PSFK speaks to Nico Sell, co-founder of the world’s most secure peer-to-peer encrypted messaging system, about the perils of digital security
Innovation is the new currency in today’s Idea Economy. In recognition of the leaders who are disrupting our tech-driven world, the editors at thought leadership site PSFK.com partnered with HP Matter to create the Innovators Index, a roster of digital pioneers making a global impact. Each week, we’ll share POVs from these experts on their work and process, sharing insights on reinvention and how to embrace change.
Our digital lives hold the promise of unprecedented access to boundless sources of information and an ever-expanding network of people spanning the globe. But all this connectivity comes at a cost. These platforms for consuming, sharing and chatting put our online identities, activities and assets at risk of exposure and potential theft. Short of canceling all of their accounts in favor of pre-Internet behaviors like letter writing and trips to the library, most consumers don’t know the best ways to ensure their personal privacy and security.
Nico Sell wants to fix that. As the co-founder of Wickr, the world’s most secure peer-to-peer encrypted messaging system, she fears the potential repercussions of insecure data floating across health, telecom, social media and other platforms. Her advocacy for Internet security and expertise in hacking make her a source of information for concerned citizens, as well as a disruptor in the eyes of the government.
As part of our series of interviews for the Innovators Index, PSFK caught up with Sell in person to learn more about society’s pressing security concerns and her strategic work to protect the “Facebook Generation.”
PSFK: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your work at Wickr?
Nico: I am the CEO and founder of the Wickr Foundation, which was founded just a few weeks ago as the not-for-profit division of Wickr Inc. I am also an organizer for r00tz Aslyum, a nonprofit I started about six years ago.
r00tz Asylum is a nonprofit I started about six years ago which teaches kids white-hat hacking skills, such as how to eavesdrop on cell phone calls for $500, turn on an interfacing camera on your TV, smartphone, or laptop, pick a lock or encode. Last year, we taught them how to break into lawful intercept machines. A lot of times people hear these things and think getting usernames and passwords, or cloning a credit card is for NSA or uber-hackers, but when we show kids how to do it in half an hour it solidifies the seriousness of the situation that we’re in, and hopefully get these problems fixed at a faster rate.
I teach these kind of things because as soon as I learned these lessons, it become clear to me that a backdoor for the good guys will always equal a backdoor for the bad guys. That’s probably why I’m one of the only CEOs in the world that has publicly said “no” to an FBI backdoor.
PSFK: What motivates you and what do you enjoy the most about teaching kids at Wickr?
Nico: I don’t think I wanted kids when I was younger and now I’m like supermom. Everything I do is for my kids. I don’t allow my daughter to use Facebook so we started Wickr as a safe way for her and her friends to communicate. She’s smart enough to know why not to use it, but our work at Wickr is to get people thinking in the long term.
PSFK: Can you provide some context to the security issues that surround Facebook or social messaging?
Nico: Facebook and Twitter are amazing marketing tools, but your messages are not private. They might be hidden from you or hidden from other people to make you believe that no one is tracking you.
People might think, “I’m not a criminal. I don’t have anything to hide so I don’t have to worry about it.” But if you think about your kids, then you do have to worry about these basic human rights.
Imagine that all of your coworkers and all of your friends could search through your company’s database. Let’s just say that we tell the search engines more than we tell our loved ones.
PSFK: Can you walk us through your creative process?
Nico: My dad’s a professional golfer and with sports you have to visualize yourself winning. You even practice your shots ahead of time and I think bringing that skill set over to the business world has been extremely useful for me. It’s one of the honor codes we have with the kids and it’s also what entrepreneurs do all of the time.
I really believe that you can manifest whatever you want, as long as you have a strong way to see it in front of you. Adversely, if you’re skiing and you think about falling then you will fall. The same discipline applies for anyone in innovation or entrepreneurship.
PSFK: What are your biggest daily challenges as an entrepreneur and what do you do when you’re stuck?
Nico: I work on my art. A lot of hackers are also artists, strangely enough. There’s a connection there—if you know how to take down the entire power grid then you need something a little light to do on the side to get you thinking in a different way. I always think about my best business ideas when I’m working on my art, and I always think of my best art ideas when working on my business.
Wickr is in a unique situation because we were attacked by nation states the first day we launched as a company. I had a FBI investigation start on me shortly after that’s still ongoing. I have people watching me all of the time, I have regular interactions with the government, and these challenges are stressful but in a good way. My work background prepared me for how to deal with these situations.
The first time I was approached by the FBI, I was scared and obedient but over time you realize that they’re people, too. They’re just citizens that happen to work in the government.
PSFK: What are the key factors or forces that are currently driving disruption in the telecom industry?
Nico: With telecom there’re a couple of things that are being completely disrupted.
The carriers have had to switch from making money off of calls and text to making money off data. I think they’ve finally come to that realization. The CEO of Orange told a great story on how Steve Jobs created the iPod, which was the most successful consumer product of all time and then he put it into the iPhone. People thought this was a really stupid move because it would cannibalize the iPod, but instead it made it an even more successful product.
That kind of vision is what the most successful carriers will do as they deal with the cellular data transition. The ones that grab onto the data realize that this is the future of their business and step in with both feet. The first carrier’s usually not going to be risky so it’s the smaller ones that take on the challenge and that’s going to disrupt their business model.
We also deal a lot with talks about metadata, which encompasses who you’re talking to, when you’re speaking to them and how often. The metadata is actually way more useful than what’s actually in the content, which is all available through telecom carriers. All of the carriers have become spy agencies and I don’t think they wanted to do that.
We found a way to make phone calls where there’s no metadata attached. You just need to have the billing done on the device, so I think we’re going to be able to stop that from occurring but it’s going to be a big issue that will be debated in the next couple of years. Carriers and governments have always had very close relationships.
PSFK: Which industry do you feel is in the need of the most radical change going forward?
Nico: Healthcare really scares me. Whether it’s the big companies that have your health records or a little health care app startup, they’re all collecting all of this data on you and then sharing it and selling it.
This is really common now: a Social Security number can be guessed by birth date and birth location and with that information someone can steal an identity. If someone steals your healthcare identity, then your medical records are up for grabs.
PSFK: In the next 10 years, what do you see as the three biggest challenges the world will face?
Nico: Currently, one in 10 of our children are victims of identity theft because the new immigration laws that were passed by DHS require you to have a Social Security number in order to work in the U.S. As a result, illegal immigrants are buying children’s Social Security numbers on the black market. This wasn’t happening four years ago and so this is a sneaking economic problem that’s going to hit us in about 10 years. The interesting thing is that the people buying it don’t see it as bad—they’re just buying an identity or healthcare online. They don’t see the victim on the other side of it.
We also think we depend on the Internet a lot today, but we don’t. We’re about to add another seven billion people online and start embedding nanotechnology with wireless sensors into our bodies. We’ve got to get this security problem fixed now before we actually really, really are dependent on all this technology.
The last thing is the lost generation of the Facebook era. There a certain group of people where all of their personal information is going to be out there forever and it’s going to cause them a lot of problems that will make it hard to clean up for their whole lives. I think Wickr will fix that. The next generation is starting to pay attention to this a little more so that our kids will have control and ownership over the personal footprint they’re leaving.
Innovation is the new currency in today’s Idea Economy. In recognition of the leaders who are disrupting our tech-driven world, the editors at thought leadership site PSFK.com partnered with HP Matter to create the Innovators Index, a roster of digital pioneers making a global impact. This week we’ve featured Nico Sell for her advocacy in internet security.