A vision of crimes in the future Marc Goodman

I study the future of crime and

terrorism and frankly I’m afraid I’m

afraid by what I see I sincerely want to

believe that technology can bring us the

techno utopia that we’ve been promised

but you see I’ve spent a career in law

enforcement and that’s informed my

perspective on things I’ve been a street

police officer an undercover

investigator a counterterrorism

strategist and I’ve worked in more than

70 countries around the world I’ve had

to see more than my fair share of

violence and the darker underbelly of

society and that’s informed my opinions

my work with criminals and terrorists

has actually been highly educational

they have taught me a lot and I’d like

to be able to share some of these

observations with you today I’m going to

show you the flip side of all those

technologies that we marvel at the ones

that we love in the hands of the Ted

community these are awesome

tools which will bring about great

change for our world but in the hands of

suicide bombers the future can look

quite different I started observing

technology and how criminals were using

it as a young patrol officer in those

days this was the height of Technology

laughs though you will all the drug

dealers and gang members with whom I

dealt had one of these long before any

police officer I knew did 20 years later

criminals are still using mobile phones

but they’re also building their own

mobile phone networks like this one

which has been deployed in all 31 states

of Mexico by the narcos they have a

national encrypted radio communication

system think about that think about the

innovation that went into that think

about the infrastructure to build it

and then think about this why can’t I

get a cell phone signal in San Francisco

how is this possible it makes no sense

we consistently underestimate what

criminals and terrorists can do

technology has made our world

increasingly open and for the most part

that’s great but all of this openness

may have unintended consequences

consider the 2008 terrorist attack on

Mumbai the men that carried that attack

out were armed with ak-47s explosives

and hand grenades they threw these hand

grenades and innocent people as they sat

eating in cafes and waited to catch

trains on their way home from work but

heavy artillery is nothing new and

terrorist operations guns and bombs are

nothing new what was different this time

is the way that the terrorists used

modern information communications

technologies to locate additional

victims and slaughter them they were

armed with mobile phones they had

BlackBerry’s they had access to

satellite imagery they had satellite

phones and they even had night-vision

goggles but perhaps their greatest

innovation was this we’ve all seen

pictures like this on television and in

the news this is an operation center and

the terrorists built their very own ops

center across the border in Pakistan

where they monitored the BBC al Jazeera

CNN and Indian local stations they also

monitored the internet and social media

to monitor the progress of their attacks

and how many people they had killed they

did all of this in real time the

innovation of the terrorist operation

center gave terrorists unparalleled

situational awareness and tactical

advantage over the police and over the

government what did they do with this

they used it to great effect at one

point during the 60 hour siege the

terrorists were going room to room

trying to find additional victims they

came upon a suite on the top floor of

the hotel and they kicked down the door

and they found

man hiding by his bed and they said to

him who are you and what are you doing

here and the man replied I’m just an

innocent schoolteacher of course the

terrorists know that no Indian

schoolteacher stays at a suite in the

Taj they picked up his identification

and they phoned his name in to the

terrorist war room where the terrorist

war room googled him and found a picture

and called their operatives on the

ground and said your hostage is a heavy

set is he bald in front does he wear

glasses yes yes yes cane the answers the

OP Center had found him and they had a

match he was not a schoolteacher he was

the second wealthiest businessman in

India and after discovering this

information the terrorist war room gave

the order to the terrorists on the

ground in Mumbai we all worry about our

privacy settings on Facebook but the

fact of the matter is our openness can

be used against us terrorists are doing

this a search engine can determine who

shall live and who shall die this is the

world that we live in

during the Mumbai siege tariffs were so

dependent on technology that several

witnesses reported that as the

terrorists were shooting hostages with

one hand they were checking their mobile

phone messages in the very other hand in

the end 300 people were gravely wounded

and over 172 men women and children lost

their lives that day think about what

happened during this 60 hour siege on

Mumbai ten men armed not just with

weapons but with technology were able to

bring a city of 20 million people to a

standstill ten people brought 20 million

people to a standstill and this

travelled around the world

this is what radicals can do with

openness this was done nearly four years

ago

what could terrorists do today with the

technologies available that we have what

will they do tomorrow the ability of one

to affect many is scaling exponentially

and it’s scaling for good and it’s

scaling for evil it’s not just about

terrorism though there’s also been a big

paradigm shift in crime you see you can

now commit more crime as well in the old

days it was a knife and a gun then

criminals moved to robbing trains you

could rob 200 people on a train a great

innovation moving forward the internet

allowed things to scale even more in

fact many of you remember the recent

Sony Playstation hack in that incident

over 100 million people were robbed

think about that when in the history of

humanity has it ever been possible for

one person to rob 100 million of course

it’s not just about stealing things

there are other avenues of technology

that criminals can exploit many of you

will remember this super cute video from

the last it but not all quadcopter

swarms are so nice and cute they’d all

all have drumsticks some can be armed

with HD cameras and do counter

surveillance on protesters or as in this

little bit of movie magic quad copters

can be loaded with firearms and

automatic weapons little robots are cute

when they play music to you when they

swarm and chase you down the block to

shoot you a little bit less so of course

criminals and terrorists weren’t the

first to give guns to robots we know

where that started but they’re adapting

quickly recently the FBI