WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.020 --> 00:00:02.020 You know, you've watched enough crime TV shows, 00:00:02.160 --> 00:00:03.540 oh, I could just sit in that room. 00:00:03.910 --> 00:00:05.520 But when it's actually happening to you, 00:00:05.730 --> 00:00:07.440 you don't really know what to do with yourself. 00:00:09.060 --> 00:00:12.640 Today, I'm absolutely honored to bring all of you, Josh 00:00:12.820 --> 00:00:14.020 from All Things Secured. 00:00:14.280 --> 00:00:17.980 And we have a very information-dense discussion to have today 00:00:18.300 --> 00:00:21.380 about especially privacy when you travel, 00:00:21.900 --> 00:00:23.100 what your rights are, 00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:26.440 his story about how his devices were confiscated 00:00:26.680 --> 00:00:28.440 and how he was deported from China, 00:00:28.500 --> 00:00:30.780 and what that entire experience looked like, 00:00:30.810 --> 00:00:32.400 which was absolutely crazy to learn about, 00:00:32.640 --> 00:00:34.240 but it had some incredible lessons 00:00:34.520 --> 00:00:37.400 that I think nobody can be too careful about. 00:00:37.680 --> 00:00:40.300 From best practices when you're just at home 00:00:40.540 --> 00:00:43.020 to when you're traveling abroad and the different countries 00:00:43.320 --> 00:00:45.860 and what to look for when you go across the border 00:00:45.930 --> 00:00:47.160 and what you do at an airport 00:00:47.480 --> 00:00:48.720 and what Josh's advice is 00:00:48.880 --> 00:00:50.780 from his unfortunate firsthand experience, 00:00:51.380 --> 00:00:52.920 I think there's a lot of really good stuff here 00:00:53.060 --> 00:00:53.900 for everybody to learn. 00:00:54.090 --> 00:00:54.940 And of course, it's wonderful 00:00:54.970 --> 00:00:56.400 to always bring on another creator 00:00:56.820 --> 00:00:57.920 and check in on their content. 00:00:58.260 --> 00:01:01.960 And he does talk a little bit about how his content is influenced by his experiences. 00:01:02.450 --> 00:01:04.760 Without further ado, let's get to the interview with Josh. 00:01:05.280 --> 00:01:08.100 Josh, it is great to have you on our podcast, finally. 00:01:08.210 --> 00:01:11.640 I know you've had me on a couple live streams, and so now it's time to get you on here. 00:01:11.690 --> 00:01:12.080 How are you doing? 00:01:12.720 --> 00:01:13.360 I'm doing good. 00:01:13.460 --> 00:01:14.500 Hey, I feel really honored. 00:01:14.800 --> 00:01:17.120 It's not like there was an expected back and forth. 00:01:17.380 --> 00:01:18.960 So thank you even for inviting me, Henry. 00:01:19.580 --> 00:01:19.640 Yeah. 00:01:20.050 --> 00:01:23.280 I mean, last time I was like, hey, just give us a little time because we had so many to 00:01:23.360 --> 00:01:23.760 get through. 00:01:23.850 --> 00:01:27.900 And so we were actually, we're getting to turn around down a lot better on these interviews. 00:01:28.160 --> 00:01:30.560 So it's exciting because now we can do more timely things, 00:01:30.820 --> 00:01:33.580 which is not this one because this is about travel. 00:01:33.880 --> 00:01:35.260 It's a little bit more timeless 00:01:35.520 --> 00:01:36.720 and a little bit more evergreen, I think. 00:01:36.900 --> 00:01:38.980 So hopefully we're going to talk a lot about today 00:01:39.110 --> 00:01:40.420 about your travel journeys, 00:01:41.120 --> 00:01:42.580 maybe a little bit more of the horror stories 00:01:42.880 --> 00:01:44.640 and the things that people don't want to happen to them, 00:01:45.080 --> 00:01:46.920 what it looks like to navigate that situation. 00:01:47.140 --> 00:01:48.740 And I really want to get practical today 00:01:49.479 --> 00:01:51.980 and kind of see what you have to say about travel. 00:01:52.070 --> 00:01:54.620 See, I've traveled a lot for especially Techlore, 00:01:54.760 --> 00:01:56.680 but I've never had to deal with any issues. 00:01:57.320 --> 00:02:02.380 And so I don't have any of these stories to share with people and things to learn from myself. 00:02:02.800 --> 00:02:09.259 So I guess I'd love to just open it up to ask you what your living situation that you're comfortable sharing looks like. 00:02:09.380 --> 00:02:12.200 Because it seems like you travel a lot and it could be helpful context. 00:02:12.390 --> 00:02:16.620 You can switch around countries if it's not relevant, whatever you're comfortable sharing, of course. 00:02:17.220 --> 00:02:18.200 Yeah, no, I appreciate that. 00:02:18.440 --> 00:02:24.800 So me and my wife have been out in Asia just in general for over 20 years now. 00:02:25.240 --> 00:02:29.840 So it feels like it's been an eternity, basically most of our married life. 00:02:30.320 --> 00:02:34.000 And we started off in China, not because I necessarily wanted to move to China. 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:39.320 And this was before, like this was back in early 2000s when the China-US relations really 00:02:39.500 --> 00:02:40.180 weren't that bad. 00:02:40.500 --> 00:02:45.620 And, you know, going out there didn't feel super, I don't know, like I would feel differently 00:02:45.690 --> 00:02:50.020 if I was trying to move out to China now versus when we were back in the early 2000s. 00:02:50.370 --> 00:02:54.940 But we stayed in China for about 10 years and not in the eastern side of China. 00:02:55.060 --> 00:03:01.900 So if you know anything about the geography of China, like the eastern side is all the big cities, all the like the wealth and all that stuff. 00:03:02.180 --> 00:03:03.620 And we were out on the western side. 00:03:03.640 --> 00:03:06.740 So we were closer to Kazakhstan than we were to Japan. 00:03:07.460 --> 00:03:09.020 And it was incredible. 00:03:09.420 --> 00:03:10.340 Like I loved it. 00:03:10.660 --> 00:03:12.120 I don't regret my time out there. 00:03:12.260 --> 00:03:17.640 But it was certainly some of the hardest living that I've ever had to do. 00:03:17.760 --> 00:03:20.240 Like it was not an easy place to live. 00:03:20.560 --> 00:03:21.880 We just loved it. 00:03:22.080 --> 00:03:23.620 We felt like we should be there. 00:03:23.800 --> 00:03:25.700 And so we were there for 10 years. 00:03:25.860 --> 00:03:30.200 And now I'm in Thailand through a series of events that I'll probably explain later on 00:03:30.200 --> 00:03:30.640 in this talk. 00:03:30.880 --> 00:03:33.240 Like, you know, we were kicked out of China. 00:03:33.500 --> 00:03:37.840 And so we eventually, not immediately, but we eventually found ourselves in Thailand. 00:03:37.960 --> 00:03:41.880 And so from here, you know, it's a great place for me. 00:03:41.920 --> 00:03:45.520 And I now have two boys to travel around, you know, to go to Europe, to go to different 00:03:45.800 --> 00:03:49.940 places in Asia, some places that we want to go, you know, like going down to Malaysia 00:03:50.140 --> 00:03:50.900 or going to the Philippines. 00:03:51.620 --> 00:03:53.000 And then some places that we don't want to go. 00:03:53.300 --> 00:03:57.940 You know, I had to make a visa trip to Laos and that wasn't my favorite country, you know. 00:03:58.070 --> 00:04:07.580 So like there are just, there's a lot of different border crossings that happen when there are just so many countries squashed together in Asia. 00:04:07.790 --> 00:04:11.200 And so that's kind of a, I got in a nutshell where we've been. 00:04:12.180 --> 00:04:12.340 Yeah. 00:04:12.790 --> 00:04:16.440 If I could ask, like why, like what about Asia? 00:04:16.600 --> 00:04:18.720 Like has you all kind of living there? 00:04:18.720 --> 00:04:20.180 Is it the culture? 00:04:20.600 --> 00:04:21.780 Like what do you enjoy about the area? 00:04:22.560 --> 00:04:27.500 Yeah, I think when my wife and I, her name's Tiffany, so when Tiffany and I first moved 00:04:27.550 --> 00:04:29.520 out to Asia, it was more just the adventure of it all. 00:04:29.820 --> 00:04:34.320 I had wanted to go to some Spanish-speaking country in South America, but we tried to go 00:04:34.320 --> 00:04:35.020 through the Peace Corps. 00:04:35.520 --> 00:04:41.660 Connecting for a couple was super hard, and so we ended up going out into Western China. 00:04:42.040 --> 00:04:44.140 And I had never spoken Chinese before. 00:04:44.370 --> 00:04:47.580 It wasn't like I had this innate desire to go out to Asia. 00:04:47.690 --> 00:04:51.700 It was just the right opportunity at the right time, the right connection for a person that 00:04:51.720 --> 00:04:55.940 needed, you know, we went out there as English teachers in the very beginning. So I don't think 00:04:55.940 --> 00:05:01.960 that there's like this great answer for why we were in Asia. But once we got here, I really fell in 00:05:01.980 --> 00:05:09.100 love with it. And I do think it is an acquired taste. It's also not for everybody. I love the 00:05:09.300 --> 00:05:15.540 food out here. I love the pace of life. I love the culture. And, you know, frankly, I love the cost 00:05:15.620 --> 00:05:21.680 of living. Like it is considerably cheaper to be out here and still comfortable. Like where we're 00:05:21.700 --> 00:05:27.300 in Thailand, like you can still have a good life, but without having to pay out the nose for it. 00:05:28.360 --> 00:05:32.840 Nice. Okay. So, you know, you said you got kicked out of China. So for those who haven't, 00:05:33.540 --> 00:05:36.840 I guess, heard the story, I think it could be good to just tell that 00:05:37.500 --> 00:05:40.860 for whatever happened. And then we can kind of dive into maybe some more specifics there. 00:05:41.640 --> 00:05:47.480 Yeah. I like to, I don't know, it feels like a frog in a boiling pot. If you've heard that 00:05:47.660 --> 00:05:51.660 analogy before, where it's, and I don't even know if it's true, but they say that if you don't throw 00:05:51.680 --> 00:05:56.280 a frog into a pot of boiling water, it'll immediately jump out because it recognizes, 00:05:56.520 --> 00:06:01.940 wow, that's super hot and it'll jump. But if you put a frog in water and then boil that water, 00:06:02.100 --> 00:06:06.600 it'll just sit there until it boils to death. And I feel like that's kind of my experience in China 00:06:07.300 --> 00:06:16.520 where if you had placed me in China in 2013, or actually, excuse me, 2018, when we were eventually 00:06:16.540 --> 00:06:21.460 kicked out, just that being my first experience, it would have been jarring. It would have been, 00:06:21.900 --> 00:06:25.560 I don't know if I could have handled it, the amount of surveillance, the amount of police, 00:06:25.630 --> 00:06:34.060 the amount of just not feeling welcome. But when we arrived in 2006 and then slowly kind of got used 00:06:34.240 --> 00:06:39.120 to all of that survey, like these changes that happened. And if you look back into China's 00:06:39.440 --> 00:06:43.680 history, you know, they had the Olympics in 2008 and there were some events that happened 00:06:44.040 --> 00:06:48.460 prior to that where there's just a little bit of unrest and then in 2009 there were some massive 00:06:48.780 --> 00:06:54.760 riots out in the region where we were living and that prompted a big clamp down a lot of police and 00:06:54.760 --> 00:07:00.360 there was just this tension between the Chinese people like Han Chinese is what we would call it 00:07:00.440 --> 00:07:05.900 like what you and I think of as Chinese and then the Chinese people that were actually more Central 00:07:06.220 --> 00:07:11.940 Asian think of like Tibet you know that that conflict over who actually is the original owner 00:07:11.960 --> 00:07:15.880 of Tibet. Well, that same thing happened in our region in Xinjiang where it was more just this 00:07:16.140 --> 00:07:21.500 ethnic conflict. And we as foreigners got a little bit in the middle of it. But one of the things that 00:07:21.560 --> 00:07:26.820 I got to do while I was out there was I went and did a lot of like travel vlogging, travel writing. 00:07:27.400 --> 00:07:30.980 I wrote for Lonely Planet back when that was a thing. And if anybody who's watching or listening 00:07:31.060 --> 00:07:34.760 to this is like younger than the age of 30, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. But 00:07:35.080 --> 00:07:39.640 like back before the internet, we used to travel with these big fat blue books, you know, that 00:07:39.660 --> 00:07:45.160 travel writers would, uh, would, you know, go and figure out what restaurants and hotels to go to. 00:07:45.560 --> 00:07:49.600 And, uh, and that was part of what I got to do. You're laughing. Like, do you know Lonely Planet? 00:07:50.240 --> 00:07:58.760 Oh, I, I invented Lonely Planet. No, no, I, I have no idea. So, um, I know a lot of, 00:07:59.100 --> 00:08:03.060 I've seen the YouTube demographics that those are like the only stats we have access to. So I know 00:08:03.160 --> 00:08:07.660 some people will know. Yeah. That's so funny. Yeah. So yeah, I mean like that kind of stuff, 00:08:07.780 --> 00:08:08.980 I got into travel writing. 00:08:09.450 --> 00:08:15.880 But what that meant was I was walking around a very politically sensitive region with a 00:08:16.130 --> 00:08:21.720 camera and with a figurative notepad, like talking to people, taking notes and doing 00:08:21.840 --> 00:08:22.260 all this stuff. 00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:26.120 And over time, that just put a huge target on my back. 00:08:26.210 --> 00:08:33.020 So not only was the political tension rising, China ended up setting up kind of these concentration 00:08:33.260 --> 00:08:37.300 camps for the local people that is still to some degree going on today. 00:08:38.200 --> 00:08:44.960 and then you had me over here just running around the province i wouldn't say naively but maybe a 00:08:44.960 --> 00:08:51.940 little bit naively with a camera and it wasn't i mean it came to a head in 2018 when the police 00:08:52.340 --> 00:08:57.820 just took me in i remember that it happened twice but the the big time the one that where we were 00:08:57.920 --> 00:09:04.660 eventually kicked out they came to my house with 18 no sorry it was 14 police officers and they read 00:09:04.680 --> 00:09:09.680 me my rights. My wife and my boys are sitting on the couch. They said they were getting me for 00:09:10.279 --> 00:09:17.000 espionage, which for the record, I am not, have not ever been, you know, I mean, everybody would 00:09:17.120 --> 00:09:21.540 say that, but like, I'm not a spy. I have no connection with my government, right? Like I 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:27.140 don't, but just like, I can't convince you of that. I can't convince, you know, a foreign government 00:09:27.200 --> 00:09:33.660 of that for sure. And they took everything. They took my computer. They took all of my, like these 00:09:33.680 --> 00:09:38.500 little, you know, hard drives that you, or like flash drives that you use for your camera. They 00:09:38.720 --> 00:09:44.340 took my laptop, my phone, they took all of that stuff and they spent the next week interrogating me 00:09:44.620 --> 00:09:51.420 and combing through all of my devices and just trying to find any and everything that they could 00:09:51.580 --> 00:09:56.880 against me. Thankfully, they weren't able to prove that I was a spy because I'm not, but they didn't 00:09:56.960 --> 00:10:02.819 like me enough that they just, after the end of, it was a 17 day, it felt like forever, like long 00:10:02.840 --> 00:10:08.260 period, they just gave me my passport. They had taken my passport and my whole family's passport 00:10:08.460 --> 00:10:12.860 so we couldn't leave. And they returned our passports without charging us officially with 00:10:12.980 --> 00:10:18.600 anything. We had to sign some documents and then we were deported and told we could never return, 00:10:18.780 --> 00:10:25.880 at least for the next 10 years. That was our experience. And as I say it, I'm sure that a lot 00:10:25.880 --> 00:10:29.460 of people can listen to this and hear a lot of different things. It was without a doubt the 00:10:29.480 --> 00:10:34.500 scariest moment of my life. And I wouldn't wish that on anybody. I thought I was going to be taken 00:10:34.590 --> 00:10:39.360 away from my kids and my wife. They threatened me with 10 years in jail for something that I didn't 00:10:39.500 --> 00:10:45.000 do. And there was very little that could be done about it except for just hope and pray that they 00:10:45.080 --> 00:10:50.900 would change their minds. Yeah. No, it sounds super scary. And especially like, did you, like on day 00:10:51.100 --> 00:10:57.400 three, did you know at all it was going to be 17 days? Were you like, oh, I'm a sixth of the way 00:10:57.420 --> 00:11:03.640 through this or was it just kind of endless? Like I'm just kind of in this until whenever it's over. 00:11:03.880 --> 00:11:08.320 There's two questions that people usually ask. One is, did they physically abuse me in any way? 00:11:08.430 --> 00:11:12.620 And then two is, did you know, like you said, did you know? And the answer is no, we didn't know. 00:11:12.670 --> 00:11:16.520 As a matter of fact, when we started the process, they told me this is going to be multi-year, 00:11:17.220 --> 00:11:23.120 right? We're taking your passport. And so when you think that, it definitely changes your view of 00:11:23.160 --> 00:11:28.500 how things are moving forward and what life is going to look like. And then they did not physically 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:33.700 abuse me, but there was a lot of like, in some ways I almost wish they had because 00:11:34.480 --> 00:11:40.200 that people can relate to a lot more than psychological abuse, which is what I think 00:11:40.520 --> 00:11:45.320 people that are trained interrogators, that are trained in that kind of stuff, that's what they're 00:11:45.860 --> 00:11:52.240 good at. I mean, like they're experts at this like psychological warfare. And I was completely 00:11:52.780 --> 00:11:57.720 unprepared. Like you think, you think you could stand up against, you know, you've watched enough 00:11:57.900 --> 00:12:02.360 crime TV shows. Oh, I could just sit in that room. But when it's actually happening to you, 00:12:03.640 --> 00:12:07.580 it's completely freaky and you're, you don't really know what to do with yourself. 00:12:08.780 --> 00:12:13.020 Yeah. I mean, I don't know what I would do. I mean, it's, it's not like a skill that I think 00:12:13.030 --> 00:12:22.220 is taught or something people normally think about. So yeah, what happened after that? And 00:12:22.220 --> 00:12:27.940 happened, I guess, prevention going forward? How possible is that to replicate in other countries? 00:12:28.140 --> 00:12:33.020 And are you concerned about this kind of thing happening in westernized countries? I know that's 00:12:33.060 --> 00:12:36.340 a big concern nowadays. So I have a lot of questions that I want to get into. But before 00:12:36.480 --> 00:12:40.280 then, just kind of what was next for you and what were the next steps just to round out that story? 00:12:41.120 --> 00:12:47.639 Yeah. So like I said, they gave me my passports back and then they dumped like most of our devices 00:12:47.840 --> 00:12:54.060 in our laps, save maybe one or two that they held onto. So I mean, that's everything from hard 00:12:54.240 --> 00:13:01.460 drives to my devices. And we got home and I contacted a security friend of mine and I didn't 00:13:01.780 --> 00:13:08.300 turn on any of these devices at all. And essentially we just ended up dumping every single one of them. 00:13:08.370 --> 00:13:13.500 There was just no way. I didn't know what they'd done with it. A little bit of context here too. 00:13:13.940 --> 00:13:19.280 And this was one of the things I was going to say, like security and privacy, like your best strategy. 00:13:20.180 --> 00:13:25.480 It's like that Mike Tyson quote, your best strategy and security and privacy is great until someone puts a gun to your head. 00:13:25.860 --> 00:13:38.200 Where when somebody comes to you and this happened to me and they were like, hey, listen, give us the password to all of these things on your computer or else we will take and put you in jail right now. 00:13:39.800 --> 00:13:40.020 Okay. 00:13:40.580 --> 00:13:41.760 You know, I'm in a foreign country. 00:13:41.960 --> 00:13:43.140 A lot of my rights are stripped. 00:13:43.400 --> 00:13:48.160 And that's another thing you'll probably hear me say a lot, Henry, is when you travel, one 00:13:48.160 --> 00:13:53.080 of the things that we give up is our right to have a right to a lot of these things. 00:13:53.500 --> 00:13:55.280 It's things that we fight for in our own country. 00:13:55.640 --> 00:13:58.300 And I believe that that is a good and a noble fight. 00:13:58.440 --> 00:14:05.140 But when we travel, we have to recognize that we don't inherently get that right as we move. 00:14:05.280 --> 00:14:10.799 Even though we represent whatever country that might have that right, I don't get those 00:14:10.820 --> 00:14:17.720 rights whenever I am in somebody else's country. And so they can demand those passwords from me. 00:14:17.900 --> 00:14:22.720 And they did. And they went through all of my stuff. I remember the moment they caught me, 00:14:22.940 --> 00:14:27.680 they caught me, they went through our house, right? They just sat us on the couch and they 00:14:27.680 --> 00:14:30.760 went through everything and they found this device. I don't know if you can kind of see it for those 00:14:30.800 --> 00:14:36.859 who might be listening. I know what that device, yeah. Yeah. For those listening, it's a USB flash 00:14:36.880 --> 00:14:42.320 drive with some pins on it to unlock it encrypted. Yeah. Like I keep my death file on here. This is 00:14:42.420 --> 00:14:48.360 like, if I die, my wife knows like this has all my stuff. They saw this and they like, it confirmed 00:14:48.980 --> 00:14:54.480 all of their suspicions that I was a spy. What normal person would have one of these things, 00:14:54.640 --> 00:14:58.520 at least in their mind. Right. And I, and I think that was the other thing I kind of learned is, 00:14:58.640 --> 00:15:04.959 is like, you know, not that our security and privacy practices put a big target on us or 00:15:04.980 --> 00:15:10.700 anything, but there are certain ways in which we can actually stand out in the way that we do things. 00:15:11.180 --> 00:15:14.760 Some of that can be good, but in some cases, especially when we're traveling internationally, 00:15:15.240 --> 00:15:18.620 that can come back to bite us. And this was one example of where that came back to bite me, 00:15:18.820 --> 00:15:22.860 where I think I'm doing a great job here. I'm keeping things that are super secure, 00:15:23.440 --> 00:15:26.780 that I don't want anyone else to have. And it just confirmed for them who they thought I was. 00:15:27.640 --> 00:15:30.560 Yeah. What I think about with this, I mean, this is the layer of anonymity slash, 00:15:31.100 --> 00:15:33.180 I guess even if you want to add a fourth one, obscurity, 00:15:33.560 --> 00:15:35.660 it's a really hard thing to kind of teach people about. 00:15:35.710 --> 00:15:38.340 But I think a more obvious one that was starting to get more tangible 00:15:38.660 --> 00:15:40.280 for people is in the cryptocurrency space. 00:15:40.390 --> 00:15:43.700 In the cryptocurrency space, we see a lot of individualized attacks. 00:15:44.180 --> 00:15:45.620 You know, like people get kidnapped. 00:15:45.920 --> 00:15:48.840 They literally get threatened to have to hand over their stuff. 00:15:49.560 --> 00:15:51.260 And so the big advice is like, 00:15:51.380 --> 00:15:52.880 you're not supposed to tell people you own crypto. 00:15:53.440 --> 00:15:54.660 Like that's like the whole thing. 00:15:54.840 --> 00:15:56.080 And the people who are on Twitter going, 00:15:56.110 --> 00:15:57.780 oh, look at all my Bitcoin that I have 00:15:57.930 --> 00:16:00.360 are probably not doing it very intelligently. 00:16:01.380 --> 00:16:06.060 but that's what you get when you buy a ledger device or a treasure device like when you get a 00:16:06.300 --> 00:16:13.300 hardware wallet you are signaling to the site that you purchase it from which ledgers site has been 00:16:13.520 --> 00:16:18.160 caught in a data breach now so everyone who ever bought a ledger back from like 2017 through whatever 00:16:18.520 --> 00:16:23.920 date until the breach happened that's public information which is a scary thought but even 00:16:23.940 --> 00:16:27.319 if someone just visits your house or law enforcement comes in if they see that that's 00:16:27.420 --> 00:16:29.700 that is an indication that you have some access to that. 00:16:30.100 --> 00:16:32.540 And so back when I was working at CakeWallet, 00:16:32.540 --> 00:16:33.680 they released something called Cupcake. 00:16:33.980 --> 00:16:37.640 And the whole concept of Cupcake is you take a second device, 00:16:37.920 --> 00:16:39.540 like an old device that's laying in your drawer, 00:16:40.020 --> 00:16:41.000 and you keep it offline, 00:16:41.400 --> 00:16:44.820 and that becomes your secondary hardware-assigned device. 00:16:45.180 --> 00:16:47.480 And the whole concept here is it's obscurity. 00:16:47.580 --> 00:16:49.260 No one would ever see a second phone and go, 00:16:49.300 --> 00:16:53.360 oh, that's used to hold cryptocurrency in a very secure fashion 00:16:53.580 --> 00:16:56.840 for someone who's holding millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, right? 00:16:57.000 --> 00:17:01.120 So it's true. People don't think about this. Sorry to go back to what you're saying. 00:17:01.660 --> 00:17:07.439 People don't think about the fact that some security tools actually are an indication and could raise suspicion. 00:17:07.620 --> 00:17:10.000 Not that it's right. I don't think either of us are saying that's right. 00:17:10.030 --> 00:17:14.579 But I think it should be something that's considered in some people's threat model, depending on their situation. 00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:17.540 So I'm sorry you had to deal with that firsthand. 00:17:17.610 --> 00:17:22.880 I mean, yeah, no, like it's part of my story. I don't mind like sharing those things. 00:17:23.189 --> 00:17:24.600 It was a definitely unique experience. 00:17:24.780 --> 00:17:29.400 One of the things I remember, this is where I see certain ways in which our life in China 00:17:30.140 --> 00:17:32.440 was a precursor to what we're seeing in the West. 00:17:32.610 --> 00:17:35.380 So an example of that is, you know, I'm walking around with my phone. 00:17:35.540 --> 00:17:36.740 I've got a prepaid plan on my phone. 00:17:36.770 --> 00:17:38.140 And mind you, this is 10 years ago. 00:17:38.250 --> 00:17:40.860 But still, I'm walking around and suddenly my phone stops working. 00:17:41.180 --> 00:17:41.540 Like, what? 00:17:42.020 --> 00:17:42.600 What's going on? 00:17:42.820 --> 00:17:43.940 You know, I can't make phone calls. 00:17:44.070 --> 00:17:45.160 I got no data. 00:17:45.740 --> 00:17:47.380 And like, you got to understand it. 00:17:47.430 --> 00:17:51.599 Like in places like China, it's amazing how good their cellular networks are because they 00:17:51.620 --> 00:17:58.100 never, like in the US, we first did everything over wire. And so all of our carriers were just 00:17:58.520 --> 00:18:03.480 slow to adopt the desire to really invest in that kind of infrastructure. Whereas places like China, 00:18:03.560 --> 00:18:08.740 just like, I remember being in the middle of the stinking desert and I still was sitting there 00:18:08.900 --> 00:18:14.400 watching YouTube videos. I had that good of cellular connection. So when connection goes out, 00:18:14.720 --> 00:18:20.899 it's not like, oh, am I in a dead spot? It's no, like, oh, something's wrong. So I top it up. I add 00:18:20.920 --> 00:18:26.520 more money, still nothing. So I go into my internet service providers, China Mobile, and I'm like, 00:18:26.640 --> 00:18:31.280 hey, what is going on here? And they look up my account. I'm like, oh, just so you know, 00:18:31.550 --> 00:18:36.220 the police have put a hold on your account. You've got to go over to the police station to get that 00:18:36.360 --> 00:18:42.180 hold released before we can do this. Was this before or after the incident? 00:18:42.900 --> 00:18:46.819 This is before the incident. So yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. I didn't clarify that. So this is just 00:18:46.840 --> 00:18:52.340 life beforehand. So I had to go over to the police station and they literally said, okay, 00:18:52.980 --> 00:18:58.860 we recognize that you've been getting on a VPN and we need you to delete all of your VPN. So they 00:18:59.260 --> 00:19:05.100 watched me sit there and delete all of my VPN apps. And then I had to go back, you know, get a sign 00:19:05.180 --> 00:19:11.340 off from them, go back so I could get my account reinstated and use my cell phone again. Now, 00:19:12.020 --> 00:19:15.620 I don't know what's to stop me from re-downloading VPNs again. 00:19:15.990 --> 00:19:18.480 Like I think I eventually did after a little while, 00:19:18.740 --> 00:19:21.420 but just this collaboration between the police 00:19:21.820 --> 00:19:23.860 and all the other entities that I dealt with. 00:19:23.870 --> 00:19:26.140 I mean, especially with, you know, like ISPs 00:19:26.370 --> 00:19:28.020 or with my mobile provider. 00:19:28.760 --> 00:19:32.060 Like I just, it was disconcerting for me at the time. 00:19:32.400 --> 00:19:34.800 And even as we talk about or look at news 00:19:35.060 --> 00:19:36.620 of what's happening around the world 00:19:37.160 --> 00:19:39.180 in regards to the legality of VPNs, 00:19:39.240 --> 00:19:45.440 can VPNs be used in order to evade any of these things that we're coming up against nowadays. 00:19:45.900 --> 00:19:52.860 I can see a time where we've got law enforcement working with mobile providers to make sure that 00:19:52.960 --> 00:19:57.420 if you are using a VPN, I'm not saying this is happening. I'm just saying this was my experience 00:19:57.540 --> 00:20:02.340 in China and it was kind of eye-opening. Oh my gosh, this is what happens whenever there is that 00:20:02.560 --> 00:20:08.220 connection between law enforcement and mobile providers or law enforcement and ISP. And it was, 00:20:08.280 --> 00:20:10.620 Yeah, it was weird, for sure. 00:20:11.780 --> 00:20:15.380 Yeah, I mean, so I have a few broader talking points. 00:20:15.640 --> 00:20:18.720 And I think this could be a good segue into the overall legality of things. 00:20:18.840 --> 00:20:21.080 And so I don't expect you to be a legal expert here. 00:20:21.420 --> 00:20:24.800 But you mentioned this concept of when you travel somewhere, 00:20:25.980 --> 00:20:27.100 you're giving up a lot of your rights. 00:20:27.180 --> 00:20:29.060 And I think that's a pretty universal concept. 00:20:29.400 --> 00:20:32.320 If you are not an American and you go to the U.S., 00:20:32.320 --> 00:20:34.240 you have a lot less rights than Americans might. 00:20:35.740 --> 00:20:41.220 And if I'm an American and I fly to Germany for a conference, I have a lot less rights there as well. 00:20:41.500 --> 00:20:42.260 But what about citizens? 00:20:42.660 --> 00:20:44.760 So are you also American? 00:20:45.540 --> 00:20:46.080 Yes, I am. 00:20:46.280 --> 00:20:46.400 Okay. 00:20:47.620 --> 00:20:54.380 So when you go to the U.S. and you are an American citizen, how does that compare to the rights that a Chinese citizen would have in China? 00:20:54.560 --> 00:20:58.440 Do you see a discrepancy between what those two things look like? 00:20:58.880 --> 00:21:06.400 What would you say is overall a good starting point for a lot of people to understand the nuances of what their rights really are in these different contexts? 00:21:07.540 --> 00:21:07.760 Yeah. 00:21:08.090 --> 00:21:11.640 I wonder, because I think that we start with two different perceptions. 00:21:11.830 --> 00:21:15.800 So I think that with an American, we start with at least the perception. 00:21:15.830 --> 00:21:27.040 I'm not saying this is the reality, but at least the perception that we have a right to privacy and that we actually have privacy to some degree by default. 00:21:27.920 --> 00:21:32.140 And I would argue that that doesn't exist by default as much as we think it does. 00:21:32.900 --> 00:21:37.820 But still, there's kind of that perception that, hey, you know, we have, you know, that's 00:21:37.960 --> 00:21:40.460 why Apple promotes the privacy of their products. 00:21:40.720 --> 00:21:45.200 That's why, you know, privacy, you know, even Samsung, this privacy screen, like they've 00:21:45.420 --> 00:21:48.260 recognized that consumers care about the idea of privacy. 00:21:49.500 --> 00:21:52.200 Around the world, it's not quite the same. 00:21:52.250 --> 00:21:56.040 And I don't know if I would chalk that completely up to just politics. 00:21:56.100 --> 00:21:58.320 I think there's a lot of culture involved in that. 00:21:58.560 --> 00:22:03.980 We're a very individualistic society in the U.S., whereas you go most places in Asia, 00:22:04.540 --> 00:22:09.260 and I can only really speak from experience in China and Thailand, it is a very collective 00:22:09.880 --> 00:22:10.020 culture. 00:22:10.380 --> 00:22:15.800 There's this expectation that the good of the group is more important than the good of the 00:22:15.980 --> 00:22:16.380 individual. 00:22:16.950 --> 00:22:21.680 And this kind of bowing to that idea of that, that is what's expected. 00:22:22.340 --> 00:22:33.120 And so this right of privacy is not necessarily as default in the mindset of the people that I'm aware of in China and now in Thailand. 00:22:33.440 --> 00:22:36.620 And so dealing with that was a little bit different. 00:22:36.700 --> 00:22:42.360 So I would get frustrated by things that my friends in China were just like, what's the big deal? 00:22:42.460 --> 00:22:49.840 you know, after the 2009 riots in our region. So this was, if you look it up, just go 2009 riots, 00:22:50.300 --> 00:22:54.180 you know, China, and you'll see all this stuff happened out in that region where we were living. 00:22:54.540 --> 00:22:59.260 They did a couple of things. First of all, they shut off all international calling. You couldn't 00:22:59.360 --> 00:23:04.160 make an international phone call from our region. So just imagine like a state, like a province. 00:23:04.799 --> 00:23:10.960 And they shut off the internet. It was just an intranet within our region for 10 months. 00:23:11.400 --> 00:23:14.940 And I want you to think back, anybody like for yourself or anybody who's watching this 00:23:15.040 --> 00:23:17.900 right now, did you ever see anything about that on the news? 00:23:18.020 --> 00:23:23.580 Like there were snippets of it on the news, but like if the internet was cut in the state 00:23:23.780 --> 00:23:31.840 of California for 10 months, can you imagine the backlash and like how much like people 00:23:31.940 --> 00:23:32.860 would just be going nuts? 00:23:33.300 --> 00:23:38.439 But for the people of that region of Xinjiang, the idea that the internet was cut for the 00:23:38.460 --> 00:23:45.140 safety of everybody in the region was kind of just this given. So I, you know, going back to what 00:23:45.220 --> 00:23:49.900 you're saying, I don't know if I can speak much to the legality of any of that. All I know is that 00:23:50.040 --> 00:23:56.280 from a cultural perspective, I think there's a lot more acceptance of that kind of invasion of privacy 00:23:56.480 --> 00:24:01.960 for the good of the group that at least in the U.S., I don't think that is considered acceptable 00:24:02.180 --> 00:24:07.279 for a lot of us. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, do you think that reflects 00:24:07.520 --> 00:24:12.040 that culture difference also kind of impacts downstream 00:24:12.380 --> 00:24:14.180 how surveillance technology is implemented. 00:24:15.420 --> 00:24:16.720 And you kind of hinted at this as well. 00:24:17.340 --> 00:24:18.820 This is something I wanted to ask about. 00:24:19.130 --> 00:24:22.500 I feel like China has no issue just calling people in saying, 00:24:22.660 --> 00:24:24.960 hey, we noticed you were using a VPN, delete it right now. 00:24:25.480 --> 00:24:27.060 Hey, we have these cameras everywhere. 00:24:27.540 --> 00:24:30.640 It's very well known that there's a lot of surveillance technology in China. 00:24:31.110 --> 00:24:35.439 But I feel like in the US, people are quite disillusioned 00:24:35.460 --> 00:24:36.440 with all the surveillance. 00:24:36.560 --> 00:24:37.820 Like people don't think about Flock 00:24:38.020 --> 00:24:39.980 until it's put in front of their face in a Super Bowl ad. 00:24:40.040 --> 00:24:41.340 And then they go, oh, I hate this. 00:24:41.860 --> 00:24:43.640 But they otherwise would have never known about it. 00:24:43.640 --> 00:24:44.900 And so I think people in the US, 00:24:45.120 --> 00:24:46.560 it's happening a lot more passively. 00:24:47.500 --> 00:24:49.500 Governments secretly tap on private companies 00:24:49.720 --> 00:24:50.620 like Google and collect it 00:24:50.660 --> 00:24:52.100 without ever notifying the user. 00:24:52.820 --> 00:24:55.820 So do you think that that reflects the cultures? 00:24:56.400 --> 00:24:58.740 How do you feel about this overall relationship? 00:24:59.360 --> 00:24:59.960 Yeah, I do. 00:25:00.360 --> 00:25:01.260 I mean, you're right. 00:25:01.440 --> 00:25:04.639 The surveillance is not hidden in any way 00:25:05.020 --> 00:25:12.040 in a place like China. It is very much in your face. The cameras, when I was living there back 00:25:12.200 --> 00:25:20.240 in 2018, before I left, the camera system they had out there put flock to shame, right? They had 00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:27.120 every inch covered by government-controlled cameras, right? So at least flock for better or 00:25:27.240 --> 00:25:33.179 worse. It's not top-down government-controlled. Now, it is regulated, all that stuff, and I'm not a 00:25:33.200 --> 00:25:38.060 big fan of it at all, but there is a little bit of a difference there. Where I was living, 00:25:38.140 --> 00:25:43.540 there were literally, we called them police substations. I don't know what the local term 00:25:43.740 --> 00:25:49.720 was, but it was like in the same way that there's a Starbucks in the US pretty much on every corner 00:25:50.340 --> 00:25:54.080 that you're driving. That's the way it felt like with these little police substations that would 00:25:54.280 --> 00:25:59.359 handle the ingestion of all these cameras. When I was being interrogated, the amount of information 00:25:59.360 --> 00:26:07.680 that they knew on me about me and my goings and my communication was very eye-opening and shocking 00:26:08.260 --> 00:26:15.120 for me personally. But I think that the average Chinese citizen, again, kind of like, 00:26:16.300 --> 00:26:22.180 the chicken and the egg problem for me is more about, do they accept it because it's cultural 00:26:22.420 --> 00:26:28.119 or do they accept it because they know they have no recourse? Like them raising their voice about 00:26:28.140 --> 00:26:34.020 is going to do no good. It will only do harm to them and their potential prospects for a career, 00:26:34.620 --> 00:26:40.940 for anything like that. And so raising any sort of concern is not going to be of any value. 00:26:41.620 --> 00:26:47.920 So you just kind of have to go along with it. Whereas at least us in the US, we've got a 00:26:48.240 --> 00:26:52.819 mechanism through which we can say, this flock stuff sucks. What are we doing? And there can be 00:26:52.840 --> 00:26:59.180 at least a debate, hopefully a good debate, but there can be a debate in the public forum about 00:26:59.380 --> 00:27:04.840 whether this is a truly helpful thing or whether it's not. And I don't think those debates happen 00:27:05.540 --> 00:27:11.560 in other parts of the world. And frankly, I think they look at our debates as foolish. 00:27:12.480 --> 00:27:18.979 Like they look in on the American debate over something like the flock privacy stuff as just 00:27:19.260 --> 00:27:23.020 us being fools just because there is so much infighting about it. 00:27:23.640 --> 00:27:29.240 Quick one, go into your email inbox right now and type in unsubscribe. However many hundreds or 00:27:29.500 --> 00:27:34.660 thousands of results you just got, that's how many companies have your real email address. So the 00:27:34.710 --> 00:27:39.040 moment any of them gets breached or quietly sells you out, it's your real inbox eating the spam, 00:27:39.440 --> 00:27:46.119 the trackers, and the hackers forever. Addy.io is designed to fix this entire problem. The whole 00:27:46.160 --> 00:27:52.040 idea is you stop giving out your real email address and instead hand every single site its own alias 00:27:52.220 --> 00:27:57.320 that just forwards to the inbox you already have think like apple hide my email except it's open 00:27:57.520 --> 00:28:02.260 source and you can bring it to any email inbox and my favorite part is that once you get all your 00:28:02.500 --> 00:28:07.160 accounts using an email alias you can always swap the email provider behind the scenes like moving 00:28:07.200 --> 00:28:12.599 from gmail to a private email provider without needing to update every single account's email and 00:28:12.620 --> 00:28:15.980 And it's possible because you're really just putting Addy in front of your email. 00:28:16.180 --> 00:28:17.540 It's like your email bodyguard. 00:28:17.680 --> 00:28:18.880 This also offers a lot of protection. 00:28:19.090 --> 00:28:22.140 If a site starts to spam you or you show up in a data breach 00:28:22.310 --> 00:28:25.280 or you realize they sold your data because that one specific alias 00:28:25.490 --> 00:28:28.140 suddenly started getting junk, you just deactivate the alias. 00:28:28.320 --> 00:28:30.520 It's fully open source, so you're not trusting a black box. 00:28:30.570 --> 00:28:33.280 And you can even self-host the entire thing if you're that kind of person, 00:28:33.480 --> 00:28:34.560 which I know many of you are. 00:28:34.740 --> 00:28:35.420 It's on F-Droid. 00:28:35.470 --> 00:28:37.380 There are browser extensions and mobile apps, 00:28:37.410 --> 00:28:40.380 so you can spin up a fresh alias right as you're signing up for something. 00:28:40.600 --> 00:28:43.400 And if you want to go all in, you can even use it with your own custom alias. 00:28:43.510 --> 00:28:46.240 It's free to start and they have a crazy generous free plan to get started. 00:28:46.580 --> 00:28:49.180 Visit Addy.io or just check them out down in the description. 00:28:49.290 --> 00:28:50.760 And thank you guys for sponsoring us. 00:28:51.160 --> 00:28:51.780 Now back to the video. 00:28:53.360 --> 00:28:57.320 So after this all happened to you, I want to get more into more like the practical side of things. 00:28:58.360 --> 00:29:00.120 What have you changed in your life since then? 00:29:00.150 --> 00:29:01.880 I think, you know, people hear this story. 00:29:01.970 --> 00:29:05.180 I don't think it's hopefully something many of our listeners have had to deal with. 00:29:05.390 --> 00:29:06.920 If they're like, oh, well, that's scary. 00:29:07.700 --> 00:29:08.980 I don't want that to happen to me. 00:29:09.060 --> 00:29:13.600 if it does happen to me, I want to be prepared for it. What are kind of your main takeaway lessons 00:29:14.220 --> 00:29:17.380 from everything that happened to you that you would share with somebody else? 00:29:17.820 --> 00:29:22.740 Yeah. Well, like I said, the best privacy and security in the world breaks down when someone 00:29:22.780 --> 00:29:26.920 puts a gun to your head. There are obviously extreme measures that you can take on certain 00:29:27.160 --> 00:29:31.879 things, but when somebody has a gun to your head, there's very little you can do. So I kind of want 00:29:31.900 --> 00:29:39.760 to separate out my particular event and circumstance was very unique in that it did feel like I had a 00:29:39.900 --> 00:29:46.020 gun to my head, but that experience did change the way that I cross borders. And I think that 00:29:46.460 --> 00:29:52.700 that intentionality for how you cross borders is important. I like to tell people that the way that 00:29:52.700 --> 00:29:59.020 you cross a border starts in the preparation before you board the plane, not once you land. 00:29:59.300 --> 00:30:01.340 And I think a lot of people have that mixed up. 00:30:01.410 --> 00:30:05.060 They're like, okay, once I land, that's when I'll just make sure that I've, you know, turned 00:30:05.130 --> 00:30:06.340 off my phone or whatnot. 00:30:06.780 --> 00:30:10.740 When it comes to, let's say, entering into China, if I'm advising somebody who's going 00:30:10.900 --> 00:30:15.580 in on business, like one of the things that I'm going to say is, you know, hey, if, unless 00:30:15.690 --> 00:30:20.000 you absolutely have to, for some reason, I'm not going to bring my regular phone. 00:30:20.200 --> 00:30:26.840 I'm going to bring a secondary phone, a burner phone, if you will, into the country and only 00:30:26.860 --> 00:30:31.840 use, you know, I'm not, that phone's not going to have all of my personal stuff on it. I want to 00:30:31.940 --> 00:30:41.620 know because for people that are just general travelers, the most risky moment of your travel, 00:30:42.100 --> 00:30:47.940 of, of, of any, like the, the most, how would I say this? The, the most likely you are to have 00:30:48.440 --> 00:30:53.320 something happen wrong with your data or with anything that you are, that you have personally 00:30:53.340 --> 00:30:58.440 with you is when you're crossing that border. So when you're going through customs, when you are 00:30:58.540 --> 00:31:03.300 in that airport or when you're crossing that land border, that's the time that you have to be most 00:31:03.520 --> 00:31:07.420 concerned about. When I'm thinking about that, I'm thinking, okay, there's certain apps that I really 00:31:07.880 --> 00:31:13.540 don't need to have. Like if I were to hand over this phone and somebody had my pin code and said, 00:31:13.700 --> 00:31:19.299 give, let me look through everything in here. Would I be comfortable doing that? I personally use 00:31:19.320 --> 00:31:24.580 ProtonPass, but 1Password has this feature where they have travel mode, where you can actually turn 00:31:24.720 --> 00:31:33.240 on travel mode and it will remove whichever vaults you have on it that are listed as not safe for 00:31:33.320 --> 00:31:38.620 travel. So if I've got a business vault, I can keep my personal vault on there, but if I have a 00:31:38.710 --> 00:31:44.040 business vault or a super sensitive vault, I can make sure that those are removed before I travel. 00:31:44.620 --> 00:31:47.220 And then I can log out of any accounts that I might have, 00:31:47.480 --> 00:31:50.480 or like I said, just have a travel specific device. 00:31:50.780 --> 00:31:52.000 But those are just a couple of the things 00:31:52.120 --> 00:31:52.920 that I'm thinking through. 00:31:53.860 --> 00:31:54.080 Got it. 00:31:54.100 --> 00:31:56.900 And so pretty much your suggestion there is, 00:31:57.180 --> 00:31:58.340 hey, I got a phone. 00:31:58.500 --> 00:32:00.640 It's either my regular phone or a secondary device 00:32:00.800 --> 00:32:01.620 if I have that luxury. 00:32:02.340 --> 00:32:04.120 And I only load onto it the bare minimum 00:32:04.180 --> 00:32:05.120 of what I need for the trip. 00:32:05.240 --> 00:32:08.000 So probably boarding passes, not all of my passwords, 00:32:08.220 --> 00:32:10.680 not all of my messages, not all of my browsing history, 00:32:10.940 --> 00:32:12.340 just the bare minimum on that device. 00:32:12.860 --> 00:32:16.240 What about like computers and any other like privacy and security tools? 00:32:16.420 --> 00:32:18.960 Like, do you recommend having a VPN on there? 00:32:19.280 --> 00:32:22.220 What's kind of your stack or what do you typically travel with? 00:32:23.200 --> 00:32:26.800 Yeah, so I am going to have a VPN on all the devices. 00:32:27.300 --> 00:32:32.500 I essentially, what I think through is one, obviously I just said, what is on my device 00:32:32.840 --> 00:32:37.440 that if I had to hand this device over, is there anything that I would absolutely not 00:32:37.620 --> 00:32:39.260 want somebody to have access to? 00:32:39.320 --> 00:32:42.820 And then the second thing I actually think about is what would I feel like if this 00:32:42.840 --> 00:32:47.580 got plugged into. And this is something that I've actually had happen to me multiple times, 00:32:48.000 --> 00:32:54.760 where I will be asked and compelled to take my phone and plug something into it and unlock it 00:32:55.010 --> 00:33:00.780 so that they can run some kind of scan. I don't know what that scan is exactly. I don't know what 00:33:00.840 --> 00:33:05.020 they're scanning for. They won't tell me. And I don't know what they're uploading. And I've asked 00:33:05.620 --> 00:33:09.360 Apple, I've literally emailed them and this is years ago. So maybe things have changed, 00:33:09.460 --> 00:33:14.700 But I emailed them and said, if somebody plugs into my phone and I am compelled to put in 00:33:14.780 --> 00:33:17.300 my PIN number, what can they up? 00:33:17.780 --> 00:33:19.720 They're restricted on what they can upload. 00:33:20.420 --> 00:33:25.160 And the answer was, we assume that if you are giving your PIN code and making this a 00:33:25.400 --> 00:33:29.660 trusted device that you can do basically anything, which kind of scares me. 00:33:29.940 --> 00:33:34.880 But again, when you're crossing a border or when you are going into an international territory, 00:33:35.500 --> 00:33:38.240 you may not have the right to say no to something like that. 00:33:38.500 --> 00:33:44.580 So I want to make sure that if I have a device, am I willing to have this thing plugged into? 00:33:45.020 --> 00:33:48.040 And that, you know, again, it's everybody's different. 00:33:48.300 --> 00:33:51.440 Everybody's threat model as they do this is going to be entirely different. 00:33:51.620 --> 00:34:01.140 It's more just how are you intentionally thinking about this travel and preparing instead of just getting caught once you're on the other side with, you know, not being prepared. 00:34:02.580 --> 00:34:02.700 Yeah. 00:34:02.700 --> 00:34:06.600 And then kind of going back to something we said earlier, do you ever think about obscurity for this as well? 00:34:06.720 --> 00:34:11.540 Like, are you concerned if you have Tor browser on the device or you're using Veracrypt on something? 00:34:11.700 --> 00:34:16.639 Do you think, do you try to avoid tools that would set off too many flags if someone was to unlock a device? 00:34:16.840 --> 00:34:19.320 Or is that not part of your concern anymore when you travel? 00:34:20.840 --> 00:34:21.360 It is. 00:34:21.700 --> 00:34:23.600 I mean, I distinctly remember they came back. 00:34:23.740 --> 00:34:27.840 So this is going back into when I was being interrogated over those 17 days. 00:34:28.520 --> 00:34:30.320 And we were in house arrest at the time. 00:34:31.000 --> 00:34:32.840 And I remember they'd taken all my devices. 00:34:33.060 --> 00:34:36.000 So like we would go home, you know, thankfully go home every night. 00:34:36.480 --> 00:34:37.960 And we didn't have anything to do. 00:34:38.060 --> 00:34:39.060 Like you can't stream anything. 00:34:39.100 --> 00:34:40.360 We don't have any devices, right? 00:34:40.520 --> 00:34:46.340 So we would like, it was a very offline week for us, but they would come back to me and 00:34:46.440 --> 00:34:52.879 I had a folder on my computer that was entirely encrypted that I kept stuff in and they brought 00:34:52.960 --> 00:34:55.700 the computer to my door and said, type in the password. 00:34:56.080 --> 00:34:57.040 We need to look in here. 00:34:57.620 --> 00:35:02.240 And it was, it was things that, you know, I wanted to stay safe, but it didn't really 00:35:02.500 --> 00:35:03.380 matter that they saw. 00:35:03.900 --> 00:35:11.600 But I think the point being, they recognized this is a particularly sensitive folder. 00:35:11.900 --> 00:35:13.360 You've obviously secured it. 00:35:13.600 --> 00:35:15.320 So we want you to open this. 00:35:15.980 --> 00:35:20.380 And there were probably plenty of other things on the computer, but they found that one folder 00:35:20.440 --> 00:35:21.340 that had been encrypted. 00:35:21.520 --> 00:35:23.280 And that is what they honed in on. 00:35:23.620 --> 00:35:26.460 Just the same like they honed in on this little USB stick. 00:35:26.560 --> 00:35:30.380 And they were convinced that this had everything that I wanted to hide on it. 00:35:30.420 --> 00:35:38.660 Those are the type of things where if it's easy to stand out, like if it really stands out, you're probably going to grab the attention of somebody who's searching for something. 00:35:39.760 --> 00:35:51.420 Do you think there's a strategy there for people to have, let's say, a honeypot where they have something that they know looks the most interesting that has nothing interesting in it to kind of just be like, no, it's not a big deal? 00:35:52.980 --> 00:35:55.420 Yeah, I mean, that's certainly a strategy you could use. 00:35:55.430 --> 00:35:56.660 I haven't thought about using that, though. 00:35:56.740 --> 00:35:57.040 That's funny. 00:35:57.520 --> 00:35:58.360 Okay, yeah, I was just curious. 00:35:58.440 --> 00:36:09.320 I guess another question I think people might be thinking about, you're sharing this advice, and I've traveled to Europe at this point probably like 10 different times for different trips, mostly work. 00:36:09.570 --> 00:36:10.620 I've never dealt with any of this. 00:36:10.960 --> 00:36:12.440 I've never taken this too seriously. 00:36:12.590 --> 00:36:18.380 I do basic hygiene, but I've never brought strictly a secondary device when I'm going to Europe. 00:36:18.960 --> 00:36:23.460 So I guess the question here is, do you think that this should be universal travel advice? 00:36:23.700 --> 00:36:28.300 Would you tell me, Henry, it could always happen, you don't know, and you should probably always be ready for it? 00:36:28.920 --> 00:36:31.940 or do you think that this should be done selectively per country, 00:36:32.640 --> 00:36:34.760 depending on the likelihood in which this could happen? 00:36:35.720 --> 00:36:37.160 Yeah, I think it's a hybrid answer 00:36:37.860 --> 00:36:40.680 because obviously your experience of traveling to Europe 00:36:40.740 --> 00:36:43.700 is a lot different than my experience of traveling to Malaysia 00:36:44.180 --> 00:36:46.660 or to Laos or to some of these countries 00:36:47.100 --> 00:36:49.700 where their law enforcement and their privacy, 00:36:50.160 --> 00:36:53.000 they don't take it as seriously as you would in a place like Europe. 00:36:53.400 --> 00:36:57.300 So I think there is something to this idea that where you're going, 00:36:57.880 --> 00:37:03.560 obviously matters in how you prepare an approach for international travel. So going to a place like 00:37:03.700 --> 00:37:10.580 Germany, I'm going to probably not be as on high alert as I would going to Vietnam or Laos or, 00:37:10.830 --> 00:37:14.720 you know, one of these other countries that I'm closer, or even down into some places in Africa 00:37:14.840 --> 00:37:20.760 or the Middle East, right? Like it's going to make a difference in how I plan. That being said, 00:37:21.360 --> 00:37:28.740 I do believe that as with anything privacy and security related, you never have to worry 00:37:28.960 --> 00:37:31.740 about the worst case scenario until the worst case scenario happens. 00:37:32.320 --> 00:37:37.380 It's not that it could never happen in Europe, you know, crossing a border in Switzerland 00:37:37.410 --> 00:37:38.240 or anything like that. 00:37:38.410 --> 00:37:40.780 I would still be intentional about it. 00:37:41.400 --> 00:37:45.260 It's just you don't necessarily have to be as on high alert in certain places. 00:37:45.650 --> 00:37:47.540 So I think it's probably a mixture of the two. 00:37:48.680 --> 00:37:48.980 Got it. 00:37:49.460 --> 00:37:53.480 I guess another question that came up, you know, when they did the whole phone scan thing, 00:37:53.860 --> 00:37:58.200 if I just whip out the secondary device I don't care about and I just say, yeah, sure, go for it, 00:37:58.620 --> 00:38:03.040 is that good enough? Or do they typically collect all devices and it's quite a thorough process and 00:38:03.050 --> 00:38:06.820 they want you to scan each one? Or I know you can't ever count on something because I know 00:38:06.920 --> 00:38:11.100 there's different degrees in which they're going to, you know, want to investigate, 00:38:11.220 --> 00:38:15.939 but in that specific scenario for you. Yeah. I mean, I did have friends that would carry around 00:38:15.960 --> 00:38:21.760 two phones. And, you know, as long as you gave them a phone, they were happy, you know, that 00:38:21.820 --> 00:38:27.120 because you got to keep in mind, these guys, it's not like they're the top dog. The ones that are 00:38:27.250 --> 00:38:31.040 actually implementing this are just the low man on the totem pole who've been told, all you got to do 00:38:31.040 --> 00:38:35.420 is plug this in. If something beeps or if something, you know, like if there's some, you know, 00:38:35.720 --> 00:38:40.700 notification that there's something on here, then we have protocol, but they just wanted to do their 00:38:40.920 --> 00:38:44.900 plug-in and they know that everybody has a phone. So if you pretend like you don't have a phone, 00:38:44.940 --> 00:38:47.040 then they'll be a little concerned. 00:38:47.680 --> 00:38:50.480 But yeah, I don't think that it would be a problem 00:38:51.100 --> 00:38:53.140 if you had two phones and then you just hand it over 00:38:53.680 --> 00:38:55.920 the dummy phone or the one that doesn't have anything on it. 00:38:56.800 --> 00:38:56.880 Nice. 00:38:57.180 --> 00:38:58.400 Is there a destination today 00:38:58.880 --> 00:39:00.400 that you would never bring your primary phone to? 00:39:01.540 --> 00:39:03.620 Oh, I mean, yeah, China, 00:39:03.740 --> 00:39:05.880 I would never bring my primary phone to. 00:39:06.080 --> 00:39:09.560 I mean, there are definitely places in India 00:39:09.780 --> 00:39:12.760 I would potentially be a little wary. 00:39:13.080 --> 00:39:16.640 It's not that I don't like people in China or I don't like India. 00:39:17.020 --> 00:39:25.380 It's more just what is the posture of the government towards foreigners and towards digital privacy. 00:39:25.860 --> 00:39:31.020 And I would say that that doesn't necessarily always reflect in the kindness of the people that you meet. 00:39:31.020 --> 00:39:32.880 So the Chinese people are wonderful. 00:39:32.930 --> 00:39:34.380 The Indian people are wonderful. 00:39:34.410 --> 00:39:42.900 But I wouldn't necessarily take my primary device into China, into India, a number of places, you know, even in Southeast Asia. 00:39:43.220 --> 00:39:50.180 It's just really hard because even places like Vietnam are just becoming like this hot spot for digital nomads to go and do work. 00:39:50.440 --> 00:39:53.180 And they're trying to promote that view of who they are. 00:39:53.500 --> 00:39:55.740 And yet it's still a communist country. 00:39:56.280 --> 00:40:09.300 And they're still like their view towards privacy is not what we would be, what we would consider acceptable, at least from our point of view, but definitely even from a Western point of view. 00:40:09.760 --> 00:40:11.780 I'm trying to think of any other countries off the top of my head. 00:40:12.180 --> 00:40:19.120 I think I would be very careful in a lot of places in the Middle East and even in parts of Africa as well. 00:40:19.160 --> 00:40:20.980 I think I would be very careful. 00:40:22.340 --> 00:40:22.600 Got it. 00:40:23.200 --> 00:40:28.300 Is there kind of a silent risk that a lot of people listening probably don't realize? 00:40:29.220 --> 00:40:33.520 Is there something that you see people do all the time when they travel that you're like, 00:40:34.780 --> 00:40:36.120 that's probably something they should think about? 00:40:37.160 --> 00:41:00.340 Yeah. So check-ins are actually a really important part of travel that I think a lot of people don't think about. And I'll give you an example. I was once out, I was filming something out in Western China and like it was morning, it was this festival and the police took me and they took me to a police station. This was the first time that they had really taken me in. 00:41:00.740 --> 00:41:02.720 Sounds like you recorded a Borat movie. 00:41:02.880 --> 00:41:06.780 You know, they got arrested when they recorded the original Borat something like 70 times. 00:41:07.130 --> 00:41:08.620 How many times were you arrested in China? 00:41:10.040 --> 00:41:11.820 Just these two main times. 00:41:12.050 --> 00:41:12.200 Okay. 00:41:13.740 --> 00:41:18.060 Because I don't know which stories are different, but it's like, whoa, you got arrested a lot. 00:41:18.680 --> 00:41:20.580 Or not arrested, but like taken in. 00:41:20.640 --> 00:41:21.040 Yeah, taken in. 00:41:21.410 --> 00:41:23.360 Again, it's that frog in the boiling pot. 00:41:23.430 --> 00:41:28.400 Like after a little while, you just get used to the police constantly like coming up to you and asking you. 00:41:28.500 --> 00:41:32.960 And this was just one time where they took me in and it was early in the morning and 00:41:33.180 --> 00:41:39.580 they kind of freaked me out because I knew my wife wouldn't worry about me or think about 00:41:39.620 --> 00:41:44.400 me until maybe 6 p.m. when I was supposed to come home from work. 00:41:44.740 --> 00:41:48.800 So I kind of freaked out a little bit because I was like, what if, you know, and I started 00:41:48.900 --> 00:41:51.360 going through all of these things because I didn't know what was going to happen. 00:41:52.460 --> 00:41:57.579 What I mean by this check-in idea is that there's a lot of times that we find ourselves 00:41:57.580 --> 00:42:00.800 when we're traveling, like going from point A to point B. 00:42:01.090 --> 00:42:02.480 And there's things that could happen. 00:42:02.530 --> 00:42:03.600 You could get in a wreck. 00:42:03.990 --> 00:42:06.320 There could be something that happens to you. 00:42:06.800 --> 00:42:08.340 And when we're in our home country, 00:42:09.180 --> 00:42:10.760 there are a lot of things that we might know 00:42:11.130 --> 00:42:12.620 how to handle or what to do. 00:42:13.240 --> 00:42:15.620 But when we are traveling internationally, 00:42:16.120 --> 00:42:18.000 we might not think about that as much. 00:42:18.500 --> 00:42:20.560 And so one of the things that I recommend, 00:42:20.910 --> 00:42:23.480 and really this is more of a physical safety thing 00:42:23.610 --> 00:42:26.500 as opposed to a digital safety type of thing. 00:42:26.640 --> 00:42:32.120 But it's like, okay, if I know that I'm going to be going from here, I'm taking a bus, you 00:42:32.140 --> 00:42:37.140 know, to go into the mountains, I'm going to text somebody, you know, outside of the 00:42:37.310 --> 00:42:40.320 country or a friend in the country and just say, hey, just so you know, I'm jumping on 00:42:40.320 --> 00:42:40.760 a bus. 00:42:41.070 --> 00:42:42.880 I should arrive at 8 p.m. 00:42:43.020 --> 00:42:44.040 I'll text you when I get there. 00:42:44.090 --> 00:42:49.540 If I don't text you, can you just like do something like reach out, find out what might 00:42:49.540 --> 00:42:50.060 have happened? 00:42:50.350 --> 00:42:55.199 Because I think there's a lot of times where, you know, a day will go by if something has 00:42:55.200 --> 00:43:01.680 happened. And because there was no check-in process in place, there's just a higher risk of 00:43:02.520 --> 00:43:06.400 physical harm or losing that sense of safety. Does that make sense? 00:43:06.820 --> 00:43:10.760 It does, yeah. So what you're suggesting is anytime you travel or doing anything that's 00:43:10.920 --> 00:43:16.040 sensitive, have at least a trusted buddy or person in your life where you have an established 00:43:16.300 --> 00:43:20.240 system for. I mean, it's no different. You go to Disney World, you go to an amusement park, 00:43:20.480 --> 00:43:21.560 Disneyland, the mall, wherever. 00:43:22.340 --> 00:43:23.220 And if you all get lost, 00:43:23.400 --> 00:43:26.200 you have a place to be at 1 p.m. 00:43:26.820 --> 00:43:27.100 Exactly. 00:43:27.350 --> 00:43:28.520 Is that kind of what you're suggesting? 00:43:29.260 --> 00:43:30.500 Yeah, 100%. 00:43:31.160 --> 00:43:31.280 Cool. 00:43:31.680 --> 00:43:33.440 As you were talking, I also looked it up. 00:43:33.560 --> 00:43:34.720 So it's run-ins with the law 00:43:35.160 --> 00:43:37.500 that Sacha Baron Cohen had in the original Borat. 00:43:37.660 --> 00:43:39.780 And it's cited as dozens of times. 00:43:40.520 --> 00:43:43.800 Like 50 to 100 is kind of the numbers I'm seeing. 00:43:44.400 --> 00:43:45.640 Oh my gosh, that's hilarious. 00:43:45.940 --> 00:43:48.540 But I just wanted to make sure I got that somewhat right. 00:43:48.900 --> 00:43:50.440 So maybe that's what they thought you were doing 00:43:50.900 --> 00:43:52.820 for China with your camera 00:43:52.980 --> 00:43:56.560 and then Lonely Explorer? 00:43:56.840 --> 00:43:57.660 Lonely Planet, yeah. 00:43:57.860 --> 00:43:59.040 Lonely Planet, thank you, yeah. 00:44:01.240 --> 00:44:02.920 You're making me feel old, Henry. 00:44:03.000 --> 00:44:03.440 Am I that much older than you? 00:44:03.440 --> 00:44:04.660 I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to. 00:44:04.940 --> 00:44:05.380 I'm sorry. 00:44:06.880 --> 00:44:08.060 The last thing I kind of want to get into 00:44:08.340 --> 00:44:09.460 before a little bit more about you 00:44:10.040 --> 00:44:11.780 is kind of the global view of this. 00:44:11.900 --> 00:44:13.560 I feel like Americans have this view 00:44:13.680 --> 00:44:15.540 that China is this surveillance state. 00:44:16.380 --> 00:44:17.880 It is this evil place. 00:44:18.040 --> 00:44:18.920 They have these weird ideas. 00:44:19.130 --> 00:44:20.040 We don't like that, right? 00:44:20.720 --> 00:44:21.520 I'm generalizing here. 00:44:21.520 --> 00:44:22.640 I don't feel this way about it. 00:44:22.650 --> 00:44:26.120 But I feel like this is not an uncommon thing I hear on the news 00:44:26.540 --> 00:44:29.500 and the way that Chinese culture is portrayed in Western culture. 00:44:30.500 --> 00:44:34.760 How do you personally view Western surveillance and Western privacy? 00:44:35.120 --> 00:44:39.520 And do you see similar concerns happen in the U.S. as you've seen in China? 00:44:39.860 --> 00:44:41.760 Or do you think they are still quite different? 00:44:42.140 --> 00:44:43.580 Like you've lived in both places. 00:44:43.790 --> 00:44:45.040 You have a lot of firsthand experience. 00:44:45.880 --> 00:44:49.300 You've dealt with firsthand kind of the Chinese arm of this. 00:44:50.040 --> 00:44:53.600 And so I think you're an interesting person to ask this question and add some perspective 00:44:53.800 --> 00:44:58.000 because I actually have seen quite polarizing takes about this. 00:44:58.660 --> 00:44:58.860 Yeah. 00:44:59.120 --> 00:45:04.560 I would say that one, whatever you think of the Chinese government and the way that it 00:45:04.840 --> 00:45:12.080 approaches personal privacy, individual rights, any of this that we see when we are even as 00:45:12.240 --> 00:45:15.440 Westerns when we think of China, they're not hiding anything. 00:45:15.620 --> 00:45:20.220 they don't they well i'm sure they're hiding plenty of things but when it comes to surveillance when 00:45:20.220 --> 00:45:24.880 it comes to personal privacy and all that stuff they're they've got their cards out on the table 00:45:25.560 --> 00:45:32.120 and and and to us like some weird degree i actually admire that like they're not hiding the fact that 00:45:32.200 --> 00:45:35.920 we are monitoring everything that's going on with cameras we're not trying to hide it from you 00:45:36.260 --> 00:45:41.039 we're not going to hide the fact that we have a back door into tiktok and every other major company 00:45:41.040 --> 00:45:46.960 in this country, that's where the government, that's what we do. Like it is a, it is in plain 00:45:47.820 --> 00:45:54.080 sight so that everybody knows that this is what's happening. What I see as a difference in the U.S. 00:45:54.180 --> 00:46:01.440 is I see so many similarities in what is actually happening. The difference is that in one country, 00:46:01.900 --> 00:46:05.839 it's just out in the plain and out in the open. Everybody knows, everybody talks about it, it's 00:46:05.860 --> 00:46:12.300 fine. They don't talk about it, but it's just there. Whereas in the U S like we're shocked 00:46:13.060 --> 00:46:19.980 when we find out that, Oh, they were monitoring us. Oh, they did have some deal with a big tech 00:46:20.320 --> 00:46:24.720 company where they were getting it from like, this is blowing our minds. We, we were under the 00:46:24.880 --> 00:46:31.239 impression that this wasn't the case. And so I, I don't think that there is a huge difference 00:46:31.800 --> 00:46:34.140 in what's actually happening. 00:46:34.420 --> 00:46:35.720 It's just this perception 00:46:36.300 --> 00:46:38.400 and this we're putting our cards on the table 00:46:38.660 --> 00:46:40.920 versus we're kind of just going to sneak around 00:46:41.440 --> 00:46:42.940 and not talk about it. 00:46:42.940 --> 00:46:45.820 I think to me, that seems like the biggest difference. 00:46:46.880 --> 00:46:47.460 Which one do you, 00:46:48.320 --> 00:46:50.360 I guess one doesn't have to be more of a problem 00:46:50.440 --> 00:46:50.920 than the other, 00:46:51.060 --> 00:46:55.460 but do you find that kind of that U.S. approach 00:46:55.640 --> 00:46:57.140 thinks to be a bit dangerous? 00:46:57.860 --> 00:47:00.140 I mean, my thought goes to just the unaware, 00:47:00.380 --> 00:47:04.040 Like, you know, something we talk about is people don't realize just how invasive it is. 00:47:04.520 --> 00:47:06.340 The educational piece is really big. 00:47:06.460 --> 00:47:11.040 Trying to actually get people to realize how massive this problem is is very difficult to do. 00:47:11.440 --> 00:47:15.560 And I feel like that is partly because it's just people don't see it. 00:47:15.620 --> 00:47:19.700 So do you think that, what do you think are just kind of the downstream effects of this approach to it? 00:47:20.480 --> 00:47:24.000 Yeah, I mean, I think part of the downstream effects is a lack of accountability. 00:47:24.740 --> 00:47:29.700 When there's not transparency on what's actually happening, there can't be accountability on the other end of it. 00:47:29.880 --> 00:47:32.080 And that in itself is extremely dangerous. 00:47:32.580 --> 00:47:33.880 And I think we're dealing with obviously, 00:47:34.160 --> 00:47:37.560 or also two different mindsets where I think in China, 00:47:37.800 --> 00:47:40.040 the pervasive feeling of the common person 00:47:40.120 --> 00:47:41.640 that I'm aware of is more of, 00:47:42.060 --> 00:47:43.240 there's nothing I can do about it. 00:47:43.560 --> 00:47:45.140 And this is just the way it is. 00:47:46.000 --> 00:47:48.800 What I see and run into more often than not 00:47:48.900 --> 00:47:51.620 on the US or on the Western side is, 00:47:51.920 --> 00:47:52.840 I've got nothing to hide, 00:47:53.080 --> 00:47:55.420 or privacy is already broken anyway. 00:47:55.780 --> 00:47:56.520 What does it even matter? 00:47:56.800 --> 00:47:58.940 Like, you know, you've run into that plenty yourself. 00:47:59.400 --> 00:48:03.960 They both share this bit of, I don't know, just kind of giving up a little bit. 00:48:04.190 --> 00:48:09.180 But I sense both of that on both sides of the, you know, both China and on the Western side. 00:48:10.360 --> 00:48:10.540 Yeah. 00:48:10.790 --> 00:48:12.060 Yeah, I made a video about this recently. 00:48:12.300 --> 00:48:25.420 My over analysis of it is I think it's a cognitive dissonance because I think it's too uncomfortable for people to admit it's something they value. 00:48:26.260 --> 00:48:29.000 But they feel hopeless and they can't do anything about it. 00:48:29.060 --> 00:48:32.180 I think that's really what it's, because it's easier to say, 00:48:32.440 --> 00:48:35.100 eh, it's gone, throw your hands up, I can't do anything about it. 00:48:35.560 --> 00:48:38.720 It's easier to say that and kind of pretend you don't care about something 00:48:38.840 --> 00:48:41.280 or that you're hopeless or it's no longer in your control 00:48:41.780 --> 00:48:43.860 than it is to realize you actually still have control. 00:48:44.120 --> 00:48:47.020 You can fight, but it's going to be a hard uphill battle 00:48:47.080 --> 00:48:49.220 and you need to do a lot to do something about it. 00:48:49.220 --> 00:48:50.820 I think that's a harder reality for people. 00:48:51.520 --> 00:48:52.680 So I understand where it comes from. 00:48:52.680 --> 00:48:56.800 I don't think people are lazy or stupid for this, but it makes me sad. 00:48:56.860 --> 00:48:59.880 especially when, because I think it's the most damaging thing you can do. 00:49:00.500 --> 00:49:02.380 Because there are people who do want to take the fight. 00:49:02.660 --> 00:49:04.040 They watch our content, right? 00:49:04.340 --> 00:49:05.260 They are active. 00:49:05.480 --> 00:49:06.520 This is something they take seriously. 00:49:07.440 --> 00:49:10.040 And then they see these comments or people pushing back saying, 00:49:10.140 --> 00:49:10.980 well, why do you care? 00:49:11.160 --> 00:49:11.540 You're stupid. 00:49:11.940 --> 00:49:14.860 And it's like, well, if you're not going to care, 00:49:15.020 --> 00:49:16.560 just let other people care. 00:49:18.200 --> 00:49:18.820 It's okay. 00:49:19.020 --> 00:49:19.840 Just let them do that. 00:49:20.420 --> 00:49:23.420 Them existing doesn't have to impact your ability to not care. 00:49:25.380 --> 00:49:26.220 It's hard for me. 00:49:26.300 --> 00:49:30.460 But I think we're seeing the worst of it because we get all the comments and we get all the feedback from people. 00:49:31.360 --> 00:49:31.800 Yeah, definitely. 00:49:32.340 --> 00:49:32.780 And I agree. 00:49:32.840 --> 00:49:35.420 I saw that video and I thought you did a really good job with that. 00:49:35.640 --> 00:49:39.060 Like it's a tough road to navigate, I think, for a lot of people. 00:49:39.300 --> 00:49:40.420 And I think you're right. 00:49:40.560 --> 00:49:49.200 That cognitive dissonance of just I think I care, but if there's no hope anyway, then what do I do with this? 00:49:49.460 --> 00:49:49.840 I don't know. 00:49:50.800 --> 00:49:51.500 Yeah, it's hard. 00:49:51.520 --> 00:49:56.360 I hope that people can see the content we put out and realize, 00:49:57.280 --> 00:49:59.900 oh, you can literally do three things in five minutes 00:50:01.180 --> 00:50:03.120 that will give you a huge amount of ownership 00:50:03.300 --> 00:50:04.320 over your digital relationship. 00:50:04.600 --> 00:50:08.180 Just installing an ad blocker opts you out of 80% 00:50:08.240 --> 00:50:11.000 of the surveillance economy, which is the backbone of so much 00:50:11.220 --> 00:50:14.280 of at least the American and the westernized privacy concerns. 00:50:14.920 --> 00:50:17.920 If you're no longer getting Google trackers, Facebook trackers, 00:50:18.040 --> 00:50:20.840 TikTok trackers, Snapchat trackers on any of the websites out there, 00:50:21.200 --> 00:50:27.680 you're blocking ads, that alone solves a huge amount of your problem. And then from there, 00:50:27.840 --> 00:50:32.300 it's easy. So I don't want to say it's easy. I don't want to like over, I don't want to oversell 00:50:32.310 --> 00:50:36.160 it, but it's just frustrating. You know what's funny, Henry, is it's like, you could probably 00:50:36.640 --> 00:50:41.340 talk about that until you're blue in the face. But if I were to just express to people the fact that, 00:50:41.540 --> 00:50:47.159 you know what, when my wife and I sit down to watch Amazon Prime at night, I don't have to go 00:50:47.160 --> 00:50:53.380 through ads. And people go, wait, what? How do you do that? That is what we're, you know, like, 00:50:53.640 --> 00:50:58.740 that's how it works. Yep. It works. I mean, I never tell anyone about Signal being private in 00:50:58.800 --> 00:51:02.460 my real life. I'm just like, hey, this is like a really cool experience. This is where I chat with 00:51:02.560 --> 00:51:08.180 people. I can send like Snapchat, like photos to you, like disappearing messages. And it works 00:51:08.400 --> 00:51:14.279 between iOS and Android. And they're like, cool. All right. I'll see you there. It works. So it's 00:51:14.300 --> 00:51:19.960 sad, but it works. I wanted to ask you about your channel. So you obviously talk about security and 00:51:20.360 --> 00:51:22.980 privacy. I mean, the channel is called All Things Secured, but I think it expands a little bit 00:51:23.050 --> 00:51:29.160 beyond that. When did that happen? Was starting that channel, was that at all inspired from your 00:51:29.280 --> 00:51:34.900 experiences? I guess I'm not as familiar with the origins of your channel. And so I kind of wanted 00:51:35.060 --> 00:51:40.240 to learn a little bit about that before we start. Yeah, it was 100% based on my experience in China. 00:51:41.220 --> 00:51:46.680 twofold. First of all, it started off as just like a VPN thing, which is almost embarrassing to say, 00:51:47.440 --> 00:51:52.420 you know, just because I like, not that I was a VPN chill. It's the fact that I literally used a 00:51:52.620 --> 00:51:57.020 VPN every day while I was in China because of censorship and I couldn't even check email 00:51:57.230 --> 00:52:01.840 without a VPN. So I got to know VPNs really well. And I, you know, would review them and do all that 00:52:01.920 --> 00:52:06.480 stuff. And then I was like, you know, there's more to this that I care about than just VPNs. 00:52:06.840 --> 00:52:08.260 And so that's when I rebranded it. 00:52:08.380 --> 00:52:13.920 And, and, but I think the real shift happened when I was in the midst of those interrogations 00:52:14.300 --> 00:52:20.020 and just realizing like the questions they were asking, it's like, man, they were really 00:52:20.380 --> 00:52:20.760 watching me. 00:52:21.300 --> 00:52:27.740 Like I didn't understand to the degree to which I was being surveilled, um, and how 00:52:28.040 --> 00:52:29.040 they were going about. 00:52:29.220 --> 00:52:32.680 And, and, and also some of the things they didn't know, which was surprising to me, you 00:52:32.680 --> 00:52:35.680 know, like I, I thought that they knew all of these things about me. 00:52:35.800 --> 00:52:40.400 We tend to think that the government just has, you know, reams and reams of data on us. 00:52:40.540 --> 00:52:47.060 I don't think that it's as deep as we think it is, but I do think it is wider than we 00:52:47.290 --> 00:52:50.060 realize in terms of our privacy being invaded. 00:52:50.230 --> 00:52:52.620 And so that is where it initially started. 00:52:53.180 --> 00:52:58.680 And, you know, Henry, I'll be, I try to be as open and honest with you as I can. 00:52:58.750 --> 00:53:04.479 Like I look up at the people like you or Naomi, or like, there's a lot of people that I look 00:53:04.500 --> 00:53:09.140 up to that I consider 10, 20 times smarter than I am. 00:53:09.660 --> 00:53:14.860 Like my core, the people that I want to talk to when I'm talking from the all things secured 00:53:15.040 --> 00:53:20.640 side of stuff, I want to talk to the people that are like my parents or that are, that 00:53:20.640 --> 00:53:24.680 are just that generation that that's recognizing something's off. 00:53:24.940 --> 00:53:30.139 I don't like something, but I'm not exactly sure what it is, or I'm writing my passwords 00:53:30.160 --> 00:53:35.920 down. And I really don't think this is secure, but I don't like the idea of a password manager is 00:53:36.180 --> 00:53:43.000 still kind of relatively new to me. So I'm not necessarily speaking to the same audience that I 00:53:43.120 --> 00:53:47.240 think that I, that you might be speaking to and that I, you know, that there are, that are just 00:53:48.300 --> 00:53:56.239 diehard privacy and security enthusiasts. I'm trying my best to speak and to explain things 00:53:56.680 --> 00:53:59.720 to a group of people that I think are extremely vulnerable, 00:53:59.970 --> 00:54:03.160 that hopefully recognize that there are things that they can do differently, 00:54:03.560 --> 00:54:06.640 and then try to give them practical ways to change that. 00:54:07.620 --> 00:54:08.560 Yeah, thanks for the kind words. 00:54:09.030 --> 00:54:10.380 And a lot of those go back your way too. 00:54:10.820 --> 00:54:13.360 For those vulnerable people, what are kind of your starting points? 00:54:14.180 --> 00:54:17.060 Like if people are listening and they are that vulnerable group, 00:54:17.360 --> 00:54:19.800 or they know people in their life that are that vulnerable group, 00:54:19.960 --> 00:54:22.300 what are like the three things that you typically start with? 00:54:23.280 --> 00:54:27.400 Well, the first thing that I start with, and the kind of comments that I get on my stuff 00:54:27.630 --> 00:54:29.820 is like, I've got stuff on securing your iPhone. 00:54:30.540 --> 00:54:35.620 Or this week, I'm going to be putting out a video on how to secure your open AI account 00:54:35.770 --> 00:54:36.560 for ChatGPT. 00:54:36.720 --> 00:54:39.500 And the privacy purist is going to comment on that. 00:54:39.720 --> 00:54:40.560 Why use open AI? 00:54:41.040 --> 00:54:41.280 You're dumb. 00:54:42.680 --> 00:54:43.920 Yeah, I know. 00:54:43.990 --> 00:54:44.320 I know. 00:54:44.840 --> 00:54:45.100 Yeah. 00:54:45.500 --> 00:54:45.720 Sorry. 00:54:46.400 --> 00:54:47.100 And I get it. 00:54:47.300 --> 00:54:47.680 Like, right? 00:54:47.720 --> 00:54:49.020 I get that feeling. 00:54:49.400 --> 00:54:51.360 I don't necessarily disagree with it. 00:54:51.480 --> 00:54:56.240 But I also don't agree that, you know, everybody has to just abandon everything that they've 00:54:56.280 --> 00:54:56.800 ever used. 00:54:56.840 --> 00:54:57.880 But I think that's the point. 00:54:57.960 --> 00:55:02.240 It's like, I think that there's a progression that people can take and that progression 00:55:02.360 --> 00:55:06.160 does not have to be as drastic as it feels, right? 00:55:06.320 --> 00:55:12.060 So just secure your open AI account and turn off model, you know, make sure that the model 00:55:12.180 --> 00:55:13.580 training is not part of that, right? 00:55:13.720 --> 00:55:20.519 And like add it to FAQ, like just these progression, this progression of steps instead of just 00:55:20.520 --> 00:55:26.900 thinking, okay, this is it. I'm moving to Graphene and I'm deleting Facebook and that's what I have 00:55:26.900 --> 00:55:32.880 to do. I think there doesn't have to be that all or nothing mentality. Yeah, I agree. I think 00:55:33.740 --> 00:55:38.560 the reality is most people aren't going to be installing different operating systems and 00:55:38.840 --> 00:55:42.840 migrating away from the tools that they use day to day. And so there needs to be a discussion. 00:55:43.130 --> 00:55:46.059 You need to meet them where they're at and go, well, if you're going to be using these tools 00:55:46.060 --> 00:55:50.320 anyway, here are at least some things that will make it better. And down the road, if you want 00:55:50.540 --> 00:55:55.480 other options, then that's the whole world for you that exists. But I definitely think that 00:55:56.720 --> 00:56:02.440 it's hard. It's hard to reach both audiences, as I'm sure you know. And it's hard to do resources 00:56:02.660 --> 00:56:08.220 for all the above. So I think it's great to have different points to target depending on where 00:56:08.360 --> 00:56:12.639 people are in their journey. Or for some people, it's not a journey, I suppose. But I think it 00:56:12.640 --> 00:56:17.180 should be a journey. People might not know they're on the journey, but I think everyone is technically 00:56:17.420 --> 00:56:21.020 on this journey of digital safety, whether they know it or not. If they have a password on any of 00:56:21.100 --> 00:56:25.680 their accounts, they're on the journey. So it's just a matter of helping them out on that journey 00:56:25.730 --> 00:56:30.180 and trying to make it better. So I think it's a great approach. For you, how do you see privacy 00:56:30.440 --> 00:56:35.380 differently? And this is maybe a good segue because a lot of people, and I guess the more 00:56:35.580 --> 00:56:41.219 intense privacy community, more absolute about things, they're going to go, oh, you're using open 00:56:41.220 --> 00:56:44.160 AI, yeah, you're like, what are you, single IQ? 00:56:44.999 --> 00:56:46.860 They're going to say a lot of mean things. 00:56:47.680 --> 00:56:48.300 It's ridiculous. 00:56:50.360 --> 00:56:52.400 It's quite frustrating, actually, for me to see. 00:56:53.099 --> 00:56:55.800 I laugh about it because when I see it, I just think it's so ridiculous. 00:56:56.120 --> 00:56:57.420 But it is actually really unfortunate. 00:56:57.520 --> 00:57:00.340 And I hope people stop that because it really pisses me off. 00:57:00.770 --> 00:57:03.020 But now I'm forgetting my question. 00:57:04.279 --> 00:57:09.080 For you personally, I think to a lot of privacy absolutists, 00:57:09.090 --> 00:57:11.060 they see the privacy issues with OpenAI, 00:57:11.220 --> 00:57:12.140 which are very real, right? 00:57:12.300 --> 00:57:14.200 Like we know that OpenAI is not, 00:57:14.840 --> 00:57:17.540 by many different measurements, an ethical company, 00:57:17.920 --> 00:57:19.240 especially when it comes to user data. 00:57:19.540 --> 00:57:22.420 A lot of these AI companies are not very ethical with user data. 00:57:22.620 --> 00:57:24.140 And so that is a real thing. 00:57:24.360 --> 00:57:26.200 But you might go and look at this and go, 00:57:26.360 --> 00:57:28.320 well, if I'm getting weather nearby 00:57:28.680 --> 00:57:30.600 and I'm looking up recipes 00:57:30.920 --> 00:57:33.800 and I'm putting that through OpenAI or Cloud or Gemini, 00:57:34.280 --> 00:57:36.500 I don't care when the Chinese government takes my devices 00:57:36.580 --> 00:57:37.220 and they see that. 00:57:37.420 --> 00:57:38.660 That's just not my concern anymore. 00:57:39.140 --> 00:57:41.360 So I'm not saying that's your stance on things specifically, 00:57:41.780 --> 00:57:43.420 but I guess that's what I'm getting to is like, 00:57:43.490 --> 00:57:44.880 do you see privacy differently now? 00:57:44.960 --> 00:57:47.860 You're like, oh, now that I've actually had my devices taken from me 00:57:48.040 --> 00:57:49.440 from a government that didn't like me, 00:57:49.610 --> 00:57:52.020 these are the things that now I actually value from here. 00:57:52.180 --> 00:57:53.860 These are things that maybe I thought I would value, 00:57:53.970 --> 00:57:55.420 and these are things that I now value, 00:57:55.720 --> 00:57:57.080 and that might reflect your threat model 00:57:57.240 --> 00:58:00.520 and the way that you see privacy and what you prioritize personally. 00:58:00.620 --> 00:58:05.060 I don't know the exact question I'm getting to here, but yeah. 00:58:05.880 --> 00:58:07.740 I mean, I think I follow a little bit of where you're coming from. 00:58:08.000 --> 00:58:14.180 I am much more interested in a distribution of security and privacy over a lot of different 00:58:14.820 --> 00:58:16.880 mediums in order, like strategically. 00:58:17.270 --> 00:58:21.360 So what I mean by that is like, I'm not necessarily going to run away from Google Drive. 00:58:21.710 --> 00:58:24.580 I kind of have to use it for certain applications. 00:58:25.930 --> 00:58:31.520 And I recognize that it's, you know, there are privacy implications for using something 00:58:31.760 --> 00:58:36.000 that where the, you know, the encryption key is held by the company itself as well. 00:58:36.320 --> 00:58:40.720 I'm still going to be able to use that, but I want to distribute in a strategic way how 00:58:41.280 --> 00:58:42.900 I'm controlling my own data. 00:58:43.440 --> 00:58:49.780 And so I want to use something like ProtonDrive in order to store that data that I think is 00:58:50.140 --> 00:58:50.740 most secure. 00:58:50.850 --> 00:58:56.480 And so again, it's not that I'm going to throw away my phone altogether anytime that I go 00:58:56.620 --> 00:58:57.180 into China. 00:58:57.780 --> 00:59:01.679 That's not my, like, it's not that, okay, now because I believe in privacy, I'm just 00:59:01.700 --> 00:59:07.400 going to forego any and all benefits of a mobile device, which is pretty much essential in travel 00:59:07.780 --> 00:59:12.340 nowadays, right? You got to have maps, you got to have, you know, some kind of way to call any 00:59:12.880 --> 00:59:17.600 translations, do all that stuff. So I'm not going to get rid of that, but I am going to compartmentalize 00:59:17.700 --> 00:59:23.040 and make sure that what I am using in that situation, it's only the data that's necessary 00:59:23.300 --> 00:59:28.320 for that particular use for going into that particular country. And the same thing for, 00:59:28.400 --> 00:59:34.600 you know, when I'm using, I do use OpenAI and I've tested a lot of different models. And part of it 00:59:34.700 --> 00:59:40.880 is not just this, oh, I just use OpenAI because it's the first one. It's that I want to kind of 00:59:41.160 --> 00:59:45.500 keep ahead and understand what is actually happening in this world because everything 00:59:45.620 --> 00:59:51.860 is changing so fast. But I'm not going to upload my bank statement. I'm not going to upload any kind 00:59:51.860 --> 00:59:57.380 of document that is going to be, and I probably even still have given it a lot of context about me, 00:59:57.620 --> 01:00:00.200 But I'm very, very careful about what I say. 01:00:00.430 --> 01:00:02.280 It hopefully does not know where I live. 01:00:02.430 --> 01:00:06.240 It doesn't know a number of different things that are personal to me. 01:00:06.290 --> 01:00:09.440 And so I'm not trying to go off grid. 01:00:09.930 --> 01:00:13.680 I am trying to compartmentalize as best I can. 01:00:13.770 --> 01:00:15.520 And there's always going to be flaws in that. 01:00:15.720 --> 01:00:21.380 There's always going to be ways that I'm improving or changing the tools that I use to compartmentalize. 01:00:21.530 --> 01:00:26.540 But I want to be intentional about where I am putting my data. 01:00:27.000 --> 01:00:28.980 what kind of data I'm giving and to whom. 01:00:30.000 --> 01:00:31.900 And the more that I can be intentional about that, 01:00:31.990 --> 01:00:33.180 I think the better off I'll be. 01:00:34.160 --> 01:00:36.500 Yeah, I think what you're saying is quite practical 01:00:36.720 --> 01:00:38.340 and a lot of people will relate to it. 01:00:38.420 --> 01:00:39.540 I mean, the two key words, 01:00:39.540 --> 01:00:40.980 I think there are control and intention. 01:00:41.720 --> 01:00:44.440 I think that's really what privacy is about 01:00:44.880 --> 01:00:45.500 when you get to it. 01:00:45.640 --> 01:00:47.280 It's like, are you being intentional 01:00:47.380 --> 01:00:48.600 with what data you're giving someone 01:00:48.670 --> 01:00:51.220 and are you aware of what they're getting from it 01:00:51.220 --> 01:00:52.320 and what you're getting from it? 01:00:52.420 --> 01:00:55.660 I just recorded the second version of Go Incognito 01:00:55.670 --> 01:00:56.580 a couple months ago now. 01:00:56.640 --> 01:00:59.240 and the way that I pose this 01:00:59.620 --> 01:01:01.320 is looking at things as relationships 01:01:02.120 --> 01:01:03.560 so when you open a Google account 01:01:03.720 --> 01:01:04.920 when you upload something to Google Drive 01:01:05.050 --> 01:01:06.660 you're forming a relationship with Google 01:01:07.140 --> 01:01:09.160 and it's important to just understand 01:01:09.600 --> 01:01:11.360 what is Google getting from this transaction 01:01:11.490 --> 01:01:13.080 and what are you getting from this transaction 01:01:13.220 --> 01:01:14.780 in this case you're probably getting convenience 01:01:15.420 --> 01:01:16.680 you might get really good collaboration 01:01:16.980 --> 01:01:18.220 with other people who are using Google 01:01:18.460 --> 01:01:20.720 and in exchange Google is going to get information 01:01:20.850 --> 01:01:21.480 about your browser 01:01:21.800 --> 01:01:24.379 they're going to get information about who you're collaborating with 01:01:24.380 --> 01:01:27.560 and maybe that network, tie it to your central Google account, etc. 01:01:27.840 --> 01:01:30.960 And so as long as you're aware of those concerns 01:01:31.600 --> 01:01:32.940 and you're aware of what you're uploading 01:01:33.020 --> 01:01:34.200 and you're okay with that, 01:01:34.720 --> 01:01:36.940 that is a consensual relationship, right? 01:01:37.060 --> 01:01:39.480 You are consenting to that, you're in control of the situation. 01:01:39.820 --> 01:01:41.820 But I think the problem that a lot of people have nowadays 01:01:42.240 --> 01:01:44.580 is they just use everything, they upload everything to everything 01:01:44.840 --> 01:01:46.960 and they have no control over this. 01:01:47.120 --> 01:01:48.020 They're just being exploited. 01:01:48.240 --> 01:01:51.360 They're in abusive relationships, kind of, in a way, 01:01:51.480 --> 01:01:52.700 because they're not aware of what's going on. 01:01:54.600 --> 01:01:59.020 I think the analogy I use is it's the equivalent of their partner cheating on them this whole time. 01:01:59.640 --> 01:02:04.700 Because the partner's not being honest, the partner is sharing their data with other people. 01:02:06.720 --> 01:02:08.080 And it's an analogy. 01:02:08.590 --> 01:02:10.020 I just felt the need to share it, I suppose. 01:02:10.460 --> 01:02:11.780 But I really liked what you shared. 01:02:12.050 --> 01:02:13.320 I think it's very practical. 01:02:13.430 --> 01:02:16.400 And I think for most people, 80 plus percent of people, 01:02:16.810 --> 01:02:21.020 it would make an astronomical difference for the privacy and security issues that we see nowadays. 01:02:21.080 --> 01:02:28.700 If they just were better aware of things, compartmentalized when needed, and just had privacy in some layer of their life, I think that would be all we need. 01:02:29.500 --> 01:02:38.480 Henry, I'm curious for you, like how do you balance that desire for, you know, privacy and kind of just your stack? 01:02:38.880 --> 01:02:48.260 And then, like, I don't know about you, but I'm constantly getting emails of new tools or new this or like other things that could make it more private. 01:02:48.440 --> 01:02:51.840 You use this. How do you find that balance? 01:02:52.850 --> 01:02:55.180 Yeah, it's hard. I'm sure you deal with this too. 01:02:55.720 --> 01:02:57.280 The job makes things quite hard. 01:02:58.390 --> 01:03:04.300 I could probably have a much better, easy-to-operate tech stack behind the scenes 01:03:04.550 --> 01:03:07.440 if I didn't have such publicity with my work. 01:03:08.640 --> 01:03:10.060 It comes with drawbacks. 01:03:10.320 --> 01:03:12.360 But overall, I'm quite happy with where it's at. 01:03:12.360 --> 01:03:13.700 It requires some sacrifices. 01:03:13.770 --> 01:03:17.120 It requires leaning into some Apple devices for work, 01:03:17.380 --> 01:03:21.480 which I don't know if I would ever buy if I just had just me and my personal life. 01:03:21.580 --> 01:03:23.020 And I think that's something I hear a lot in our audience. 01:03:23.340 --> 01:03:25.320 It's like, yeah, a lot of people have jobs, 01:03:25.500 --> 01:03:27.900 and those jobs require certain devices for them. 01:03:28.060 --> 01:03:29.700 But that is compartmentalization, right? 01:03:29.820 --> 01:03:32.320 You're allowed to have work devices as long as you're aware 01:03:32.360 --> 01:03:33.940 and you built that relationship for work. 01:03:34.460 --> 01:03:36.580 So I think it's kind of like what you alluded to, 01:03:36.660 --> 01:03:38.860 is I have these relationships in different parts of my life. 01:03:39.000 --> 01:03:42.320 Some of them are a lot more private and a lot more robust 01:03:42.440 --> 01:03:43.840 that I don't talk about much on the channel 01:03:44.000 --> 01:03:46.080 because I don't want people to know about them. 01:03:46.880 --> 01:03:54.380 But also, for other things, it's a lot more careless because it needs to be careless because that's how stuff gets done. 01:03:54.480 --> 01:03:59.280 And that's those services I need to lean into to make sure that we get our message out there for people. 01:03:59.420 --> 01:04:01.520 And so it's a tough thing to balance. 01:04:02.080 --> 01:04:03.940 I'm sure you deal with that as well, if I had to guess. 01:04:04.140 --> 01:04:06.240 I'm sure every YouTube creator does. 01:04:07.120 --> 01:04:07.320 Yeah. 01:04:07.720 --> 01:04:16.720 Well, and even like for me, even just having a wife and kids, like I try to be very careful about not posting or publishing even the region. 01:04:17.130 --> 01:04:20.320 Like I don't mind saying where I'm at, you know, that I'm in Thailand. 01:04:20.720 --> 01:04:23.800 But like beyond that, I really don't go too much further than that. 01:04:23.800 --> 01:04:25.920 I don't try not to show my kids. 01:04:26.700 --> 01:04:28.540 You know, I want to protect. 01:04:28.900 --> 01:04:31.180 And I've heard this a lot from, you know, other people. 01:04:31.440 --> 01:04:40.380 Not that I'm a big celebrity or anything, but even at this level, I think that it's important for me to take and protect my kids and their own privacy. 01:04:41.400 --> 01:04:42.120 Yeah, it's a thing. 01:04:42.220 --> 01:04:44.300 I mean, I've been recognized on the street now a few times. 01:04:45.200 --> 01:04:47.560 Definitely at conferences is where, which makes sense. 01:04:47.700 --> 01:04:51.300 You know, when you go to a security privacy-focused conference, people recognize you. 01:04:51.500 --> 01:04:55.420 But I've been at Starbucks and like someone just goes, I know you from somewhere. 01:04:56.460 --> 01:04:59.080 And then I go, never seen you before. 01:05:00.100 --> 01:05:02.560 And then they kind of walk away and they're confused. 01:05:03.080 --> 01:05:05.220 So I don't know if that's happened to you yet. 01:05:05.240 --> 01:05:06.320 Have you been recognized? 01:05:06.560 --> 01:05:07.800 I've had it once or twice. 01:05:08.160 --> 01:05:10.240 Yeah, it's not, living out in Asia, 01:05:10.400 --> 01:05:12.140 it doesn't happen quite nearly as often though. 01:05:12.840 --> 01:05:13.480 Yeah, it's weird. 01:05:13.660 --> 01:05:15.020 It's always like, I don't know what to say. 01:05:15.200 --> 01:05:17.140 And obviously I'm not comfortable with it really 01:05:17.340 --> 01:05:18.760 because I don't want to be, 01:05:19.100 --> 01:05:21.240 but I want to get my message out to more people. 01:05:21.420 --> 01:05:23.020 So then that means more of that. 01:05:24.860 --> 01:05:26.400 And it's a hard relationship. 01:05:26.600 --> 01:05:27.240 I don't like it. 01:05:28.120 --> 01:05:28.520 Exactly. 01:05:29.060 --> 01:05:36.160 No, it's like I have Instagram on my phone and I've got, you know, and I use YouTube and it's not because I love Instagram. 01:05:36.520 --> 01:05:40.900 I really don't enjoy using Instagram and I've still got a long way to go growing that. 01:05:40.900 --> 01:05:46.240 But still, it's like, it's like, okay, that's where the audience, that's where the people that I want to reach are at. 01:05:46.820 --> 01:05:51.380 And so I'm going to try to find them on that place and see if I can share a message there. 01:05:52.220 --> 01:05:52.380 Yeah. 01:05:52.550 --> 01:05:54.240 I just watched the internship again yesterday. 01:05:55.420 --> 01:05:56.900 The comedy, I think it was 2013. 01:05:57.920 --> 01:05:58.780 Robert De Niro, I think. 01:05:58.960 --> 01:06:01.620 first off in the way that they portray Google 01:06:01.800 --> 01:06:04.640 as this like, because I mean, back then Google was cool. 01:06:04.820 --> 01:06:06.740 Even when I watched that movie, I was quite young, 01:06:06.940 --> 01:06:09.260 but Google is like this force for good. 01:06:09.820 --> 01:06:11.220 Their motto is still don't do evil. 01:06:11.700 --> 01:06:13.400 They're like, we need to give people the information 01:06:13.680 --> 01:06:17.480 and like decentralized knowledge, powerful messages. 01:06:18.340 --> 01:06:19.120 And it didn't age well. 01:06:19.120 --> 01:06:21.280 I think there's no way in hell Google with a straight face 01:06:21.400 --> 01:06:23.060 would ever say they're trying to be an ethical company, 01:06:23.180 --> 01:06:25.060 even themselves, I don't think they would say it. 01:06:25.580 --> 01:06:28.740 But in the movie, the whole thing is like, 01:06:28.860 --> 01:06:31.400 we need to invent a photos app 01:06:31.800 --> 01:06:32.780 where I take a photo 01:06:33.600 --> 01:06:35.360 and it instantly shares it on the line. 01:06:36.820 --> 01:06:38.400 And I'm going to call it exchange-a-gram, 01:06:38.720 --> 01:06:39.880 exchange-gram or something. 01:06:39.990 --> 01:06:40.960 And so when you said Instagram, 01:06:41.120 --> 01:06:41.880 I just thought of that 01:06:41.930 --> 01:06:42.680 because it was on the mind. 01:06:42.720 --> 01:06:43.180 That's funny. 01:06:43.520 --> 01:06:44.760 Well, Josh, thank you so much 01:06:44.790 --> 01:06:45.700 for being on the podcast. 01:06:45.990 --> 01:06:47.120 I know we got a little rambly 01:06:47.120 --> 01:06:47.680 at the end there, 01:06:47.860 --> 01:06:48.820 but I think there was a lot 01:06:48.830 --> 01:06:50.260 of practical advice for people 01:06:50.480 --> 01:06:51.280 that I hope can make 01:06:51.290 --> 01:06:52.540 their travel experiences better. 01:06:52.610 --> 01:06:53.420 And I think your story 01:06:53.600 --> 01:06:54.840 is just really, really enlightening. 01:06:54.970 --> 01:06:56.180 It can hopefully get people 01:06:56.380 --> 01:06:57.640 just more aware of what's going on. 01:06:57.780 --> 01:07:00.360 And I think it's true that things can be fine one day 01:07:00.390 --> 01:07:01.460 and then out of nowhere they're not. 01:07:01.510 --> 01:07:02.920 And so at least thinking about that 01:07:02.970 --> 01:07:04.320 and being intentional for that day 01:07:04.420 --> 01:07:06.440 is always a good thing to be proactive about. 01:07:06.720 --> 01:07:08.320 Maybe next time, I think a good conversation 01:07:08.640 --> 01:07:09.520 could be family stuff. 01:07:09.670 --> 01:07:11.300 I think that's another topic 01:07:11.600 --> 01:07:13.000 that people are quite curious about 01:07:13.130 --> 01:07:15.780 is like, what does the tech world look like 01:07:15.780 --> 01:07:17.860 when you have a family and you also value privacy? 01:07:18.320 --> 01:07:19.800 And I'm sure that's another thing. 01:07:19.830 --> 01:07:21.680 I don't know if you've talked about that on your channel yet, 01:07:21.900 --> 01:07:23.380 but that could be a good talking point. 01:07:24.080 --> 01:07:24.280 Yeah. 01:07:24.720 --> 01:07:26.320 There was another lady I had on, 01:07:26.610 --> 01:07:27.560 I did an interview with, 01:07:27.700 --> 01:07:30.040 And she was very much into that. 01:07:30.840 --> 01:07:31.000 Yeah. 01:07:31.400 --> 01:07:32.780 I'll try to get you on for that again. 01:07:32.820 --> 01:07:33.620 I think that'd be interesting. 01:07:33.740 --> 01:07:35.080 If you guys want to see that, let me know. 01:07:35.200 --> 01:07:36.480 But thank you so much for being here. 01:07:36.840 --> 01:07:39.380 And definitely share how people can connect with you. 01:07:39.660 --> 01:07:40.700 Because I'd love to send them your way. 01:07:40.700 --> 01:07:44.860 Yeah, I mean, the best place is either on YouTube or Odyssey with all things secured. 01:07:45.280 --> 01:07:49.200 I am on Instagram, but I'm still learning my way around that. 01:07:49.440 --> 01:07:51.640 So more just on the YouTube and Odyssey side. 01:07:52.220 --> 01:07:52.360 Yeah. 01:07:52.560 --> 01:07:56.220 I mean, you're on Instagram to reach people on Instagram, not to send people to Instagram. 01:07:56.480 --> 01:07:59.140 So we don't need to, you're not on Instagram for this podcast. 01:08:01.320 --> 01:08:01.680 Good point. 01:08:02.540 --> 01:08:02.640 Yeah. 01:08:02.810 --> 01:08:05.180 And I guess, I think, I don't know if you ever figured this out. 01:08:05.180 --> 01:08:06.400 I think you're still on PeerTube too. 01:08:06.890 --> 01:08:07.540 So I think. 01:08:07.660 --> 01:08:08.000 I might be. 01:08:08.100 --> 01:08:10.180 I tried reaching out to him and he didn't reply back. 01:08:10.460 --> 01:08:10.700 But anyway. 01:08:11.000 --> 01:08:11.120 Okay. 01:08:11.220 --> 01:08:11.300 Okay. 01:08:11.450 --> 01:08:12.960 Well, maybe on PeerTube as well. 01:08:13.660 --> 01:08:15.240 We'll try to get links for everything in the description. 01:08:15.470 --> 01:08:17.980 So check out Josh if you guys want to see more of Josh's content. 01:08:18.250 --> 01:08:22.140 And especially, I guess, for friends and family, it's probably really good stuff for them as well. 01:08:22.460 --> 01:08:24.080 So thank you, Josh, for your time. 01:08:24.240 --> 01:08:25.460 And I guess we'll have you on next time. 01:08:26.060 --> 01:08:27.240 Appreciate it, Henry. Thanks so much. 01:08:27.790 --> 01:08:27.920 Yeah. 01:08:28.520 --> 01:08:32.080 This one was a lot of fun to do, not only because Josh is another creator, 01:08:32.230 --> 01:08:36.580 and so we can always talk a little bit backstage about kind of our experiences and how that's going. 01:08:36.710 --> 01:08:41.560 But also, this is a story that I haven't heard in a full-length interview from Josh about. 01:08:41.670 --> 01:08:45.100 And so I really wanted to get his experience, get the lessons from it. 01:08:45.100 --> 01:08:47.980 And so that way, all of us can act a bit more accordingly. 01:08:48.089 --> 01:08:50.259 And hopefully, we don't have to go through what Josh did. 01:08:50.680 --> 01:08:54.539 So I hope that all of us walked away with quite a bit of practical advice 01:08:54.540 --> 01:08:56.819 when it comes to when we just travel to other countries, 01:08:57.140 --> 01:09:00.400 even if it's just for vacation with our families or for work, 01:09:00.799 --> 01:09:02.740 or especially if you're in a region 01:09:03.060 --> 01:09:05.759 where you should be a little bit more aware of these issues, 01:09:06.100 --> 01:09:06.920 even when you're at home. 01:09:07.240 --> 01:09:09.740 Hopefully Josh's advice applies to you there as well. 01:09:10.160 --> 01:09:11.759 I want to give a huge thank you to Josh. 01:09:11.880 --> 01:09:14.060 I also want to thank you all for coming in and listening 01:09:14.440 --> 01:09:17.660 and just valuing your own protection a little bit better out there. 01:09:17.740 --> 01:09:19.560 It also keeps the people around you safe. 01:09:19.920 --> 01:09:22.759 And if you want to support what we do and keep these podcasts going, 01:09:23.259 --> 01:09:25.600 Check out how to become a Techlorian down in the description. 01:09:25.740 --> 01:09:27.859 We have a private signal group that I'm active in. 01:09:27.859 --> 01:09:29.920 I also have my own private RSS feed. 01:09:30.279 --> 01:09:32.400 And you also get featured in the outro of our videos. 01:09:33.000 --> 01:09:33.700 Thank you all for listening. 01:09:34.180 --> 01:09:35.600 And I'll see you next time on Techlor.