Comcastrodors, please welcome Elissa Shevinksy. Sought after as an expert on security and entrepreneurship, Elissa is a free speech advocate, author, and serial entrepreneur. Building successful startups since 1999, Elissa is the CEO and co-founder of Glimpse and the CEO of JeKuDo, a company committed to upholding the digital privacy of its clients.
In the past year, Elissa has been on the cover of the NY Times Sunday Business, was quoted in over 100 mainstream media publications, and gave talks at events like SXSW, DefCon, Shmoocon, the NY Tech Meetup, and Comcastro guest Rachel Haywire‘s INSTED, an anti-conference that seeks to create a new space for the dissenters and antagonists of the tech industry.
Elissa joins us to voice her concerns on the government’s attack on cryptography, most notably from the lasting effects on national security and the American economy. She also curated the book Lean Out: The Struggle for Gender Equality in Tech and Start-Up Culture, a collection of essays detailing several women’s experiences within the tech industry, published through OR Books.
Stay tuned for the new metric we’ve developed to measure equality in the workplace. Spoiler alert: We’re at 9/10 dicks. We did it, guys.
Let’s have some fun.
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Hey there. What is up man I’m doing good about yourself. I’m good and I sewing in the house in Menlo Park drinking star in an A in just good that law enforcement and encryption and I am ready to yell and scream a bit about free speech free speech is like it’s so hot right now right. Well it’s so hard to get it right for the big social network is I think about it a lot. I think it’s what happened when the sternest become like grown up company and their shareholders and you know investors investors who don’t want to be bought into something called fat people hate. You know that’s what you get with free speech free speech is not like nice speech and pretty speeches like all the theories that people fought and died for the right to be ignorant assholes right. Well kind of the way I see it. Like I just worry about how we’re going to moderate and monitor repeats like who’s in charge of it. I don’t necessarily trust the moderator. So essentially what do we need the moderators seemed to be responding from sort of a bottom up reaction as well. Right. Is there like a puppet masters like steering the outrage or are they just trying to see it and keep themselves insulated from that monster. I think that the outrage from influencers in the justice movement that minute that all has an impact. But really the folks who read into it are really thinking about it’s the advertisers. You know do you want to be advertising like that people who really you don’t know this is not going to come down to you like these companies make these sites friendly to like Quaker. For the we need look at puritanical movement of the Internet now right. It’s like a nice safe speech safe space where you’re protected from being offended right and then there’s a lot of that going around. You know how kind of my deal is like underneath me being offended all the time. I mean that’s the come down agreeing to disagree. OK so you’ve grown such a thick armor that enables you to be a visionary thought leader in this culture of bullshit right. I don’t think he’s leader who thinks in Syria and you think controlling the other and at the risk of being not promotional I’m so excited about what it could be for that I want to at least trying to attack you and then we can get back to a time that everyone else sure but to me Oh and actually before you do I’m going to come up to your level. All right like I said on the e-mail I was going to pick up a forty on the way home and said And so now with this open up can crack this finest Colt forty five money can buy here. And she used to do it in the name of standing over the fuck you want you to come past and hoping and use to a list a list for saying what needs to be said. That’s right and here you see the Internet in ugliness for them and then we all read the glass to warts and all. I also have a coffee just M.I.A. again just to balance both the chemicals. Well I have a coffee that’s good is going to stay I’m going to stay in there for a while. So you’re pissed that amazing coffee smell right. So I’ve been thinking a lot about free speech and I worry about it. I think it’s a problem corrected just like share our free speech willy nilly all over the Internet and I think that that’s a problem when he comes for acne you know when free speech is like out there hurting people are really what they need to manage. So what I’m building is a way for groups really large like one hundred thousand people if you want that many people in your group OK those groups are going to be like that out and you guys can just sit on each other all you want you know. So if Mike Gaynor these years want to come on and they like now early whoever want to come on and have the conversation making the point that one person is going to step in and like I don’t mind you can talk amongst yourselves. I think that there is a place for that and letting Trying to me. So you know you imagine Jim to do. Yes you could shoot or freaky. OK great. You imagine this essentially let’s say you had to climb to the same time which was all like male indie game to have who don’t know marketing and I have no friends in the press complaining about women who are sleeping with the other ones versus the exact opposite as the press are trying to get their own like Hampshire gone for one of her press articles are going to spread. Now that I stand on one side of this argument just saying you would have the insulated place where everyone gets that free speech but is not suddenly would penalize for their opinions they get that opportunity in their community to express it. I just think we should have the freedom to congregate in that. OK People want to share private messages I think that’s fine. I think the line that we moderate and make sure people cross is like are you harassing someone else. Is your speech hurting someone else. You know when it encounters that I think that people should have the right kind of like awful in their privacy. And a lot of that is just not knowing how to crack down on that effectively and I think I want to evolve the human people and get to a place where we respect each other we respect our equality we can like live nicely together but we’re just not there right now so until we’re there I think that it’s important that people at least the thousand to talk and a lot of that is just not trusting how moderation happens in practice. OK As you look at read it and you look at Twitter and Like who’s doing the moderation bad for like every marginalized group. It’s not just these white gamers like also women. It’s also that’s were it’s also like anyone who the moderators don’t understand so I have a point and I just lost it. Thank you Colt forty five so in your view vision that culture as we know it right now is I’m kind of like as a communication medium changes. Are we looking in new infancy of sorts. Like if we meet the right to be able to say bullshit even if it is bullshit. But we also need like on the record stage and some are both being used in the same medium. Like do we all the stuff like learn to adapt through like this changing the world or because it’s not like you we’re going we’re going to be OK. Yeah because we need to protect the right to be able to say bullshit right. Well we need to protect the right. Or like this isn’t true. Communicate privately so you know Reddit and Twitter can do whatever they want and that doesn’t really change our status legally. But the government right now the director of the F.B.I. you know the former director of the N.S.A. they are talking about not allowing encryption they’re talking about making sure that the government has access to all your communications. I’m sure. I’m sure people feel real wonderful about that this entire concept especially because it’s been it’s been in recent news a very sort of eyeopening fact that the National Security Agency which is really existed just for Tom Clancy novels until now. Like when it comes to what the public knows about it has basically got complete freedom to break whatever law they feel like and or the name of something. Yes crazy. You know Senate and are like official government they they congregate and they talk about changing the laws the funding the N.S.A. but none of that matter. The N.S.A. is not operating within the rule of law and they have so much power. You know people speculate that the N.S.A. had so much dirt on the president that he can’t even get in and the truth is that some of my crazy conspiracy theories but what we can see what we’re witnessing is that the N.S.A. does the piano thing. It’s you know when we look at recent F.B.I. cases or their investigations of your hackers or what they pretend to be hackers it seems to me they’re out of the same cowboy mechanism as well right. I kind of do what we want to down the casualties along the way. Now leads me to examples of the people who are easy for them to get. But they go after high schoolers because you know the young guys. Well kids make mistakes and then they go after people like Weaver Kevin Mitnick because they’re high profile. The problem is there’s a lot of the rich and crazy by the way. Barton season actually has a blog talking about how the law that used to prosecute computer crime is like so quietly that it doesn’t me and so is it like an outdated Telegraph law or something. Yeah you know what these modular me before technology was pervasive and these laws end up being enforced by people who aren’t necessarily that technical so you can copy and paste the link and break the law. So it’s just the. Well then can we find Microsoft guilty of criminal conspiracy for allowing me to copy and paste a link you know you can assign actors are guilty of computer crimes if someone were to prosecute them because the lies so broad and that’s what scary like I don’t know as a security researcher as someone who’s working in this. I actually don’t know how to stay within the bounds of the law. All I know how to not to stop the F.B.I. great job of that by the way. Let’s raise a glass to the wonderful F.B.I. keeping us safe from ourselves and our Emerging Technology medium Cheers to all the young ladies in the you know help us win the Masters. I mean that’ll be good right. We’ll be on our team. I think so. Human interest will definitely be prevail in that situation especially we have a real enemy that is unless that is unless Right now we program our heuristics to make them absolutely love like cartoons the drug or something. Yes you’re reading my Twitter. Yeah well we have a little hawk to like to actually answer from a guy who looks like. Howard Bloom was speculating. When our computer models can eventually recreate consciousness and I was like well if our human history was evolved to respond constant desire to fuck and kill one of the AI iterations going to be driving the motivations from a kernel base level right do we have to play God right there is something. Yeah I think our speculations about the future are just wildly you know something will come out a lot in me the thing that actually take the over. I mean no one predicted like in the sixties or seventies when the Jackson Justin did not look like that. Well the Jetsons The Jetsons had to live that far off the earth’s surface because they’d already destroyed the whole thing and might as well just be melted ice caps that point. They did play they do you love your mother is trying to save us from the Jetsons future right. I think when you look at what he’s building like we need to figure out how to get from our well getting to Mars is the backup plan isn’t it. When we do have ruined Earth’s surface so we can survive any more I like it here. I don’t even want to expatriate the US if you like published a book any angry and I land like that seem really cool and he doesn’t need to make that much money because even Iran. Sure I don’t like I don’t like it here are the integrate taken me and others. Well if you get too far you can be the next Kim Dotcom you know just be the complete privacy expert instead of just media hoarding he immediately can’t come back here to camp. I actually do know all of these details but I know I don’t want to let me do things for me like I want to be like the lady duck or burger or whatever. I want you to be here in California you know and I don’t like it here. My friends are here. Weather. We don’t want to be consciously afraid of what the F.B.I. might decide is a crime one day. I really don’t worry about that so much because just of the overreach of the law by creating a company committed to people’s privacy you know my company is committed to security for him and I got into this out of this intense patriotism. I talked to the former chief security officer of the T.S.A. Tony and they were so worried about like hackers and and rogue nations feeling or intellectual property. And it became clear that businesses just need a better way to run the company and the hackers don’t take everything and so I got into this because they believe like like I know classic American patriotic capital it sure is. While the that it does my work and you viewed from any other less well I mean you might have protected American families if you were implemented before inside of Ashley Madison actually actually approached me when I was in the L.A. dating that they wanted to work with me and I like you know free speech is meant like small networks of people saying what they want to exchange and what they want and moving on when their business is done. I don’t think it should be illegal. And I’m not sure how I feel about the hack. You know Ashley Madison really just very unethical because they told their users they were deleting their accounts and they never did which is just like what I remember. I heard what to believe cost more than it did to be a member or something. This expenses to actually wake people from databases like most companies don’t know how to do that. OK so you could. I thought it was just some sort of like holding your reputation hostage right. That’s an interesting. Oh absolutely. And now that’s likely it seems that society has turned on them now that now that where you know what I’m going to say I’m going to raise a glass to society right now for being so accepting of alternative lifestyle that they find it disgusting that they would out someone for the sake of press and call them the monsters and sort of the guy just having his own private life. So cheers to you society. You did one right. Here’s the progress. Progress even if it only means that we get social benefits for the sake of ignoring the changing international policy that’s running the rest of the world but whatever whatever its fun here it is funny here we don’t have flying robots dropping bombs in the rest of us. Cheers to that. Another day inside American borders. Soon the skies will be ours with robots dropping bombs everywhere. Birthday party for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Oh cool. Yeah I pretty much harder than you know the legal lobbyists on the side of the gap of not the man but the little guy against the big government fight against technology. Yeah I’m going to get a girl and and I so I flew from New York to California you know and they’re not even a really good communicator about basically the Internet insecurity and the funny thing he was talking about flying drone Roula many like it but also I think. Yeah see that’s that’s like Old Man’s War right. You know it’s like well it’s messed up to something like people into new bodies to go and shoot lasers shit in space but it’s like if that’s what I was proud to be in my life. OK let’s practice Halo forever because that’s an awesome way to go. Wow. Well I think what’s really interesting what I worry about. Hewitt we don’t know what the military doing. They don’t always run away and they hire out all the smart people and they’re doing all kinds that we have no idea like we get so mad about soccer like we really we don’t even know what the worst people in the world are building right now. Well I have heard that’s the strength of the American military is that their policies are so strange that not even themselves know what happened and therefore they do that and therefore the enemy can never predict our behavior. That’s an inside joke of some soldiers from like like troop movements in different times but like usually at least. We had we had the pleasure of interviewing the medical officer of Guantanamo Bay from two thousand to there was a major Montgomery Granger and according to him like everyone the army personify all the rules I believe in the drinking Geneva Convention we want conventional warfare is just a crazy fuckin CIA and real international power stuffing I’m a fox with you know everyone’s values. Yeah I believe that I think a lot of the people who I know the foot soldiers in all of these battles that they’re fundamentally good people at the top and I think the fact is that the F.B.I. like the feel like they have to accomplish these weird things like the F.B.I. I think that at the top of all the crime on U.S. soil ever and any cause and if the AT ANY COST did they get you into these weird places where they didn’t like what they’re doing now or they want to read every e-mail that send ever. Yeah yeah. Beyond just metadata but every concept has been right here in the speaker by the F.B.I. director feels like it’s his job to prevent any crime or to catch all the crime and any cause you know we need to be willing to take that kind of you know. I don’t know loss of life or some kind of other loss and an exchange for just having a free society in a free society that’s going to happen. Well what do you want the batch of that’s happening is that from what’s a disagreement going too far or are you thinking like you know. I am sure I was forty five over the mike. So you’re just you’re saying we’re allowed a terrorist strike every fifteen years so long as people can live more free just personally I think we need that are having. Yeah like one terrorist hit every twenty years versus being in some kind of to Tallaght hereon state where we have casualties happening you know in other ways from the repartition thinking you can stop one kind of that thing but the rubber questions end up being even bigger. I think the best example with the encryption wars happening right now is if the F.B.I. gets what they want with encryption. The F.B.I. can read all the messages but so can Korea and China Russia you know any of the visually motivated hackers know there’s going to be lots of life there there is a question like can we trust the government to stay on top of the cutting edge of technology in this regard when they have control over it like is American prosperity in the technology realm. Is it because of our cowboys breaking the rules and finding all the exploits locally for the sake of advancing our progress. Well we do have the capabilities and the tech here you know we have these amazing hackers and we are on the cutting edge of cat urine. But the government isn’t using it and I’m not close enough to the government agencies in our line and then you look at like. O.P.M. the Office of Personnel Management and they just bought millions of records. Who are U.S. government employees. Oh yeah everyone in like every branch of government like started with the I.R.S. all the way through it with everyone like if you ever had government clearance your information is out there and and the thing is they need to be big mistake I’m not going to get it all the time but they basically gave everything away they didn’t even use encryption encryption when even a pal as much as just basic management so I have very little confidence in the government’s ability to manage any important data because look at what happened at O.P.M. very recently the White House even now was recently hacked. I just I have very low confidence that the government knows how to keep our data. Well at that point them because of this sort of infancy that we’re in as a culture especially communications is a time to collect fewer lawyers and more engineers I was a lot more engineers and I actually got to give props to Obama who generally like he’s not my guy but he’s just brought in like all the that people OK like you must if you keep writing like E.J. could tell who was the day that right at that link then you brother maybe I love you make it because the government has these really solid engineers now and then a stronger engineering culture and that’s Obama but it’s just not enough to rectify like there may have been a myth that whatever they’re doing back there they’re drinking a coke revived to stop drinking on the job. Well well but thankfully because we’re just doing a press media and entertainment we can take on the jobs much like right. I’m great as opposed to being the entire American people collectively as your boss government and it’s right. Oh and I’m also a little bit rude or book and there are high crazier than I have really. Yeah I’m grateful for that. Every fucking day that I go on air and that like the. OK That’s awesome. I don’t get regular capitalists and they are you know publishing Julian Barnes and Wiki Leaks in Yoko Ono and you know China like pushed me to be even more raw so that your year a year and every year and every day tech entrepreneur like normally but assumes a certain A comes out suddenly we’re like ranting against the government bring it all down. Going to reorient into a new cyberpunk vision future free speech freedom and general goddamn safety all thanks to the glory of our own intellect to power technologically. God bless the USA. I am getting ready to run my own matriarchy seasteading. What do you think you need to study. See that dating in this contest is like going out to sea in this lawless round where you can make your own little utopian society and I think you are just being very interesting to turn in the Cherokee and you know that’s different and I think as well qualified as anyone else. I studied political theory. You’re going to be the new leader who is going to be reorienting. So you start this entire conversation speaking on speaking of the moderators are so absent minded or not clear of the stuff they need to properly take of and finally we get to the real raw bit of it. But clearly if it was a mere charge all of this would be fucking perfect. I don’t see nothing interesting. I like I like an out. I didn’t seem to be perfect as it is going to be interesting and I promise all of you now. That’s definitely how it’s going to end up. Do you think you’re writing for everyone. Now that is a government platform I can get behind if they want to go in like character whatever that cool I just want to but they are actually not done to dive too much cash. I have a friend who just he like he’s obsessed with like historical tribal African cultures matriarchal he based. Well yeah yeah and. And basically he’s got like this thesis of how the West is like fundamentally evil compared to like African society. But I won’t get into it too much. Anyways I think you would like the perspective though. Let’s see we actually just interviewed Rachel haywire. There was a lot of fun for her website trigger warning. Yeah I’m her lover and I really was her instead which was what you’re going to meet to talk about like not dating men in part because the White House that things are intact. So I that was a very angry Rachel Rachel cool because you like the real deal isn’t it. But yeah yeah I don’t know if she wants privacy so much as wanting everyone to be as gross and nasty as they naturally are completely. Yeah I’m not coming from that play. But you know we understand that. Yes you know that I don’t why. OK Well it’s interesting because like I have this I have the suspicion of my brain like I’m just wondering what happens when everyone’s dirt is available. Right. We’re getting there were guinea. Well really I mean it worries me is we’re getting to this place where people are vigilant and afraid all the time you know. Like I want the L word. It was like I don’t know ten or fifteen years ago it was for Instagram and they were showing people just doing weird shit at a party. Like I would not do that. We’re going to do that and I’m going to be that the next day. Oh yeah. Eyes wide shut. What they would have to have a really like well policed insular network just blocking any sort of camera and data access. Yeah so I think we’re already at this culturally Julian but I do not like I don’t like feeling not all the time and I think people who are like digital needed to this kind of digital insurgents used to it so it’s just like older folks like me who you know kind of that freedom. So just like getting weird and not talking older folks like you. Yeah. Early thirty years older than thirty. Please. All I ever remember I remember back in the day when times were pure people could be their own human being. Back before the ubiquity of your life of data pre full recording pretty full surveillance. Back when people weren’t afraid to be people. Pretty Dr I don’t think you know the day that I was single I was like well the leaders I don’t know if there are not like I don’t know what I would hear like from my parents all these like I don’t know it. Bill you’re an enchanted the We all this definitely guy and you’re like the real question I just deleted. So it’s like me going forward. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a scandal moment at some way where along the line from my past be it from maybe singing really massaging the songs or rugby party or I don’t know to some fucked up thing written drunken like a homeland somewhere and I don’t know how we respond to it but it’s just good stuff which is a joy. Who humbling you know to saying we all have our times amused when we perhaps are led astray and not see the vision of our futures and who are hurting with our words you know but also have those moments when we may have spoken out of line and how we may have hurt in that process I just want us to be more forgiving. You know people aren’t perfect and I think there’s a difference between who is just doing are consistently over time like really be taken down and this is just like the bank ten years ago and isn’t that person anymore. Yeah I said I think yesterday but that’s not the foundation like we do you see something wrong right now but that’s not who you are contradicting the wrong things already in this. I missed all of that now because of the start of May we’re having to get a time of this because of my own. OK with people being who they are at a point where it’s a high tolerance for people to just be who they are. That’s it’s a value to show I want to see people as they are I want people to respect people as they are and sometimes a poor man’s too but you know if they’re fearlessly and boldly Masti them you can have a better friendship with them then after fucking Patrick Bateman in hiding. I found all of these nasty people can be really nice if you approach them like all night like this because they’re just there being bad people but they’re trying to it’s people who are bad because they’re just born that way there may be bad you know I don’t like that cartoon character which one is OK. Jessica Rabbit Oh I’m not bad. I’m just drawn this way I think people get defensive they get defensive when they feel frightened but I don’t feel like if you’re willing to come to the table in the night to me in the well then I will try. And to the extent that you know with time or whatever and and feel we can work together and that’s been really productive for me and I’ve learned a lot from having friends who are really different and I just I wish that more people were willing to come to see me and who they are and not assume that everybody bad and also look at it just so if we work together I don’t mean to sound like it’s just going to come together and just like except each other even with our flaws really up to core we need to accept ourselves that we know everyone OK to come just to look. So we don’t read it should have done to the fat people it’s about it. He goes can we be a little less mean today what they are right approach for what is right I think like you reap what you know you know at a certain point they decided they were going to be a free speech platform and just like when you do that that’s not like a nice place for advertisers. That’s a recipe for investors a lot. Their mission driven. So then rather we thought then read it will be different that’s going to be really roughly I think Reddit needs to just decide who they want to be in be a Brown about it and understanding me lose a lot of the constituent people or their I think the real leader. Like if you really want to be a free speech is just charge you’re talking user you know charge them up front be real clear about what’s happening here. Be real clear on your privacy policies and like let it go and know that you’re not going to get that advertiser money. And there may be some kind of cap on like how massive you’ll ever be because you know you get the size of a really big because they’re free. But what happens I am going to snatch crone who built two key cubit and he told me that when you have an advertising model like you’re just you’re not as connected to your user. Right. Because your real customers are not your users. Well so do you do you see yourself being the target of the next Ashley Madison thing everyone trying to dig deep into their own secrets for. Cudos six different you can you know I’m really just interested in building for enterprise like enterprises have money they’re driving the U.S. economy I know they’re kind of boring. Care that consumer that like I just want to be carried and that’s why the Fortune five hundred and I think definitely people be trying to hack their secret their intellectual property but not because it analysts because you know they want to get to market with it first or maybe someone or maybe even on the stores or stuff there and everyone tries to attack to take it over. Right there will be the greatest thing every month you get a fifty percent discount. Plus we’re breaking the news. OK fifty percent discount to Kudo to eleven asking any child companies that he might provide that provided I get it of OK but you’ve got to get we got to the top model on right with like with a ten thousand dollars of trade for the ludicrous speed crazy. I’ll take the lower model that’s fine. Oh you’ll take the test for the like the thirty thousand dollars Carly brand I think that brilliant. Extent temple like I was tweeting about this and here are my about when we’re still trying cars that are on the road. I’m not the only one like all the security people are really worried that the Internet of Things. Wired I think today published a video article interviewing Charlie Miller and Chris valve stack. I wrote that down to not memorize it and they had put a wire reporter inside of a Jeep Jeep Cherokee. Well each of them remotely hacked it from their house like ten miles away and there it was like that. Yeah they took complete control but they found an exploit in the entertainment system and then rewrote the firmware for the internal. Like entire car for their chip driving all the inputs and took complete control of the accelerator and the steering wheel and the seat belt and all of it and they just think it’s not part of the country. You know you’ve got you’ve got the F.B.I. and they’re trying to mitigate risk. This is a tremendous threat. These cars are not going to be think you are going to be that hacker would be able to exist. You know I’d like to know what the president will not be in a car like. Well the same time Melissa. Imagine that that’s congestion on the highway where every car could at once hit the accelerator and forever remove gridlock through complete met work of inputs. Imagine an amazing world where sprawl does not destroy communities but is just a natural part of time because we have moralist teleporter is that take us move us to places where it’s a great forethought. Well so so like. So here’s a question. So if we need higher tech if we need higher tech implementation at government levels I understand the fact that it wasn’t there security wise work out the documents out like this is kind of a leading question let me start with this how about SARS. How do you feel about how you feel about digital voting you know they don’t dearie. It’s not all know that countries will regular action. The problem with digital voting is we don’t actually have any kind of receipt of what happened to it didn’t even need to be now it or wrongdoing on the part of government. It could just be you know I love my Twitter and decided it would be OK then. We have fought like. Should the government be in sort of issue until security numbers should be issuing private keys to people instead of the government issuing I think. Hold remake a culture that instills protects the rights we value with the technology that we have instead of criminalizing it. That’s an interesting question and the truth is I haven’t examined it closely enough to have a tech solution that I can feel good about what I can say is that given my misanthropic view of human nature and I sense that people generally tend to know what’s better for them then you know government and that’s why I’d want to smaller government just to prevent some of these overreach and that’s my reason why I don’t think the government needs to be going after the crime. They go after. Honestly I think a lot of it’s a race war. I know that separate from what we were talking about the like just the police go after a lot of black people. Well I mean I’m a little atlanta. So the police force is kind of representative of the population. We don’t really have the same like Stop and Frisk system other places which is no. Yes I’m a New Yorker so you know you’re a different boat where like black people in New York aren’t even eligible to join the police force because they’ve been like arrested at some point their life just on basic policy. Right right right. Stop and Frisk is discreetly especially I mean you’ve got corporations and they break so many rules and you know white collar white people break tunnels but then it’s you know these part people who get you know the end up in jail for having weed in their pocket which is like legal here in California. What’s legal with a prescription right. Yeah with the prescription that’s right although they look at it are you going to be kind of a stand here. I’m actually all that shit. Yeah yeah that’s where I got my first bite and I was on my way just to hang out and now chat when I was building it actually a competitor and I was like Let’s check this out. I cannot kill the competitor to see through the various businesses. What is their profile and they’re like no fuck off girl who wants to go on to repeat all of our success somehow monetize it before we can. I actually got members that week over a retraction with a teenage population and I’m just like I like I just can’t like I love you like I love you teenagers you’re so much fun and like thank you for being my friend. I just can’t care about the same things you care about like for a sustained period of time like life and easily. OK so I remember trying to turn down like a sale deal to Facebook and I think I think the number they wanted it was like ten billion and they would save up for something other than turning down. Like even smaller amounts of money. Yeah but it’s not. So there’s some of the best leadership that I’ve seen in startups in the long time and I just I actually love what they’re doing now and I think they’re going to be like I don’t know how many billion. Like fifty billion or whatever they’re going to be interesting because I was thinking in my head that they’ve got blackmailed an entire generation of adults about to reach adulthood right. Even things though that you know what do you that I love. They actually believe the messages from the server after thirty days or so they say maybe they’re the next that we now see so that’s the thing I’ve got that’s sort of like suspicion there you know because I’m like oh well what can we say you know all we can assume is Ashley Madison style or the next possible vulnerability but so word is that everyone’s kind of safe too in their snap chatting. I believe it my snap chat a while ago I did not trust them but they did you believe you did you do it yourself because you didn’t trust the company or because you were not appreciating the community that was interacting with you with their snaps. I you know I had really great people. OK Right now they’ve all been my good friends I’ve definitely got it. Do they need us accusing could have a years worth of analysis on this conversation alone. Yes he really does but you know I don’t understand how did it like I mean friends with the people who would harass me because they were able to agree about free speech and other things and that just a lot of harassment and agree. So thank you everyone who isn’t harassing me like I really appreciate it. OK Well this is a lesson. If you feel like sending a dick victual is a Listen I think first simply just actually just say ahead of time I feel like something addicted to you and she’ll give you the time of day to explain yourself before saying that Dick Peck I possibly but here’s the other thing I think I got all of these like incredibly violent people who are really protective of me that maybe one needs of it. OK so you’ve got you’ve got the Met work that is insulated and somehow the tech community has built a firewall for dick pics that cannot be penetrated. It’s not taken anything done right. Community and then into a community. John guns I’m injures. So you’ve got you’ve got it. You knew where the power was. You’re like OK If America falls down we’ve got to rebuild it from a hole you know techno commercial center and slick start making our own way as little micro Nations who’s going to helping out the people with the fucking guns and the Ninja is that’s how we’re going to survive. I do love them. I do love them for that but the other piece of it is like who can tolerate me. Like the fucking lady but I think he believes me or really thought people are like Yeah you’re allowed and you’re talking you might interrupt me but like that. OK we can grow up. Yeah. Just bring a Colt forty five pretty sharp in a good time. Woodford Reserve Woodford Reserve just I’m kicking it to get it and when I don’t call forty five that way I just don’t even know. So I think you’ve ever been. No I really want to go and all these folks really want to host another ranch a cactus on the lake. They’re all these libertarian in Atlanta who so basically welcome them to come on down and either start a trend. Oh hell yeah we’ll get some will incorporate the A.T.V. incubator and the Libertarian community and Georgia Tech put it all together and get a whole Rand Paul center effect on I think of you really and I’d love to come down and be fun I’ll show you around to show you the climate lounge of a fun time. Have you heard of the place. Now I haven’t said I’m looking forward to that already. It’s going to be a fun time. Well so there’s lots of really special things climate for the most special place is a thing that Atlantans always bring their friends from out of town too. I won’t spoil the surprise. OK but I can guarantee the closest thing you’ll ever find to that is maybe in Thailand but I’m not sure. Wow That’s right. Let’s see. So because I was stalking your tweets before this conversation which I thought was appropriate in order to get to know the subject of the conversation. They are public of course. So your dad’s a ninja. He kind of did. OK. He’s like that dad and I met him when he was teaching karate at best a long day camp which is where he met my mother. But it wasn’t until last Father’s Day a little over a year ago now didn’t change that Nora and several of Bruce Lee’s former student and he told me the story. People love it that they eat it. Yeah because like the founders are usually left wing right. And this would totally be like backed by libertarian groups right which they don’t usually see eye to eye in this kind of thing people have these activities in the doubt what I’m going to be and then they me and they’re like I don’t like is that all. Well I’m not saying I had expectations I’m enjoying getting this interesting picture of what not even contradictions just like the the cafeteria values that you get to make as your own sort of following some guided path that everyone else wants to send forward momentum like minded That’s why I want to come in your studio. It’s just it’s good to read like media wanna be in there and we’re in it like a warrior note and just I never really related to that and one of the reasons why I had been afraid that I had including people you know like tactic and then with me cause I just had this like you know this fierce way in the world. But if you do get well and I will go have ensued you have another conversation just about you know stuff the damn call. So I really like Oh you really led the way in this conversation and got us into a bigger civil rights conversation if I had thought my mind if we needed a sort of a jumping point I was going to ask we’re going to start out by saying. So you’re telling me in the e-mail first that the American and British government want to subvert your efforts to provide privacy to the world around you you are a published author who has details the frustrations of women trying to succeed in the tech technology sector and in general everything seems incompetently built to bring down a sense of privacy for everyone. So my question then to you how I want to start of the interview is how fucked up is shit right now. We’re at my ex society. That’s a fucking Call to Action America. We’re at nine pics of how bad it is for everything but you know what I actually think of the women in the background. Things are getting better they’re getting better and they’re getting better isn’t only are we getting too close some point for life I think we did the one to ten day like take land like the fifth everywhere OK. Far as the eye can see. So we were not what we were at like unity with dick right like you couldn’t technology simply was a giant dick and if you didn’t grow it couldn’t be a part of it right. You know when when I started in tech It was kind of warm and wonderful and then I came to Silicon Valley in two thousand and eleven after being already a tech better and it was like you got to be one with the day. Listen it’s just what rules us here you know if you’re not going to be on board if you’re just out right. I have publicly declared my lesbianism I will not be ruled by your dad damn them. See we work so hard just like hold it over guys. You know school dick so I got I think that things are getting better in one hundred seventy eight when my mom is pregnant with me she got fired for being unmarried and pregnant. And before that she was fired from a job in a university professor for being unmarried. Like when she was married she could have the job and when she got divorced could it but that’s how bad I think that’s really where he was when you get fired for these crazy clearly obviously that this isn’t and of course like the sexual harassment in the replay all that was happening. They never were able to first talk about it. So that transparency is good. And as hard as things are women like we’re not getting fired just for being when we’re getting fired after all the politics around that and they think they’re still bad but when I compare my situation my own things are definitely getting better. It’s just not fast enough so you can actually count the pics now as opposed to them which was the best of the stars in the sky. Yeah I like it used to be just the Klan and now it’s like well OK there’s one there and there’s one there. I think the real problem is that only like one really bad guy or person any gender in an organization to make things harder on who they target. When we need to see is like for the for people to just not tolerate that kind of stuff in urbanization anymore. Well I mean isn’t natural and they say oh yeah. I work in technology too and I don’t want to fucking put down anybody but holy shit. It’s hard to have conversations sometimes you know them and yet it to people to stay there just are the things that attract certain members to technology that may be built systemically a difficult area in order to have any kind of conversation broader organization. Michael Neal is just opting out of that of much of the ball in my book now which is an anthology but is also an opportunity for me to share my ideology. Why do it leaning out is just not wanting to be part of the battle. In addition and that our culture I’m not a printer so I can work from home I can work with who I like. I regret husband right now like we work at all hours. We communicate by ten I don’t feel like all this yet. At like convulsing was really hard for me because I suddenly had to navigate all of these people and I feel really bad for people in corporate culture because it’s just corporate culture is really hard. It’s harder for women in front line already in and every opportunity I get and opting out of that well is the startup culture more from one you know the thing the start of a culture is you can at least choose your environment you know if you go and you were get older the whole department people you did not choose in a small start of your choosing that small team. You know if you’re an employee or in the best case you like me or the lady but if you hire everyone you love and adore and you love everyone you higher than yourself and you can fire them and they get out alive. So if you have to just you have to go be as excellent as possible weather the storm and them to be the one in power. Pretty much yeah like go run your own King Island leave the fuck out. Yeah yeah. Or I don’t know this this particular thing cool you have a violinist. Yeah. You going to every step of my turf Pretty soon be able to snap or speech advocate. Now you can come on my show. Well this will check him like once every few months and be like hey how many dicks of the world right now. Well I think the dickens will be just like me right. It’ll be mopey I’m not even gonna make that take a moment just be different facial expressions with like decree of I want to have tickets dealing with I have friends I have a friend you need a logo and it will look like a different color. A rainbow of dicks. What in the city. Yes that’s where we are a society Wilden society. OK we’ve gone kind of off the rails. I don’t follow that but what else. So what’s your what your Internet outrage in general was overblown or not of conversation. Yeah I think about that a lot I think the measure of outrage is corrective you know I think it’s really powerful for previously unheard of marginalized people to be able to speak out collectively that’s one of the ways I’ve been able to see what’s wrong with the world is seeing that it’s not just me with newness thing the thing but connecting with other people but just the average machine. Gotta go I and or it will take one quote out of context. Everyone will read tweet it and the next thing you know someone’s been fired. So we’re being very busy and ultimately I think the responsibility is not on the individuals in the outrage machine because you know we’re just like one person really tweeting something. Ultimately I think there are sponsibility have to be on the organization to not be so responsive to like one weekend of bad P.R. You know if you know about evil employees if you’re someone who has been great who is great. I think we should fire people because their P.R. is bad like one day I think we should fire people who work for say that actors who deserve to be fired. But like I don’t I think anyone could be the subject of like a weekend of outrage and that the average machine doesn’t have to be intelligent to judge you know who’s serving and who isn’t. Yeah. From enough we talked to one guy. He was speaking at the social media expert to Fedex at like. I don’t know early two thousand and where like Twitter was like Brando and apparently it was in like a suburban Tennessee town where it took an hour to check into a hotel because in trust because he’s a black man right. So it’s Tweets if I had to live here I would die and a lot of these of the conference everyone sees the tweet gets passed around internally constantly and he has a giant like pariah moment where like the entire like you know it is like against the sky getting him like ousted from the company and representative of all the shit losing the client etc like that right. It’s one two three. Yeah and then what’s funny about it is that one of his next Jobs was he was consulting and he was aiding Jane Fonda for getting into social media like as a platform and so son. So she does that well because she poses a Viet Cong. She still gets like a severe death threats daily right. And she’s like listen fuck up the best ally through the storm you could add the person who’s been who’s basically been facing this as much as humanly possible her entire life since Vietnam. Well yeah I just I don’t want to be at the center of it and I mean just I think there are many people who get hit I think the clearest example for me my friend that that was one who you know he said something that were razor thin biggest way that fundamentally he’s a good person in fact it did spread the news with some kind of sexual predator. And as someone who knew him and knew him pretty well and that is part of the truth though I think for me now is the moment where I became like really activated again. Yeah reach machine because they saw that it didn’t get me here occasionally one person left them. There’s someone out there the bad person. Everybody jumps on it. You know like he was when he made a mistake that he was incredibly genuinely just never sexually weird with anyone that I knew and I know pretty well. So that made me really mad like people will just use their influence to take people down. I’ll make things up and we just don’t have like back in the day. OK maybe the French or maybe newspapers didn’t fact check them back to tell tell us more. You know so I think we should be fact checking. I don’t mean to say crazy talk to have time for that in this world. Well again we don’t. And then because the aires machine doesn’t fact check and and report is done at the very fact that I think we shouldn’t be firing people over just say training people to be in the Internet. So yeah I have personally a little bit of fear in that. So there’s been so part of the rationale for the several opportunities being kicked off campus or what not specially. And so you had to happen at every freaking campus there is like one when they had the video of them singing they’ll never be a beggar. OK And they were kicked off campus will be should be kicked out for that. Yeah that’s fucked up right. Well the group of people collectively deciding that that’s OK like that’s not OK and I’m like reinforcing that right then we need bander I definitely need standards and that’s a thing that happens. That’s not like I think taken out of context which is already made. They did that. Well what they were actually kicked off Georgia Tech before that the one of those look when that Lanza after several investigations and some of the some of what was made public was inside of our internal e-mails which was socially. There was one song the song that the lyrics of which were like progressive. More grotesque about like socially. OK up with a prostitute and she dies and gets worse. Right and that’s that like one of the worst iconic meetings right. The more psychotic millions of you know just like the and forgive my phrasing like the dead iconic me being used so much. I gotcha. Yeah just it’s been my personal fear because that very song I sang every single thing in your personal life. So what are you doing in your personal life it was a it was a post game rugby thing but it all happened then that’s when I was the person situation and that very song I’ve sung like once a week for like six years and as soon as that came out I like this personal terror of like and I could be the next Internet villain out of this or someone just decides to take this and ran with it you know so it was kind of like I think preemptively is like OK how do we defend this anything goes culture of rugby thing. You know being being accepting of gays is very in vogue right now there’s more gay or out gay athletes in rugby The Anything else they’ll be strong you know I think to you you know when this does happen I think people need to link the good people and apologize. I think the wind up really paying are the people who like really maintain being disrespectful. You know they were actually don’t really understand why people were upset. I think I think that if you actually apologize in the genuine way then it won’t heal the fire or something happens for you and you don’t think you know what was all this wrote back and they were like you know what they should stop doing that I’m sorry I did it and that people want to hear reason. Well I suppose so. The second fact thank you called forty five for blanking out women. Oh no that’s me being a New Yorker to college. Oh it’s OK polite Sultana so I can put a case in a lot of rude behavior. All I need to learn these Southern ways I just graduated. Oh well thirty seven in Virginia. My investors are in Virginia headquarters in Virginia and I need to I need to learn your strange and mysterious ways to well the Virginia investors. My not adapt so quickly to such an outspoken woman but I think they’ll grow to really respect it. But already give me money who are already got the money got the money but yeah I think you’re the industry. Oh because you’re the language Virginia right so you’re really getting it from like say people stuff. Yes we want to maybe do you Straten he’s part of not thirty seven he actually did I think you tell he was one of the first to be involved in the bench are interesting. You have a series investing a lot into what technology and things of a locally so I don’t have that much insight into what they’re doing now. From what I understand the CIA invest money in companies that had interesting applications from the CIA So I am not looking for money from the CIA because I think that my customers that I know to be a conflict but you know I actually think that the CIA is pretty savvy. That’s my suspicion. Little a little better than the rest of the organizations whether Nokia clearly. Yeah you would hope that the group in charge of secrets to being better at Record for just went willy nilly once said whoa. A security industry mean there aren’t a lot of women represented the big guys who are there they’re like all who are boys like me which is nice. They’re not like you should be more dainty there was no it sounds like you’d be best friends with Danny McBride and he’s bound and down. I don’t know what any of that is but I think it is basically the biggest like moronic massagers capital of scum so much I thank you because I think you’d really appreciate a good FROM like that I would be like OK you can come on my platform and you can pay what you want but don’t bother anyone else. Some quotes from some quotes from Kenny Powers include. Shut up you big beautiful bitch I’m about to fuck you up with some knowledge shit like that well you know. Yeah he’s not going to be my that but he would open up privately in fact one hundred times a resolvable he’s like countering so hard not to be an asshole to you guys but you make it so fucking hard. You know I think a lot of women or night willing to kind of like the friend all kinds of people you know has just been how mean people have been to me. You know like I’m not allowed to have person in I think founders who told me I was making them cry and they didn’t like in and they want to me to be more than your and you know I have like ten minutes come after me real hard and so on I five people and they want to be ninety and kind of like oh I didn’t rate well as civilized as you can be when you’re creating a metric of dicks to this day like state of society in their day. I was really mad or just talk about dick. I sense a low bar to say hey man I have a lot of people and I’m at least I mean that I did not necessarily want to be thing that’s interesting. So we were just earlier praising society but now to the point where if you’re generally polite to a woman if you haven’t yet shown her your penis and you know that this is life they don’t know you can escape the penis staying home. You’re just twice as likely to get it digitally than you are in person I am just happy that there are O’Brien C.N.N. Money you know telling my story about being like a public lesbian now. So now if you guys get outta line with me I’ll be like don’t know you are barking up the wrong tree and they look even dumber and I’m very excited about that. Yes the power of being gay. This is what it’s come to the game through our King is taking over. Oh my god my mom was like why can’t you just tell them you’re not interested and like I’ve been trying that work so well when we need to take that up a level. Mom it’s not working. I got C.N.N. to say that for me if they want to listen to them. I think people are listening which is awesome. And for what it’s worth there was a very thoughtful in telling what kind of an affiliation story some kind of grateful about that that although I just I really am such a workaholic. People who know me and I’m like quiet like you want to hang out like parks. So I just I like I like the idea of having that kind of distances around this idea of people like wanting to have to have me to him a man just maybe make a pod cast about free speech and then we can look at the other one that just got here. Just yeah yeah. If you want to hangout then let’s have a podcast and curse a lot of talk about free speech for later. Fuck I’m talking about was cold forty five’s in Charlotte fuckin May I have you guys you might want to take me and a Half Moon Bay Like what like that sounds really boring. I’m terrible. Damn damn let’s assume I’m kind of out of things to spend spitball on random funny concepts for us while. I mean any more shout outs. Anyone do want to write for the tech culture. General policies or privacy should we know that. And black on black. I’m excited about them. Part of the problem we get with privacy is someone like me can make a really great app but they were limited by the devices were running on the field to build P.G.P. back in the day are now working on a phone that designed to be open source and as a cure is possible and it’s called black hole. Well disclosure like they’re my friends and they help me out with their sees that their chief security officer is on my advisory board that that’s because like they’re such bad asses like I want you to help me are just doing a lot of those practices which is exciting they’ve left the country their headquarters are in a bit Switzerland. So anything goes as like a privacy concept there. You shouldn’t have to leave the country to run your security come to Switzerland but it is a symbolic act to go to Switzerland. The money to do that. Neutral World War two people who will protect everyone else’s ship they don’t want to know what happened. Just do that that is that is overt statements of the rest of the world what they represent. So I got to yell about this now because it’s kind of bullshit like I have to leave the country as well we have to run our development team. We’ve got lawyers and people like I can’t run my security company here in the United States because the government’s war on encryption because of Patriot Act because of N.S.A. because yeah. Encryption to slosh it isn’t hurting the American economy to not allow entrepreneurs like you to do what you need here. Well yes isn’t taking my tax dollars elsewhere or at least part of them and the thing is if they are weakening corruption which is what the government talking about doing. I don’t think the government understands like our banking runs on encryption e-commerce trends on encryption like what happens when people can’t trust their banking or to make purchases online like that could be catastrophic for the economy. So right now they’re talking about messaging but you know who knows how far they’re going to take it. And in terms of messaging like if they were to succeed one thing we know for sure is it would be come say like fifty percent harder and more expensive to make any kind of consumer web site that would have messaging in it which is like almost everywhere right. Well you know what may be OK Comcast or a BIG bring in like whatever weirdo dollars people want to support free speech. We can like pair up with like vice and start a new lobbyist branch just to like keep American prosperity at home through the values of privacy and technology that’s the thing people aren’t really talking about this through the lens of you know the government trying to frame it it like privacy versus security. And then you have these brilliantly cryptographers and proud of the freedom fighters in their time that it from their angle. And I’m you’re saying look I’m an American business woman and like you are going to hurt my ability to run my company the Americans develop the atom bomb because the Germans kicked out Albert Einstein is that in except as weirdo relativity Jewish thinking. Right that’s right that’s where no Jews are going to take our bit. That’s right. Our present day weirdo Jew feminists who want to protect their privacy being blocked out by the Patriot Act are going to take that shit over to Germany and take over America after that from there. Actually Germany Berlin is one of the places for privacy activists right now. Their poll and Einstein back there bring him back. Don’t let Einstein go America. Keep out of forgot how to pronounce your last name or pulls up keep a list of Bensky at home. How funny would be a campaign became the at home anyway raping campaign and Dick we’ve reached out to Chad tax. Well actually that’s a good question. It would be zero taxes when you don’t want to know dicks