoring your children's usage now

01:32:09.720 | If you're a parent and you don't know every single thing that your child is doing on the Internet

01:32:14.000 | You're a fool and you're gonna reap what you are, you know, you're gonna reap major problems

01:32:18.600 | But you need to fix that first of all and there are some good tools for doing that

01:32:22.560 | But he was talking about this guilt. I know that was a strong statement, but please I beg you

01:32:26.760 | It's very very important that with your children. I hope this what I'm about to say gives you reason to do it

01:32:31.800 | He was talking about this guilt that sometimes you have a feel as a parent of

01:32:34.960 | Watching your children's activity and monitoring them and you say well this flies right in the face of privacy. What about their privacy?

01:32:41.760 | The point he made which I thought was so well put he said if you think that you have privacy on the Internet

01:32:48.960 | You're living in a like a world from

01:32:50.960 | 1996 right you have no privacy on the Internet and he says you're you're behaving foolishly

01:32:57.560 | Because you think that you're on a free and open Internet where you have privacy

01:33:01.360 | You are you are the one being manipulated step by step for every single thing that you're doing

01:33:07.440 | You're the one who's being who ever everything that you do online is being controlled monitored watched

01:33:13.720 | absorbed purchased every single thing that you're doing online is

01:33:17.480 | Manipulated and you are falling prey to a non-stop flood of algorithms

01:33:24.060 | That are seeking to control your behavior systematically and his point as a parent

01:33:30.320 | Was that by monitoring my children's activities online and by the fact that they know that I'm monitoring

01:33:37.720 | Them I'm teaching them how to live in the world that we live in

01:33:42.400 | Which is a world of constant and never-ending monitoring and I thought it was I didn't say it as clearly and eloquently as he did

01:33:50.000 | But I thought that's a really powerful point

01:33:52.000 | I say immediately sent it to all my friends and family like listen

01:33:55.560 | This is this is a very important point because I have a bias for privacy and my children have no privacy with regard to their

01:34:02.160 | online activities

01:34:03.360 | And and they won't for a very very long time and I thought how do you reconcile this and I thought this is the wreck

01:34:09.080 | This is the way that you reconcile it

01:34:10.680 | Can you be private on the Internet for a few minutes if you're a techno wizard and you know how to set up?

01:34:16.240 | You know a sandboxed

01:34:18.320 | Virtual machine running through multiple layers of VPNs. That's everything like you can do it. It is possible

01:34:25.200 | but it requires a vastly high level of technical knowledge and

01:34:28.440 | So most of us aren't gonna reach that level or live that way on a daily basis

01:34:33.920 | I think your point Gabriel about using clean browsers is really valuable for many years

01:34:39.200 | I have used a clean browser to simply change the browser settings

01:34:43.360 | If you just set Firefox every time you close eliminate history eliminate cookies

01:34:47.480 | I'll just scrub scrub the browser that in and of itself gives you a very different experience on the Internet because you don't wind up

01:34:53.840 | In a side and in a silo you don't wind up just constantly having feedback

01:34:57.680 | Of the an echo chamber

01:35:00.040 | And so if you go on YouTube and every time you see just native naked YouTube without your being signed in

01:35:05.520 | It gives you a vastly different experience than your own personally trained, you know algorithmically enhanced

01:35:11.040 | Personal account. So I guess what I was saying was I

01:35:15.160 | Believe that the audience of radical personal finance tends to be quite wealthy and quite well educated and quite busy

01:35:21.960 | And I think that privacy

01:35:23.960 | You are exactly right. There are levels of privacy that are possible

01:35:28.760 | And that are and that every level is good, right?

01:35:31.880 | Just putting a VPN putting it on your phone putting on your computer running it. It's great gives you a major upgrade

01:35:38.000 | Being thoughtful about the apps that are on your phone gives you a good upgrade being thoughtful about where you go on the internet

01:35:43.360 | And how you go good good upgrades. My answer is you can use money to solve some of this

01:35:47.680 | We didn't talk and I for the sake of time

01:35:49.740 | I don't want to get into things like location privacy

01:35:52.280 | but after doing all kinds of stuff over the years on location privacy, I became convinced that

01:35:57.640 | If you can afford it the best way to have location privacy is just simply to have an apartment where you live

01:36:03.600 | that you don't personally set foot in much and

01:36:06.720 | Looking like a normal person is a big deal for phone privacy

01:36:11.240 | right

01:36:11.720 | one of the best things you can do is just have a traditional phone number a

01:36:14.880 | Traditional thing that's useful for two-factor authentication and verification, etc

01:36:19.480 | and so I spent I have spent a lot of time and a lot of money using many of the solutions and

01:36:25.240 | Found out the limits as to where they work and don't work similar like with a business. I love my pseudo

01:36:30.080 | I think it's great. I would never run a business on it. It's gotten better, right?

01:36:33.600 | But I would never run a business on it's not reliable enough

01:36:36.280 | So if I'm running a business, I'm gonna have a phone that's dedicated to that business

01:36:39.480 | But knowing how to leave that phone behind

01:36:42.120 | Knowing how to put the phone in a Faraday cage knowing how to use the phone for what it's just to be used for

01:36:47.280 | Maybe I teach people right having a backup set right having you may not use a private phone every day all the time

01:36:54.280 | But knowing that you have a privately purchased phone that's clean that set up that's ready to go that has service and that's sitting in a Faraday

01:37:01.880 | Cage, you know a Faraday bag in your buddies gun safe or in your storage unit or at your office or something like that

01:37:08.000 | So if you need that secondary form of communication, these are powerful ways to do it

01:37:13.020 | And so this is I've had this kind of tenuous relationship with privacy where I'm totally into it because I'm into like weird hardcore stuff

01:37:19.220 | Like that, but I find that a lot of the techniques are

01:37:22.420 | Difficult, but yet I'm really glad I'm into it because having it as a backup option has been really powerful

01:37:28.580 | And that's kind of my point is that if you're a guy who's making a good income and you don't have a private phone

01:37:35.120 | at least as a backup sitting somewhere I

01:37:38.100 | Think you're you're not planning ahead enough, right?

01:37:40.700 | if you don't have a

01:37:41.720 | place you can go and know how to go to a place where you could fall off the grid if you all of a

01:37:45.800 | Sudden we're on the front page of the newspaper. I don't think you're planning ahead well enough in the modern world

01:37:50.020 | That's that's all well said let me just say one final thing here, which is slight tangent

01:37:56.320 | But I want to make sure to say it and that is for people who think we've gone off the deep end here

01:38:01.100 | Let me get let me give you something very practical for the the wealthy listener out there

01:38:05.580 | let's say that you have your bank account and you have X amount of money in there and you have your coinbase account and you

01:38:11.980 | Have your fidelity and Vanguard accounts and you have X amount of stock in there

01:38:16.920 | the easiest thing you can do to protect that is

01:38:19.420 | To have two-factor authentication. I didn't mention this. I should have Joshua referenced it just a minute ago

01:38:26.260 | Go into your important accounts go to the settings set up two-factor authentication

01:38:32.500 | That is going to force you whenever you log in to provide a code that can be sent to your phone

01:38:40.180 | Or through an app like Authy and I recommend that you consider an app called Authy

01:38:45.900 | This is an easy way to make sure that you're not part of some of my recent clients

01:38:49.840 | Who the statistic of six trillion dollars of cybercrime per year?

01:38:55.000 | Which is growing which my clients recently have contributed to because they didn't have two-factor authentication in their important accounts

01:39:01.900 | Because they were using a Yahoo email address, which they didn't change the password and Yahoo accounts were breached a few years ago

01:39:08.340 | So there's the keys to the kingdom right there. They lose all of their coinbase money

01:39:13.420 | Just like that and you can't recover cryptocurrency. So have the two-factor authentication

01:39:19.380 | Change your email address to one that is not hackable. For example proton mail

01:39:27.500 | They do not have the credentials of their users so they cannot

01:39:32.060 | Theoretically have a breach. So go create you a proton mail email account change your important

01:39:38.780 | Financial accounts to that make sure you don't forget the password because you will be locked out for eternity

01:39:43.460 | set up your two-factor authentication and you will have just done your financial future a

01:39:49.180 | Huge benefit by making just those steps

01:39:52.300 | Absolutely. So I want to plug your book the watchman guide to privacy reclaim your digital financial and lifestyle freedom

01:39:59.740 | This book is fantastic. I

01:40:02.300 | Strongly recommend it. It's wonderful. It's a it's a really good and Gabriel

01:40:07.860 | You're very good at organizing information and you're very good at laying out kind of the philosophical underpinnings of your position and giving a good

01:40:17.900 | Introduction to people but also giving enough tidbits of how you can go deep in this book. I love this book

01:40:23.540 | I think it's great. You're also doing a podcast

01:40:26.340 | Yes, that is simply the watchman privacy podcast available pretty much anywhere including YouTube, etc

01:40:33.500 | So watchman privacy podcast and are you additionally maintaining a blog or is it most of your writing in this book?

01:40:39.100 | You can if you want to track me down get the book check out my podcast

01:40:43.540 | You can check out my website watchman privacy comm I have a newsletter

01:40:47.900 | I hope to be doing some important things with that in the upcoming year

01:40:51.240 | So those are the three ways and then Gabriel and I are working on a project

01:40:54.860 | Which we hope to be announcing the details of very soon

01:40:57.640 | about Bitcoin Bitcoin privacy, etc

01:41:00.420 | my

01:41:02.660 | Hopefully that'll be a q1

01:41:04.660 | 2022 launch that was supposed to be q4

01:41:07.500 | But I've messed that up and so q1 2022 is the plan for a pretty cool Bitcoin collaborative project Gabriel

01:41:15.140 | Thank you for coming. Thank you for being on the show today. Thank you

01:41:17.700 | Thank you.

2021-12-20-A_Watchmans_Guide_to_Privacy-Interview_with_Gabriel_Custodiet