Unlocking Unity: The Power of Civil Discourse and Protecting Online Privacy in America

Have you ever wondered just how much of your personal information is actually out there? How much still remains long after you log offline? Did you know every time you click agree when using a smartphone app, except cookies on a website, type in online search, send messages on systems and platforms that you think otherwise would be private, you're leaving behind a permanent trail, a digital footprint. It increases your personal risk as well as the risk to your organization's brand. Today we have in the studio Kurt Long CEO of Bunker and an expert with experience helping initiatives like the NASA space shuttle, the Hubble telescope and much more. This is his story on the newest ways to take control over data privacy and now the show. Come join us as we go behind the scenes of today's most notorious cyber crime. Every time we get online we enter their world so we provide true storytelling to raise awareness, interviewing global leaders making an impact and improving our world, translating cyber security into everyday language that's practical and easy to understand. We appreciate you making this an award-winning podcast by downloading our episodes on Apple and Spotify and subscribing to our YouTube channel. This is Cybercrime Junkies and now the show. All right, well welcome Kurt. We appreciate you being on and joining us. Thank you David. Yeah, so yeah, no, we're excited. So a little bit of background for anybody that may not know you. We don't have to go into detail. We've explored your origin story on a prior episode. That'll be linked in the show notes. But share with everybody kind of how you got started in technology and ultimately came to work at NASA and work on things like the Hubble telescope and other very cool initiatives that are much much much smarter and more technical than things that most of us see on a regular basis. No, I watched the missions of the Apollo missions when I was really young in Florida. I grew up in Florida and could see literally the take-offs and the launches and then a few days later you'd see the astronauts on television and that was very inspiring and ultimately I wound up working it. This was directed. It didn't just happen by happen chance but you know worked very hard to wind up being in the real-time space shuttle launch data bank at Kennedy Space Center and was part of you know a few dozen launches including Hubble Space Telescope. Left somewhere in the 90s and wound up being an information security entrepreneur and have been involved in that for about 30 years of strictly privacy and information security built several businesses sold them and somewhere around health protected health care systems with around 250 million patient records and trillions of dollars of assets within banks, wealth management firms, trading companies. So in the last 20 years always kind of on the highest standard of protecting protecting information. That's just phenomenal. Yeah and we explored a lot of your recent accomplishments in the last episode and it's really remarkable how somebody that has the ideas, has the experience, has the good cause behind them can actually make an impact like you have and so we thank you for kind of all that you've done especially in health care and the financial industry. That's for the most sensitive data. That's for the bad guys. Yeah it really is. I mean yeah you know it's it's remarkable how cybercrime has just advanced in their their leveraging of AI everything from from the code that they're able to create you know undetectability get into systems the amount that it's just been funded and the amount of revenue that that cyber crime and ransomware gangs and financial crime gangs have have created and built up in in the past few years. You know I'm sure before we get into some of the topics that that we had wanted to discuss I wanted to just to get your take because you see the news obviously. Law enforcement has had some big wins in the last few months against some of the ransomware gangs and some of the cybercrime gangs. What's your what's your what's your take on that it's it's it's pretty exciting isn't it? I mean you have field level intelligence analysts doing an incredible job of infiltrating the gangs. I know them some of them personally and they're very proud of of the work that they do and they make a lot of personal sacrifices to be trusted by people that are tough to earn the trust. So a lot of a lot of those wins just come down from field level intelligence analyst infiltrating the organizations and putting those people in a position to be compromised and it takes a long time and they make a lot of personal sacrifice. At a more macro level something I hope we like to we can talk about today is global governments including the United States and European Union particularly are putting their citizens at great risk through non-enforcement of laws and under-reporting of crimes. So while the field level practitioners are phenomenally dedicated and very very skilled our political class is putting all of us at risk and there's a blurring of lines now between physical crime and cybercrime and governmental enforcement of laws. Yeah absolutely and we see that across so many platforms and at various levels. So let's jump right in there. What are some of the samples or examples that you can give that are showing that especially in the US and in the EU? Yeah I mean I travel a lot we travel a lot internationally and you know you really can't the one point I want to make up front is that you really can't get good data by just reading the headlines and reading the media either direction if you're in the EU or UK and you're reading American headlines US headlines. Probably not getting a real story and then vice versa you know you read the headlines there you go to there on the ground you talk to people so I was just in Prague a country we had not visited checklist Czech Republic and had a great visit there and the driver is driving us back to the airport and I realized that he had lived in the Czech Republic through the Warsaw Pact and while the USSR still had a big influence and he told a story of using the phone that his family used the phone and when they did they always do something like a line of mine or a cell phone didn't matter like they surveilled and he said that everyone knew that every conversation was listened to and that if you said things that were disparaging of the party that your kids would be taken out of school that you would lose your job you'd be not allowed to travel and that over time reduced down to what they just called a red phone so that you had to be a red card carrying party member in order to use the phone at all and as a if you weren't that you kind of became a non person and that they turned everyone against each other they would try to get neighbors to tell on neighbors so that they create a society and a culture of fear like it's it's a form of indoctrination right like it's they they get compliance by getting everybody to kind of rad on each other yeah then they don't trust each other you don't even trust family members anyone on to that is you know that is literally literally what he said you know I wouldn't trust my friends they could barely trust family members we didn't talk to one another people in states can't even relate to that though because they think we're getting there first and I I know I mean that's that's what we're gonna talk about but I mean people like they they think that's something from from the McCarthy era or something from back in the day or it's something that they see in movies right it's not something that people that are in their 30s and 40s have really grown up with I mean if they're realized right like people below what is it 35 or so in age like the USSR wasn't even around when they were kids yeah so we talked about that like like I did and like you did stay with us we'll be right back most business leaders have a fatal flaw which results in their growth being interrupted or stopped terminally they ignore the mountain they're about to crash into distracted by the focus on revenue growth until it's too late don't become another fatal business statistic keep your cybersecurity modern so you can grow without interruption stay competitive get net gain stay focused on your growth and funding while net gain keeps your technology always available with expert level cybersecurity services to stop breaches in their tracks all at a fraction of the cost of managing it yourself don't wait for a technology disaster to interrupt and cripple your growth speak with a specialist today contact net gain technologies today at 844-777-6278 or reach out online at netgameit.com that's 844-777-6278 and netgainit.com grow your business uninterrupted contact net gain today yeah so conversation continued and I said well what is your free you know he said the 90s were the most amazing time for everyone in eastern that eastern block it said it was interesting credible the freedoms that came with it right after I said what about today yeah and he said well today I feel like censorship is coming back um surveillance is coming back and I said really you know tell me tell me about that and his comments were that crimes are not reported that uh that they're censored if you will online they're never published in the media and I said what do you mean specifically what do you mean by that you know how do you say they're well he said that if it's immigrant immigrant crime it will never be reported so on the trains in Germany on the train system throughout that region Austria Germany Poland um and uh the check uh we will never report on immigrant crimes and that's being censored like why do you think that is why do you think if assuming that what he's saying is true yeah so I think what you see globally across the EU and across the United States is there's generally a huge movement for uh immigration and I'll just call it uncontrolled immigration I don't know what other word is how you're supposed to refer to it but it's uncontrolled immigration and so if I'm on the ground every every country I'm on the ground in Europe um there's a backdrop of this the immigration question and so for example in Britain and these this is all one of about this this was a personal story I just told you now and that's just in the last weeks like and literally that was two weeks ago whatever was yeah these are headlines right now and you can do your own research like in in Britain they're refusing to publish statistics on who's committing the crimes and the people are getting uh some people are getting upset and you can look at that in Denmark they did report crimes um by country born and the immigrants were 40 times more likely to commit a serious crime than um than a uh a Danish born person and so if you kind of just look at general policies as a general statement by every indication I have both in the US and the EU there is a political sentiment um amongst the political class to encourage broad skill uh immigration and then those same parties are suppressing uh the crime statistics that would reveal that the the the policies are endangering the citizens and that's a pretty obvious theme to research and recognize yeah that that seems fairly well documented um just a cursory research we'll we'll show people that here's my question look what is the benefit to political leaders whichever party but what is the benefit to them to have uncontrolled immigration do they get more votes generally because the new immigrants tend to be aligned to them politically you know I think we all have our opinions I'm a cyber security and privacy expert maybe you know I know a bit about fraud um I can make observations and uh I I don't know David like I in other words your your speculation or the audience's speculation is as good as mine okay which is something like for some reason they view it as an accumulation of power um right and it by every indication it looks like central governments in the US and central governments are europe are in power accumulation mode and so I want to point something out uh we the family the long family just committed a million dollars to the University of Florida Hamilton Center um which is creating the largest department uh of western civilization studies in the world and the thing that tipped it over for us is what's civil discourse that the the president of the university been sass is saying that and I have every reason to believe that they're going to teach all 60,000 students it's a big university right how to speak to one another without argument without physical violence you know that without attempts right without contempt yeah that's really important yeah that's not tied in just a second go go ahead but I'll tie this together in just a second no please do go ahead I didn't mean to I don't want to know that's okay so remarkable what you guys are doing that's that's really and we we're making a similar commitment uh with a firm in Denmark uh that's doing these kinds of things on a global scale firm called valentis uh fantastic people and we're also working in war torn countries uh we are they are and I'm helping fund it you know so um meaning rights of people so so why is why is western civilization tied into crime what I came to believe deeply is that you know by the time you get to the u.s constitution we've learned a lot of lessons about civilization and one of them might be the the way that say ancient Greeks and early the third fourth century people wrote they wrote socrates and play to wrote and kind of this dialogue style and people like the feasts boethiast wrote in a dialogue where they were arguing they were literally holding arguments that were civil and that that is kind of the lowest level foundation of our civilization is that we can talk to each other without resorting to violence or without me deciding that we need to get rid of you you know today that get rid of you is probably more canceling online back then it might have been physical right and then if we progress through say let's just go through england um it's it's really well documented that that the kings um would go into a political adversaries home and without a warrant famously and find they managed to find something bad that you were doing and if they didn't find something bad you were doing well then they would plant something right and so that the the kings men if you will were weaponized against political adversaries so when our constitutional framers put together the fourth amendment um famously it was a protection from warrantless search and then on the other side of that there was checks and balances because otherwise it's uncontrolled power right like I would call it almost anarchy it would be it would devolve into kind of anarchy right and that's where we are we're teetering on that now as and so the one of the tie back in the western sieve thing before we throw all that out you know say oh this is they didn't know any we should probably at least understand it and maybe teach each other to talk well and at least recognize that like our bill of rights probably has things in there that we should be very careful of throwing out so if you were to tie all these things together it's what we're devolving into online is you've got kind of this anarchy online because of the anonymity anonymity and end to end encryption and the location of businesses in countries that that can't be be challenged by um by central powers and that allows for kind of this anarchy online that criminals participate in there there's no surveillance whatsoever if you will and what has this done to the politicians what's just made them ever more aspirational in their surveillance like they get more aggressive you know so when we look at Pfizer 702 which just got renewed in late April um there was a bill to make it required that there had to be a warrant in order that you be surveilled well that got voted down in a tie vote and the speaker of the house cast the deciding vote I believe that's correct I know it was a tie vote I believe that was the speaker of the house and he he made I made it where it's a two-year extension of Pfizer of the ability to surveil as opposed to five-year but nonetheless the spans political parties and so now there's um even some expansions of Pfizer and so you've got this incredible dynamic of government overreaching into surveillance and then tech entrepreneurs responding by getting above the law and outside the law and it's both worst of both worlds it's deep surveillance uh countered by almost like anarchy and that's all because we've thrown out the wisdom of some of these harder lessons like the fourth amendment so I know that was a lot to go through no let's let's throw it down that was really good so in a it's it's it's it's your own personal assessment of that's right of what is going on but I will tell you it seems you know they're you're not alone let's just say that it seems like there's a lot of people kind of a feeling this way for listeners yes let's explain to them what is Pfizer 702 so Pfizer 70 high level yeah so most of this started uh post 2001 after after 9/11 and that's why it's always tempting to point at one political party and say what's the dems or it's the Republicans but really this thing spans so it started with a patriot act which at the time probably felt really proper to a lot of a lot of us uh people who live in the US and it gave the government more surveillance powers to surveil for terroristic activities specifically around people who are not uh domiciled in the US um and then if they came to the US or they communicated outside the US that that opened the surveillance net up and over time meaning over uh uh uh over a decade they wound down the patriot act but they really spun up the powers of foreign intelligence surveil act 702 um which in effect replicates the powers of the patriot act and so that the basic idea is that I do not the government does not need a warrant to surveil um your communications if you are communicating with someone outside the US and then that gets all spun around and it's not transparent which is the problem to say well if you're communicating out someone outside the US and they get entangled and you get entangled with people that are in the US and those communications that it broadens the net so I would assert that it is not exactly clear where the powers of surveillance start what we know they at least start when you're communicating outside the US but they seem like they do not stop they seem like it can they can twist that around to surveil all of us and there's a there's a great deal of lack of transparency um including the voting down of a warrant requirement which is the most fundamental constitutional you know bit one of the more fundamental things we have is as as uh domicile because we now say to you have the right uh yeah uh of not having warrantless searches yeah the king's man if you will the government can come kick your door down and say I know you're doing something wrong you know i'm start looking around and we're gonna find it and then if the government gets corrupt enough which I argue that if you think that this stuff's okay you're just one presidential change away from thinking it's not so if you like Biden you're not afraid today well wait till Trump gets in office and see if you you fear or if you like Trump and uh you're not afraid well wait till a democratic it's voted and these are things that cut across parties that we all have to learn to stand up for right oh and it's not just one it's not just the executive leader like like like this is a systemic issue would you would you think so see this is right executive leader it's absolutely not just the executive leader and right now you know I would say the dim and in the past democrats have always tilted toward privacy right so I was favorable from my own self interest because I was in the privacy business to say well you know the dims are gonna stick up for privacy that's probably a good thing today the dims are probably leading a little bit away from privacy and a little more towards surveillance as a general but here it is you know I just saw an article online that the the republicans are kind of split into two groups and that the they're pitted against one another and that they're gonna use 702 against one another to to control a central vote so it's it goes up and down the stack David not just and I wouldn't stop adjusting it's once you weaponize this stuff it's dangerous right exactly and and this could be the result of a lot of special interests and funding right like you have certain all the the kids that are funded by certain you know tech groups in favor of privacy then they're gonna vote a certain way other groups a DOD contractor I mean if you're funded by a DOD contractor you're funded by a pharmaceutical you you pick it these things are all interrelated yeah and I hate to sound like the old guy yelling at the sky but it I'm okay to do that I'm I know if I get accused of that fine but we need to revert back a bit we need to revert back to government is actually for the people representing our interest and bring back a balance of the constitutional framework we have a lot of guests in here that are that are former FBI secret service and and and they're like yeah people have to stop believing in the phrase like we're from the government we're here to help you yeah like there's there's there's a lot of good intent but in the execution there's a lot it's the system is really a broken yeah let me give you one more data point just to and we can go wherever you want David let me give you one more data point like if you look at the uniform FBI crime reports statistics you know we're hearing people out there going hey you know crimes at all time low and you're like wow that doesn't match my intuitive view of the world what's going on well it turns out 33% of the cities in the United States including LA and New York are not reporting they're withholding statistics and you know just the Chicago LA New York the Chicago was in their David's credit crimes down Chicago was in there they were but Tampa where I live in Florida yeah Tampa was either late and reporting or had not reported and that's a big city so you're you know but it's interesting you know here here's here's a real life example yes there's apps that people can monitor their local safety or to see what law enforcement is doing there's like the citizens apps and things like that where you can see oh there's a break in over here or there's an emergency over here there's a fire it's a good way of being abreast of storms as well as criminal activity but when people and I've spoken to people all over the country there's various jurisdictions that don't report into that app and so you would so so you see all this you're like look at all this activity on the on the south side yet but the north side suburbs aren't reporting anything yes there's no activity yes three years there I'm like okay well don't tell me it's not happening yes not reporting because it's bad PR right yes like they don't like people may not want to you know uh you know um go to our local boutiques etc if there's if they actually know how dangerous it could be right yes yes and in other regions like California uh proposition 47 uh I passed in 2014 and it in a sense decriminalized certain kinds of crimes nonviolent crimes for possession of drugs as well as um stolen uh goods which uh under $950 turn them into Mr. Meeners and so in a sense we've legalized some what used to be crimes so those also don't get reported and what I can say is I've been to I've traveled to over 50 50 countries I I don't know how many cities and the only place I've ever been robbed is San Francisco you know it was interesting we we recently interviewed somebody that was just out at RSA and they've been to RSA in San Francisco numerous times and they said it it has changed it was they were right they were really afraid for themselves and this is their own personal perception don't know what it's like they're right now today the problem is I think is without the reporting of it nobody really knows right but the sense is you know uh there's a feeling of not being safe and that's and that's a concern yes so I said the overall theme here that I'm getting at is we have a a politic I'm just going to call them the political class of people david and you could refine that wherever you want it's definitely not just the president it's not one party it's the political class for whatever reason they have these agendas and let's just call it less controlled immigration as an example agenda and and they're going to run those and then apparently they're we're going to not report crimes we're going to legalize what used to be crimes and then instead of like having directed law enforcement to say I have reason to believe that Kurt or david is engaging in crime we are just going to surveil you and you show me the man and I'll show you the crime you know I believe it was Stalin who famously said and I and the the result is like the tech entrepreneurs are reacting by creating products and services that remove us and remove their users completely from law enforcement and then and then you wind up with more crime and we've got to restore some kind of balance and order back to to a more centrist place. Exactly and let's talk about some of those some of those platforms um platforms like telegrams signal things like that right? Yes so walk us through what what what are those platforms and how are they most of our listeners have have heard of them but they may or may not have used them so I know that telegram is used quite regularly by cyber crime like it's there's a thousands of reports of it and I know that law enforcement is monitoring a lot of it there's been some significant arrests arising out of conversations that they see on telegram which the people speaking kind of thought were private but they weren't. Yes so that that would be examples of where you know you'd have intelligence agents getting into groups that the criminals think are private groups but they're in fact infiltrated by intelligence analysts but the core say around telegram is the encryption where they famously resist cooperating and probably resist cooperating with law enforcement governments is the right way to phrase that and what that means is if law enforcement issues a subpoena to them they yes used to like turn on as a general statement I'm sure there's exceptions to that but it's a general statement and then they relocated the business to the UAE and interestingly the founder of telegram was also robbed in San Francisco and claims that's the only that's a lot of culture there it's fantastic don't get us wrong we just want it to be accurately reflected in the crime statistics that's all we're saying right um no I think I'm going to be on that I'm going to be on that no I am because San Francisco will show as it's a great place yeah my opinion is I've been traveling to San Francisco since 1985 I considered it my favorite city in the world even beyond the city that I grew up in in Florida and I thought I think San Francisco was amazing it's been amazing to the foundation of this country but I think the policies that the political class have put in place there have not served law-biting citizens and people who are industrious I don't think it's served them well and I think it's reflected I think it's reflected in in in the city today and I think that there's every reason to believe that the city can recover with the modest regaining of rebalance it's always been a great place and and will be in the future but I I believe it has to regain its balance that's my opinion yep and hey look you could pick one city in the world to live that's it but I'd want law in order there so in any case in any case you know we we we we we wind up with this under-reporting of crime and and it becomes ubiquitous and we lose ground and we're on on telegram interesting yeah an interesting correlation what you're making is okay whatever city whatever state whatever country even there's an under-reporting of crime for various reasons we don't know what but we can surmise or speculate yes but because of that who the technology industry is responding and has been responding for years like creating ways around it yes because because there's under-reporting of crime or because there's there's various challenges because the government can't employ a million intelligence analysts to infiltrate everywhere right yes they need they have sought through the laws to be able to have warrantless surveillance yes and then from there the tech industries responding and they're saying well they're creating platforms which can be encrypted and can yes and and we'll knock on cybercrime cybercrime elements are starting to leverage those platforms they have been for at least a decade and it's expanding rapidly right well I mean it's it's how it started with you know before you know like originally there was Brett Johnson and the shadow crew and yes and and that aspect and then the dark web and the Tor browser and all the onion uh uh uh uh urls kind of came up but now there's all these messaging apps like telegram and signal will matrix talks yeah matrix yep talks right yes and and and talks we talk about all the time because if you get attacked by ransomware you get a note that says you know come talk to us on a talks channel and people are like we don't what like they've never heard of the Tor browser they like business owners right there yes it's really technical but all of a sudden they have to like download the Tor browser set up all these other systems maybe tails to get on there and then they've got to go and have a talks channel communication which you know is apparently you know not public so uh it's it's it's it's where cybercrime lives and it's where when people think of the dark web and the and the shadows of it I mean it's really very similar in analogous to organize crime back of the 50s and 60s which would just go and talk I mean we've all seen them we've all know the real stories where they have to talk and hide their lips they have to go talk in public they don't use the phones because they just find a place to have in to conduct business away from surveillance and that's happening online it is it accepted scales really really well oh yeah scale of it is back a hundred x you know so the one thing that gets a little messy in here is as I go through through through these things and we and we talk about these things is what are people supposed to do and it's a it's I think we all have to play some role in bringing back accountability and bounce to society so there's a couple couple things is a person who's been involved in privacy for at least 20 years um you know we've heard famously from from people that just get over it privacy is gone and except that you're going to be surveilled I think this is this is one of the most I don't know what word to use I hate to say naive because it makes it sound to the listener that they're naive but it's it's nefarious this privacy compromises absolutely nefarious because you don't feel it you don't you can't see it it's tough to attribute what you see in the world happening but as we watch this play out and you speak to people say from Czechoslovakia under the USSR when you lose your privacy it really does consistently lead to governmental political class abuse a loss of not just human rights but the value of humans and and to some extent anarchy because everyone goes and hides from it in the dark if you will and and you wind up with a criminal side of the world and and a a surveilled side of the world and a loss of rights so if there was just one takeaway it would be I really really wish the audience would take their privacy right seriously I'm not saying to go protest Facebook or something but watch the government stand up to this and just push back legally we don't need to be part of the problem but push back legally in every way you can that's my opinion yeah and that's and that's not misaligned with the messaging that other guests have had and that we've promoted and that is take your like Americans in general have not been valuing their personal privacy they just have it like as a culture we haven't like you're right you talk to people over in other countries and they consider it a fundamental human right yes as I believe the harm that happens when it leads to abuse has happened more recently over there to them and because of that right I mean I think it's a fair assessment no you're right you're right it's it's in it in the case of the Prague driver he was he was in his 40 so it's in living memory right it's in delivering memory for them and you know David one thing I would say that if you want to take an action how do you take action well you know we all got addicted to the free app you know the free app is part of this where it's like time when I use an app set free you're the product yes and like it you know for years you're like why still win along with it and the more and more I saw it play out I'm like you know what it's worth paying a modest amount of money to get a really valuable app where where my my sovereignty is protected and that's what the bunker tie in is there it's like yeah try to make it a modest amount of money for for people to use and and we really do protect their privacy yeah absolutely yeah I mean it's and and we will have links to bunker I mean it's extremely affordable and the levels of privacy are just unmatched it's it's absolutely fantastic well and there's also the what you're opinion I wanted to ask you about this because we didn't talk about it last time but the and I'm not one that is in favor of more regulation or more laws because again I don't I mean we just the people that I talk to and and in my personal experience my own personal opinion not the opinion of my employer none of these opinions are these are my employers everybody but but look like you know data brokers like data like there's no there's very little regulation about about data brokers and yeah there's so much like they take so much data and sell it to so many organizations that you have no idea accepting cookies and you're signing up for these free apps you're giving them you're answering these these questions these security things you're giving them all this stuff about you and it gets sold all over the place and many of them are nefarious and you are subject to that yeah you know David I was ready to give a little speech about how we should have fewer what laws but enforce the ones we do have and then you did the data broker thing which is really complicated you're right and the case and I would the thing I would add I don't have anything to add what you said about that other than they also don't have breach reporting laws so when they aggregate a ton of data not only they selling your data and and there have been charges of selling data in real time your location all kinds of things but when they're breached this gigantic trove goes to the dark web and unlike a regulated industry they don't even have to report and so it's I think you've hit the nail on the head with with that one and I don't know how you get around having a bit more laws on that but but my big thing is like what I've seen over the years of being involved in information security and regulation which isn't affect laws we don't usually need more laws we usually need to enforce the ones that are there because we do not do a good job of enforcement and just to give you an example of that briefly there's thousands of examples right there actually are because so this is good that's I think that's well said because people don't really think about it that way because because whenever something happens they're like well we need to like I mean it's it's analogous in so many aspects of of life there's a big shooting and so people in certain cities are like well we need more laws I'm like you already have the most strict laws on the planet right like it enforce them and then maybe it'll be okay right like it's it really boils down to enforcement it does and up this example was going to be one I used to spend a good amount of time in Washington DC it was not a lobbyist but I did educate congress people senators staff legally a zones as well as enforcement agency and this was this was at the time of office for civil rights health and human services together with congressional work and what I learned is that I would go meet with a senator or a congressperson or a legally azon for them and tell them that listen you know in the healthcare industry for example these kinds of organizations don't worry at all about in this case HIPAA because there's no enforcement and they were always shocked to the and they were I think deeply disappointed on the law making side and then you would go over to the office for civil rights side and they really kind of had the attitude of you know we're going to enforce what we want we're going to kind of do what we want unless someone threatens funding and it was the first time I realized that the lawmakers might have really good intention but if the administrative state doesn't enforce it that the laws don't even matter that was a huge revelation for me and that's the nature of why spent time in DC trying to bridge the gap between lawmakers and the enforcement agencies well you know that's a great distinction because that cuts it's non-political like you're not saying it's this party doing this or this party because it's not it is it is just it is the government function and there are ways around that they can tie in restrictions on funding should should they're not being forced there's always ways to craft and edit and amend so ultimately to your point David what wind up happening in a positive note on on this one is that they started tying Medicare funding to privacy and security regs and it worked yeah it worked you because they got control of the money and like you're not going to get money if you're found to be negligent in the area of protecting the data as well as the associated fraud and it worked yeah absolutely well I mean here in the United States it seems the financial industry clearly has been the leader in on the forefront of bolstering cybersecurity and bolstering compliance as evidence of certain controls for cybersecurity overall but um and and healthcare you think would be right up there it's still slowly coming right it's not as um and we see it in the in the in the data breach statistics right yeah I mean you you just see us healthcare getting pummeled and with uh attacks like ransomware it's literally killing people like it's literally causing physical it's blurred the lines yes between digital harm and physical harm and yeah you know I think people are starting to see that more and more now yeah I think that you know it's just as human beings um my my belief is we've come a little we've come to undervalue human beings I think that my opinion is every human being that could come into the world we should be aligning ourselves and and programs to maximize the potential of human beings and when we we lose a human being uh that this is this is a loss and I think that's probably very naive but I think we need to restill that beginning with our own selves and our children and our grandchildren and asked that lawmaker is wrecking as well um it's constitutional yeah it's the foundation of the US institution and it's funny because I mean I was uh I was a political science nerd I was a I was an attorney and I will tell you that you know our constitution is almost identical to certain communist countries it's in that execution of it that's a great point you know what I mean like on paper they're almost the same but yes let me tell you the execution is completely different yes like the way we created the entities the checks and balances that we have in place and what you're bringing up is we're lacking checks and balances in certain segments right and transparency like trans trans trans currency right exactly yeah real the light is the best disinfectant you know like that's the saying or you know we know that bad deeds happen in the dark and the light is the best disinfectant and when we see government officials of any persuasion party whatever and they're pushing back on why we don't need to know and you know low-know it's too scary for the public to know like no oh my gosh they all they have to do is watch the nose like they like they they've they've seen everything at this point yes right I mean yes and and and I think it underestimates the public in general yes like you know trust in your people a little bit more and absolutely that's that's exactly right so in any I know it's a little different conversation David but this is where my head's been I appreciate you know it's all that I mean explore these things a little bit you and this is this is so interesting so let's talk about some things that people can do so from a personal privacy standpoint what are what are some of the top three to five best practices that a that an individual can do and the reason I'm focusing on the individual is organizations benefit when individuals take their privacy more seriously and have better cyber hygiene because when we create those those those best practices for ourselves we bring those to work all right I'm not going to say password management first okay so I will do that I'm gonna purposefully go a different direction so you know I just let me give you a little story I just presented at a large manufacturer last yeah in front of like it was so almost a couple thousand people live and I thought it was going to be like 50 and there was like several thousand and I was like whoa it was exciting it was exhilarating but I'll tell you when we're talking about password management I'm like they've like people's eyes roll over when we talk about passwords again it's like when you talk about spotting a fishing email everyone's like oh we know we know I'm like do you do you really like this is still like 80% it is all of the incidents are involved there like we don't know right they don't know right and they get so I would you know here's one that you don't hear as much that I that I think is a good one and I have friends doing it we all know that social media is important in people's lives and to say we'll stay off social media is very naive but you know what you can do is you can at least not put the apps on your phone and you can just leave your social media activity to like your desktop you know your laptop and so that that that can eliminate a lot interesting point now what's the benefit to that well you know if they're you know you know you know you're getting tracked I'm I'm using a VPN today on my desktop you know so on my phone when I use a VPN it messes up too much like another it slows it up the darn thing off you did the same thing David yeah yeah it slows the slows everything up it slows it down it breaks the apps all in your like blaming the app and they're like no it's my VPN on my phone so in case I can have the VPN on my desktop and you know I have an Instagram account and I have an ex account I don't have a Facebook account I have LinkedIn and I can go on my desktop when it's at my house and if they track me they're gonna if they are able to get through the VPN still correlate me to an identity well they're gonna find out that I'm still ordering me at my house yeah exactly and so it and then like at least I'm not carrying this device around with me that's tracking every last interaction all the way down to I'm going to the doctor or yeah now they're gonna market me products related to the like I just went to an eye doctor for example oh yeah so then all this other thing adds for us yeah all all the time right yeah and then I mean it brings a sense of of of safety at least a sense of physical safety and maybe the reduction of a good deal of unwanted ads and all the byproducts come with it so that's that's one we talked about the the VPN I do that on my desktop we talked we talked about password management and you know the next kind of two or three are going to be exactly what we constructed bunker to do is reduce the attack surfaces because if you can reduce the attack surfaces it just leaves the bad guys going on to the next target so passwords and I think secure document storage when you've got your most important documents spread out all over the place they're on your phone they're on your iPad they're on your desktop they're in Dropbox they're in you know Google Cloud they're they're in Apple Cloud Google Cloud I mean that's increasing the attack surfaces so for myself I've reduced my attack surfaces by putting my most important documents all you know into bunker where I know they're going to be with or without internet connectivity and I don't have to store them in 18 different places and then I think secure communications is a really big deal I think that the you know it's impossible not to observe every went ransomware or you know every major loss there's probably a 80% chance it started with email you know so I or in that always goes to like an imposter on the other end of the email is an imposter and I use bunker exclusively for any kind of mission critical communications I have it's our own product I 100% trust it and believe we eliminate those risks so those are some that come to my mind and then now we got to worry about you know the deep fakes and the not just voice fakes but the video fakes and I'm telling you that was the that was how we began the the education summit last last week before that before that manufacturing group it was all I mean we just started on deep fakes and we showed them so many examples because I said I can explain this but you're not going to believe me so let me show you and yes just showed them samples of it and it was undetectable from the human eye and not only that deep fakes have gotten to the point where it's it's used live yes there's that it was a long story done yeah 25 million there's a big slug of money big on different yes seven different transactions totally 25 million and what happened was it started with an email it was business email compromise they said no we're not going to do this I don't know anything about this and they said okay no worries let's all get on a zoom or a teams and live there were seven other people live speaking with with the person in accounts payable right and and the target and they were able to ask questions for like 25 30 minutes all seven people were live deep fakes yes it was and they said there was they said I couldn't tell like they said everything was accurate nothing was glitching it was it was just like if I was speaking to seven people at my company yes really now for individuals the family password is you've probably heard that I'm sure your other guests have said create a family password for businesses there's all kinds of ways you can avoid that but part of it is what you already alluded to and we run business to read a lot of employees and security awareness it's well you needed to invest in security awareness and you can do that to your blue in the face and there's still people who just aren't going to remember to hey maybe I should pick up the phone and call this person on the known cell phone for them they're still not going to take those actions so I think businesses still probably have a challenge I still think a lot of it revolves around email yeah absolutely well Kurt thank you so much what a fantastic conversation my friend well I hope I didn't go too far but I've David I've really I want to be more you know I've watched all this happen and I know I'm filibustering slightly but there's me one second you know of all the things I've read and seen of of authoritarian regimes to get created around the world over all time periods is they always ask people to live with lies they ask that you it's almost like by the end you know I'm lying and I know you know I'm lying but I'm still going to lie to you and you're going to go along with it right and as a society the very best thing that we can do is to tell the truth stay open-minded stay civil discourse and assign a value to the truth and try to get to the truth as a society individually in conversation that's what make that UF commitment important to us well who and congratulations on that and I think that's that's remarkable um we will definitely speak with you again so we can find out how that goes because I think creating a safe place for open discourse is how we solve this right this is how I mean it used to be I mean I I'm you know I'm a student of history so I look at the Lincoln Douglas debates right and things like that talk about heated life and death like absolute diametric opposition of those two guys and they were able to both just have open discourse and let the people vote and it was just it was the way and it the results removed slavery right and that was the result but it was open discourse it yes you know it's it's just remarkable so thank you so much my friend we will we will we will talk again sir talk again soon Kurt Long everybody CEO and founder of bunker there will be links in the show notes and we thank you for all you do thank you thanks everybody yeah it's bunker.life is the website thank you thank you well that wraps this up thank you for joining us we hope you enjoyed our episode the next one is coming right up we appreciate you making this an award-winning podcast and downloading on Apple and Spotify and subscribing to our YouTube channel this is cybercrime junkies and we thank you for watching